Gettin' Foxy on Your Ass

[vovat]

We move on from chickens to foxes, turning to the city of Foxville, introduced in The Road to Oz. And discussing Foxville pretty much necessitates also delving into its neighboring city, Dunkiton. These two towns are also located outside of Oz, south of the Great Sandy Waste, but they still have talking animals. Foxville is a quite beautiful and cultured city, full of marble buildings decorated with images of fowl, and with its own theater. The foxes who inhabit the city walk upright, dress in fancy clothes, and are apparently about the size of humans. Their ruler is the bespectacled King Renard IV, who claims that his name is pronounced "with the accent on the 'ren,'" although it seems to me like its derivation from French would suggest otherwise. His private name is Dox, and it's this that his friends usually call him. The Fox King was so impressed by Button-Bright's youthful curiosity and unassuming manner that he magically gave the boy a fox head, which he only managed to change it back by bathing in the Truth Pond.


Thinking of Foxville in combination with this April Fool's joke mentioning Megan Fox playing Dorothy made me think that, if she plays any Oz role (and I'd rather she didn't play any role at all; seriously, what's her appeal?), it should be one of King Dox's daughters. Then again, any new movie would probably make the foxes CGI, so I guess she wouldn't be recognizable. Maybe I should just slip a quick pop culture reference into one of my own stories, with the King having a daughter named Megan who's absurdly skinny. Maybe she's on a no-poultry diet. :P


Anyway, moving on to Dunkiton, it's a much less impressive-looking city than its neighbor. It's made up of low, square houses of whitewashed brick, scattered all over the town. The donkey inhabitants insist that they're intelligent enough not to need an organized city. The donkeys claim to be the smartest creatures in the world, but it's clear that they're somewhat deluded as to how intelligence actually works. They don't attend school because they say they're born wise, so the children are kept occupied in whitewashing the walls. While they do have the ability to read and write, they're not very good at it. Still, they've done pretty well for themselves given their limitations, being able to use their hooves for various tasks that might usually require hands. Unlike the foxes, the only clothes they wear are hats and leg jewelry. The king of the city, Kik-a-bray, seems to be a more accomplished magician than King Dox, using his jeweled staff to make food, among other things. The Donkey King was just as impressed by the Shaggy Man as the Fox King was by Button-Bright, so he followed in Puck's footsteps in giving Shaggy a donkey head.


Ozma invites both of the monarchs to her birthday party, and while their cities are traditional enemies, the kings actually end up getting along very well. Whether or not this leads to improved relations between the foxes and donkeys isn't discussed.

Comments

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

I'm sure glad you identified that article as an April Fool's Day joke ...

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would be pretty terrible if it were actually true. I knew the article was a joke when I first saw the link to it, but I might have been able to figure it out anyway, what with some of the more ridiculous content like the argument over Winged Monkeys being racist.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Actually, that one didn't strike me as too ridiculous, considering how thin-skinned and PC some people are: "monkey" has been used as a racially tinged expression in the past. Howard Cosell got fired as a sports announcer when he called a black football player a monkey, even though he was just commenting on the guy's speed and scrambling ability. However, some of the other things were pretty out there!

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Howard Cosell got fired as a sports announcer when he called a black football player a monkey, even though he was just commenting on the guy's speed and scrambling ability.

I don't know that that's a fair comparison, though, since the Winged Monkeys were never associated with black people in the first place (although Littlefield identified them as the Ozian version of Native Americans).

As for what was pretty ridiculous, I think the reference to "Smurfs" in Avatar, which apparently pretty accurate, isn't something you'd find in a legitimate news story.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

In the last sentence, I meant "which, WHILE apparently accurate." Just in case anyone couldn't figure that out.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

I figured it out! :-)

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Native Americans? Odd. No, I don't think it's a fair comparison at all, but since that's a term of insult that has been used in the past, you can see how some people would relate it in the article. It wouldn't be the first time racism has been seen where it didn't exist; sometimes such things really are in the eye of the beholder.

As for the Smurfs -- well, they were very short and the guys in Avatar are very large, but the color sure fits! Definitely not something you'd see in a legitimate news story, though -- it was a dead bluish giveaway.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well, Littlefield wrote the Parable on Populism interpretation, which linked pretty much everything in Wizard to things from Baum's America.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've read that. It could be true, I suppose -- I was never inside Baum's head -- but personally I think Baum just wanted to write a fun children's story, and afterward just wanted to keep getting his bills paid. Not that he didn't make some connections with American life, but people shouldn't go crazy trying to link everything.