Ruby Slippers: A Journey with Colour in the Land of Oz We're Not in Kansas Anymore : Colour for a New World With a few exceptions, I've chosen to focus almost exclusively on the themes in L. Frank Baum's original children's novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), instead of the more widely known 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland. The main reason for this is the way the two versions deal with fictionality as a concept. In the book, Oz is a real place- as real as Dorothy's Kansas anyway- but exists in an ambiguous location that can only be accessed by outsiders from the air (think hot air balloons and tornadoes) because of the deadly desert that surrounds the Land of Oz. The film version of Oz, however, only exists in Dorothy's dream. Because of this, the Oz of the novel has its own reality consisting of distinct characters, mythologies, rules, and architecture, whereas the Oz dreamworld exists as representations of experiences from Dorothy's waking life. Book Dorothy is dealing with the problems of existing in a foreign land, while Film Dorothy's subconscious is working through the problems she deals with at home- mainly her irritating Toto-hating neighbor who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West in her mind. The introduction to the Land of Oz and the treatment of colour in both mediums furthers this comparison. Both versions of the story start in the grey, dusty land of Kansas which, in the novel, while the only colour term used in the description is grey, the effect it gives is one of dullness and a certain poverty of life: When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray colour to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.1 The conditions in which she lives strip the colour and the life out of her world. After the tornado sets Dorothy and her house down in the new land, we are gradually introduced to colours, first the green grass, then the blue clothing of the Munchkins and the Good Witch's white dress and hair. Kansas and its inhabitants in the film are rendered in pure sepia tones until the spectacular moment when Dorothy opens the front door onto the hyper-saturated world of Oz. There is a breathtaking moment when we are still standing inside the doorway and the sepia house but see the fantastical, colourful world beyond the door.
Still from The Wizard of Oz (1939) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
The discovery of colour in a previously desaturated existence is a common metaphor for the loss of innocence and the discovery of knowledge. Other great examples of this are when the child protagonist in The Giver sees the red apple for the first time2 after receiving memories from the society and in the movie 1 L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), 12 2 Lois Lowry, The Giver (1993). Apples, of course, are another common metaphorical device for the loss of innocence with a rich history- Eve, Kafka, et al.