10 Things I Hate About the Wizard of Oz

From 1959 to 1991, The Wizard of Oz, was shown on tv every year, on CBS until 1968, and then on NBC.

Nazarenes weren't allowed to go to movie theaters, but watching movies on tv was fine, so our parents sat us down every year and forced us to watch the "beloved children's classic."

Apparently it was shown in November or December, but I remember it in the springtime, one of the traumas of the end of the year.

It's old-fashioned, outdated, incomprehensible, and...well, horrifying.

1. 10-year old Dorothy, played by 16-year old Judy Garland, the queen of angst, lives a horrible life on a Depression-Era Dustbowl farm in black-and-white Kansas. Her parents are dead; her elderly Uncle and Aunt appear to be raising man-eating pigs.

 Her only source of joy is her dog Toto, but the evil Miss Gulch is planning to take him away and have him killed.  So Dorothy dreams of going to a place where there "isn't any trouble."

2. A giant tornado destroys her home and zaps Dorothy off to Oz, where at least things are in color, but the main residents are disturbing munchkins.  They look like little adults with mouth deformities, and walk like they have cerebral palsy. Could this be the place with no trouble?

3. Dorothy has accidentally killed the dictator of Munchkin land and stolen her ruby slippers, which apparently are powerful.  The Wicked Witch of the West, the dictator of Winkie Land, shows up.  She thinks Dorothy is hot ("I'll get you, my pretty")  But she wants to kill her anyway, get the slippers, and take over Munchkin land.

In Oz five minutes, and Dorothy has already started a war and gotten a death threat. No wonder she wants to go home to Kansas.

4. She goes on a journey through an empty postapocalyptic Oz to get to the Emerald City and ask the assistance of the great and powerful Wizard.  Along the way she picks up adult male companions, mutants with their own quests: a brain, a heart, the "noive."

She's uncomfortably intimate with the Cowardly Lion.

Meanwhile the Witch burns, poisons, and otherwise terrorizes the group.  I hated the poppy field -- that's opium poppies, the source of heroin -- where Dorothy and company are almost smothered to death.

Incomprehensible: when the Scarecrow's body is torn up and scattered around, the Tin Man says "That's you all over," punning on a 1930s slang phrase meaning "That's just like you."   Who makes a joke about a friend being torn to pieces?

5. At the Emerald City, where the bourgeoisie live in glorious excess and ignore the deprivations of the proletariat, Dorothy and company enjoy a spa day.  Dorothy asks about getting her eyes dyed, which is disgusting.  There's an incomprehensible reference to "a horse of a different color": another pun on a 1930s slang phrase meaning "that's different."

6. After trying to terrorize the Fellowship of the Ring for awhile, the Wizard says he'll help, but only if they steal the Witch's broom.

They undertake a second long and perilous journey to the Witch's castle, where they are captured.  The flying monkeys are horrifying, as is the hourglass that counts out the minutes Dorothy has to live.  Nightmare time!

After almost being murdered, Dorothy melts the witch, frees her slaves -- at least in The Wiz, they were hunky guys in speedos -- and brings the broom back to the Wizard.

7. Who has no power at all!  He's a complete fraud!  He sent her on the quest assuming she would be killed, and his secret would be safe. Too cowardly to commit your own murders, Wiz?

The Wizard suggests that, instead of real skills, the companions defraud their way through life.  For instance, the Scarecrow gets a diploma he didn't earn and spouts some gibberish that sounds brainy but isn't.  He'll probably become a math professor.

Unfortunately, Dorothy can't defraud her back to Kansas.

8. Glinda the Good Witch, the dictator of Gillikan Land, shows up and, with an infuriating smirk, tells Dorothy that she always had the power to go home.

Why not tell her this before she went through all of the agony and terror, you sadistic jerk?

Were you trying to get her to do your dirty work for you, assassinate two world leaders so you could consolidate your power?  Were you the brains behind this whole trip?

And why is the matra that takes you back to Kansas "There's no place like home"?  That is, don't stay in Oz.  Is Glinda worried that if Dorothy sticks around, she will be a threat to her power?

9.  Upon arriving back in Kansas, Dorothy discovers that it was all a dream that occurred when she hit her head during the tornado.  All of that trouble, pain, betrayal, fraud, and behind-the-scene machinations for nothing.  Besides, the plot about Miss Gulch taking away Toto is never resolved. Dorothy's life is still horrible.

10. After all that, there are no same-sex relationships, and there's no beefcake. Where's the gay content?  (The "dandy-lion" line doesn't count.)

Oh, well, here's a picture of a shirtless guy.

See also: The Wiz; The Boys and Men of Oz

The Stonewall Movie: Convoluted Plot, Not Enough Beefcake

I've read books on Stonewall, the riot that sparked the Gay Rights Revolution.  I've seen documentaries.

Now I've seen the 2015 movie.

Wow, who knew it was so convoluted.

1. Danny Winters (Jeremy Irvine), a clean-cut all-American kid from rural Indiana, gets a scholarship to Columbia, but before his parents can fill out the scholarship papers, they discover that he is gay and kick him out.  His boyfriend, disgraced, refuses to talk to him.

So he goes to New York anyway, where everybody -- repeat, everybody falls in love with him.

He lives on the street, and works as a hustler (although the look of pure disgust he gets whenever a client tries to go down on him would probably limit his success).

He hangs out with a group of androgynous gay and transgender street kids led by Ray, aka Ramona (Johnny Beauchamp).

2. They are regulars at the Stonewall Tavern, run by Ed Murphy (Ron Pearlman), who has connections to the Mob and may have murdered a street kid who was Ray's lover.

3. Meanwhile Danny gets involved with Trevor (Jonathan Rhys-Meyer),  who picks up twinks by playing Procul Harem's "Whiter Shade of Pale" on the jkebox.  Trevor belongs to the establishment-gay rights Mattachine Society, with its ineffectual message of accommodation and "waiting."

Danny hates it; he wants a revolution!  But he actually drops out because he sees Trevor using "White Shade of Pale" to pick up someone else.   Back to the Stonewall street-kid crowd.

4. There are regular police raids, giving the cops an opportunity to harass, belittle, assault, and arrest the gays.  Until the gay-friendly Deputy Pine (Matt Cravan) takes over and orders his men to be nice to the gays.  He continues the raids, but only because he's trying to solve the murder, and thinks Ed is responsbile.

5. On the night of the riots, the mob kidnaps Danny and forces him into tricking with J. Edgar Hoover in drag.

6. Meanwhile Deputy Pine realizes that Ed is in the bar, and sends out a squad car to pick him up, letting the gay patrons go.  But the cops outside let Ed escape, and that makes the gay patrons so mad that they start yelling "Gay power!,' and Danny throws a brick.  The police and some of the patrons rush back inside.

So it wasn't police harassment, it was letting a mob boss escape, that caused the Gay Rights Revolution?

7. Afterwards Danny goes back to Indiana to see his sister, who turns out to be a gay rights advocate, his mother, and his ex-boyfriend.  Mom and Sister even come to the Gay Rights March held the next year.

This is the most convoluted, crazy version of Stonewall that I've ever seen.  It's not even about Stonewall, it's the boring coming-out story of a Golden Boy who has a perfect body, scrubbed Mormon good looks, and a scholarship to Columbia.


There isn't even a lot of beefcake to keep your mind occupied while you're trying to digest the plot convolutions -- these are all pictures from other projects.  Danny and Trevor show some chest.

Why You Shouldn't Boycott "Stonewall"

Every LGBT person knows, or should know, that on the night of June 28th, 1969, patrons of a Greenwich Village dive bar called the Stonewall Inn fought back against police harassment, starting a rebellion that would result in the decriminalization and depathologization of gay people, hundreds of gay-positive churches, thousands of gay elected officials, gay studies courses and majors at hundreds of colleges, and positive media images, including the new Stonewall movie.

Stonewall wasn't sacralized until the late 1970s, when gay historians such as John D'Emilio and Jonathan Katz seized upon it as The Moment That Changed Everything.  That contention has been  been disputed -- Stonewall got no media attention at the time, so no one outside of New York City knew that it happened.  There had already been many rebellions against harassment, and lots of gay organizations were already in operation.

It's a little simplistic to talk about "Gay Life Before/After Stonewall."

Still, it sounds more substantive, more definitive, than "Gay Life Before/After the Black Cat" or "Gay Life Before/After Compton's Cafeteria."

In the 40 years since, Stonewall has undeniably united us as a people with a history and a destiny.

I haven't seen the 2015 Stonewall movie, directed by Roland Emmerich -- it's not playing here -- but it's apparently about a young, white, clean-cut, heart-throb type guy in a 2015 haircut named Danny Winters (Troy Irvine, who has muscles and a bulge to draw in the gay male audience).

He arrives in New York from Kansas...um, I mean Indiana, meets a group of nonwhite, transgender, and colorfully-dressed gay hippies, and helps them overthrow the Wicked Witch of the West...um, I mean Ed Murphy, the Big Bad who runs Oz...um, I mean the Stonewall Inn.

It's not just the plot of The Wizard of Oz -- it's the plot of every colonialist movie every made, from Tarzan on down.

We now know who threw the first brick at Stonewall -- not any of the real people, who were really there, and claim the honor -- but the young, white, clean-cut, heart-throb leader of the natives, Danny Winters.

And apparently the 1960s gay people have a distinctly 2015 mentality, responding to their exploitation (with Danny's help) as if it were happening today.  No 1960s closets for them!

And apparently the heavy-handed "We Must Fight Oppression!" dialogue sounds like it comes from a movie musical, not a serious historical drama.  In this shot, one does expect them to break out to song.

But this isn't a review -- I can't review a movie I haven't seen.  It's a reflection.

Stonewall has been released.

A positive movie about LGBT people, with a gay director and some gay actors in the cast, has been written, directed, produced, and released.  

Isn't that, in itself, a cause for celebration?


See also: The Stonewall Veteran and the Bodybuilder in the Park.