 |
| Sunflower shovel |
Thursday, August 5, 2010
The Wiz: Out of the Heartland and Into the Urban Jungle
The Wiz dismantles one of the world's whitest movies (1939's The Wizard of Oz) and puts it back together again” (Stuever, N01). Baum’s story moves from the Kansas heartland to the beating heart of black culture, Harlem. Both the play and film versions of The Wiz follow a similar story line. The biggest difference though, is that 34-year-old Diana Ross is casted to play an anti-social 24-year-old Kindergarten teacher rather than a younger teen star. Other than that, Dorothy still meets a scarecrow, tin man, and lion, and the motley crew still travels the yellow brick “highway” in search of the great and powerful, Oz. In both the physical and metaphorical sense, the journey of the four main characters in the movie, The Wiz is an allegory for black liberation, which at the conclusion of the civil rights movement, still had a long way to go to escape social tyranny, as demonstrated by the setting and characters.
The 1978 screenplay of, The Wiz was written by Joel Schumacher using none of the original Broadway stage script. It was directed by Sidney Lumet (who is known for films like 12 Angry Men, Serpico, and Murder on the Orient Express). The original Broadway production that ran from 1974-1975 brought more critical acclaim than did its 1978 film successor. Regardless of the film’s negative reviews, it did well to recognize that African-Americans, though experiencing liberation, were still imprisoned within the very context of the movie’s setting, urban New York City and/or what it represents.
Prior to the Seventies, the civil rights movements of the 1960s superficially created winds of change. There were indeed important victories within the movement that include Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (Affirmative Action: History and Rationale). However, as monumental as the legislation was, it did not address the underlying, subtle prejudice that continued to plague minorities in the United States. In describing the prejudice in the work place, in a report to President Clinton, his staff writes,
“In grocery and department stores, clerks were white and janitors and elevator operators were black. Generations of African Americans swept the floors in factories while denied the opportunity to become higher paid operatives on the machines. [They], even if they were college-educated, worked as bellboys, porters and domestics, unless they could manage to get a scarce teaching position in the all-black school -- which was usually the only alternative to preaching, or perhaps working in the post office” (Affirmative Action: History and Rationale).
By using Harlem as the backdrop in the film, The Wiz, the allegory of the screenplay comes to life. The expansive urban setting represents the newfound freedom experienced by African Americans, while at the same time acting as a prison to the African American dream. Whereas, the backdrop of Kansas in the original 1939 film illustrates the “white” American dream, the urban setting of The Wiz gives wings to opportunity, while at the same time, acts as a cage for a bird just given its wings. According to Elwood Watson, (author of Pimps, Wimps, Studs, Thugs, and Gentlemen: Essays on Media Images of Masculinity) “The Wiz suggests that African Americans carry the scars and the idea of racism in their bodies. In the film Oz – New York City – constitutes an attempt to imagine a space where racism does not and thus, a space in which both opportunities for self-affirmation and upward mobility exist for African Americans.”
Rather than upward mobility though, “…The Wiz, Harlem and other locations within New York City becomes a space than imprisons those such as Tinman, Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, and Herman Smith/The Wiz” (Watson, 71). Add to them, Dorothy, who in her search for self-affirmation is also imprisoned by this “space”, a metaphorical “prison”. Dorothy begins her journey, in her 125th street apartment. The apartment is bustling and filled with family celebrating Thanksgiving. The occasion is jubilant and yet, Dorothy’s body language portrays her feelings of isolation and uncertainty. In the song, “Can I Go On?” Dorothy, played by Diana Ross sings, “I don’t even know the first thing about what they’re feeling./ What am I afraid of?/ Don’t know what I’m made of./ Can I go on not knowing?” (Vocal pg. 6) Her character is in fact “trapped” in her fear and naïveté and what appears to be a form of social anxiety. This entrapment she feels is a metaphor for the isolation that urban minorities were feeling during the “supposed” time of “black” liberation.
Once reaching the Land of Oz, Scarecrow, played by young Michael Jackson, is the first of Dorothy’s protagonist companions that she meets along her journey. Like Dorothy, he is in restraints. His prison is two-fold; both the pole that he is affixed to and the crows who act as his ward. Scarecrow is unable to release himself from his prison. Metaphorically, the “prison” is simply being born “black”. Scarecrow cannot experience upward mobility suggested by the expansive backdrop of New York City because he is limited by the color of his skin. Additionally, as Scarecrow resides in his “prison” or on the pole, he is mocked by the crows. Scarecrow asks the crows for help to get down from the pole and they respond by saying, “Didn’t we tell you yesterday and the day before ‘dat and the day before ‘dat, you can’t get down? This is your life buddy, all hung up. Besides, Clyde, us crows are just thinkin’ of you. They ain’t nothin’ to get down for” (The Wiz, DVD). This illustrates the oppression felt by any minority group during the 1970s, specifically, African Americans. The crows represent the “white” man, who at the time, held nearly all jobs of significance, all political positions, and all positions of authority and power. To put it simply, there was “nothin’” for the “black” man to do. The crows continue to batter Scarecrow with more oppressive statements. They make him repeat the “Crow Commandments” which are: 1) “Thou shall honor all crows.” 2) “Thou shall stop reading all pieces of paper and literature.” 3) “Thou shall never get down off this pole” (The Wiz, DVD). The crows, or the “white” man, demonstrate oppressive behavior by forcing Scarecrow to remain ignorant, in a sense, prohibiting a proper education, thus maintaining his predicament. The famous quote by Sir Francis Bacon, “Knowledge is power”, is applicable to the very reason why the crows wanted to keep Scarecrow from reading the informative strips of paper that served as his “stuffing”, subsequently, acting as a metaphor to the knowledge he already has within himself. Scarecrow responds to the crows in his song, “You Can’t Win” which reinforces the self-defeatism that accompanies oppression.
As the journey continues, Dorothy and Scarecrow come upon Tin Man, played by well known comedian, Nipsey Russell. They discover Tin Man trapped beneath a large, rotund statue of a woman, Teeny. As it turns out, she was his most recent wife. He had gotten lodged under her and was left behind during the closure of the amusement park in which he had once been employed. As time passes for Tin Man, he becomes rusted and stiff and is unable to move beneath the colossal statue. The two friends, Dorothy and Scarecrow, rescue the Tin Man by rolling the statue off of him and freeing him from his prison. Upon his release, Tin Man shouts at the statue, “Rid of you! Free from your posterior prison you hulking she-devil!” (The Wiz, DVD) The statue, Teeny, is a metaphor for the prison of society’s expectations, or lack there-of, imposed on African American culture. Tin Man dreams of breaking free of those ideals as he goes on to sing a number entitled, “What Would I Do If I Could Feel?” The lyrics describe his inability to feel, his lack of a heart, and his desire to look inside himself and to like what he sees. This is the African American dream; the ability to break free of the prison of self and society and reach one’s full potential. At the completion of the song, Tin Man, exasperated, reasons aloud, “Argh, I’m just a miserable hunk of junk. Me, once the fastest metal mouth on the midway, frozen, ironically, in a position I had assumed all too often, a seat cushion for Teeny, Teeny, Teeny, Teeny…” (The Wiz, DVD). The “prison” of his position as a “seat cushion” beneath Teeny, is a metaphor for the foundational role that slavery initially played in building the U.S. for the “white” man. As a result of the civil rights movement, African Americans were looking for restitution or restoration for an equal place in society. They wanted freedom from beneath the “seat cushion” of white males.
Now a “trio”, Dorothy, Scarecrow, and Tin Man follow the yellow brick highway in search of the Wiz. What they find however, is an unexpected cowardly lion. This lion, unlike the Middle-America lion from the original 1939 film version, is full of soul. His name is Fleetwood Coupe de Ville, named after a 1970s luxury car (the “king” of the road). The lion is also a king, the king of the jungle, yet he has not yet reached his potential. The association between the lion and his name is a metaphor for the African American who fears success. Speaking on the subject of “fear of success”, Fulton Oursler, (an American journalist 1893-1952) says, “Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.” For the African American living at the conclusion of the civil rights movement, he/she lives between the oppression of the past and the possibility of the future. The fear of success stems from fearing responsibility and living up to the expectations that success will bring. The lion’s fear holds him back from fulfilling his place in the world, as king of the “urban” jungle. According to Dennis Waitley, (Motivational speaker and best-selling author) “Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.”
Determination is what drives the foursome forward and as the journey of the four unlikely friend’s draws to end, the characters all seem to find what it was that they were missing. Scarecrow finds that he is intelligent and that he can win. He has within himself the knowledge to seek out education and opportunity in a white male dominated world. The Tin Man finds during his journey, that he can feel and that he is no man’s “seat cushion”. In his self reflection, he now likes what he sees and can seek out his equal place in society. The lion finds that he has had the courage all along. The anxiety of exercising his courage is what had prevented him from reaching his full potential. The unavoidable challenges and experiences that he faced once he decided to leave his safety net removed his fear of success and replaced it with courage. And then there is Dorothy. Even though she finds her way home at the end of the film, The Wiz ends without showing Dorothy back in her home, looking at the familiar faces of family as she lovingly recollects their involvement in her adventure, as the character does in the original Wizard of Oz film. This lack of finality is a metaphor for the lack of completion of the civil rights movement. The theme of the film is reinforced right up to the end. As it remains, the road to equality has not ended.
The Wiz, during its debut, represented everything that urban black culture was experiencing. The expansive New York City backdrop for the film acted as a metaphor for “greater opportunity” for inner-city black culture while the personal “prisons” of the characters, Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the lion, illustrated the subtle prejudices and restraints still felt within the community. More barriers needed to be destroyed so that the winds of change could truly give flight to the self-affirmation and upward mobility that the African American community needed to spread its wings and fly.
Works Cited
Clinton White House Staff, law from owning. "Affirmative Action: History and Rationale." Almanac of Policy Issues. N.p., 19 July 1995. Web. 14 July 2010.
Stuever, Hank. "Michael Jackson On Film: No Fizz After 'The Wiz'." Washington Post 30 Jan. 2005, Sunday ed.: N01. Print.
The Wiz. Dir. Sidney Lumet. Perf. Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell. Universal Studios, 1978. DVD.
The Wiz: Vocal Selections From the 1978 Movie. Van Nuys: Alfred Publishing Co., Inc., 1999. Print.
Watson, Elwood. Pimps, Wimps, Studs, Thugs and Gentlemen: Essays on Media Images of Masculinity. North Carolina: Mcfarland, 2009. Print.
Works Consulted
Hischak, Thomas S.(Author). The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television [OXFORD COMPANION TO AMER MUSIC]. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2008. Print.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Man vs. Time: Time Wins
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Critical Analysis
"As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs” (Henry David Thoreau). When Ozymandias was written in 1818 by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Egyptology was a popular “Romantic” topic of the day. Ozymandias is a fourteen-line sonnet that follows the traditional thematic and formal convention of the Romantic period. Using voice, open-ended metaphors, and irony, Shelley writes the Romantic sonnet as a commentary on the effect that history has on anyone who thinks they can outsmart time.
The poem Ozymandias, describes a man who meets a traveler. The traveler tells him of an ancient land. He describes a scene that includes an object half buried in the dry, far, and reaching sands, possibly left from centuries or millennia past. The statue is no longer complete. What does remain intact, however, are the statue’s legs and near to them, the expressive face of the statue and an inscription at the base of the statue which proclaims the timeless majesty and pride felt by whom the statue’s likeness is of, Ozymandias.[1]
The “Romantic” poetry, art, and literature of Shelley’s day reflect a culture that is looking to escape the trials of their time. The “French Revolution” and “American Revolution” have depressed the nations from continent to continent. The “Industrial Revolution” has dirtied cities and overcrowded them. Napoleon is the self proclaimed emperor of France and has just been involved in massive art and antiquity acquisitions in Egypt. People look to get away from the wars and overcrowding and get back in touch with nature. They do this by escaping in their minds to far off places like that of where the “traveler” has been.
The poem begins when the “voice” of the poem meets a traveler. It is not clear however, as to “when” the traveler is from. Is he from the past or from the present? This is a technique that Shelly uses to add to the irony of the poem. It is an open-ended metaphor that allows the reader to decide. Shelly veers from the traditional sonnet slightly by allowing the reader to use his or her own intuition and later in the poem, cast his or her own moral judgments on the king.
The antiquated and lifeless statue is first introduced in the second line of the sonnet. What remains of the statue is “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone” (Shelley, line 2). In the third, fourth, and fifth lines, Shelly describes the remains of the statue’s face that has been separated from its legs over time. “Near them, on the sand, [h]alf sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, [a]nd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” (Shelley, lines 3-5). The sands of time have partially buried the mysterious face, a face wearing a sneering expression, a face that is cold and has the authority to command.
The sculptor of the ancient statue was able to capture the subject’s passion that he then permanently etched into the statue’s expression, “Tell that its sculptor well those passions read” (Shelly, line 6). The piece of stone was commissioned by Ozymandias, to assert his eternal majesty and power and so the sculptor carefully recreates the king’s likeness in the statue meant to survive for all eternity. And yet the sculptor seems to mock the king in all of his vanity which is described in lines 7-8, “Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, [t]he hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed”. The king’s heart “fed” the vanity and power that was visible in his expressive face. According to David B. Pirie, author of Shelley; Open Guides to Literature, Ozymandias had an “egotistical obsession with [his own] illusory power.”
Looking at lines 9-14, Shelly’s use of irony is again evident.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
According to Anne Janowitz, editor of Romanticism and Gender and Lyric and Labour in the Romantic Tradition, “The rhetorical irony of Shelley’s sonnet is made by juxtaposing the heroic inscription of a living tyrant with that same inscription as it becomes a dismal epitaph on the ruler’s works, now reduced to dust.” What was meant to be a monument of vanity and an arrogant proclamation has, over time, become a self-imposed epitaph of mockery.
It is indeed an epitaph of mockery, a colossal wreck, a tombstone now broken in the dry and arid sand, mocking the very king who commissioned the statue. Ozymandias was a megalomaniac dictator who declared his power through the abundance of structures he had built in his honor. The Egyptians believed that they could “take it with them”, that power could defeat both death and time. Shelly’s own dislike for the tyrannical authority of his time is relayed through the “voice” of the poem and in that, he makes the statement that time will always outsmart man.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Shakespeare's Sonnet 130: Removing the Ideology of Beauty
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red ;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
–William Shakespeare
Throughout Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, he writes lines that seem like an ode to the beauty of his love and yet it is quite the opposite. Shakespeare contrasts her beauty to objects of nature and in doing so, highlights their differences in order to show her true beauty.
For instance, Shakespeare writes: “Coral is far more red than her lips' red”. This means that her lips are not as red as coral. In most sonnets, the poet compares a part of his love’s body to a beautiful object of nature not contrasts it. Again, Shakespeare contrasts his love’s beauty by stating: “But no such roses see I in her cheeks”. By this he means that he does not see the color of roses in her cheeks. Lastly, Shakespeare contrasts his love’s beauty when he states what could be construed as very offensive: “And in some perfumes is there more delight [t]han in the breath that from my mistress reeks.” Shakespeare is stating that perfumes are more pleasing than the stench of his mistress’s breath!
In the final stanzas of the sonnet, Shakespeare nicely “redeems” himself when he states: “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare [a]s any she belied with false compare.” Here Shakespeare has asserted that his love is as rare as any woman who has been falsely represented by exaggerated comparisons.
The ending of the sonnet is by far the most interesting. In today’s society of the “ideal” woman, which is far from accurate considering the average sized American woman is 5’ 4” ,152 pounds and a size 14/16, beauty is unattainable. Women are compared to unrealistic standards. Shakespeare, in Sonnet 130, removes this ideology and claims that his love goes beyond the boundaries of fictional beauty. His love is real and in that, she is beautiful.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)