Talk:The Wizard of Oz book to film comparison

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Re ON A PAR. Baum's seemingly gruesome imagery and violence was on a par with that of standard fairy tales such as the famous and often fittingly-named Grimm stories; it is well to keep in mind that it is only in recent generations that fairy tales have become "sanitized". What a wealth of information; and all of it packed into one perfect WP sentence! I checked the facts with the help of the original Grimm stories (Gesamtausgabe of Brüder Grimm: Kinder- und Hausmärchen, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1980).
Let's start with on a par: There are roughly five instances in all of the Grimm stories put together where someone dies what could be called a "gruesome" death. This number is of course exactly half of ten, which in turn is on a par with exactly one quarter of the wolves that get their heads chopped off in Chapter 12 of The Wizard of Oz. The editors have no doubt chosen the right words.--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 09:20, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Re OFTEN. A reader might well ask: What do the editors of the article mean by often fittingly-named? The fact that the men who gave us the Märchen were named Grimm can be verified by looking it up in the German Wikipedia. So shouldn't we rather say "always" instead of "often"? Ah, but we are not alone in the world! Who knows how the Grimms are called in China, for example. If you consider how we have handled the names of their writers (Tschuang Tse, Chuan Tzu, Zhuanzi etc etc to name just one) I wouldn't be surprised if our Brothers Grimm were called Krim, Krumm, Grmm, Creim, Crumb or whatever by the Chinese. The editors were well advised to have taken this into consideration.--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 09:30, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Re RECENT. Anybody who has ever studied the way of one of the Grimm stories from its early oral versions (cf Delarue and Tenèze: Le Conte populaire français, Paris, 1976) via Perrault's Contes de ma mère l'oye of 1697 to the Kinder- und Hausmärchen knows that these tales were step by step "sanitized". The Grimms, of course, are the ultimate "sanitizers". They modified everything they judged offensive to the delicate ears of the ladies who were supposed to read these tales to the children in their charge. Not only explicit sex but even hints of it were expurgated, characters that had been killed off were brought back to life, happy endings were tacked on etc etc. As the editors of the article correctly point out, it is well to keep in mind that this is a development that has taken place only in recent generations. After all, what's four or five hundred years more or less in the history of mankind?--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 09:48, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Re SEEMINGLY. A reader might be tempted to exclaim: What exactly do the editors of the article mean by seemingly gruesome imagery and violence? The killing of 2 witches, 2 kahlidas, hundreds of bees, 40 crows, 40 wolves, and 1 wildcat does not add up to enough violence? Or is it not sufficiently gruesome?
Ah, but you have to read the text closely. Look at the way the Woodman dispatches his victims with his axe: So the Woodman raised the axe and as the wildcat ran by he gave it a quick blow that cut the beast's head clean off from its body, and it rolled over at his feet in two pieces (p.67, Puffin Classics). Or look at the way the crows are done in: The King Crow flew at the Scarecrow, who caught it by the head and twisted its neck until it died ( p.102). Whether necks are slowly twisted or heads are rolling at the feet of the friends, there is never any blood, not one drop. All the killings in the book are "clean" or, in other words, not really but only seemingly gruesome.--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 09:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Re SOBS. Garland's Dorothy cries some half a dozen times in the 101-minute film, the editors of the article inform us, whereas Baum's Dorothy "sobs" just once in the course of a 40,000 word novel. "Hey, what's going on here", our incorrigible Reader will probably ask, "can't these guys READ? It is in the book that Dorothy's life becomes very sad when she realizes how hard it will be to find her way back to Kansas. It is in the book that we find bitter crying and dismal whining going on. For HOURS. And not only once. Sometimes she would cry bitterly for hours, with Toto sitting at her feet and looking in her face, whining dismally... (p.111)
So who said anything about "crying", Reader? Not the editors! They clearly speak of "sobbing". A Wikipedia text has to be read closely; so much care has gone into it, after all. True, Baum's Dorothy is constantly sad, grieved, dismayed, etc etc, again and again she cries bitterly for hours, at meeting the Wizard for the first time she begins to "weep" (p.91), and afterwards she cried herself to sleep (p.92); but it's very well possible that all the grieving, weeping, and crying notwithstanding, she only sobbed once. If all the editors say it is so, Reader, who are you to doubt their word?--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 09:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Re DAMSEL. At no point in the novel, for example, is Dorothy a damsel in distress to be rescued by her companions..., the editors correctly inform us. There are, of course, numerous instances in the novel where Dorothy is afraid, hides behind her companions, lies on the ground covered with straw etc while her friends do the fighting: This is my fight, says the Woodman seizing his axe to fight the wolves (p.101), and this is just one example.
But here again, you have to pay attention. Take the scene where the Scarecrow fights the wild crows (p.102): When the little girl saw them coming she was afraid. But the Scarecrow said, "This is my battle, so lie down beside me and you will not be harmed." There you have the proof: Dorothy may be afraid but she is not "in distress", and she is a little girl, which is certainly not the same as a "damsel". --BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 09:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I just read the book, and this article presents quite a skewed picture. In particular, Dorothy cries quite a lot and is rescued or defended repeatedly. However, I've also read many Grimm's fairy tales and they are often rather gruesome. There are plenty of feet getting chopped, people pushed into ovens, and being devoured--however temporarily--by wolves. They were certainly expurgated by the Grimms (we can only wonder what "wickedness" wicked stepmothers got up to in the original versions), but they remained pretty graphic and are always further expurgated today. I will make some changes, and you should feel free to actually edit the article rather than merely criticize it. However, please try to avoid doing so by way of your own personal research. --Tysto 22:13, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Re TEMPORARILY. Well you fixed the major problems, Tysto, so I don't see a good reason for another commentary. But I do owe you an answer to what you said about the Grimms: In the earlier versions, the wolf devours the foolish little girl. Il la mangea. Period. End of story. (For sources see my post of 3 Jan 07.) The Grimms' version is not only different, it produces a different effect, which cannot be dismissed with a casual "however temporarily". Once children realize that the girl was never really dead, they will form a certain idea on how seriously they have to take not only this wolf and the one in the next story but all the "gruesome" things in all of the Grimms' tales. In other words, the Grimms did exactly the same thing as the makers of the Wizard film. They put the original fairy tale on a totally different level of "unbelievability". Expurgating cannot be taken further than that. --BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 10:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)