The Wizard of Oz, a movie classic and a personal favorite, especially when I was younger I watched this movie all the time, along with listening to the audio on a cassette tape. Although I loved this movie, I would always become frightened and confused when Dorothy crossed over to Oz. As I became older, the movie became creepier, as I’m still trying to decipher why this is. However, looking through the lens of Halberstam, The Wizard of Oz is a queer classic movie. Halberstam defines “queer time and queer space” as being “of strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and eccentric economic practices” (Halberstam, 1).
If we take a moment to deconstruct Dorothy’s predicaments before the tornado, we lay the base understanding of queer time and space. Dorothy’s companion is a dog-named Toto, and she lives within the bindings of a heternormative lifestyle in rural Kansas. Unable to conform to a possibly foreseeable barren life around her she runs away only to return right when a storm is tearing through the desolate Kansas land. Queer time and space becomes apparent as soon as the screen turns into color. Dorothy has left the “temporal frames of…family” (Halberstam, 6) and now has entered a world of Witches, dwarfs, talking words of endearment and flying monkeys. Although Dorothy is physically present within the modern world, she has also managed to be physically here in queer time (Oz). Oz creates a world in which queerness has become the framework of their existence. To define further what I mean by queerness in terms of Oz is that in the film, the rainbow is seen as symbolic of the LGBTQ+ flag, Dorothy has escaped a heternormative lifestyle and now is exploring a state that is not non-normative, a place in which Dorothy’s desires, whether that be through the understanding of her sexuality or friendships (with the scarecrow, lion and tinman). This represents the unwinding of time, and the embodiment of postmodernity, it is as though the place of Oz is queer centrality, and Dorothy exists within the subcultures, navigating an unimagined future.
I think by comparing the wizard of to queerness is really interesting. I never thought about it this way but when by having the rainbow be represented as the queer community was very fascinating. How else though is it queer besides being without norms? I was very intrigued by this and wanted to know more about your thoughts on it.
Great post! I like your implication of the OZ rainbow as a symbolism for queerness, especially extending that interpretation to the frame of queer time and place. The slang term “Friend of Dorothy” even came to refer, as Steven Frank stated, “”mirrored many gay men’s desires to escape the black-and-white limitations of small town life…for big, colorful cities filled with quirky, gender-bending characters who would welcome them” (Frank). I think the observation that the analysis can be extended to queer temporalities is a good one. The Land of OZ seems to defy normative temporalities as a stark contrast to the normative time-frame of her life in Kansas. I definitely want to re-watch the film looking at queer time as an analytical framework. Thanks for posting!
Frank, Steven (2007-09-25). “What does it take to be a gay icon today?”. http://www.newnownext.com/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-gay-icon-today/09/2007/. Retrieved 2016-2-20.
I found this post to be extremely interesting and insightful. The last time I watched the Wizard of Oz, I was a young child with little to no concept of society’s construction of time. I believe that Halberstam would support the queer conception of Oz, as a place free of hegemonic expectations to grow old, marry, reproduce, and pass on wealth. While in class, I was trying really hard to imagine a symbol of queer time, and this post really helped me understand the concept in an illustrative way.
I love your reading of Oz as a queer space and time; your analysis of the colors and imagery in the film supported your point really well. What I’m wondering is what you make of the fact that Dorothy eventually returns back to the normative space of Kansas at the end of the film. If Dorothy is able to navigate an unimagined future in Oz, what happens to that future when she returns back to canvas? Your post also connects will with the post that discusses how Oxford functions as a virtual space in Written on the Body; I think that both posts draw attention to the possibility that queer spaces and queer time can be fleeting.