I had never watched
The Wizard of Oz, as much as someone can go through life in this day and age without watching
The Wizard of Oz; its omnipresence in American (and maybe in general anglophone) culture makes it perfectly possible to have never seen the film, and yet know everything about it; the
Yellow Brick Road (thanks, Elton John), ‘
don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain’,
Over the Rainbow, ‘
Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore’, ‘
fly, my pretties, fly’ (ok, the exact phrase is never spoken in the film,
but still, how can you leave this out…), ‘
there’s no place like home’.
Even
Lost took something from it. The biggest multiplex in my hometown is named after
Oz.
And in the time it took me to write this post, the
Wicked Witch of the West has appeared in the latest episode of
Agatha All Along.
And do you remember the time when the Internet wanted to persuade you
to watch this film while listening to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon? Because of course, it’s unthinkable that something big in culture could
not originate from this film.
And I didn’t feel particularly confused when I watched the revisionist musical
Wicked! in the West End a few years ago.
