Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Freeman, Matthew

Titel

1900–1918: From Fin-de-Siècle to Fairy-Worlds: L. Frank Baum, the Land of Oz and Advertising

Ist Teil von

• Historicising Transmedia Storytelling, 2017, p.79-117

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Towards the end of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a novel written by L. Frank Baum and first published in Chicago on May 17, 1900, the story’s mystical Wizard is revealed to be nothing more than a circus imposter, a trickster whose hot­air balloon had once accidentally drifted into the magical Land of Oz some time ago. This Wizard of Oz is a professional con man who creates a realm of illusions, each of which – including the ‘spectacular brightness and glory of the Emerald City’ (Baum, 1900a: 80) – ultimately owe their glamour to a visual ruse. For Stuart Culver, the ruses of the Emerald City symbolise the powerful lure of industrialisation and mass production (1988: 103) that Mark McGurl pinpoints as an embodi­ ment of early twentieth­century urban America (2011: 686). Frank Kelleter even goes so far as to describe The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as itself a story both of and about America (2012: 23). He points to the book’s narrative journey from the desolate, grey farmyard of the story’s beginning to the vibrant, colourful Land of Oz experienced thereafter as a transition that mirrors early twentieth­century America’s own transformation from what was a predominantly rural­farming economy to what hence became an urban­manufacturing landscape (2012: 23).