In The Wizard of Oz as American Myth, Alissa Burger provides a study of Frank L. Baum’s classic children’s story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and five other works related to it: The Wizard of Oz (1939, MGM), The Wiz (1978, Universal Pictures), Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Jerry Maguire (1995), Wicked: A New Musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman (2003), and Tin Man (miniseries, 2007). Burger frames her argument by drawing from two theoretical approaches: American myth/symbol theory and Diana Taylor’s model of archive and repertoire in performance theory. Burger argues that the “outdated” American myth theory (2) needs to be repositioned to avoid it being “exceedingly monolithic” (15). Burger does so by emphasizing the process of mythmaking as being one that retells and revises the original story, and by situating myths within fairytales. Burger observes that in a manner similar to the multiple versions of a fairytale, key themes in Baum’s work reappear again and again in the works based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Burger also revises the idea of the hero and heroic journeys in myth theory by arguing that female characters can take the place of male heroes, and that these heroines after the completion of their quests do not necessarily return to traditional gender roles. By adding Taylor’s model of performance to this new approach to myth, Burger sees the audience having an active role in the revisionist retellings of the five works subsequent to Baum’s work. Using this framework of myth and performance, Burger then analyzes representations of gender, race, home, and magic found in these works.
Burger certainly makes a good case for juxtaposing myths with fairytales and for understanding how social contexts and audiences influence the revisionist versions of an original tale. Where Burger’s book excels is in her demonstration of the problematic polarities of “good” and “bad,” “citizen” and “other,” “frontier” and “home” in Baum’s work, and how the different texts that follow The Wonderful Wizard of Oz complicate the understanding of these terms. For instance, Burger observes that although Dorothy is an active heroine in Baum and the MGM movie, she still falls under the category of “good girl,” whereas later works (such as Maguire’s Wicked) complicate the idea of “goodness” and “badness.” Likewise, Burger moves with ease between the different genres that she examines, and she also makes insightful observations on the contexts that shape each of the six works. Overall, Burger makes a detailed study of each of the six works that she analyzes.
Understandably, Burger focuses on Dorothy and the witches in her analysis, but the minimal space she allocates to the male characters raises questions over her model of myth/performance. Should the concept of the male hero in traditional American myth theory, for instance, also be resituated? After the completion of heroic quests, do male characters also return to narrow roles defined by gender, which in turn need to be reframed? While Oz, the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, and Lion appear in Burger’s analysis, a more balanced reading of these male characters would have added complexity to her analysis of gender and magic. Another aspect that Burger could have treated more fully is the occurrence of intertextuality between the works. Burger notes moments of intertextuality between Maguire’s Wicked and Schwartz and Holzman’s Wicked. More of these instances of intertextuality (particularly between the five latter texts) would have strengthened Burger’s argument of myth.
Finally, Burger’s work opens up further intriguing possibilities of myth making. Undoubtedly, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz began as an American text, but it also has crossed international lines. The book and MGM movie were immensely popular in Britain, particularly after the movie’s release. More recently, Australia, directed by Baz Luhrmann (2008), retells the myth of Oz to explain identity formation and the concept of “home” for Australia. While Oz retains its distinctive American flavor in Australia, it has also crossed over to a more transnational space. The questions that once pertained to America in Oz – what defines identity, makes one a citizen (or not), or creates a home –have become global questions.
