This is a pet peeve of mine. When an author or screenwriter takes their characters through an ordeal of suffering, loss and growth… but then at the end they erase it all. Everything is sunny. None of that Bad Stuff ever happened.
There are a couple of common mechanisms authors fall back on. Probably the most notorious is the Dream Sequence, where someone goes through all sorts of Bad Stuff but then they wake up and it was just a nightmare. For me, the only way it could be right is if one of the characters then sees something that could be a hint of what is to come. The Dream Sequence becomes a premonition, and they can try and take steps to prevent the Bad Stuff.
Speaking of premonitions, that brings us to the other significant means to erase story events, which is Time Travel. Characters in genre movies, especially, are constantly traveling through time to “fix” some sort of Bad Stuff. But there’s no end to the paradoxes with Time Travel. Villains can be killed (not a heroic thing) before they do Bad Stuff, so then why would the future characters Time Travel? They can start relationships that they have to abandon (not a heroic thing) or try to stay with someone they had lost, which means abandoning everyone they know with the Bad Stuff still going on. It’s just a mess.
Wishing/Miracles is another common way to erase Bad Stuff and revert to the status quo. This is more a fantasy thing, obviously. Somewhere along the way, the characters encounter some form of magic that grants wishes, or a deity that can literally wave their hand and make it all go away. Maybe it seems that everything is restored without the Bad Stuff, but tampering with reality itself? Never a good idea.
I suppose that for the writers, it feels like having your cake and eating it, too. Tell the dramatic story, bring your characters into dire peril with the Bad Stuff, but then wave a magic wand and fix everything. But really, it’s an insult to the readers/viewers who were invested in the story and then had it snatched away.
Don’t do this. Just don’t.
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I don’t recall ever writing a story where I did the “everything’s completely fixed” thing. Maybe I have, but I’m sure I never tried to publish such a story.
Traditional episodic American television does a variation of this. The heroes may seem to be changed forever by a major incident–that’s completely forgotten by the next episode. Each episode is a self-contained story, largely because the producers couldn’t assume the viewer had seen the previous episode. Since VCRs/DVDs/streaming video/etc., that’s changed.
On a personal note, I do have an idea for a time travel story where the time-traveling heroes don’t kill the “bad guy,” but stop him from ever being conceived. Unfortunately, however….
Your time-travel idea is a perfect example. If they stop this evil person/event, there would be no reason for future-them to go back and there would be no “then” for them to return to. I guess they could do it knowing it would be a one-way trip. Which does contain a certain drama, if they carry out a mission but have no way to know the outcome in their time.
I have long suspected that “it was all a dream” stories owe much to Louis B. Mayer’s presentation of “The Wizard of Oz.” The visual framing effect — going from black and white to color and then back again — was cool. The storytelling side, not so much, especially because it actually changed Baum’s story. As I recall, in the novel, Uncle Henry and Aunt Em are, indeed, skeptical of Dorothy actually visiting Oz, but ultimately they come around in later books and even move there!
The real tragedy is that Mayer’s version is so iconic that it makes it very difficult for anyone who would want to make a movie from the later books. A couple have been attempted and there’s usually a large outcry from critics who never read the books, thinking those other filmmakers don’t know the source material because they did something different from the 1939 film.
The 1939 Oz movie going from black and white in Kansas to color in Oz was likely inspired by the book itself. Kansas and the people in it are described as gray. Then, when the land of Oz is reached, it’s described for its colors. Personally, after Dorothy’s return, I would like to have seen Kansas in color, symbolizing her acceptance of her real life.
There’s a color joke in the book that they didn’t use in the film, and I can understand why. Before entering the Emerald City, everyone had to wear spectacles. People of the city wore those spectacles. The glass in the spectacles was colored green.
In the book, I thought it was a fun joke. But in the movie, everybody would be wearing green-tinted glasses which might not work well visually.
The ending for The Wizard of Oz shows that Baum may not have expected it to be so successful, or that it would become a long series of 20-some books. My mother, who was born in 1920, avidly collected the series.
However, I have to say, Baum’s work is problematic in many ways. For example, he mocks the Women’s Suffrage movement. He also was an outspoken advocate of Native genocide. Although I don’t know if he expressed this in the Oz books specifically, it would certainly be brought up by Native activists — and rightly so.
So a contemporary adaptation of the Oz books would HAVE to “change things” in order to be acceptable to today’s audience. It’s like the Tarzan books, which come from the same era and are horribly racist. I don’t know why you would need to adapt Oz or Tarzan when there are so many contemporary books that merit attention.
In addition to the 1939 film making a dream of *The Wizard of Oz,* there’s the original *Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.* Author Lewis Carroll doesn’t specifically say in the beginning that Alice is dreaming, but does drop some hints that’s what’s happening. (My suspicion is that many adults would get the hints, but many young children would not.)
To me, there’s an important distinction between what’s in a work and what the author/actor/etc. does outside of that work. Oz is a very tolerant place, where people of a variety of different cultures and even species are accepted. It even accepts female witches (as long as they’re good.)
Evidence seems to suggest Baum was tolerant for his time and culture. But, if he wasn’t writing the genocide articles as sarcasm which some suggest, it was likely out of fear and ignorance. From his perspective, he may well have believed a bunch of horrible savages were out to kill innocent people, and that they would continue to kill innocent people unless they were destroyed. I’m not justifying such a reaction even for his time and place; but do understand how someone could have that perspective based on the propaganda that was spread during that time. And it appears Baum changed his views once he had more information.
As for Baum on women’s suffrage, there may possibly me a misunderstanding here. This from his article on Wikipedia: “Sally Roesch Wagner of The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation has published a pamphlet titled *The Wonderful Mother of Oz* describing how Matilda Gage’s feminist politics were sympathetically channeled by Baum into his Oz books.” Remember the leader in the first Oz book was a girl, and the most powerful and competent opponent was a woman. And his second Oz book, *The Marvelous Land of Oz* ends with a virtual statement for women’s equality.
I try to stop and think that some things we take as acceptable and proper in our time and place may be viewed as horrible by future generations. I like to hope those generations will be more tolerant of our ignorance and misunderstandings than ours is of those in the past.
The Oz character I clearly remember is General Jinjur, a very obviously mocking reference to a suffragist and how ridiculous the very idea of female leadership was. The teenaged me, looking through my mother’s old books, was furious.
Understood. No offense, but your teenaged self might have missed the importance of Princess Ozma in that story.
I suspect Baum was making a statement that men and women should not be battling each other, but should work together.
In one of the books, Baum actually uses Princess Ozma as an apparent statement on accepting “non-standard” gender identity, which was a very radical concept for his time (although he of course covered up the controversial subject by using magic).
I just found something in the Wikipedia article on Princess Ozma that might clear up the apparently sexism. “In Windham Classics’ adaptation of the Oz books, Tip is made monarch of Oz and no reference at all is made to Ozma.” Without Princess Ozma, I can certainly understand how your teenaged self could have seen the book as sexist. I find their choice odd, as Ozma appears in every one of Baum’s Oz books except the first.
Baum totally questioned gender identity. Did you ever read Baum’s John Dough and the Cherub? Baum refused to identify Chick the Cherub’s sex! The publisher wasn’t even going to publish it because of that.
That’s terrible that Windham did that! Really some of the books hint that Dorothy and Princess Ozma became lovers. Dorothy was the only person Ozma would let come in her bedroom at any time.
I am not familiar with *John Dough and the Cherub*, but that fits with my perception of Baum. I’m guessing “John Dough” is a joking reference to “John Doe” which has been used for someone whose identify is unknown I think since the Middle Ages.
Baum was a feminist! A friend and I did some adventures in Oz.
Did you know his mother-in-law was the feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage? She gave him ideas for his books and convinced him witches could be good. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the first feminist children’s book!