Exposing the Patriarchy in the Wizard of Oz
Somehow in the Wizard of Oz, that the pretensions of patriarchy are exposed, it allows the feminine in the form of that little girl to come forward and the good to assert the power of the feminine.
And I think the whole drama turns on an intuition that American culture was getting inflated in a masculine direction and going much too much into power and development, and it needed to keep itself balanced and remember feminine values.
Movies are the fairy-tales of the culture, the present day mythology.
Dorothy’s journey is also a bit like Alice in Wonderland — rather than descending into a rabbit hole, the adventuress ascends to another realm through a tornado. And, again, the author is a male.
Dorothy made her adventure eighty-years ago; it may have portrayed the pretensions of the patriarchy, but the patriarchy seems to have ignored the movie. She was essentially a little girl; we need mature Dorothies and Alices to make the journey.
Can you think of any movie like these where the leading role was played by a mature woman who successfully navigated the journey into the Unconscious? The closest I can think of is Sigourney Weaver, playing Ripley in The Alien.. She is a bit older than Alice and her sword in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, but it is still the theme of fighting the Jabberworky in a masculine type of combat. This is a model of woman-as-warrior. Not to take anything away from Sigourney and her tenacious strength — but surely there is less muscular way to succeed in the journey….
