The Emerald City
I don’t think Conor will be discussing fictional cities all that much at his Atlantic cities blog, but one in particular deserves attention: The Emerald City of Oz, or at least the one elaborated upon in Gregory Maguire’s Wicked and subsequent novels.
Maguire’s Emerald City is not only the capital of Oz, but the seat of its tyrant Wizard who is bit by bit strong-arming the rest of the country into submission. The emerald mines of Gillikin and the trolls who mine them are exploited for their precious green gems which give the City its name; the southern swamps of Quadling Country are slowly drained, the waters diverted to feed the pipes of the City’s residents; Munchkinland, the ‘bread basket of Oz’ finally secedes from the union in protest, as more and more of its crops are taxed away by the Wizard (and the various despots who come after he is deposed). The only place unscathed by all of this is the city of Shiz, home to Oz’s financial markets.
Elphaba goes off to the western wilds to fight her doomed rebellion against the Wizard. Her concerns are less for the welfare of all these places, then for the civil liberties which the government under the Wizard has stripped from Oz’s Animal population. (The Animal here is capitalized because these are talking, sentient Animals, not just ordinary animals.)
In many respects, Wicked is an anti-government novel (though not really a conservative novel – in the second book there’s a pretty confused gay romance subplot meandering through what is essentially a book of meandering subplots) – rife with secession, rebellion, crony-capitalism, and the horrors of a state-created second-class citizenry. Even more so, it’s a cautionary tale about the centralization of power – and in this case, the centralization of economic and political power in the Emerald City. Just as was the case in L. Frank Baum’s original Oz novels, there are echoes of America in all of this.
P.S. – the musical version, while very entertaining, doesn’t touch on many of these themes – and strays a good deal from the original work. If you’ve only seen the show I recommend you also read the book.
I couldn’t stand the sequel novel but I was fascinated by “A Lion Among Men” (the third book).Report
The novel is terrible. Terrible. I went into it expecting to love it. Wicked is a misnomer; that would have been interesting. “Confused” would have been a better title. Or perhaps simply “Narcissistic”. Trying to empathize with the characters is like trying to walk on pudding; there’s not enough substance and after a while you feel sticky and disgusting.
It baffles me that so many people have bought into it.
I almost bought A Lion Among Men, but I no longer trust Gregory Maguire.Report
I think my mother-in-law is currently reading this. I’ll see if I can borrow it when she’s done.Report
@Rufus F.,
Please tell me what you think of it if you do. I want to know if it is possible for a human to like both the Odyssey and this dreck simultaneously.Report
@Mopey Duns, Sure thing.
I don’t know if I read a lot of fluff books- my wife certainly picks on me for never reading anything ‘fun’. But I should note, in fairness, that I see pretty much every single horror or kung fu movie that comes out on DVD, and own a few hundred of them.
Also, if you pause this trailer at 1:49
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIwvoOOOhLA
you can see me in a leather jacket. I mean, okay sure, “Slime City Massacre” is not what I’d call dreck; but it’s not the Iliad either.Report
@Rufus F.,
Don’t get me wrong; I am not making a claim of high taste. I am an avid consumer of manga, which tends to have plotting and characterization a bit south of the average soap opera.
Wicked would have endeared itself more to me if it had taken itself less seriously. There is a funny and a good idea hiding beneath all the dreck. Instead it dragged and wallowed and in the end fundamentally besmirched a perfectly delightful children’s series to no good purpose. And she wasn’t even really WICKED. That is what drove me nuts about the book. I could have forgiven it so much more if it had actually been the meaningful exercise in the examination of evil, and what. Maguire simply cheats by fundamentally changing the story to something much more boring rather than simply examining it from the witch’s perspective without changing anything else. The witch, like everyone else, was a self-absorbed, shallow, unappealing navel-gazer. If I wanted to read about that, I’d go over my diary.
/rant.Report
@Mopey Duns, She was a pretty hard core leftist. That’s for sure.Report
What a peculiar comment.Report
I am an avid consumer of manga
Have you ever watched it in the original manganese?Report
You seem to confuse government with tyranny. Admittedly, this is a standard reflex among the right-wing, but one would hope you could see the distinction.Report
@Mike Schilling, There are just enough things wrong with this question that I am not sure how to answer it.Report
It’s OK. Neither of my kids (who took first-year chemistry over the past two years) thought it was funny either.Report