Episode #233 - Is The Wizard of Oz Secretly About American History?

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Have you ever heard of the dark side of the rainbow?

It's one of those great pieces of dorm room lore passed around between music-obsessed undergrads.

Sometimes called the Dark Side of Oz, it involves the beloved 1939 cinematic classic, The Wizard of Oz, and the equally beloved 1973 classic rock behemoth, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

Turns out these two massive pop culture artifacts are secretly in conversation.

Or at least, so goes the tale.

By the time I entered university in the early 2000s, it was well established among music heads, psych rock aficionados, and really anyone enamored with the trippy that if you played Dark Side of the Moon while watching The Wizard of Oz on mute, the two would weirdly sync up.

So, of course, my friends and I had to try it.

And what I now realized was a textbook first-year bonding ritual.

A crew of us living on the same university residence floor got a VHS copy of Wizard of Oz and Darkseid on CD.

If memory serves, the young lady in the room next to mine had one of those TVs with the VCR built right in, and of course, a serviceable CD player.

And by the way, I think this is the optimum way to experience the dark side of the rainbow in a dorm room surrounded by like-minded kids primed with contraband substances ready to be tripped out.

I also think the compact disc is the ideal format on which to play the album for this experience.

You see, for the effect to work, it's all about timing.

There is a perfect delay between when you push play on a CD player and when the music actually starts playing.

No need to get all audiophile on this one.

If you're using a fancy vinyl copy of Dark Side of the Moon, flipping the record will actually throw the whole thing off.

No, no, you want a C D.

We had read on some message board online that for Dark Side of the Rainbow to work, first you had to start the video of Wizard of Oz, and then you had to wait until the old MGM logo with the lion appeared on screen.

After the third roar of the lion, you pressed play on the CD player, and then you let it happen.

I'm not sure how deep we were into the whole experience before I literally shouted, oh my god, it's working!

working.

At the start of the film, the action on screen vaguely aligns with the feel of Pink Floyd's gentle opener, Speak to Me, Breathe.

But the first really jarring moment comes when Mrs.

Gulch, the Kansas equivalent of the wicked witch of the West, first appears on screen aggressively riding her bicycle and as if on cue,

the clanging clock bells that introduced the song Time blare out of the speakers.

Things get even wilder once the tornado starts.

As Dorothy races back to her farmhouse with the twister bearing down on her, the song The Great Gig in the Sky begins.

As Dorothy's house rose into the sky, the song seemed to build in intensity.

Now, just the symmetry between the song title The Great Gig in the Sky and the action on screen, A Little House Literally Spinning Through the Sky, was enough to blow the minds of my friends.

But as all Floyd heads know, Great Gig in the Sky has no lyrics, but instead features this emotional, bluesy, moan singing provided by the British session vocalist Claire Torrey.

The vocals themselves can feel like a wild tornado ride, complete with Torrey screaming with a kind of terror at the climax.

And as the song winds down, The house on screen plops down in Oz.

Then the real jawdropper hits you.

The music goes quiet, and Dorothy moves through the blackness to open her front door.

And as she pulls it back to reveal the yellow brick road, we hear

Yes, just as the whole movie bursts into technicolor, the opening cash register sound effects for the 7-4 classic rock banger Money blares through the speakers.

The dorm room was stunned.

Then came the no

and the no way

and the dude, they had to have planned this.

the moments of synchronicity keep coming after that point but the yellow brick road money moment is never quite equaled the song black and blue plays while the witch in black confronts dorothy wearing blue the lyric the lunatic is on the grass is sung just as the scarecrow falls off his pole

and then in a final trippy moment, the heartbeat effect that bookends the dark side of the moon returns and fades away as Dorothy pushes her ear to the tin man's chest where his absent heart should be.

My 19-year-old mind was blown wide open.

I'd gone in curious, but skeptical, and I'd been genuinely shocked by how well Dark Side of the Rainbow worked as an experience.

Now, I think it helped that I'd already spent so much time with both The Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd.

Like many kids, I'd grown up with the Judy Garland classic and knew every beat of the film from my family's taped-off TV VHS copy.

I was also an aspiring music snob.

So by the end of high school, I'd already absorbed many of the canonical classic rock texts and had sorted them into piles of what was cool and what was uncool.

In my estimation, Pink Floyd were cool.

And as such, I'd put in some serious headphone time with Darkside.

But this

was a revelation.

The moments moments where the album and the film came together were so bracing, at least to my undergrad mind, that I was convinced that it could not have been an accident.

Pink Floyd had to have done this intentionally.

They must have watched the film and used it to guide the creation of Dark Side of the Moon.

How else could this kind of thing be explained?

But of course, Pink Floyd did not not write their best-selling album with The Wizard of Oz in mind.

Not only has the band denied it on countless occasions, but the logistics of it would have been nearly impossible when Pink Floyd was recording the album in the early 70s.

Remember, this was well before the era of home video.

The band would have needed a projector and a specially ordered print of the movie on film to give it the repeated viewings necessary.

Even if the band had these tools, very few other people would have had them.

How did they expect anyone else to experience the Dark Side of the Rainbow phenomenon?

Perhaps it was the kind of thing that could have been enjoyed in art house movie theaters in the 70s, but Pink Floyd did not tell the owners of art house movie theaters that Dark Side of the Moon synchronized with Wizard of Oz.

Now, as far as anyone can tell, no one made the connection between The Wizard of Oz and the Dark Side of the Moon until the early 1990s.

It was something that was stumbled upon in the home video age and then spread on message boards in the early iteration of the World Wide Web.

But I would like to propose that there's something about The Wizard of Oz that lends itself to this kind of pattern-seeking behavior.

This goes beyond the 1939 MGM musical and applies just as deeply to the source material, L.

Frank Baum's original novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The novel was first published in the year 1900 and immediately became a sensation.

By 1902, the book had been adapted into a popular play, and two years after that, the first of a long line of sequels was published.

It has been heralded as the quintessential American fairy tale.

But some believe that there is more to L.

Frank Baum's original text than meets the eye.

It has been argued that the wonderful Wizard of Oz is actually a sly allegory meant to lampoon the politics of late 19th century America and celebrate a nearly forgotten populist movement.

In the pages of the children's book, some commentators have seen clear references to the American election of 1896, the heated debate around gold and silver in American monetary policy, the rise of populism in rural America, and the presidency of William McKinley.

One of the most influential Oz interpreters has said that, quote, the original Oz book book conceals an unsuspected depth.

Through it, in the form of a subtle parable, Baum delineated a Midwesterner's vibrant and ironic portrait of the United States as it entered the 20th century, end quote.

The perceived parallels between L.

Frank Baum's original novel and late 19th century American history are so great that by the 1990s, some university professors were using the Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a teaching tool to help their students better grasp the politics of the 1890s.

The assertion is that the text is ripe with commentary about the political issues that were most pressing for America's farmers during that era.

It's no accident that the protagonist in the Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a farm girl from Kansas who is given silver shoes, later transformed into ruby slippers by Hollywood, that she uses to traverse a road of gold.

The silver shoes and the yellow brick road may have been meant as symbols that would have resonated with rural Americans caught up in a debate around whether or not the government should move away from a gold standard and embrace silver currency.

So, is the wonderful Wizard of Oz secretly about the politics of the 1890s?

Or is this a dark side of the rainbow situation?

Are these patterns intentional or are they just a fascinating coincidence?

In this case, should the artist's intentions matter?

Let's see what we can find out today on our fake history.

One, two, three, five

Episode number 233.

Is the Wizard of Oz Secretly About American History?

Hello, and welcome to Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major and this is the podcast where we explore historical myths, try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story that it simply must be told.

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This week, we are investigating the world of children's literature.

Specifically, the widely held belief that hidden in L.

Frank Baum's modern fairy tale, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, there's an allegory about American politics at the turn of the 20th century.

Now there's no denying the power of the Wizard of Oz as a piece of literature.

It has endured for a reason.

Part of it is undoubtedly the timeless mythic elements of the story.

Dorothy's quest neatly follows the beats of a classic hero's journey.

In this way, the story can feel like it's been with us from time immemorial.

Just a few months ago, I actually showed my kids the 1939 Wizard of Oz film with Judy Garland for the very first time.

And at first I was worried.

Would it hold up?

Could my children relate to something that was made in the 1930s?

Would it feel too slow for them?

But they loved it.

Now, part of it, no doubt, is the wonderful music, the iconic visuals, and the amazing colors.

But they were really tuned in to the story.

But what really struck me on this viewing was how unique the land of Oz is as a fantasy setting.

I found myself reflecting on how the fantasy genre has largely taken its stylistic cues from the likes of J.R.R.

Tolkien and C.S.

Lewis.

As such, fantasy stories often take place in a pseudo-European medieval setting.

But this is not the case in The Wizard of Oz.

Now, that's not to say that Oz has not been hugely influential, because obviously it has,

but rather, the aesthetic feel of L.

Frank Baum's fantasy hasn't been stripmined quite in the same way as those other authors I mentioned.

It seems to me that so much of what makes Oz Oz is how it reflects the very specific sensibilities of the late 19th century.

It's a magical land that feels kind of industrial.

It's filled with contraptions, hot air balloons, mechanical men, and large urban centers.

In Oz, real magic is contrasted with the technological illusions of the wizard.

In this way, Baum's tale can feel stylistically more like Jules Verne than, say, Narnia.

Could I be so bold as to call the Wizard of Oz steampunk?

Maybe not.

I don't know.

Sound off in the comments.

But I'm clearly not the only person who's noted Oz's connection to its original historical context.

For many decades now, there's been a popular theory that the wonderful Wizard of Oz was not simply aesthetically inspired by its historical context, it was commenting on its historical moment using cleverly placed symbols.

Specifically, it's been argued that the novel reflects the politics of the 1896 United States presidential election.

The Yellow Brick Road has been seen as a metaphor for America's debate over the gold standard in the 1890s.

In this context, Dorothy's magical silver shoes could be seen as a reference to the free silver movement, a largely rural political force that sought to have American currency backed by silver along with gold.

Now, if you're only familiar with the film The Wizard of Oz, this might be a little confusing, and that's because the original silver shoes from the novel were transformed into the much more photogenic ruby slippers by Hollywood.

But it's important to know, in the book, Dorothy Wears Silver Shoes.

Further, it's been argued that the 1896 presidential candidates William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley are also represented in the text.

When read the right way, the wonderful Wizard of Oz could be seen as celebrating the rural American populist movement and the Democratic candidate for president, William Jennings Bryan.

Or so goes the interpretation.

Now, this specific reading of the text first appeared some 64 years after the wonderful Wizard of Oz was first published.

In 1964, a high school teacher named Henry Littlefield had an article published in the academic journal American Quarterly titled The Wizard of Oz, Parable on Populism.

In the article, the teacher laid out exactly how L.

Frank Baum's novel connected to the history of the late 19th century.

This article proved to be surprisingly influential and soon American history professors started using the article with their undergraduates.

Eventually other thinkers started elaborating on Littlefield's ideas.

In 1990 the economics professor Hugh Rockoff from Rutgers University published The Wizard of Oz as a Monetary Allegory, which dug deeper into the idea that Baum's book contained a message about the gold standard and the free silver movement.

This article reinforced the idea that the Wizard of Oz could be used as a helpful teaching tool when trying to explain the complexities of 19th-century monetary policy to American history and economics students.

When I told my wife that I was going to be exploring this topic, she remembered being taught that the Wizard of Oz was an allegory about the gold standard when she took economics as an undergrad in the early 2000s.

But did L.

Frank Baum actually intend for his novel to be read as a parable?

It turns out that question is fairly controversial.

In this way, the Wizard of Oz as allegory reading has graduated from an interesting fan theory into what might be described as a historical myth.

So today I want to explore if L.

Frank Baum truly intended his story to be read as a political allegory.

But I also want to ask whether or not his intent even matters.

How much should we separate the art from the artist?

Now, if you've been following this season closely, then you have probably picked up on the fact that this topic ties in with the last trilogy that I did on President William McKinley.

Now, while I think you will get more out of this episode if you've spent time with that series, I don't want this show to require any homework.

I want this one to work as a fun one-off.

So if you haven't listened to all my stuff on President William McKinley, no worries.

You don't have to.

I'm going to bring everyone up to speed so this all makes sense.

All right, so let's get a little bit of helpful historical context, and then we'll jump into the Oz as allegory theory and break it all down.

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The author L.

Frank Baum started his adult creative life as an actor and a playwright in upstate New York.

But after finding little success there, in 1888, he moved his young family to Aberdeen, Dakota territory, which was on the precipice of becoming South Dakota.

Like many other Americans, he went west to seek his fortune.

After a false start as a shop owner, Baum eventually settled in as a columnist and an editor for the newspaper, The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer.

But that newspaper was not long for this world.

When the Saturday Pioneer went under, Baum moved his wife and four children to Chicago, where he eventually found his way into publishing children's books.

Here he finally seemed to find his calling.

In 1899, Baum published a book of light-hearted children's poetry called Father Goose, his book, that ended up being one of the best-selling children's books of the year.

But of course, it was 1900s, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, that truly made L.

Frank Baum a household name.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz famously begins in rural Kansas, where we meet the heroine Dorothy, her Uncle Henry, and her Aunt M.

The setting was clearly inspired by Baum's own experiences in the Dakotas.

In fact, Baum biographer Catherine Rogers has pointed out that Dorothy's farmhouse seems quite similar to descriptions of Baum's sister-in-law's isolated prairie home.

But what's more debated is just how much L.

Frank Baum absorbed the politics of his western home, as Dakota Territory became the states of North and South Dakota.

One of the most pressing political issues in the the American West in the late 19th century had to do with deflation.

Now, if you've already listened to the McKinley series, forgive the recap.

But for everyone else, this will help things make a lot more sense.

Between the 1870s and the 1890s, America's rapidly industrializing economy was defined by violent booms and busts.

The busts were often followed by years-long depressions that were accompanied by price deflation.

This meant that goods became cheaper, which might sound nice, but it was particularly hard on America's farmers.

You see, most farmers carried debts in the form of mortgages on their farmland.

Deflation, especially lower prices for wheat and other agricultural products, meant that it was harder for farmers to cover the costs of their mortgages.

Deflation made the real value of the borrowed money bigger and made the money coming into the household much smaller.

This led to a full-on agricultural economic crisis that birthed a new third-party political movement in the United States.

This was known as the People's Party or the Populist Party.

The Populists' base of support lay mainly in the rural West and Midwest of the United States.

The People's Party advocated for a complete rethinking of American economics that would better serve the country's small farmers.

One of the populists' central policy ideas was the revaluing of American currency that would encourage inflation and hopefully ease the pain of cash-strapped family farmers.

The tactic for doing this that gained the most popular support was known as free silver.

The proposal was that the United States should start issuing coins made of silver and redeeming American paper money for silver as well.

This would put more currency into circulation.

Now the other side of the debate was a belief that the gold standard was the best way to ensure the stability of American currency.

Under the gold standard, there could only be as much money in circulation as could be redeemed in gold.

This kept the money supply tight, but advocates insisted that it made sure that American dollars held their value internationally.

The free silver advocates pushed back that the strict adherence to the gold standard was hurting small farmers and prioritizing the interests of American bankers.

This issue became most heated during the presidential election of 1896, when the Democrats chose William Jennings Bryan as their presidential nominee.

Not only was Bryan an engaging orator, he made free silver the central plank of his presidential campaign.

His famous cross of gold speech, decrying the harm being done by the gold standard, became one of the best-known political speeches of the decade.

This actually brought the People's Party into the Democratic fold when they also chose Brian to be their candidate for president.

And yes, two different political parties could choose the same person to be their presidential nominee.

This meant that despite the reticence of Republican candidate William McKinley, the defining issue of the 1896 presidential election was gold versus silver.

The fiery populist Brian represented silver, and the business-minded McKinley slowly embraced being the face of the gold standard, although he preferred the term sound money.

It was in the year 1900, in the aftermath of this gold versus silver election, that L.

Frank Baum published his most popular children's book, which is filled with references to gold, the yellow brick road, silver, Dorothy's magical silver shoes, and green, the Emerald City, the political capital of the magical land of Oz.

But the fact that all of these are various colors of money got little attention when the book was first published.

Right away, the wonderful Wizard of Oz was extremely popular.

It was a bestseller and was widely praised as a pleasing modern fairy tale.

Very few saw the novel as a political satire, beyond some fairly gentle jabs at politicians generally.

Many noticed that the great and powerful Wizard of Oz was a big fake, a stage magician who gains power through puffery and distraction.

This was recognized as a wry comment on the superficiality of politics.

But beyond that, no one seemed to think that the wonderful Wizard of Oz was commenting directly on the monetary debate that had defined the 1896 election.

The author certainly gave no indication that the book should be read with that in mind.

It was 64 years after the publication of the novel that a history teacher named Henry Littlefield proposed that an allegory about monetary politics in the 1890s had been hiding in plain sight the entire time.

He poured his ideas into an article titled The Wizard of Oz, Parable on Populism, which he then submitted to the academic journal American Quarterly.

Now it's a rare thing for someone who's not a working academic to have an article like this published in that kind of a venue.

But Littlefield's interpretation of the text was so engaging that the editors of the journal thought it was worth academic consideration.

So what was Littlefield's take on the novel?

Well, central to his interpretation was his understanding that Frank Baum had been a consistent Democratic voter who had become increasingly populist in his politics while living in South Dakota.

He got this from the Oz scholar Martin Gardner, who had written that Baum, quote, consistently voted as a Democrat, and his sympathies seem always to have been on the side of the laboring classes, end quote.

Further, Littlefield pointed out that while living in Chicago, quote, Baum certainly saw the results of the frightful depression which had closed down upon the nation in 1893.

Moreover, he took part in the pivotal election of 1896, marching in torchlight parades for William Jennings Bryan.

No one who marched in even a few such parades could have been unaffected by Bryan's campaign.

End quote.

For Littlefield, these suggestive indications of Baum's populist politics made the entirety of The Wizard of Oz make perfect allegorical sense.

If L.

Frank Baum was a free silver populist, then perhaps the entire story could be read as an allegory for the populist movement.

The story begins in Kansas, which, Littlefield points out, was the heart of populist politics in the 1890s.

The heroine, Dorothy, is the ward of her aunt and uncle.

These are poor farmers living in a harsh landscape.

She is then whisked away to the magical land of Oz by a tornado and upon arriving accidentally kills the wicked witch of the east when her house lands on the witch's head.

In doing so, she frees the enslaved munchkins who had been forced to live under the witch's tyranny.

Now, according to Littlefield, Baum intended the wicked witches of the East and the West to represent the evils that plagued American farmers.

The Eastern Witch represents Eastern American financial interests and industrialists.

The Western Witch, by contrast, represents the unrelenting forces of nature which make farming hard.

Now, interestingly, the Witch of the East rules over a part of Oz that is a bit more urban.

That's where the Munchkin towns are.

The Wicked Witch controls this realm much in the same way that big business tycoons dominated the political life of the eastern United States.

Or so goes the interpretation.

By vanquishing the power in the east, Dorothy is gifted the silver shoes.

This may represent the populist desire to defeat Eastern interests at the ballot box so they could get free silver coinage.

As Littlefield writes, quote, Dorothy sets out on the yellow brick road wearing the Witch of the East's magic silver shoes.

Silver shoes walking on a golden road.

Henceforth, Dorothy becomes the innocent agent of Baum's ironic view of the silver issue.

Remember, neither Dorothy nor the Good Witch of the North nor the Munchkins understand the power of these shoes.

End quote.

So, according to Littlefield, Baum's point may have been that the free silver movement was certainly powerful, but no one fully understood how free silver would help the American economy.

Okay, following so far?

Now, I'm sure there are some of you going, wait, so how exactly is the Yellow Brick Road the gold standard?

Well, in the story, the yellow brick road is the path that leads you to the political center of Oz.

The yellow brick road is something that seems safe, but ironically, the road is filled with dangers.

The allegorical point, at least according to Littlefield, is that the gold standard seemed like a responsible and safe path for the United States.

For politicians like William McKinley, it seemed like a safe route to power.

But Baum may have been trying to say that all of this was an illusion.

Following gold leads to peril.

Dorothy is actually empowered by silver, just like the working people of America.

Then there are Dorothy's famous companions, who Littlefield argues are the most allegorically rich part of the text.

As Dorothy heads down the Yellow Brick Road, she meets the Scarecrow, who believes he doesn't have a brain.

Littlefield suggests that Baum meant the scarecrow to represent unfair caricatures of American farmers.

In the 1890s, populist farmers were derided as being foolish, brainless, and easily deluded.

Baum may have also been referencing a widely read editorial from the era titled What's the Matter with Kansas, which criticized the rise of populism as naive.

Baum's scarecrow has convinced himself that he has no brain.

But of course, the irony is that the scarecrow is, quote, innately a very shrewd and very capable individual, end quote.

Littlefield argues that for Baum, the scarecrow represents how rural folks get sold short and how sometimes they can even doubt their own intellectual abilities.

But they should not.

Then Dorothy encounters the Tin Woodsman.

In the novel, we learn considerably more about the woodsman than in the 1939 film adaptation.

In the book, we're told that the Tin Woodsman was once a normal flesh and blood human being, but was enchanted by the witch of the East.

Every time the woodsman swung his axe, a different part of his body was chopped off.

Each limb was then subsequently replaced by Oz's clever tinsmiths.

But because he knew no other trade, Baum says that the woodsman, quote, worked harder than ever, end quote, until he was entirely replaced by tin.

In the allegory, at least as interpreted by Littlefield, the woodsman is the American laborer, forced by Eastern bosses, wicked witch of the East, to turn himself into a machine to be exploited.

The tin woodsman is literally dehumanized and then left to rust when the work slows down.

According to Littlefield, quote, the tin woodsman's situation has an obvious parallel in the condition of many Eastern workers after the depression of 1893.

While the tin woodsman is standing still, rusted solid, he deludes himself into thinking he is no longer capable of that most human of sentiments, love.

Hate does not fill the void, a constant lesson in the Oz books, and the tin woodsman feels that only a heart will make him him sensitive again.

End quote.

The message is that the American worker needs to reconnect with his or her essential humanity.

Littlefield lays it out, writing, quote, here is a populist view of evil Eastern influences on honest labor, which could hardly be more pointed, end quote.

The final companion Dorothy meets on her quest is the cowardly lion.

According to Littlefield, the lion is an allegorical representation of William Jennings Bryan himself.

Now, to be honest, I find this one to be the biggest stretch, but hey, let's hear him out.

The lion has a ferocious roar, but ultimately believes that he has no courage.

When Dorothy, the scarecrow, and the tin man first encounter the lion, he tries to pummel the tin man, but finds that his claws don't make a dent in the tin man's metal frame.

According to Littlefield, this represents Brian's inability to win over Eastern laborers, as represented by the Tin Man.

Littlefield tells his readers that, quote, Baum here refers to the fact that in 1896, workers were pressured into voting for McKinley and gold by their their employers.

⁇ End quote.

And yes, check out the last series if you want to hear me go deeper on that particular point.

So, why is the cowardly lion cowardly?

Well, by the year 1900, the politician William Jennings Bryan had become an outspoken opponent of American imperialism in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War.

This had him labeled a coward by his political opponents.

Now, like the lion in the novel, this was an unfair charge given that Brian enlisted and served as an officer in the 3rd Nebraska Infantry Regiment during the war.

The cowardly lion is no more cowardly than the scarecrow is brainless.

Now,

Like I said, I find this connection to be a bit more of an awkward fit.

But this interpretation is bolstered by the fact that Brian was sometimes represented as a lion thanks to his roaring rhetoric in political cartoons from the 1890s.

So in our allegory, we have a team representing the populist movement, an American farmer, an industrial laborer, and a politician led by Dorothy, the living embodiment of American decency and goodness.

Together, they head to the political heartland of Oz.

They are then sent on a dangerous errand by the humbug wizard of Oz, hoping to distract them and hopefully keep them out of his hair.

The team are told to destroy the wicked witch of the West.

And much to everyone's surprise, they actually succeed at this.

The fact that Dorothy ultimately melts the wicked witch by throwing a bucket of water on her is seen by Littlefield as being rich with allegorical meaning.

He maintains that balm meant for the wicked witch of the west to represent the evil forces of nature.

We're talking drought, famine, and harsh weather that bedevils farmers.

The witch is undone by the most important ingredient in the life of a crop, water.

Littlefield writes, quote, water, that precious commodity which the drought-ridden farmers on the Great Plains needed so badly, and which, if correctly used, could create an agricultural paradise, or at least dissolve a wicked witch.

Plain water brings an end to malign nature in the West.

End quote.

When the team returns to the Emerald City, the wizard is revealed to be a little man hiding behind a number of clever illusions.

Now, in the book, Oz uses different illusions to impress each member of the party as he meets with them individually.

Littlefield sees this as a comment on a handful of American presidents, including President William McKinley, who could change his shape depending on his audience.

He could be everything

to everyone.

In 1896, William McKinley was the candidate of big business, but he was also good at selling himself as a friend to the working man.

But in the end, the Wizard of Oz has no solutions for anyone's problems.

The scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion all learn that they can solve their own problems.

The scarecrow was always intelligent, the tin man always sensitive, and the lion always brave.

Dorothy is the only one with a real problem.

And while Oz says he can help by flying her home in his hot air balloon, he's ultimately swept away before he can do anything.

L.

Frankbaum's message, according to Littlefield, is that politicians like President McKinley have no real solutions.

They are smooth-talking hucksters that will ultimately be undone by their own hot air.

In the end, Dorothy is returned home by the power of her silver shoes.

Once she truly embraces the power of silver, she's able to reconnect with her family in Kansas.

For Henry Littlefield, Baum's message could not be clearer.

Silver helps families in Kansas.

So, that in a nutshell was Littlefield's grand interpretation of Oz as a populist allegory.

Now, at first, this article didn't make too many waves, but it was given a favorable notice by Russell B.

Nye, a noted scholar of Oz and the era that produced it.

Then, fans of the wonderful Wizard of Oz discovered the article and started circulating it amongst each other.

By the way, fans of the Wizard of Oz are one of the earliest and most tenacious fan communities out there.

I'm not sure if the current world of fandom would exist if it was not for the Wizard of Oz people.

So shout out to the Ozheads.

The article was featured in a few Oz fan newsletters and magazines.

Now, it might have ended there, but interestingly, over the next few years, Littlefield's article quietly seeped into the popular consciousness.

In 1977, the famous author Gore Vidal mentioned that the Wizard of Oz was widely understood as an allegory in the New York Review of Books.

After that, it became a piece of received wisdom.

that the wonderful Wizard of Oz was an allegory for the politics of the 1890s.

But what was often left out was that this was just one high school teacher's theory.

Now, like any good fan theory, there are enough connections between the Wizard of Oz and the politics of the 1890s to give a curious reader some pause.

Indeed, some parts of Littlefield's theory are hard to deny.

I found myself particularly taken by his analysis of the Tin Woodsman.

But

is that what Baum really intended?

You see, L.

Frank Baum's politics were considerably more complicated than how they were represented in Littlefield's essay.

Littlefield was operating under the assumption that Baum was a Democrat, a populist, and a supporter of William Jennings Bryan.

But is any of that actually true?

And

does it matter?

Well, let's pause here.

And when we come back, we'll see how well Littlefield's take has held up under more critical scrutiny.

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Have you ever heard of the concept of the death of the author?

It's an approach to literary criticism that was popularized in the late 1960s by the influential French philosopher Roland Bach.

If you'll pardon the gross oversimplification, the general idea is that the biography of an author and his or her specific artistic intentions cannot definitively explain the ultimate meaning of a text.

A text may hold meanings that the author did not intend or did not fully appreciate that she was implanting in the work.

This means that a reader or critic should not feel limited in the way that they interpret a text as it appears before them.

Once a text or any work of art is in the world, the author's intentions no longer matter.

Readers should not be bound to the author's interpretation of the art.

They are free to find their own meanings and messages.

There's a similar idea that comes from a school known as new criticism.

The literary scholars Wilmsat and Beardsley once famously wrote that after a poem is written, quote, it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it.

The poem belongs to the public, end quote.

Now,

generally I subscribe to this school of thought.

I believe that there is truth in the idea that artists do not always consciously know what meanings their art might contain.

I agree that interpretations need not be limited by what we know about the artist's stated intentions.

But how far should we take this?

Can an author accidentally write a political allegory?

Allegory involves the deployment of carefully chosen metaphors and symbols that usually stand in for something very specific.

Can something like that be created unintentionally?

Well, Henry Littlefield did not think that L.

Frank Baum accidentally imbued the wonderful Wizard of Oz with a populist pro-Silverite message.

On the contrary, in his essay, he goes out of his way to argue that Baum meant to do it.

Littlefield spends time establishing that L.

Frank Baum was a supporter of William Jennings Bryan.

and was deeply influenced by the Western populist movement.

Littlefield plainly states that, quote, once discovered, the author's allegorical intent seems clear, end quote.

But he also hedges his bets, admitting that the allegory is not tidy, consistent, or even perceptible in many parts of the novel.

He writes, quote, the allegory always remains in a minor key, subordinated to the major theme and readily abandoned whenever it threatens to distort the appeal of the fantasy, end quote.

That seems a little convenient.

Later on in the essay, he returns to this idea, saying, quote, Baum never allowed the consistency of the allegory to take precedence over the theme of youthful entertainment.

End quote.

During a viewing of Dark Side of the Rainbow, the music and the images do not always line up in a satisfying way.

But when they do, it's so mind-blowing that it seems like it had to be intentional.

So too is it with Littlefield's proposed allegory and the text of the wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Still, Littlefield's article managed to have a surprising influence on historians of late 19th century America.

Author of The Historian's Wizard of Oz, Ranjit Digay, has pointed out that between the 1970s and early 1990s, historians and political scientists like Richard Jensen, John G.

Gere, Thomas Rokan, and Gretchen Ritter started incorporating the idea that the Wizard of Oz was a political and monetary allegory into their own descriptions of late 19th century America.

Then, in 1990, the economic historian Hugh Rockoff published his own twist on the Littlefield interpretation in an article called The Wizard of Oz as Monetary Allegory.

Rockoff's article focused even more heavily on the complicated debate around gold and silver in American monetary policy, and how that was reflected in the novel.

But Rockoff had a slightly different take on the text than Littlefield.

While he agreed that Baum must have meant the novel to be a pro-silver allegory, He argued that the wicked witches were meant to represent specific politicians who supported the gold standard.

The wicked witch of the East was, to him, Democratic President Grover Cleveland, who hailed from the eastern city of New York.

The wicked witch of the west was Republican President William McKinley, who came from the Midwestern state of Ohio.

Now, in reality, both men had fairly complicated views on the gold versus silver issue, but they were perceived as gold men.

So, Rockoff argues that Baum made them into his wicked witches.

In Rockoff's reading, the wizard was an allegorical representation of the Republican strategist Mark Hanna.

As listeners to the last series will remember, Hanna was the wealthy Cleveland industrialist turned Republican political boss whose aggressive fundraising and political propaganda campaign has been credited with getting William McKinley elected.

Mark Hanna was a master of political image-making, and many perceived him to be the man behind the curtain in the White House.

This makes him a nice parallel for the wizard in the Emerald City.

Rockoff's stature as an economic historian meant that his article would go on to have an even greater influence than Littlefield's original.

Eventually, the Wizard of Oz as monetary allegory would become a staple in first-year university economics classes.

Rockoff's article was even included in a run of introductory economics textbooks in the 1990s.

This did a lot to reinforce the idea that L.

Frank Baum had always intended the wonderful Wizard of Oz to work as a political allegory.

But in the 90s, just as Rockoff's article was introducing the Oz as allegory idea to a fresh audience, a countercurrent started to emerge.

In 1991, the historian Gene Clanton argued that the wonderful Wizard of Oz was not a populist allegory at all.

On the contrary, Clanton maintained that L.

Frank Baum's tale was clearly written in support of the gold standard and was critical of Western populists and specifically William Jennings Bryan.

Clanton argued that Baum seemed to be more politically aligned with progressive Republicans, like Theodore Roosevelt.

Clanton wrote that The Wizard of Oz was, quote, an apt metaphor or parable of progressivism, not populism.

It mirrored perfectly the middle ground ideology that was fundamental to those who favored reform, yet opposed populism.

End quote.

Clanton agreed that the yellow brick road represented the gold standard, but unlike Littlefield and Rockoff, he insisted that it symbolized the correct path for America.

How do you get where you're going?

Follow the Yellow Brick Road.

Dorothy's silver shoes, on the other hand, are the tools of the wicked witches.

They came from the wicked witch of the East and are coveted by the wicked witch of the west.

Dorothy doesn't even understand how the shoes work, which Clanton believes Baum meant to reflect the general ignorance around what free silver could do to the American economy.

Clanton also pointed out that while Dorothy flies back home with the help of the silver shoes, Baum included the detail that the shoes fall off her feet on the journey back to Kansas.

The message, according to Clanton, is that the book's happy ending comes only after silver is abandoned as a convenient fix-all.

In this interpretation, the wizard is not President McKinley, but instead the persuasive Democrat William Jennings Bryan.

Near the end of the book, it's revealed that the wizard was originally from Nebraska, Bryan's home state.

Clanton regards this as a clue that Bryan was the shifty politician that L.

Frank Baum meant to lampoon.

Now, I have to admit, it is curious that the wonderful Wizard of Oz works just as well as an anti-populist and pro-populist allegory.

It certainly raises the question: do either of these interpretations at all reflect L.

Frank Baum's true intentions?

Well, as it turns out, there may be a big, fat, historical myth right at the heart of Henry Littlefield and Hugh Rockoff's influential interpretations of the wonderful Wizard of Oz.

L.

Frankbaum may not have been a Brian supporter, a populist, a silverite, or even a Democratic voter.

Henry Littlefield believed that he was all of these things, but he didn't just pull that conclusion out of thin air.

In 1961, Frank Jocelyn Baum, the eldest son of the Oz author, published a biography of his father, where he wrote, quote,

Not long after moving to Chicago, Baum took a brief interest in politics.

Stirred by William Jennings Bryan's cross of gold speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention, he marched in torchlight parades on behalf of Bryan's candidacy.

But aside from these two campaigns and from voting in elections usually for Democrats, he ignored the problems and personalities of public life.

End quote.

Now, for a long time, no one questioned the recollections of Frank Jocelyn Baum.

It was taken as a fact that the elder Baum was a passionate Brian supporter.

But in the decades since 1961, many Baum scholars have come to regard Frank Jocelyn's biography as unreliable.

More recent biographers have come to believe that the younger Baum misremembered his father's political leanings in 1896.

The biographer William Patrick Hearn has pointed out that Baum could not have marched in a torchlight parade for William Jennings Bryan in Chicago because there never was a torchlight parade for Bryan in that city.

But newspaper records show that there were torchlight parades held in support of William McKinley.

Could Baum have marched in one of those?

Further, Hearn discovered that Baum actually penned a poem in support of William McKinley published in the Chicago Times-Herald in 1896.

That poem featured lines like, quote, Great will be our satisfaction when the honest money faction seats McKinley in the chair, end quote.

Now, some think it's possible that this poem may have been ironic or was written cynically to make some money from a Republican-leaning newspaper, but at the very least, its existence complicates the idea that Baum was some kind of Democrat true believer.

The truth is that in all of L.

Frank Baum's writing, there's very little evidence that he supported the Democrats, Western populists, or William Jennings Bryan.

While he was the editor of the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer in South Dakota, most of his editorials were in support of the state's Republicans.

There's only one instance of him writing favorably about the early Populist Party, but there are more examples of him criticizing them.

He also seems to have had ambiguous feelings about about free silver.

According to historian Ranjit Digay, he voiced qualified support for a silver purchase bill in one opinion piece, but then later criticized the politicians who he believed had, quote, drastically oversold it, end quote.

The truth seems to be that L.

Frank Baum was not overly impressed with any American political party.

He most likely leaned Republican, but was hardly a passionate party loyalist.

The one thing most modern biographers believe that Frank Jocelyn Baum got right about his father was that the Oz author was fairly ambivalent when it came to politics.

All of this means that it's highly unlikely that L.

Frank Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz as an allegory in support of populism and free silver.

There's very little evidence that he supported those causes, and considerably more that he leaned Republican and supported William McKinley, at least in 1896.

Clanton's inverse interpretation that Baum meant the novel as a pro-gold standard parable also doesn't seem likely, given Baum's general ambivalence towards politics.

In his biography of the Oz author, Michael Patrick Hearn unearthed this very telling anecdote about the election of 1896.

Quote,

during the 1896 campaign, Baum was on the road in Illinois selling crockery when a friend asked him to speak before a Republican Party rally.

He agreed and that night delivered a tirade against the opposition.

Then he was asked by the Democrats to speak at their rally.

He agreed and delivered the same speech, this time directed against the Republicans.

End quote.

so if that story is true, then maybe we've been looking at Baum's intentions entirely the wrong way.

Baum seems like the kind of person who might sprinkle in just enough political and monetary illusions to send over-eager readers on a wild goose chase, trying to piece together an allegorical puzzle that doesn't actually fit.

He might have loved the fact that later scholars were debating whether or not his novel was a pro-populist or anti-populist parable.

The joke is on those of us who want to make the story political.

I've been left with little doubt that L.

Frank Baum only intended to write a pleasing children's fantasy.

But this brings us back to the question of whether or not the author's intentions even matter.

In The Historian's Wizard of Oz, author Ranjit Digay annotates the entire novel with relevant historical footnotes.

His very project suggests that having a good understanding of 19th century American politics deepens a reader's understanding of the book.

But Digay admits in one of his first introductory essays that, quote, the wonderful Wizard of Oz is almost certainly not a conscious populist allegory, and to say that unambiguously is to traffic in misinformation, end quote.

But he justifies his grand set of annotations, writing, quote, The parallels between the characters, incidents, and settings in the book and real-life issues in late 19th century America are striking.

Whether intended or not, the book works as a populist allegory.

End quote.

His point is that the historical allegory deepens the text, even if it's entirely unintended.

Now, the fact that that could happen by accident is a miracle in its own right.

Even though Pink Floyd didn't write their seminal 1973 album while watching a film print of The Wizard of Oz.

That doesn't mean that Dark Side of the Moon doesn't sync up with the 1939 MGM musical.

But this whole topic now has me seeing patterns and connections between almost everything.

You see, I can't get the story of Henry Littlefield out of my head.

A high school history teacher is teaching summer school when he gets an idea for a hook for his class.

While reading the wonderful Wizard of Oz to his kids, he realizes that it connects beautifully to the elections of 1896, the somewhat dry topic that he's trying to bring alive in his history class.

He takes the idea to school, and what do you know?

His students get engaged.

The kids in class are making making connections.

According to Littlefield, it was one of his students who suggested that Dorothy represented the American every girl, someone who was just trying to get along with her life.

Littlefield put these ideas into writing, he sent them out into the world, and his article found a surprisingly large audience.

His historical hot take went went viral.

From that point on, this high school teacher's entire legacy was defined by his surprisingly well-received bit of amateur criticism.

Do you get it guys?

Henry Littlefield and I

are the same guy.

I came up with this podcast.

when I was a high school teacher looking for a hook for my history class.

I tried the idea out for my students, then I wrote it up, then I recorded it, and I put it out into the world.

And amazingly, I found an audience.

Now my professional life has been defined by the kind of amateur scholarship that defined Henry Littlefield's.

Our lives have followed a strangely parallel path.

And here I am, researching the episode that will be released on the 10-year anniversary of the start of this show.

And I discover that the entire story hinges on the work of a man

who is essentially me.

And I know I didn't plan it like that,

but

you would think that I would have had to have planned it, right?

Okay,

that's all for this week, and that's all for season 10.

Join us again in one month for the start of season 11.

Now, like I said at the start of this episode, August is not going to be an entirely dry time for the feed.

I will be releasing a handful of throwback episodes with all new introductions to keep the good stuff coming in the meantime.

Before I sign off, I want to thank absolutely everyone who continues to listen and support this podcast.

It means absolutely everything.

I get to do this because of you folks, and I never want to take you all for granted.

So thank you so much.

If this podcast means something to you, then please think about doing something nice for the show as we close the book on season 10.

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Frank is an integral part of the operation here.

He's an extremely talented artist, and I wouldn't want to do it without him.

So think about supporting him and the show in general by going to our TeePublic store or just go to ourfakehistory.com and follow the links to the merch store.

Before we go this week, I also need to give some specific shout-outs to our very awesome patrons who've just started supporting at $5 or more every month.

Big ups to Soren Davis, to Chris Dunlop, to Penguin Crow, to Fabian Gasperl,

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To

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All of these folks have decided to pledge at $5 or more every month.

So that means they are beautiful human beings.

Patrons, I cannot thank you enough.

Honestly, the fact that you folks pledge your money every month in support of this podcast keeps it coming.

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I love you all.

I look forward to doing more exciting stuff for you guys in the coming season.

Thank you so much.

If you want to get a hold of me in the meantime, please send me an email at ourfakehistory at gmail.com.

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So just look for me wherever you are engaging with social media.

As always, the theme music for the show comes to us from Dirty Church.

Check out more from Dirty Church at dirtychurch.bandcamp.com.

All the other music on the show is normally written and recorded by me, but on this episode, of course, we pulled some clips from Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd.

My name is Sebastian Major, and until we meet again, remember, just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't real.

One, two, three, five,

five.

There's nothing better than a welcome side.

Hey, it's James Altiter.

I've been an entrepreneur, investor, best-selling writer, stand-up comic, and whatever it is I'm interested in, I get obsessed.

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I have failed more times than I can count.

I wish in my life I had had people to talk to.

That's why I started the James Altacher show and bring on some of the most brilliant minds in every area of life.

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And I wanted to find out exactly how they've navigated the highs, the lows, and everything in between.

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I've talked to 1,500 of the most amazing people on the planet.

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