openings and objective correlatives

[marycatelli]

Stemming from a discussion of portal fantasies, the sort of story in which a character goes through a portal to Another World for adventures.  And then comes back.  Or doesn't.

And now I am going off on a tangent about Dorothy's motives in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which were, you remember, to go home.


The precise statement that triggered this was that Dorothy's motive was not strong enough.  Which is certainly arguable.  She lacked what T. S. Eliot termed an objective correlative:  an external focus for her emotions, to convince us how deeply she felt.  (Better than the movie, where she purportedly learned that she needed to go home, but still immediately asked how to get home, and was sent to the wizard.  Phooey.  You want to give her a character arc, you got change her at the beginning to make her need to learn.  Then, you didn't give her anything that would really learn it.)

But the desire for home is only one of many things that can start the story off.  The abduction of a parent, or sibling, or beloved, or child, or the theft of a precious object.  Etc.  The problem is that if you do not want the kidnap victim, for instance, to be merely a MacGuffin for the quest, you need characterization and stuff to provide the objective correlative.  Which takes up time and space.  And delays the action.  And quite possibly makes the genre unclear.

Bridging conflict, where the hero and the kidnap victim are involved working with a different problem before the abduction, is one solution, but doesn't always work best.  (If they already have problems, for instance, it may be a problem if the abduction has to be a surprise to the main character.)  But wrestling the info into the story is always interesting.

Especially for portal fantasies, since the character's old life is on the other side of the portal.

Comments

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

"We murder to dissect." I don't want to dissect either the book or the movie, or even to pin either down enough to carefullly distinguish them. So this will be mostly from memory.

Imo Rilstone's takedown of the family drama plot that Adamson added to LWW, applies even more to the movie TWOZ. Adamson didn't invent the Blitz, but the Hollywood of the 40s did invent the whole Kansas plot with the mean neighbor etc.

The movie had iirc more than one ‘lesson’. In addition to ‘home is best’ (which was a reply to the movie Dorothy who had dreamed of a better world), near the end there was the movie Glinda saying something like ‘Click your heels, you could have done this any time, but you had to learn for yourself that you could do it.’

In the book, at the end they meet Glinda for the first time, who says: “Your Silver Shoes will carry you over the desert," replied Glinda.
"If you had known their power you could have gone back to your Aunt Em
the very first day you came to this country."

But there’s no preachy ‘lesson’ of it, there’s no ‘had to learn it for yourself.’

We might find a lesson in the book by how Dorothy’s attitude about home vs Oz changes between the beginning and the end of the book.

On arrival she says "I am anxious to get back to my aunt and uncle, for I am sure they will worry about me.”

The Munchkins can’t help, and instead tell her all about the Wicked Witches, at which Dorothy understandably “began to sob at this, for she felt lonely among all these
strange people.”

At the end, she’s back to her first thought, less anxiously:
"My greatest wish now," she added, "is to get back to Kansas, for Aunt Em will surely think something dreadful has happened to me, and that will make her put on mourning; and unless the crops are better this year than they were last, I am sure Uncle Henry cannot afford it."

What’s happened in the mean time is that she has met her friends and helped them and helped the country get rid of the other wicked witch, freed the Flying Monkeys, etc. The book Dorothy hasn’t learned that ‘home is best’ or that she could have wished herself home any time or anything that connects with our world. She’s learned to function in Oz and that Oz is a wonderful place, not a place to be lonely in.

Personally, I doubt that Baum felt required to teach any sort of big lesson to Dorothy (any more than Dodgson to Alice, or Lewis to Peter). Baum did plenty of small lessons to other characters, though, if that helps. (Hm, actually it’s the humbug Wizard who goes into (humbug) lessons for the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, and Lion.)

[marycatelli]

Of course, in the book, Glinda didn't withhold the knowledge from her when they first met, because their meeting at the end was their first meeting. Really, was it that difficult to have two witches?

[princesselwen.livejournal.com]

That was always my problem with the movie.

[marycatelli]

It was one of mine.