Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a Media and drama good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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Latest comment: 3 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Is the subject of this article the theories of what Frank Baum meant when he wrote 'The Wizard of Oz'? It seems to me that's what's meant by 'Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'. I DON'T think that the 'Alternative Allegory' section fits with the intent of the article or with the meaning of the word 'allegory' as it's used in this article. I advocate for removing this section.Niccast (talk) 03:51, 15 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
It's not Baum's unstated intentions that the article is about--rather it is the way scholars and historians identify so many basic features of his story that had a correspondence to the politics of the 1890s, which Baum as a newspaper editor wrote about every day. Rjensen (talk) 07:13, 23 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I removed a small sentence that made a metaphor of the Wizard to the USA political position President Elect. It's very clearly not a political interpretation of the story of the Wizard of Oz. It is simply a metaphor about something else, using a very small characteristic of a single character in the story. It's clear to me there is no reason the sentence should be included in the article. I would cite wp:undue and the fact that it's just simply not on topic. This is the sentence:
Canadian author Margaret Atwood linked Donald Trump's election in 2016 to the Wizard: "the wizard is the president-elect. He has no magic powers".[1][2]
^ María Teresa Gibert Maceda, "Margaret Atwood’s Visions and Revisions of 'The Wizard of Oz'." Journal of English Studies 17 (2019): 175-195.
It seems the writer may have discussed a political interpretation of the story (see the second source, but paywalled), but that is not mentioned in the small excerpt above. So I removed it, among other edits. IP 2600:4041:5248:4000:1064:7C55:A8AE:BD44 reverted it, arguing in the edit summary that it was sourced content. So I have removed it again and posted here on talk [1]. Sourced or not, it still isn't about the article topic. I can't actually determine whether that second source discusses politics at all, but it doesn't look likely. Atwood seems to be a mostly fiction writer and that paper is a study of her literary works with relation to the Wizard of Oz. HC (talk) 22:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC)Reply
The topic of the wiki article is the interpretation of political themes within The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, rather than the interpretation of miscellaneous political topics using The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a figure of speech. Atwood does not explore the political meanings of L. Frank Baum's work, but instead uses The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in her own writings. In Gibert's Margaret Atwood’s Visions and Revisions of "The Wizard of Oz" it is said that Atwood "has often been inspired by both [the novel and the film] and has drawn attention to the main issues it raises", with several examples of non-political themes ("e.g. the transformative power of words, gendered power relationships, the connection between illusion and reality, the perception of the artist as a magician, and different notions of home"). In her The Guardian article, Atwood does not explain The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with the help of politics, but rather explains politics with the help of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. As such, it does not fit the scope of this wiki article. Cilidus (talk) 23:51, 6 March 2023 (UTC)Reply
Atwood does indeed fit. The article covers the resemblances between American politics and the book/stage production/ film. Atwood is a Canadian and argues that Trump continues an American tradition over a century old. Rjensen (talk) 07:15, 23 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
