or the Art Deco Emerald City from the 1939 MGM film.
Given the preeminence of the film in the public consciousness, though, I’m guessing the critics were referring to the film… but, to my eye, the edifice seems more akin to the book illustrations. Picking up on this critique and using it in an act of anti-Mormon bigotry, someone spray painted "Surrender Dorothy!" on a nearby overpass on the D.C. beltway.
Interestingly, L. Frank Baum's inspiration for the Emerald City came from The White City at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago (where he was living at the time). Designed to showcase the works of the most prolific American architects of the era, the White City was an amazing architecture achievement, in itself. Sadly, it perished in the Great Chicago Fire. Even so, its influence can be felt in a great number of impressive twentieth-century American architectural structures (but I’ll leave any further discussion of that to those who study architecture).
On a side note, Walt Disney's father worked on the construction of the White City, as well. It was said to have inspired Walt's visions for his theme parks. There is a clear visual link between the White City and the iconic Magic Kingdom castle.
There is also a strong link between Oz and the Magic Kingdom; both of them are quintessentially American utopian visions. The connection, however, goes deeper than this. They share a strange geographical similarity as well. Certainly, there is also a strong resemblance between the map of the Magic Kingdom and the map of Oz. Both of them are kingdoms divided into four separate quarters, in a quincunx formation (sorry, it just isn't everyday one gets to use the word quincunx in a meaningful way), with an elaborate palace in the center of the map.
(Here's another Fun Fact: The Mormons were banned from the World's Parliament of Religions at the 1893 World's Fair by the organizers, who generously offered them a consolation spot... on the Midway.)
For those of you who are teachers, I believe The Wonderful Wizard of Oz can serve as the centerpiece of a language arts course that integrates a great number of subject areas across the curriculum. I’ll delve more deeply into this in future posts, but there are ways to use Oz to integrate history (Chicago World’s Fair, the Great Chicago Fire, westward expansion of the United States in conjunction with rapid urbanization, etc., etc., etc.), science (tornadoes, anyone?), geography (map reading), and now obviously religion and architecture.
2 comments:
I really enjoyed this post. I lived in DC for awhile and remember "Surrender Dorothy" very well. It didn't occur to me to take it as anti-Mormon bigotry, so I'm confessing to a blind spot here. Did the members of the temple take it that way?
My understanding (from the limited number of LDS folks I talked to about it) is that they did see it as anti-Mormon bigotry. Because of the sensitivities, I didn't really want to push the issue too heavily. On the other hand, I hear a sense of pride when Mormons talk about the architecture of their temples... and it's difficult to argue that there isn't an element of the Crystal Palace going on here.
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