(Continued from part 1.)

Sacrifice

Rory Williams — Christ-type.

Yes, in Doctor Who’s midseason finale, “The Angels Take Manhattan,” Rory even spread his arms wide as he stood atop that roof ledge, ready to give his life to save not only himself from a lonely, imprisoned future, but the city of New York.

Everyone laughed at how often Rory died in the series, either for real or only in visions.

After death no. 2 (shot by a Silurian, then eroded from reality by a time-crack) I began to wonder: You idiots. That’s the whole point. Not only did Rory’s deaths and revivals generate notoriety and meme-level amusement, but they were based on the fact that one can’t have a truly great story without echoing the Biblical truth of resurrection. So why not roll with it? Especially if the point was for Rory to become a true hero?

Rory wasn’t the only sacrificial giver. Amy sacrificed her childhood hero, the Doctor, her “Raggedy Man” who crashed in her yard. In one way she blinked, yet also did not flinch, as she bid farewell to the Doctor and stepped into another time, to reunite with her true love.

God-given marriage

“The Ponds.” Some people say their storyline was scum. (Presumably “Pond scum.”) Why?

Maybe people dislike seeing a stable relationship.

Maybe they have been trained by other television shows that the only interesting story relationship is one that is constantly threatening to break apart.

Maybe, similar to the Doctor, they can’t stand happy endings to a love story. Stories that don’t simply delay and withhold true love, but pursue it to its finish.

Throughout Doctor Who’s Pond-centric episodes, viewers watched Rory and Amy grow up, fall in love, marry each other, become parents, lose and find their child, change jobs, and fight to save their marriage from monsters of normal life (and actual monsters). Finally, they were ready to die together in one other’s arms, after Amy’s potentially final words:

The Doctor: “What the hell are you doing?!”

Amy: “Changing the future. It’s called marriage.”

Have you noticed my references to “the Ponds”? This follows the story’s constant hinting that Rory took Amy’s last name, not vice-versa. Ha ha, see? It is Not What You Expected. It is Counter-Cultural. It’s subversive.

Or not.

Later, this is what we see on their gravestone:

In Loving Memory
Rory Arthur Williams
Aged 82

And His Loving Wife
Amelia Williams
Aged 87

Rory’s name first? Rory Williams? “His loving wife”? Amy Williams?

How un-hip. How chauvinistic. How un-progressive. How horribly “boring.”

Yet viewers, perhaps strung-out on love triangles, constant banter for little purpose, cast changes, and immature adolescent phobias of commitment, were left weeping.

As I wrote before, few would weep over two homosexual men in these roles. Those notions are only good for sprinkled and possibly network-diversity-mandated “jokes,” sidekick characters, or else guilt-tripping art-house movies. But never for a transcendent love story.

God-given love, sacrifice, and marriage — flagrantly celebrated and honored.

End of the story

I suppose we should have seen this coming. Moffat said he hoped to make Doctor Who more like a fairy tale than straight-up science fiction. You may disagree with that approach. But consider the differences and strengths in either genre (both of which I love).

• Science fiction stresses an unlimited future. Parallel possibilities. Always a way out. Moral nuance and conflict. Overlapping timelines and changed actions.
• Fairy tales stress a beginning, a middle, and an end. Only one possibility. Rules that can’t be broken. Moral good and evil. Actions that have permanent consequences.

Doctor Who has taken the best of both genres’ worlds and combined them into one entity.

For that, I believe Grand Moff Moffat deserves more praise, not only complaints and rants.

After all, do we really want to be like the Doctor himself — a reflector of the best and worst of humans? Many reviewers noted with shock that the Doctor, twice, instinctively begged Amy not to leave him, even if that meant she left Rory. Amy didn’t flinch; she had chosen her man. Why did the Doctor do this? The answer seems clear: he doesn’t like endings. Finality. Commitment. Predictability. “Boredom.” Instead he’ll yank a lever and rush off to a newer time, location, companion, adventure, mystery, storyline, even universe.

Ah, but this time is different. The Doctor is faced with a Finality, not only because of the Ponds’ finished story but because of his own. He has already witnessed the end of his own marriage, and despite his initial attempts, resigned himself to being irrevocably joined with his wife. His stories constantly recur, science-fiction style. Yet hers will not.

Still a Pond-hater, because of their story’s insistence on permanence? Then you’re behaving like a child, or a fickle immature Time Lord — and not in a good way.

After that last Doctor Who episode, this year’s midseason finale, I think several people owe apologies to executive Steven Moffat. I mean this for naysayers, slackers, heterophobes, and folks (like Joss Whedon) who seem to think stable relationships make for dull stories.

In “The Angels Take Manhattan,” we learned that the Doctor, the thousand-year-old time-traveling Time Lord, hates endings. When he reads novels, he tears out the final page so he can never know for sure what happened. (Presumably the Ninth Doctor missed the very end of The Lovely Bones, and the Tenth Doctor only missed part of the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; he told Martha Jones that made him cry.)

Yet Moffat, knowing the long-predicted departure of “the Ponds,” Rory and Amy Williams, decided to go “meta.” What if the Doctor himself knew that ending? What if the characters were made aware of their own “script,” and tried their best to thwart a disaster?

Those are the first of a few spoilers I must reveal here.

But you likely don’t need me to tell you that Doctor Who fans are (absurdly, I say) divided on the Ponds’ storyline. Internet commentators are spitting mad at “the Moff.” He stomps on classic Doctor Who with his ego, they insist. He has social agendas. He has supposedly threatened to ruin canonical mystery by exposing the Doctor’s real name, answering the show’s title question, in a grand story next year.

First, about the “Moffat is an egomaniac” accusations: those are likely overthrown by the fact that most humans are far too arrogant to expose their actual, comparatively shallow ego trips in public-relations campaigns. Real egomaniacs care little for what others think and feel no need to craft images of posturing, chest-thumping media executives. (By the way, this also explains conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh.) So readers, when you buy into that he’s-a-raging-egomaniac PR, that may be exactly what they want.

But it’s the “Moffat promotes social agendas” accusation I attack as the worst absurdity.

Unless by “agendas” you mean rejoicing in love, sacrifice, and God-given marriage.

That’s why I suggest people may owe Doctor Who writers an apology. I’ll go first.

Love

Grand Moff Moffat, I apologize for my 2010 accusation that you would sex up the show.

In the Moffat-written series-5 opener “The Eleventh Hour,” the story introduced new companion Amelia “Amy” Pond. She’s not a teenager or adult, a la the revived series’ first three companions. She’s a delightful child. We meet her alone without family, on her knees praying (though bizarrely to Santa Claus). Later she’s perplexed and intrigued by the mad man who crashes his blue police box in her backyard. How sweet and different was this?

Flash forward a few minutes, or a few years of Amy’s life. When next we see her, she’s all grown up. And the camera practically gropes her overexposed, pantyhose-clad legs. She’s a “kiss-o-gram.” Innocence lost. Ha ha! the show seemed to shout. Fooled you. You thought you would only hear more slight innuendo? Well, take a gander. This one’s for the blokes!

After that came reprieves and more sweetness. Amy was a human being, not just eye candy.

But then several episodes later she threw herself at the Doctor, in her bedroom — and I wanted to quit on the whole program then and there. Already I’d had it up to here with companions crushing (making Donna Noble a welcome relief). But near sex scenes besides?

… Then came another about-face. The Doctor rejected Amy. Fetched her fiancé. Took them both to Venice to meet water-vampires. Then beyond. At the series’ end, Amy married Rory.

Still, Moffat kept head-faking: does Amy really prefer the Doctor over her husband? At first it was annoying. But now that their arc is done I realize what he intended all along. The trope is this: couples aren’t meant to stay in stable relationships, so a Breakup is inevitable. Any time now, it’s over! Back to the angst and wandering, another Love Interest and male cast member! It’s the No. 1 Romance Rule of Television! And Moffat laughed in the trope’s face.

This is why I name-checked Joss Whedon. He has many strengths. But knowing what to do with stable relationships is not one of them. Someone is doomed to break up, or at least die.

“Angels” spoiler here: Rory and Amy did have their tragedy. Eventually they did die.

But they died in their 80s. After decades of growing old together. Their love endured, never threatened by the Doctor, clichéd marital boredom, or “inevitable” television cast changes. Per the program’s own (temporal) rules, their storyline is fixed. And theirs was a fantastic love story, with ups and downs, distance and closeness, and realism.

Coming tomorrow: Doctor Who’s reflections of sacrifice and God-given marriage.

We have our finalists! It was a close contest, and it’s always hard to see good entries left out, but here are the three you, the readers and judges, have determined to be the top selections. Special thanks to all the writers who took part in the Challenge.

In no special order, the finalist entries are re-posted below. After reading (or reviewing) them, vote in the poll to determine who will win this year’s Fall Writer Challenge. Then help spread the word so that we have many readers this week who will vote for the best entry. Thanks to each of you for making this work.

Entry by Eugene Black

If dragon hopping was safe, then I wouldn’t have any interest in it, but of course it’s not, so guess where I’m heading.

Adri’s note was stuck on the front door, impaled by her hunting knife. As usual her almost perfect handwriting announced her confidence, but spoke little of her impetuousness, or the argument from the night before. Foolish woman! Sometimes I wondered why I even tried.

There was little time to lose. I pushed the door open and grabbed my sword. I was out the door at a sprint when I stopped to reconsider. This was no time for heroics. I returned for my bow and arrows. Better to kill a dragon from a distance.

“Where are you going?” Father John asked as I turned a corner and almost ran him over.

“Where do you think?” I shouted over my shoulder, barely slowing down. The desperation in my voice must have said it all.

“She didn’t!” he shouted back. My silence was his only answer.

“Wait!” His shout faded in the distance. I shook my head as I ran. There was no time.

I pushed on, my lungs burning as I left the village behind me. Up ahead, at the top of the gorge, beside the waterfall, the gigantic stone ring continued its centuries-old vigil across the secluded valley we called home. It was ancient and broken, covered in vines. Who knew it could still work? Least of all, who could suspect they’d send a dragon? Why here? Why now?

A shiver ran down my spine, cold as the river water I now splashed through, and suddenly I knew. Because Adri was here. Because they knew this was something she’d do, and they weren’t finished with her yet.

 

Entry by Lauren

If dragon hopping was safe, then I wouldn’t have any interest in it, but of course it’s not, so guess where I’m heading. Yeah, to the arena. The dragon-hopping trials start today.

My mother believes a girl who was jilted at the altar two months ago ought to stay at home and sulk. My brother, Captain of the Dragon Guard, was only slightly more understanding when I told him my plan. “Mathilde,” he’d said, “Philippe is not worth it. Don’t risk your life. I almost lost you once. I don’t want to lose you again.”

A year ago, I had been a member of the Dragon Guard myself, and had a daredevil streak even wider than the one I have now. That attempt at dragon-hopping hadn’t ended well. It left me with a permanent limp and a left ankle that would give out unexpectedly. But this was about more than just proving myself.

I knew Philippe would be participating. I had not seen him since the day before our wedding. I’d had no inkling anything was wrong then. He simply didn’t show up the next day. Nor had he tried to offer any explanation since. I would find him and force him to tell me what was wrong, even if I had to attempt a midair leap from my dragon’s back to his.

 

Entry by Lori Stanley Roeleveld

If dragon hopping was safe, then I wouldn’t have any interest in it, but of course it’s not, so guess where I’m heading.

My grandson will certainly follow through with his petition for guardianship if he catches me, so I have to be very cautious.

Last night, at Tuesday dinner, I smiled like the sweet old granny he longs for, and mentioned that I was going to visit old friends, leaving this afternoon. I left out the fact that the way to my friends requires traveling the Great Gauntlet and also that I would be carrying a message from the Cloud of Witnesses to a besieged warrior on the other side.

Instead, I let Bryce imagine me sipping tea with other docile, white-haired scarf knitters so he wouldn’t bother to check in on me again until the week-end. Three days is not entirely sufficient for the journey but I love a challenge. How I miss my brave Howard and the adventures we shared! To his credit, just before he died, he passed the Vessel on to me, tipping each of my shoulders with his very own sword to designate me his replacement before the High Council.

Where did I put the dagger that fits inside my green galoshes? I hope I didn’t drop it in the swamp during my last clash with Bedivere.

 

And now it is time to vote. 😀 Choose the entry you believe is the best. You have until Sunday at midnight (Eastern time) to vote.

[poll id=”3″]

Just a reminder that on Monday I’ll post the three top vote getters for the Fall Write Challenge and open the poll so that readers (all of us, actually) can pick a winner.

BUT before we get to the poll, we need to pick the finalists. There are some very close races. Be sure you add your voice (in reality, what counts is your thumb up) to the decision so that we can include the three entries readers prefer.

Subtitle: An Interview with Gut Check Press Founder and Author Ted Kluck

(Editor’s Note: In spring 2011, E. Stephen Burnett interviewed author Ted Kluck [coauthor with Kevin DeYoung of Why We’re Not Emergent and Why We Love the Church] about his forays into satirical end-times fiction. Now Kluck is back with another interview, this time with himself — which helps shortcut the process.)

Tell us about your new collaborative end-times novel, Beauty and the Mark of the Beast.

Well, it has all of the following in it:  guns, microchips, professional football, hipsters, romance, and a little bit of dispensational theology which, as we learned by reading (or as it were, not-reading) the Left Behind series in the 90s are all the ingredients of a good end-times thriller.

Also, it can be yours for only $2.99 which makes it cheaper than pretty much everything in the world.

Talk about the enduring appeal of end-times literature. 

I think people have a fascination with what happens when the world ends … which as we all know includes people getting microchips implanted in them as well as people floating up into the air naked and leaving behind little piles of clothing with their glasses sitting on top (of the piles of clothing).

So this is a send-up of Left Behind in the same vein as Gut Check’s other semi-successful send-ups if you count selling a few copies, making people laugh and making other people very angry as “successful”? 

Not exactly.  I mean I think it started as a send-up but then the four of us really started to enjoy getting to know the characters, weaving the plot, and watching this story come to life.  That’s not to say that it doesn’t get funny and stay funny (I think it does) but it’s also a real novel in the way that a real novel paints multi-dimensional characters and then has those characters doing interesting things on the page.  We also don’t ever directly mention Left Behind (Frank Turk’s foreword notwithstanding) and we’re careful not to really even spoof dispensational theology.

So what exactly are you spoofing?

We’re spoofing what we call “dispensensational” theology which is what happens when Christians make a really creepy industry (television, books, movies) out of eschatology – what happens when the world ends which, let’s face it, we all have our theological opinions about but we’re all, also, a healthy kind of clueless about as well.  That’s a long-winded way of saying that none of us are dying on that particular theological hill.  In fact, we all acknowledge that there are dispensational-leaning theologians we respect, and who have worked very hard, even if we don’t agree with them.

We’re also spoofing the kind of Christian culture that creates a Christ-figure out of a kid who throws a football on television.

So you’re spoofing Tim Tebow?

“…”

Well?

Not exactly.  Okay, maybe.  We’re not really spoofing Tebow as much as the culture that created Tebow, if that makes sense?

It does.

I’m glad we had this talk.

Me too.  But still … how do you feel about laughing at some individual’s expense?  Is it wrong?

I actually think it’s imperative that we laugh at the kind of culture that makes an idol out of somebody like the Ted Strongbow character in our novel.  A culture in which fans and readers are drawing all of their hope, energy and inspiration from a celebrity rather than from the glorious grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ whose death and resurrection paid for our sins and is our only comfort in life or death.  That culture, to me, is kooky … and is ripe for satire.  And that happens to be exactly the culture we’re living in.

How do you manage living, and making your living, in that culture?

Starting a publishing project like Gut Check Press certainly helps me maintain my sanity in this business.

How so?

Because we’re both (co-owner Zach Bartels and I) Christians and our faith drives what we do as a company…but a very close second ethic is that we do absolutely whatever we feel like whenever we feel like it…which usually means eating lunch out, smoking cigars and laughing a lot.  And also occasionally releasing a book and then doing very little to market the book.

What was it like, logistically, writing with three other people?

It was fun. More fun than writing by myself, that’s for sure, which is saying something because I’m an introvert who got into this business (writing) primarily so that I could be alone most of the time.  This book was a blast.  We would each write a chapter and then hand it off to the next person with no instructions and no expectations.  Our idea was to put a handful of really talented, fun people in a “room” (virtual) and see what happened.

What happened?

173 pages of pretty non-stop humor and action.  There are very few pages in which somebody isn’t either getting punched, shot, implanted with a microphip, falling into or out of love, falling off a light stanchion, feeling conflicted about something, or else doing or thinking something funny.

But shouldn’t writing novels be a serious enterprise?

Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be all the time.  We were particularly interested in doing the kind of end-timesy, sci-fi-y book where people use contractions and actually talk like real people.

How is it different than the Left Behind books?

It tries to be funny, whereas those just sort of were, unintentionally. And although we have discussions underway for 161 sequels, action figures, and a commemorative calendar, it’s been markedly less successful, financially.  This book has made, wait for it, hundreds of dollars.

These columns will be written in honor of, but also as a loving and respectful corrective to, spec-story readers who feel alienated by Christian fiction, aspiring authors who are frustrated by publishers’ skepticism, and recently, ACFW conference attendees who were disallowed from entering an awards banquet while wearing sci-fi-and-fantasy costumes.

Brothers and sisters: it’s not about you. Or us. Or the genre. Or, especially, Being Weird.

In April I dealt with the “I love weird stories because they’re weird” notion more as a petty annoyance. My view was pragmatic. I said: This doesn’t help to promote the genre. But the worst problem is not that this motive doesn’t work. Worse, it distracts from true worship.

I keep seeing the Weirdness notion rear its ugly head. I see it in myself, and am ready to call it for what it is: an idol. Reading Is Worship, as this series says, and that worship can only be of two things: God, or a ridiculous replacement that is not God. “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin,” the Apostle Paul writes with Spirit-inspired authority in Romans 14:23. We can read or write in ways that don’t come from Biblical faith, making idols out of good things like experience, The Cause of Christian speculative fiction, or writing itself.

But this latest idol to roll off the human heart’s assembly line may be the worst of the lot.

First I ask: what do the following attitudes prevalent in Christian cultures have in common?

1. Cultural “fundamentalists” who measure people’s hemlines or condemn enjoyment of fiction, movies, contemporary music, or television, to be Different from Culture.
2. Christian “patriarchalists” who insist that the chief end of man is to have as many children as possible (a “full quiver”) and train them to Take Back Our Nation.
3. Religious fiction publishers who offer clean, moral fiction as a solution that reacts against secular publishers’ perceived obsessions with swearing, sex, and violence.
4. Speculative story readers or writers who enjoy and promote niche genres such as fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal, or anything in between, mainly as reaction against no. 3.

Answer: every one of these is based on reactively beating bad guys, not proactively glorifying our God. Each approach seeks to be “different” or “weird” for no other goal than to look good or seem spiritual, or as real or imagined confrontation of a Majority Culture.

Each is a revolting idol, perhaps worse than other idols because they sound so spiritual.

Idol identified: enjoying “weirdness” for its own sake

“Throw me idol, I’ll throw you the whip.”

Do you love stories mainly because they’re “weird”? If so, you may believe things like:

• “In the morning I get up and want stories You Probably Haven’t Heard Of. Part of me also wants to ‘stick it’ to stories that ‘normal’ people enjoy. You can have your modern dramatic fiction without magical worlds, and straight-up histories instead of alternate-history steampunk craziness! Give me weird any day! The weirder, the better!”
• “Christian fiction today is just too safe! I want stories that Push All The Limits.”
• (After being asked what you’re reading:) “Oh, [speculative novel name], by [name of author].” (Later, silently to yourself:) “You probably haven’t heard of it.”

I recognize these lines (adapted from this) from my own redeemed yet sin-struggling heart. But this week I also saw some of them even more glaringly, in response to a dustup at this year’s American Christian Fiction Writers conference in Dallas. According to John Otte:

I can confirm that some spec fic writers were temporarily turned away from the [Saturday fiction awards] banquet (I was an eye witness). Here’s what happened:

Four spec fic writers dressed up for the banquet. The tamest outfit was a little black dress with a dragonscale choker and special nail/claw things (I’m sure there’s a technical term for it, but there you go).  Another wore a suit but built a cybernetic arm overlay. A third wore funky contacts and werewolf gloves.

The fourth, though, was really awesome. My roommate dressed up as Failstate, the titular character from my book. He faithfully replicated the entire costume, down to the face-obscuring mask. When I saw what he came up with, I was so tickled and humbled that someone would do that as a surprise for me.

Once we were ready, we went down to the banquet and were able to take a few pictures. The others joined us but before we could enter, hotel security stopped “Failstate” and told him that they had gotten some calls about his costume. He showed his badge and they seemed (mostly) satisfied. “Failstate” went into the banquet and was almost immediately pounced on by the conference director and told that he couldn’t enter dressed like that and that he had to go and change into “Sunday best or better” if he wanted to get back in. She then insisted that the cyborg remove his arm and the werewolf remove his gloves (again, hotel security was cited as the motivating factor).

Some reactions to this incident are contagious. On Monday when I heard of it, I also felt like taking up arms. I thought: Those bonnets-obsessed persons are persecuting us again; this is just plain silly; what’s wrong with a Renaissance dress or a Star Trek uniform?

Unfortunately, that’s not the only angle here. Having attended at least one ACFW banquet, I can confirm that the rules, written or unwritten, lean toward formal wear, not cosplay. The online program for this year’s conference specifically stated:

ACFW Annual Awards Gala Dress Code = Sunday best-to-formal

Thus, the issue is not conference organizers who object to acceptable dress for the event. Rather, the issue is likely people who didn’t know the rules, or did and chose to make fudge of them.

Should the banquet mission or standards change? If so, that’s another question. What’s at issue now is those who likely Pushed the Limits. And I must ask: what were the motives? To have fun? To support the genre? That’s great and understandable, but the primary questions are:

1. Did this action “proceed from faith” (Romans 14:23) to glorify God?
2. Did it show love to other conference attendees, who were either brothers/sisters in Christ, fellow “characters” in God’s true-life Novel, or potential nonbelievers — all of whom, either way, needed to see us show love and respect for God and for others?
3. Do our responses to the dustup show desires to make peace or to pick fights?
4. Does the desire to “cosplay” at a conference and/or its banquet reflect the truth that speculative stories are normal, and that it’s no-speculation-allowed contemporary stories that are newer and “weird”? Or do they reinforce others’ stereotypes?
5. Shouldn’t we who love speculative stories be “all things to all people” (1 Cor. 9:22) to win them to Christ, or even to what we believe are more God-glorifying stories?

Of course, I wasn’t there. That’s partly why I’m offering these challenges, which are a mixture of hypothetical and rhetorical. Those serve as ways to diagnose the threat that this “weird” complex is not only inaccurate, unloving, and self-defeating, but the result of idolatry. Next week, with your input, I hope to explore ways we can cure the ill of weirdness-worship.

ummmmm . . .

Huh.

Okay, so it’s my turn to post something this week and I fully intended to have something ready to go, but sadly, I think I dropped the ball here. I knew things were going to be tight schedule-wise, what with the ACFW National Conference just last week. So yesterday, I considered my options:

• A wrap-up of the Conference. This could be fun, but I mostly attended classes on marketing books once they were published that left me feeling inadequate and overwhelmed. I suppose we could talk more about what happened at the banquet, but that discussions seems to be generating more heat than light, and I think it’s better to just let it go and move on.
• The current crop of new TV shows. It is the new fall season, after all. Old favorites are returning and there’s a new crop of spec fic shows that are emerging. Small problem: I don’t watch most of the spec fic shows, so I’d only be able to discuss a few of them. Well, one of them, namely Revolution, and I haven’t seen anything worth ruminating on. Well, there was one thing this last Monday, but I haven’t had time to mull it over entirely. Maybe next time.

So basically, what I’m saying is, I got nothin’.

Sorry.

Instead I’ll turn it around on all of you: what are you reading right now and is it any good? Personally, I’m reading The Wool Omnibus on my Kindle and enjoying it (even if it’s leaving me with a few questions that I’m hoping will be answered before it’s done). How about you?

From the Travel Guide:

Oz as you’ve never seen it before! Experience the kaleidoscopic culture of the the Land Over The Rainbow and immerse yourself in the vivid color and music casual tourists can only dream of! Dance with the Munchkins! Sing with the merry citizens of Emerald City! Experience a private audience with the Great and Terrible Oz Himself! Soar with the Flying Monkeys! Come face-to-face with the poisonous green embodiment of nastiness herself, the Wicked Witch of the West, and live to tell the tale! When your adventure is complete, our express travel service will whisk you back home in the blink of an eye, but your memories of Oz will last forever, inspiring happy dreams for years to come!

Metro Goldwyn Meyer’s 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, is one of the most iconic movies in American filmdom, beloved by viewers of all ages. Though it was reasonably faithful to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which we toured last week, it illustrates how a story often mutates in its transition from print to film, for both better and worse, and how its tone and message are subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) altered. Here’s a quick summary of some of the major differences, and I’m sure I’ve missed more than a few. Feel free to add your observations to this list:

Dorothy is portrayed by Judy Garland as a pre-teenager rather than a little girl. Kansas bores her. She longs to escape the featureless, monochrome prairie and fly away to a land “somewhere over the rainbow,” and to top it all off, the lady down the road is a spiteful grouch who wants to dispose of Toto.

The Munchkins are “little people,” not slightly-undersized adults, and they’re engaged in a variety of whimsical pursuits rather than being staid, industrious farmers.

We don’t meet the Witch of the South, and a very pretty Glinda, played by Billie Burke, assumes the role of Witch of the North, who was a wrinkled old lady in the original story.

The silver shoes are now ruby slippers, since red looks cooler in Technicolor. They are magically bonded to the wearer and cannot be removed forcibly save by the death of the wearer. When the Witch tries to snatch them, they generate an impressive electrical force-field.

The Scarecrow and Tin Woodsman are pretty much as advertised, thanks to some beautiful makeup work and a tour-de-force of rubber-legged dancing by the great Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow. The Lion is a guy in a lion suit, but it’s the delightful, rubber-faced Bert Lahr, so we don’t mind so much. Jack Haley plays the Woodsman as a bit of a milquetoast, and one wonders how Buddy Ebsen would have done in the role had he not suffered a life-threatening allergic reaction to his silver makeup that forced him to bow out.

“…and your little dog, too!”

The Witch of the West is scary, and Margaret Hamilton’s performance continues to spawn nightmares and damp sheets for succeeding generations of youngsters. She looks like a conventional witch (black robes, broad-brimmed pointy hat, green skin, wart, and long fingernails), and she’s capable of numerous magical feats, including manipulation of nature (she creates a poisonous poppy field as a trap for Dorothy and her friends, rather than naturally-growing wildflowers with tranquilizing properties), flight using a magic broomstick, fireball casting, crystal ball scrying, and vanishing herself in a puff of smoke. She simply exudes mean, a quality lacking in Baum’s rather pale Witch.

The Emerald City is really green. No glasses required. A Horse of a Different Color is useful for getting around town.

The Wizard’s flimflam employs sophisticated special effects. More steampunk than puppetry.

Dorothy must not only kill the Witch, she must bring the Wizard her broomstick as evidence.

The Witch controls the Flying Monkeys without the need of a magic hat. That’s just how they roll.

Dorothy douses the Witch not out of anger for having one of her shoes stolen, but to protect Toto.

The Wizard rewards Dorothy’s friends a little differently. The Scarecrow gets a diploma, the Tin Woodsman gets a testimonial watch, and the Lion gets a medal. This Wizard, played by Frank Morgan, is a better psychologist than the original, and I have an easier time buying him as a well-meaning charlatan who lost his way, rather than a craven con man.

Dorothy misses her balloon ride per the original story, but her tedious trek through the southlands is replaced by the more efficient, if campier, deus ex machina of Glinda’s arrival in a magic soap bubble. The ruby slippers return Dorothy to Kansas after a little prompting from Glinda, who doesn’t have a good reason for not telling Dorothy about the slippers’ power at their first meeting. A really Good Witch would have ‘fessed up. Just saying. In the original, the Witch of the North hadn’t a clue how they worked, thus the trip to see the Wizard and everything else.

Dorothy awakens in her own bed. It was all a dream! Uncle Henry’s three hired hands (another addition) bear a suspicious resemblance to her three companions from Oz, and the local flim-flam man pays her a visit, just to make sure we get the point. The cranky neighbor doesn’t turn up, but we all know what role she played in the dream (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Dorothy announces that she’s learned her lesson and will no longer go searching for happiness beyond her own back yard, because there’s no place like home. The End.

A few more contrasts between the film version and the novel:

Color, Color, Color! And lots of it. The film makes extravagant use of the vivid hues available via the Technicolor process, and it’s bold,  brassy, and loud. The transition from sepia-toned Kansas to the garish sensory overload of Oz is mind-shattering, and must have been even more so for the first audiences. Oz looks so good, one wonders why Dorothy ever wanted to leave it. It’s also a tribute to the wonder of dreams and imagination, at least for those of us with the good fortune to dream in color.

Song and Dance. Music and movement are used effectively to convey emotion, as a shorthand way to introduce and develop the characters, and to liven things up. They help preserve Baum’s desire for a lighthearted tone, and by contrast, their absence makes the scenes of conflict with the Witch seem more scary and threatening. Judy Garland’s signature rendition of “Over the Rainbow” won an Academy Award for Best Song, and the film was also awarded an Oscar for Best Original Music Score.

The Morals of the Story. There’s no such thing as an implied moral in this presentation. The messages are delivered directly and explicitly to the audience. The original theme of Good’s power over Evil is discarded in favor of an invented lesson for Dorothy, though it’s noted that “only Bad Witches are ugly.” The Big Idea is that, even as we sympathize with our heroine’s plight…who would want to live in Kansas, that dry, dusty, flyover country populated by earnest hayseeds?…we must remember that the true road to happiness is accepting our lot in life and treasuring the friends and family closest to us.

In similar fashion, the observation that the three companions already possessed everything they thought they lacked is amplified, particularly in the Wizard’s little speech as he distributes their awards. It’s a better speech and more clever set of solutions, in my opinion, than the original Wizard provides, especially as there’s no need to fill Ray Bolger’s head with bran and needles. I’m sure he was thankful for that.

In sum, the film’s message is sort of a lightweight version of Phillipians 4:11-13, minus the connection to God’s power and grace that makes it more than a nice sentiment. It’s one thing to say you’re going to be content with what you have, and quite another thing to live that way, whether in Kansas or Hollywood.

Next week, we’ll explore the dark underbelly of Oz, via Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Check your insurance policy, and be prepared to sign a liability waiver. Just saying.

There are several critical components in a writing challenge, the first being writing entries. We have those in the Spec Faith Fall Writers’ Challenge.

Which brings us to the next phase. We need readers. We’ve already had a number participate–either with comments or by hitting the thumbs-up button on the ones they liked the best.

But here’s the thing–if only writers are voting for writers, we’re behaving like a closed society: we who write want to honor one of our own. That’s not a bad thing, but it doesn’t generally give a true picture of the writing samples. The real question should be, what does the reading public think about these entries?

I don’t want to turn this into a popularity contest, but I don’t know how else we can attract readers except to ask you to invite readers to come and participate in the challenge, both this week and next when we run the poll.

I know that visitors might take one look at the number of comments to the Writing Challenge post and get discouraged, thinking they need to read 49 entries, or whatever the current number. In reality, many of those are comments–a great component to this challenge. The actual number of entries is twelve (mine isn’t a real entry–just my for-fun attempt because I didn’t want to be left out 😉 ).

I might add that at least four of those were posted late in the week, so those who visited the challenge article early may have missed tho entire group of entries.

Also, this early stage is to determine the top three entries which will be included in next week’s poll, so visitors may hit the thumbs-up button on as many of the entries as they wish. You might ask yourself if you’d like to keep reading. If yes, then that entry might deserve a thumbs up.

As I’ve mentioned before, these Spec Faith Challenges are hopefully pre-cursors to an actual Spec Faith Contest, with prizes and everything. But before we launch such an endeavor we need to see if there’s enough interest in that kind of an opportunity. In short, you’re evaluating the writing entries, and we’re evaluating the challenge itself. 😀

With that said, I hope you’ll take the time to stop by the Spec Faith Fall Writing Challenge post and read the entries you’ve missed.