The Wizard of Oz is one of the most beloved American stories ever. The novel (1900) is still in print and the film (1939) is still screened regularly. Together they have left an indelible imprint on U.S. language and culture: “Follow the yellow brick road!” “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore!” “There’s no place like home!” The story has even given names to at least two popular rock bands (Toto and Kansas).
Oz’s magic is easy to understand. Apart from showcasing the talents of Judy Garland, it has many features that perennially appeal to Americans. It’s a story of virtue and optimism, a story about the triumph of brains, heart, and courage over evil and deception.
It’s also a story about the gold and silver crisis of the 1890s, and about the “little people” fighting the moneyed interests of Wall Street.
That’s hardly what you think about when you watch Dorothy dance off down the yellow brick road with the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man. But the original novel appeared after the depression of the 1890s, and author L. Frank Baum was well aware of the currents of resentment and anger coursing through U.S. society at the time. As recounted by George Akerloff and Robert Shiller in Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, the yellow brick road and Dorothy’s slippers (silver in the novel, changed to ruby in the film because it looked better on screen) “were metaphors for the intense conflict over the gold standard and the proposed free coinage of silver.” The movie’s Munchkins represented the poor working class, the Wicked Witch of the West stood in for the business elite, and the Wizard was President William McKinley (“the great deceiver”). In 1896 McKinley had defeated populist candidate William Jennings Bryan in what some have called the first modern presidential campaign, in which big money and mass communication techniques were combined to carry the day for business interests.
The Wizard of Oz embodied the kind of story that circulated within popular consciousness about what was happening in the economy. Akerloff and Shiller argue that such stories are one of the ways that psychology shapes economies. The 1890s depression, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and today’s recession all share the fact that stories spread by “person-to-person contagion” helped drive them. In 1925, for instance, one of the stories was “that stocks had always had excellent long-term performance.” After the Crash in 1929, say Akerloff and Shiller, “the stories changed completely,” turning to “unfairness, corruption, and deception.” In the run-up to 2008–09, the stories were about skyrocketing real estate values. Now, they’re about big banks milking taxpayers to pay their executives huge bonuses out of the bailout billions.
The point I’m finally getting around to here is that this phenomenon of contagion—stories that spread like viruses—is amazingly powerful, at least when it serves peoples’ interests to believe it. The housing bubble, driven by stories of people who had bought low and sold high and by the availability of easy credit to ordinarily unqualified buyers, grew to astounding dimensions before bursting—because what renter wouldn’t want a house without a down payment, or the need to have a job or credit record? Bankers, too, were swept up in the something-for-nothing frenzy.
But couldn’t this power of stories, as horribly destructive as it was this time, work for us as well as against us? If we need a new story, what should it be? What kind of story would offer comfort and inspiration at a time when both are in short supply, but also encourage us to change direction, not just hold on till we can go back to our old ways?
Thanks for a very interesting bit of history, and for pointing out its relevance to our current circumstances.
Great idea to call for a new story (or stories), but it’s always so hard to get a story that’s so masterfully told, and that resonates with the zeitgeist so well. Although W of Oz has had remarkable lasting power too.
I’d like to see a story developed that slaps down that invisible hand of Adam Smith’s that rationalizes and justifies greed and self-interest. Maybe that manipulative hand could be replaced by two cupped hands – inclusive, compassionate. (I lean towards Buddhism – does it show?). Although of course there needs to be just a wee bit more work around the story line
I believe the book you are looking for has already been published! The ‘Chronicles of Thomas Covenant’ (Stephen Donaldson) is a comforting and inspiring series of novels that tells two parallel stories; one of fantasy and fictional charcters and one of the attitudes and issues that are destroying the Earth. Wikipedia has a blurb on the Chronicles but it does not do justice to the underlying messages such as; good over evil, living within the means of the land, how your actions can affect others on different temporal and geographic scales, how important natural resources are for supporting us, inclusiveness and compassion …. (to name just a few).
The text in brackets has been extracted from the first book in the Chronicles “Lord Foul’s Bane’ -
(Here we meet Thomas Covenant, a man burdened with a terrible stigma that has deprived him of wife, friends, almost all human contact, perhaps even his sanity. In this state of moral isolation, he is suddenly shunted to a mysterious world known simply as “the Land” – a place of magical potency, acutely beautiful wherever it has recovered from the ravages of age-old, recurring wars. For the Land has an immortal enemy – Lord Foul the Despiser – whose unceasing intent is to lay it waste. He has been defeated in the past by the Council of Lords, servants of the Land and protectors of its arcane lore; but now the power of the Council has been reduced, and Lord Foul has found his perfect, unwitting tool – Thomas Covenant, the man who thinks the Land is a dream; who cannot accept its life-restoring powers for fear of confronting the terrible dilemma of his own existence…). Does this sound like any ‘Lands’ that you know??? Could these ‘restoring powers’ referred to be ecosystem services as we now call them? Perhaps you know either the ‘Despiser’ or the ‘Thomas Covenant’ in your country, state or region (depending on what scale you work on)???
I will not give too much away about the Chronicles but WOW what a motion picture it could be with world wide imagery portraying the beauty and the destruction of the ‘Land’ as we know it!!! I urge you all to at least read the ‘First Chronicles’ of Thomas Covenant and learn something about yourself.
I’m wondering if the alternate story of future post-peak-everything culture will be one of how today’s society contracted a mad fever and worked far from home in a frenzied rush to buy ‘things’, and then resources ran low so people were forced to live more locally and experience a richer family and community life again. It could become a story of alienation to friendship, and greed to contentment.
I’m not sure who the main characters would be, but if translated back into the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her friends flee the madness of the Emerald City, dodge the mine-pit toxic wastelands of the now dead wicked witch, and learn to find contentment with the simpler village life of the Munchkins as they heal the land and live less frenzied, slower, but more humane lives.
Wow! That is a layer to the Wizard of Oz I never knew about!!
Thanks so much, Tom, for this important and interesting post, and for the book you referred to.
Further to this question of myth [cultural stories], not sure whose this quote is, Googled it and can’t find a source, but remember reading it many years ago, unattributed:
‘If everyone’s an actor
And all the world’s a stage
Then who is it that’s writing
Such destructive plays?’
This transition we are facing is a social and cultural issue, not a rational and technological task. It is humanity’s ultimate quest. The role of myth and story in this is paramount – modern industrial society believes it is no longer bound by myth, because we equate myth with superstition and the unscientific beliefs of so-called ‘primitive’ peoples. However myth-making is universal to all societies, and plays a role in the stories of every culture.
We love to hold on to our cherished myths, because they have worked for us, and we find it hard to let go when circumstances change.
William Rees, who co-created the Ecological Footprint with Mathis Wackernagel, has been writing on this issue – see http://qbsblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/william-rees-ecological-footprint
and:
‘All our great cultural stories – our myths – are…concoctions of fact, belief, and shared-illusion, shaped and polished by frequent repetition and ritualistic affirmation.’
from ‘Is Humanity Fatally Successful?’ (2002) Dr William Rees, Journal of Business Administration and Policy Analysis
Thanks, everyone, for these thoughtful and provocative comments, which raise the question of just what a “story” is. The Thomas Covenant novels sound like they’re thematically relevant (I haven’t read them), but I wonder if what’s needed here is not so much an elaborate work of literature but a more organic bit of pithy shorthand, such as:
Jesus loves you.
We’ll always have Paris.
Gas prices are high because of oil company gouging.
True or not–and I’m making no judgments–these themes encapsulate key truths about the world for many people. They’re a kind of handy explanation for the way the world, or some part of it, works. Some of them are comforting, others are bittersweet or express real resentments. If you go looking for equivalent stories within the environmental movement, what you usually find (as has often been pointed out) is stories that threaten disaster, express alarm, and promise wholesale upheaval, probably involving a lot of pain and sacrifice if not the actual collapse of civilization as we know it.
No wonder so many people tune this stuff out. Theoretically, one should be able to conjure up a story that embodies the hopeful and positive changes we could make in response to energy constraints, climate change, etc. Years ago I attended a gathering of experts (apart from me!) in sustainability–people like Janine Benyus, Robert Costanza, David Orr, and Peter Montague, 30 or 40 in all–called “Envisioning a Sustainable and Desirable America.” It was incredibly stimulating, but despite its obvious purpose did not, as far as I know, yield a world-changing story. More recently, the Stern report has offered some of the best news about climate change in years–but it essentially boils down to “yeah, it’s going to cost us, but not as much as doing nothing.”
Where’s the story about stronger communities, simpler and less hectic lives, richer spirituality, and so on? Do we just not believe it in our heart of hearts? Why is it such a tough sell?
By the way, here’s a link to a news item for investors that discusses the steady-state economy and makes it sound pretty good: http://www.theinvestmentprofessional.com/vol_2_no_3/rock-steady.html. Got to be a pithy, catchy story in there somewhere…
It could become a story of alienation to friendship, and greed to contentment.
I’m not sure who the main characters would be, but if translated back into the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her friends flee the madness of the Emerald City, dodge the mine-pit toxic wastelands of the now dead wicked witch, and learn to find contentment with the simpler village life of the Munchkins as they heal the land and live less frenzied, slower, but more humane lives.
Christopher Houghton-Budd has written Rare Albion, an allegory based on his studies of the Wizard of Oz and the economics lectures of Rudolf Steiner (founder of biodynamic agriculture and Waldorf education among other things). http://www.steinerbooks.org/author.html?au=1219
If you liked the above story, then reading Ellen Hodgson Brown’s latest book, The Web of Debt, is a must. Congratulations Mr. Prugh, for bringing up such a pertinent comment on a lovely and classical fable about the power of money and the (immense)power that lies in people’s good will. The moment couldn’t be a more appropriate one.
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