PREPARING AMERICA FOR TODAY’S FUTURE

Listening to YouTube’s conservative pundits pontificate over Disney’s wokeness propaganda while opining over the tradition, read conservative, values of yesteryear made me wonder if they really understood Hollywood’s true role since its inception? D.W. Griffith’s, Birth of a Nation(1915), singlehandedly revived the Neo-Klu Klux Klan from the Whitehouse to the everyone’s house until the rise of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1950s into the 1960s Western cultural revival. Hollywood has always been a propaganda mill to educate the masses in right-think. Let us briefly examine the 1939 classic, Wizard of Oz to understand how Hollywood is the propaganda tool of choice for influencing America and the World.

We will look only at the Hollywood production though it was adapted from Frank Baum’s 1990 book of the same name which few people today have read. However, Hollywood has insured that several generations have embraced the Wizard of Oz message(s) through annual reruns for generations and several recent adaptations such as Wicked (2003), Oz, The Great and Powerful (2013) and The Wiz Live! (2015). Each expanded on various themes of the original movie to include homosexuality {LGBTQA+}, feminism and wokeness {reverse racism}.

As the opening graphic suggests, the major overt Oz theme was, YOU have the inner power to succeed. Remember, this movie was released in America which remained in the clutches of the Great Depression long after many other countries had recovered; including Hitler’s Germany which reverse a severe crippling hyperinflation! The film’s opening black and white bleakness mirrored America’s current economic reality. The other major theme, There is no place like home, wanted Americans to ignore the overseas recoveries occurring and stay fixated on. the superiority of America even though the policies of the Federal Reserve and the Democratic Party’s President Roosevelt (FDR) deepened and prolonged everyone’s misery!

Interesting as these perspectives are, I want us to focus on several more subtle Hollywood themes that continually surface in both movies and television productions commonly referred to a the Golden Age when traditional values were the bedrock of entertainment; even though they were not! Movies and television have been the vanguard by which biblical values have been undermined and eventual overturned until their adherents are the strange and hateful minority of which the majority can no longer be tolerant toward.

DOROTHY, THE POWERLESS EVERY PERSON

BUFFETED BY SWIRLING POWERFUL FORCES

Dorothy is the every person perspective of the story. This teen, depicted as rebellious and confused, decides her only option against forces she cannot fathom or control is to rebel; i.e., run away from. It is no accident that Dorothy is depicted as a vulnerable female evoking protective feelings from male and female viewers who were also surrounded by swirling uncontrollable powerful forces. Dorothy experienced a tornado while America’s Midwest experienced drought and stripping of its top soil being popularly labeled as America’s Dust Bowl! Toto, her dog, allows her to exposit needed information to the viewer as well as to keep the plot moving.

The men in Dorothy’s life are pictured as bumbling, bombastic and otherwise useless unless directly and minutely directed by women. The real power in Kansas are the women and this theme continues into Oz. This theme recurs throughout nearly all Hollywood movies and television productions even before feminism became a thing in American everyday consciousness. This reversal of roles turns society on its head which is its purpose (Ro 1:18-28). Once the lines of direction are reversed, women over men, then the elements of good and evil can be switched (Is 5:20-21; 1Co 11:3; Ep :23). Even the man she encounters after running away from home is a worthless charlatan, a conman who lies to her to fool her into returning home. Men may be strong but they are fools and liars not to be trusted but Controlled. Women, when properly guided into right think are the true purveyors of Control whether good or evil.

THE TRUE PURVEYORS OF CONTROL IN OZ;

THOUGH WIZARD CONTROLS BY DECEPTION

Dorothy, true to her role, is powerlessly transported to Oz and inadvertentlykills a powerful woman, Wicked Witch of the East. Immediately, Dorothy is helplessly trapped between two powerful women struggling for power: Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda, Good Witch of the North. Glinda is the power behind the events whose motives are never explored beyond the moniker of good. Viewer is seduced into either ignoring her or viewing her actions as protective of Dorothy. However, it is her action of placing the Ruby Slippers on Dorothy that focuses the witch’s attention onto her; again, powerless. Both witches have innate power, The Wizard is revealed to be a powerless charlatan; hence, a lying man. The wicked witch wants the ruby slippers but cannot directly take them, Glinda does not guide Dorothy but directs her to travel to see the Wizard who will direct her and does direct her to kill the wicked witch. When stated as this the movie’s dark tone is quickly revealed. A hapless teen is being manipulated into murdering a powerful political rival.

THREE STOOGES OF MEN IN LIFE:

BRAINLESS – HEARTLESS – SEXLESS

Dorothy the Teen helps three male objects on her way to Oz. The Scarecrow who purports to be brainless yet is a liar since he guides the team, under Dorothy’s direction who is obviously clueless. The heartless Tin-man who rusts because he cries rather than helps and needs Dorothy’s strength, though she has demonstrated helplessness in every situation. Finally, the effeminate, cowardly Lion who is the stand-in for sexless or gay men {sexless in the vein that they are worthless for producing prodigy}. Dorothy, a female, puts herself in company through secluded forests and fields, in the company of three grown men even to falling asleep with them in a poppy {narcotic} drug induced state; supposedly by the wicked witch. Seriously, this is Hollywood’s idea of a children’s movie?!

STRENGTH OF MILITARY MALES FADES

WHEN DOROTHY MURDERS WICKED WITCH

Dorothy and her trio of stooges are sent by the Wizard to murder the wicked witch which they accomplish accidentally, Hollywood’s favorite trope, by throwing water on her. Thus, Dorothy does not appear a murderer though she accomplishes the intended goal and gets to keep the ruby slippers. The witch’s military force, men, remains ineffectually and changes sides the moment they have a new master. Again, men are not to be respected but used by women.

Dorothy and her troop return to Oz, see the Wizard and discover he is a liar. Then they supposedly trust him to reveal that her companions did not lack any qualities but simply lacked the intelligence to understand they already possessed them; You Always had the Power Within You! Dorothy is guided to the realization that, There is no place like home! Americans, you have the inner power to survive if you keep your eyes fixed on America (stop looking at the other nations recovering).

LET ME NOT UNDERSTAND SWIRLING FORCES; LET ME

CLICK MY HEELS, REPEAT MY MANTRA AND BELIEVE

Glinda has a problem, Dorothy begins to understand she has power via the Ruby Slippers. She has to go and she wants to go home. True to form the bumbling Wizard leaves without her. Glinda cleverly disposes of her newrival by having her use the power of the slippers to remove herself from power via self-hypnosis and useless heel-clicking. Glinda, the true behind-the-scenes manipulator; not unlike the Federal Reserve, is free to expand her power unimpeded in Oz. The Wizard, American government, bumbles itself out of the picture except when needed for police-military interventions or to redirect the attention of the people onto an imaginary evil {Pearl Harbor, 9/11, etc.}.

And Dorothy gets to return to the stark, impoverished crushing reality she fled from with the self-hypnotic mantra continuing to sooth her poppy induced mind numbing state: There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home…! She has left the color of Oz for the drabness of reality believing it is for the best. Do not aspire to be different! Do not aspire to better your plight! Embrace the drab equality of economic despair less it become worse!

Wokeness is simply a modern term keeping you unaware that the values have always been the same. There is nothing new under the sun; all things are full of wariness (Ec 1:8-11). The LGBTQA+ does not bring freedom but hopelessness in that life is not created; there is no future. Though people are daily propagandized with the newness of Wokeness, it is the same drab hopelessness leading to death (1Co 10:13). This is the path of sin and its Delusion of Hope (2Th 2:3-12).

Christ has made a way of escape through Himself (Jn 3:16). It does not involve hiding your head in ignorance nor trusting in empty mantras designed to keep you in a self-hypnotic state of Controlled subservience enjoined with meaningless gestures of supposed independence. It is merely calling on Christ’s name to be saved as He has done the hard work for you (Ro 10:8-13).