T he combination of Irvine Welsh, author of "Trainspotting," and "The Wizard of Oz," Hollywood's quintessential family film, in the stage play "Babylon Heights" may raise some eyebrows. But "The Wizard of Oz" is not innocent entertainment. The significance of the film to gay and lesbian audiences, for whom Judy Garland's Dorothy has become a mascot, may seem perverse to conservative viewers, but it derives from an awareness that "The Wizard of Oz" is, in fact, a subversive film which challenges American sacred cows.
If "Trainspotting," Welsh's account of the lives of drug addicts in urban Scotland, demonstrates that narcotics allow an escape from a drab, disappointing reality, "The Wizard of Oz" shows how a girl in rural America finds solace in fantasies of flight from an unhappy childhood. It is less an escapist film than a film about the need to escape.
No one who has seen the film forgets the scene where Dorothy arrives in Oz. The earlier sequences were set in Kansas, where the cantankerous Miss Gulch has threatened Dorothy's beloved dog, Toto, and a tornado has carried away her house. All this was in black and white, like 95 of 100 Hollywood features in 1939. But the house has been whipped into another world. Opening the door, she emerges into Oz -- and into brilliant Technicolor. From the start, Oz is more beguiling than anything in Kansas.
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