(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) Black filmmaker Kenya Barris said he will incorporate LGBTQ representation and other left-wing ideological themes when he remakes The Wizard of Oz.
Barris pledged not to let art and creativity deter him from telling “a story that reflects the world,” or at least the Left’s urban and coastal view of the world.
“Now we’re going to turn a mirror on where we’re at right now and take disparate characters from the LGBTQ community, from different cultural communities and socioeconomic communities, and tell a story that reflects the world,” he said, according to Variety.
“I think this is the best time to do that.”
Focusing on sexual identity and racism will be the modern equivalent of the struggle with the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, Barris argued and said he hopes today’s themes will become permanent fixtures in film history.
“I’m nervous,” Barris said. “Hopefully, my movie can last as long as the original does.”
Barris recently announced the project, which he will complete on behalf of Warner Bros, in August 2022, leading him to comically add, “Hopefully my movie comes out.”
L. Frank Baum published the book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in 1900, and in it he considered both permanent moral problems and contemporary political debates, like the argument over the gold and bimetallic standards.
In 1990, economist Hugh Rockoff published a paper about the monetary allegory in the book and movie. The switch to the gold standard, from the gold and silver standard, in 1873 caused prices to rise and hurt debtors, especially farmers.
Baum opposed this trend and voted for William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat who wanted to return to a bimetallic standard to ease deflation.
American politics has descended well below the days in which good art could include serious policy debates. Rockoff stated that “Baum’s main purpose was to tell a good story,” but today’s mainstream movies and shows put ideological purity before artistic quality.
