Abstract

This thesis investigates the presence of the film The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) in a selection of visual materials. Considered one of the most viewed and most influential motion pictures of all time, The Wizard of Oz has become a common focus in artistic production. To adequately evaluate this range of examples, this thesis is structured in three thematic sections of escape, transformation, and home. Contextualizing the film’s production, the first section considers the relationship between escape and cinema by dissecting the Hollywood industry and the desires of filmgoers in the 1930s. Analyzing queer-focused artworks and sociopolitical activist projects, the second section examines how the film has been unintentionally transformed by its reverence within queer (LGBTQ+) culture. For instance, The Deposition (2019) by Carl Grauer depicts the film’s characters in allyship with notable trans activists of the Stonewall Uprising, and American politicians are replaced with the film’s characters in posters produced by ACT UP New York (c. 1990s) that were used in protests during the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Engaging with concepts of home, the final section looks to works of art that support and challenge the film’s famous quotation, “there’s no place like home,” such as Ken Lum’s public installation of the same name (2000), and Suburban Legend (1999) by Julie Becker. Shared amongst the visual materials in this thesis is an active queering of The Wizard of Oz, or a non-normative interpretation of its cultural value. Borrowing scholarship from queer theory and film studies, this thesis demonstrates how a single film can perform as an effective cultural agent that is continually revisited and reconsidered through media that transcends the cinema screen.