THE WIZARD OF OZ

As Christina Tucker wrote last year, Wicked has been very gay from the beginning. The Gregory Macguire novel, from which the stage musical and films are adapted, provides backstory for the LGBTQ cultural touchstone The Wizard of Oz. Christina summed it up the queerness of the 1939 The Wizard of Oz film well:

“It’s easy to point at the sole presence of Judy Garland and say ‘case closed, a gay film was made here today.’ But everything about the story of the Wizard of Oz tracks neatly to a queer reading, pretty much from the moment Dorothy is stuck at a crossroads and the Scarecrow reminds her ‘Of course, some people go both ways.’ Plus, it’s the story of a ragtag group of misfits traveling, who all discover they are fine the way they are; they just have to believe in themselves. Dorothy leaves a drab farm life to hang out in a technicolor city and gets a pair of cute shoes — a coming out for the ages! ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ is so obvious I don’t even need to say more than the title, do I?”

Lauren Herold, Autostraddle