Massachi, Dina Schiff, editor. The Characters of Oz: Essays on Their Adaptation and Transformation. McFarland, 2023.

Abstract

When people think of “Oz,” they tend to think of the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz. But the Oz franchise is larger than those two works. It is so large, in fact, that a specialized term is required to fully appreciate its mass and the concepts pulled into its orbit. In the introduction to their essay collection Third Person, Patrick Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin establish a list of five qualities and claim that a text should satisfy at least one to qualify as what they call a “vast narrative” (2). Two of these are closely connected to new digital media forms (vastness through procedural potential or multiplayer interaction) and another involves a sharp deviation from expected form (vastness narrative extent). The remaining two traits are vastness through world and character continuity, and vastness through cross-media universes. Beginning with the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and extending to this very day, then, L. Frank Baum’s Land of Oz is doubly vast, first through its ever-expanding cast and adventures in Baum's fourteen-book original series and through its multitudes of retellings and adaptations, ranging from the early plays to the 1939 MGM classic film to the upcoming 2024 film release of Wicked, still two months away as I write this review.