L\u27OZ

Taking Oz Seriously is a piece that contemplates the interaction between the Law and the girl/woman in The Wizard of Oz. The interaction is set in motion by the legal document that Miss Gulch waves at Uncle Henry and Auntie Em allowing Miss Gulch to take Toto away from Dorothy. Additionally, this story is also about the feminine in our culture and in the academy. In the end, Dorothy finds her own way home. The implication is that not only is Dorothy transformed, but she is also transformative. Although it seems that the adults are just playing her along at the end, disbelieving her story and humoring her out of love, Dorothy has seen the world in color, and it will never again be black and white for her. The viewer also knows that Toto is, for the moment, safe because of Dorothy’s ability to find her way home. However, legal scholarship has an aggravated masculinizing tendency of finding women and spirit uninteresting in the business of ideas. Despite the necessity of publicly formulated rules and laws in a world of fallen creatures, the patriarchal severing of law from the spirit of the feminine has already done damage. Therefore, the best that a law can aspire to be is a reasonable anticipation of behavior that a community hopes to regulate