Article by Emily Fowler Hartigan
In April 1990, French intellectual Jacques Derrida of “deconstruction” fame, during a visit to the University of Nebraska, was a member of a roundtable at the Law College. As my part of the roundtable, I offered him a tale of welcome, a retelling of The Wizard Of Oz. In the movie, the wizard goes back to America's heartland in his hot air balloon, but Dorothy gets home her own way. I suggested to Derrida that the writing on the balloon in which the Professor-wizard returns home revealed its true origin and destination—on the balloon is written “STATE FAIR/OMAHA.” And because Omaha is not in Kansas, Toto, I welcomed Derrida home to Nebraska.
From another perspective, political scientist Michael Genovese portrays the story of Dorothy, Toto, and the Wizard as a political allegory of the collapse of Populism. According to Genovese, the Cowardly Lion was intended by L. Frank Baum, the author of the original book, to be Nebraska's own Great Commoner, William Jennings Bryan.
Much of Genovese's analysis is persuasive. He suggests “Oz” itself came from the abbreviation for ounce, the tally of the gold standard that Bryan denounced in his “Cross of Gold” speech; that the tin woodsman is industrial America, which lost its heart in the dehumanizing factories that turned workers into machines; and that the Wizard is the President, who is really a humbug of empty rhetoric. Some of what Genovese says is not quite right. He suggests that “Toto probably represents a dog.” Toto represents something much more crucial and mysterious–the one main character who never speaks, (s)he unveils the Wizard, rescues Dorothy, and escapes, and is always faithful. And the Lion's fate is different, perhaps, than Genovese's judgment that he represents Bryan's lack of success. While Bryan is unsuccessful in gaining the presidency, the lion gets what he wants–he becomes king of the forest.
This Article is about the wizard (Derrida), the king (the sovereign), and the scarecrow (the law reporter who wanted to get the “brain-words” right, but got it all right when he got it wrong). The wizard Derrida, the writer and pharmacist, brews for us a word-philtre, which in the wrong dosage kills (Derrida is notoriously hard to read; the reader's interest dies easily), yet in the right amount, cures (his basic movement of deconstruction images a wonderful, minutely woven means of finding freedom in the text, in life, in law).
While the place of home, along with the mystery of Toto, may be another story, in ours the blustery lion becomes king. And that is the key question of law here: who is sovereign; what does it mean, in Populist Nebraska at the turn of the century, and today, in America and her heartland, that the people are sovereign? To answer that question, we will find that the scarecrow, the “brains” of the outfit (the official court reporter of the text), is a very surprising character.
About the Author
Emily Fowler Hartigan. Adjunct Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Law. Resident, Pendle Hill Quaker Study and Contemplation Center.
Citation
67 Tul. L. Rev. 1133 (1993)