Blog 8: Rushdie and the Indian YouTube Video

In The Wizard of Oz by Salman Rushdie, the impact of the famous movie on a young Rushdie is retold through his adult eyes. The book is a blend of both East and West as Rushdie comments on a childhood where he envisioned the journey to London as a trip to Oz. It is a blending of two cultures as is the very nature of the Indian video on YouTube. The children are singing in their Western-style uniforms, their teacher counts them down in English, and there is a picture of Jesus Christ hanging over the stage. Both sources point out the implicit impact the Western world has over all other societies.


On page 36 of The Wizard of Oz, Rushdie mentions the palpable tension among the studio heads at MGM and Disney during the early 20th century. Rushdie mentions Disney versus MGM to transition into the story of the Munchkins found in the film and their legendary stories:

Few of the Munchkins could actually speak English (the songs had to be post-synched). They weren’t actually required to do much in the movie. They made up for this by their activities off camera, and though some film historians nowadays try to play down the legends of carousing, sexual shenanigans and general mayhem, the legend of the Munchkin horde cutting a swathe through Hollywood will not lie down easily. (Rushdie 40)

Though the stories aren’t told one can only imagine the ruckus these little people seemed to be making per the accounts that Rushdie was elaborating on in his quote above. They come off rowdy and playful, just like the little Indian children of the YouTube video. At 0:31 of the video, the camera frames a small group of the children who seem to be misbehaving on the side, away from all the organized action taking place on the stage. It is hard to tell whether or not this self-exclusion has a purpose to the general piece. However, one can also make the case that it is simply playful and should be expected because the attention span of a small child is somewhat tested when it comes to large orchestrated numbers that include dancing and singing.


Not only are the children singing and dancing, they are reliving what is the experience of the film that is The Wizard of Oz like a stunt double would when performing the harrowing stunts too dangerous for the actors. Rushdie has this idea that “we are all the stars’ doubles,” (Rushdie 46) and we because of the impact that each main character has on the audience the viewer gets sucked into the world that is Oz. This idea is manifested in the dance number that the children are taught to re-create from the film. They are now the Indian stunt doubles for the film’s actors, re-enacting what may be their favorite piece, fulfilling their insatiable hunger for stories from the Western world.


The last paragraph of the first part in Rushdie’s The Wizard of Oz, he reveals his own take of the ending of the film stating:

….that the real secret of the ruby slippers is not that ‘there’s no place like home’, but rather there is no longer any such place as home: except, of course, for the home we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz: which is anywhere, and everywhere, except the place from which it began. (Rushdie 57)

This statement at what can be considered as the end of his take of the film can also apply to the global culture of the today; to all the once colonized countries of the developing world and the identity crisis ensuing from the sudden pull-out. The country of India, under heavy British colonial rule had to forge their home. The country had to consider what it was before and after the cultural invasion of the Anglos. In the end, the Western world sees a hybridity that blends together, two cultures resulting in a beautiful symphony of off-tempo children!