When I first saw The Wizard of Oz I was three. And I can still remember watching it that first time and thinking, Oh fuck yes, this is for me. The third or fourth time I saw it we had a new television set, and when Dorothy went to Oz and the screen suddenly turned color, I lost my shit. If my mother had taken a giant dump on the living room carpet right in front of me I would’ve shown less surprise. “IT’S IN COLOR?! WHAT THE FUCK?!” I always eyed my parents suspiciously after that. What kind of a lunatic lets their child watch The Wizard of Oz on a black-and-white TV set without at least mentioning, “This part’s supposed to be in color,” when they get to Oz. But to spring it on us out of nowhere? I always waited for the other shoe to drop in any other movie that I watched after that, but this was, to my knowledge, the only film whose entire plot hinged on such a mind fuck.
It aired once a year on, or around, Easter. I sat mesmerized in front of the TV as if I were watching the moon landing. I looked forward to it the way a woman approaching forty would her wedding day. Christmas had nothing on the night The Wizard of Oz aired. I’m not going to go on about how much more special things were then, when you could only see them with the infrequency of, say, a dental exam, and had to delay gratification—the whole country watching as one, shared experiences, etcetera, etcetera. Pass. I would’ve much preferred to have been able to watch it at my whim, the way children watch things today. Tiny tyrants all of them, demanding to see their favorite movies over and over and over again until their parents are ready to blow their brains out. One mistimed bathroom break then, and just like that you’d have to wait another year to see Dorothy collapse from poppy dust. Do you know how hard it is to learn every line of a movie when you see it only once a year? Kids then had to WORK. No rewinding, no play it again. You had to wait an entire motherfucking year just to be certain the line was “you’ve always had the power, my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.” Glinda could’ve told Dorothy this a lot sooner, but then there would’ve been no movie, I guess. Dorothy goes home just by clicking her heels three times, but I never understood why she wanted to return so badly. Oz was fabulous. It was in color, for fuck’s sake.
“I would’ve stayed,” I think while watching every time. “I would’ve stayed forever.”
“IT’S STARTING!” I would scream to my sister on those annual Sunday nights. (My idea of hell is reliving that Sunday night on a loop the second after The Wizard of Oz has ended. The total sickness I felt I can still summon.) You don’t really have to scream “It’s starting!” anymore to anyone ever about anything. All of life is paused until we’re ready for it now. That’s nice in its own way. Then the world didn’t stop for anyone. If you wanted to watch The Wizard of Oz you better sit the fuck in front of the TV NOW or else you were going to have to wait another YEAR. Think of how barbaric that sounds today. And yet “IT’S STARTING!” still gives me a thrill. Like happening upon your favorite song while flipping through radio stations in the car, the song always sounds so much better somehow than when you put it on yourself.
It’s funny how The Wizard of Oz never seems like an old movie. Never dates, never goes out of style. It’s of its own time. Or maybe it just seems that way to me. When I was a kid I obviously didn’t know it was the gayest motion picture ever made. (Or did I?) And if anybody is reading this thinking, It is? Yes, dear, it is. Dorothy is the quintessential fag hag. She hangs out with three gay men. THEY’RE GAY! (Jesus. Come on. They perform musical numbers.) Also the black-and-white-to-color thing is like the gayest thing ever. The movie is literally one big drag reveal. Then there’s the Wicked Witch of the West, perhaps the best villain in all of film history. Villains don’t need to have backstories, by the way. She’s a fucking bitch, I don’t need to know how she got like that. All she has to do is scare me. And Margaret Hamilton scared the shit out of me. But I couldn’t look away from her. Is there any moment more chilling than when Dorothy is desperate to get home and she is a prisoner of the witch and cries for Aunty Em, and then Aunty Em appears in the globe and Dorothy is going into hysterics because Aunty Em can’t see her and she breaks down sobbing, “Aunty Em, Aunty Em, I’m right here!” and then the Wicked Witch appears, mocking her, “Aunty Em, Aunty Em!” and then laughs at her. She fucking laughs at her. I still lose my mind when I see that part. It’s so vicious. And I love it. The Wicked Witch never makes any stupid jokes like she would now. Or has a song. Or ever has a moment when she hesitates about what she’s doing. “Is there a way to get the slippers back without killing Dorothy?” She doesn’t have a vulnerable moment like Meryl Streep has in The Devil Wears Prada. (Which I feel like was way more human than Anna Wintour is in real life anyway, so why put it in?) No, thank you. Margaret Hamilton played it as if this wasn’t for kids. She wasn’t soft-pedaling it for us. You could either take it or you couldn’t. She didn’t give a fuck.
And another thing that makes it so super gay? Dorothy is looking for something better, someplace she belongs, somewhere over the rainbow (which the studio wanted to cut from the movie for “slowing it down.” Can you fucking believe that? It still pisses me off). And aren’t all gay people looking for someplace we can call our own? Where we will be safe. Loved.
But it wasn’t any of those things that made it the most gay film of all time. It was Judy. At only sixteen years old she already knows real pain. The kind of pain that most gay children can also identify with. She is damaged. So young. And when she sings about going over the rainbow she is crying. She is broken. And it’s haunting. Because it is real. And you say “Yes, I want to go, too. Let me go with you.” You recognize yourself in her. You recognize her pain. Two lost, broken things calling out to each other through the screen. This is no children’s performance, no G-rated pablum. This is raw fucking hurt. This is someone who knows us, who sees us. And, yes, she travels over the rainbow and wears ruby slippers, and kills two witches and gets her hair blown out and sings and there are Munchkins and flying monkeys. (No amount of CGI, by the way, could create anything nearly as terrifying. CGI has no soul. Something needs to have a soul in order for it to be truly frightening.) But none of these are the reasons The Wizard of Oz has remained a gay touchstone for over eighty years. Judy Garland’s pain is the reason. That we understand. That connects us forever. The rest is just icing on a very marvelous cake, the moments we can enjoy together without having to confront the darker thing just underneath.
All I ever wanted was to leave Queens. To go someplace where I wouldn’t feel alone any longer. And I did. But now I come back. Often. And my parents are still in the same house I watched The Wizard of Oz in all those years ago. And when I visit, I walk up to the door, that door I have walked up to for over fifty years, and my mother is there to greet me. And she hugs me. “Gary’s home,” she calls to my father.