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Salman Rushdie's Essay 'Out Of Kansas'

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Salman Rushdie's Essay 'Out Of Kansas'
Old Yellow Bricks
Why do we sometimes feel as if we are watching our lives when we are actually watching a movie? Well, it is simply because movies are projections of the perfect miscellany of reality and imagination. Those two things – reality and imagination – are perhaps the only commonality all human beings have had a taste of. That is why everyone can somehow associate their own life with whatever they are watching, and thus, different perspectives emerge. "Out of Kansas" is an essay written by Salman Rushdie about a rather unorthodox perspective on the timeless classic, The Wizard of Oz. The everlasting fascination with The Wizard of Oz raises inquiry of why the movie is so wonderfully enchanting, even though according to Rushdie the movie fails to deliver its message. Rushdie suggests that there were slight misconceptions in the movie that caused confusion on the film's moral. However, in retrospect, what Rushdie believes …show more content…
The message trying to be conveyed is actually contradictory to what is provided on screen, leaving Rushdie and many others questioning. Why exactly would Dorothy want to go back to the horrible Kansas when she has experienced the magic of Oz? The answer “there is no place like home” would be irrelevant here, as Kansas is not a good place to be in and Dorothy herself longed to go to a place over the rainbow as she felt unappreciated in Kansas. As stated in the caption by the editors at the British Film Institute, “’Rushdie rejects the conventional view that [the story’s] fantasy of escape from reality ends with a comforting return to home, sweet home (221).’”, meaning that Rushdie’s perception is that the film does not support “there is no place like home” at all. Alas, the movie fails to communicate its
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