In the Land of Oz lives a mysterious man behind the curtain. But look closer, and the powerful voice of Oz becomes just a little man pulling on levers. In the land of reality we too have a man pulling on our levers, yet instead of the Wizard of Oz he has renamed himself the Wizard of Media.
The Wizard of Oz haunted us as children. The idea of dictation, domination and manipulation drove us to hide behind our mother's blue gingham aprons. Now in our twenties and away from our mothers, we are faced with another wizard. The Wizard of Media was there when we were born and he will be there when we die. While living within the constraints of the Wizard, we must ask ourselves if we are all just munchkins.
The Wizard of Media makes us what he wants us to be. He tells us what we want and what we care about. He tells us what to wear and what to watch. He tells us when to be happy and when to be sad. He convinces us that bad witches are green and good witches wear pretty, pink dresses. He gobbles up our truth, spits back his chewed smut and we are left to feed on his regurgitation.
So powerful is the Wizard that only he can create existence. According to the Wizard, black families didn't exist in middle america before \The Cosby Show."" Similarly, The Beatles may have never come alive if not for the ""Ed Sullivan Show."" And quite possibly, there are millions more existences left unborn by the Wizard. The Wizard decides what he wants to exist and we are left to believe that's all that exists.
Not only will the Wizard decide who will be born, he now turns death into primetime. Currently, ""ER"" ranks among the top television programs, yet we must wonder why we watch a show where humans are stripped of life as their blood gushes out of their bodies and their anguished loved ones helplessly look on. ER's Feb. 13 episode entitled, ""A Boy Falling Out of the Sky,"" featured a young boy fatally injured by his mother who accidentally hit him with her car as he came to hug her goodbye. The boy died, the mother felt tortured by her lapse and we are supposed to be entertained?
Not only does the Wizard desensitize our minds, he plays with our bodies as if we were Gumby dolls meant to be contorted for his amusement. Recently, the Wizard of Media has decided to confuse us in his confliction by pairing continuous food messages with unrealistic model images. Both evils numb us. The Wizard added the verb ""supersize"" at the same time he added the waif body ideal. The Wizard magically burdens us with obesity and anorexia simultaneously.
As if warping our body's exteriors wasn't sufficient fun, the Wizard of Media also invades our interiors with drugs. In 1928, the American Tobacco Company hired public relations consultant Edward Bernays to make smoking appeal to women. Bernays capitalized on the women's suffrage movement and famously made smoking Lucky Strikes a sign of a woman's liberation in the ""Torches of Freedom"" campaign. He later made the boxes the fashion color of the year, green. Bernays died, but his campaign lives on. Seventy-three years after the launch of his campaign, the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General released that more than 22 million adult women and at least 1.5 million adolescent girls smoke cigarettes. Bernays became rich and famous, we became addicted and the Wizard's destruction continues.
The Wizard's destruction is not always a solo act, be weary of his subversive tag teaming. We like to believe ""Top Gun"" was created for our sheer entertainment, yet really ""Top Gun"" serves as a very well constructed piece of military propaganda. Top Gun is known to have ""shot Navy recruitments higher than an F-14."" When ""Top Gun"" opened in the U.S. Navy recruiting booths were set up in cinemas. The Pentagon worked with the film's producers in the creation of the movie. ""Top Gun's"" credits thanked the military, but really the military should thank ""Top Gun.""
We are the Wizard of Media's joke. Yet, without the Wizard, would we be like Dorothy without her yellow brick road? We have a responsibility to expose and confront the powerful voice of Media just as Toto did with the powerful voice of Oz. Being a munchkin is a choice.
