Oz Revisited 125 Years Later
Every week A View from the Piedmont explores where culture, economics, politics, and markets collide, and few stories capture that intersection more elegantly than The Wizard of Oz and its modern counter-narrative, Wicked. With the release of Wicked for Good, the second chapter in the film adaptation of the Broadway phenomenon, it is worth revisiting how Oz—first imagined 125 years ago—became one of the most enduring economic allegories in American life.
Stories shape markets as much as data, and Baum understood that long before it became common wisdom.
When L. Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900, he was not simply crafting a children’s fantasy. He was writing in the shadow of a bruising national debate over monetary policy, regional power, and America’s economic identity. The nation had been battered by the Panic of 1893, the closing of the frontier, and the rapid industrial transformation reshaping the East and the emerging West.
Baum traveled widely, spent considerable time in the Midwest, and listened closely to farmers and merchants who were grappling with deflation, falling crop prices, and the crushing leverage of railroad monopolies. His book—marketed as a “modern American fairy tale”—was anything but apolitical. Beneath its whimsy lay a sharp commentary on monetary orthodoxy, regional tensions, and the distributional battles that were shaping America’s future.
Economic anxiety, not escapism, is the soil from which Oz grew.
Baum’s symbols were crafted with purpose. The Wicked Witch of the East represented the Eastern financial establishment and the hard-money discipline of the gold standard. The Wicked Witch of the West embodied the monopolistic power of railroads and mining interests dominating the frontier. The Wizard—charismatic yet hollow—stood in for political and economic elites in Washington, whose authority rested more on spectacle and institutional mystique than on genuine competence. Even the Flying Monkeys carried symbolic weight: they served whoever possessed the Golden Cap, much like railroad agents, bank collectors, and the enforcement arms of monopoly power. Dorothy’s silver shoes—changed to ruby in the MGM film—symbolized the Free Silver movement and the hope that a bimetallic standard would ease deflation and relieve the burden on indebted farmers, captured so eloquently in the famous line by William Jennings Bryan: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
Oz was a monetary parable disguised as a children’s story.
When MGM brought Oz to the screen in 1939, much of Baum’s monetary critique was softened, but the populist heart remained: institutions are fallible, authority is often a performance, and resilience comes from ordinary people rather than elites. In the shadow of the Great Depression and on the eve of global war, that message carried particular resonance.
The 1939 film preserved Baum’s warning: the biggest illusions often come from behind the curtain.
Gregory Maguire’s Wicked—published in 1995 and adapted into one of Broadway’s longest-running hits—reimagined Oz for an era shaped by Watergate, globalization, rising inequality, and declining trust in institutions. Where Baum critiqued the elites of the 1890s, Wicked critiques the power to shape narratives. The Wizard evolves into an engineer of political messaging rather than mere spectacle. Elphaba, the so-called Wicked Witch, becomes the truth-teller—skeptical, principled, and punished for refusing to uphold the official storyline. Even the Flying Monkeys are reinterpreted as bureaucratic machinery: sympathetic, constrained, and trapped in systems that reward obedience over truth.
In Wicked, the battle is no longer over money—it is over who controls the narrative.
Understanding this evolution requires understanding the evolution of populism. Baum’s populism was rooted in the Midwest and South—a bottom-up revolt against tight money, coastal finance, and railroad monopolies. The establishment sat on the coasts: the East with banks, trading houses, and federal influence; the West with industrial, railroad, and mining conglomerates. Populism then was about the mechanics of daily economic life—price levels, freight rates, crop failures, and the arithmetic of debt.
Populism today is far more fragmented and ideologically diverse. One branch aligns with Donald Trump, skeptical of institutions, global frameworks, and elite cultural authority. Another aligns with Democratic Socialism, skeptical of corporate power, wealth concentration, and the influence of money in politics. They share little ideologically, yet both challenge establishment narratives and distrust traditional centers of power.
Baum’s populists battled a single dominant story; today’s populists confront a marketplace of competing truths.
Truth-telling has become harder because truth now has competitors and those interests have been magnified by social media. Today’s domestic politics reflect this tension—witness the oddly cordial, camera-ready meeting between a smiling Donald Trump and Mamdani, a moment that left both sides’ followers wondering whose narrative was being advanced.
The economic parallels are equally striking. The United States is navigating record debts, rising interest burdens, questions about the durability of the dollar, and an intensifying debate over digital currencies, monetary sovereignty, and the scope of fiscal dominance. Institutions face scrutiny reminiscent of Baum’s era—and skepticism reminiscent of Wicked. The question Baum posed—Is the system fair?—now sits alongside Wicked’s question—Is the system honest? Markets increasingly ask both at once.
Today’s economy sits at the intersection of Baum’s anxieties and Maguire’s skepticism.
Across Baum, MGM, Maguire, Broadway, and the modern films, one insight endures: power rests on shaping the narrative—who creates it, who contests it, and who gets labeled “wicked” for exposing the gap between image and reality. The yellow-brick road may still guide the journey, but the real story—economic or political—unfolds behind the curtain.
In every era, the levers of power remain hidden in plain sight.
Disclaimer: This publication has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not intended as a recommendation offer or solicitation with respect to the purchase or sale of any security or other financial product nor does it constitute investment advice.