Episode 4: Pink Floyd, Dorothy, and the Gilded Age

Hello Shakespeareans and welcome to The Sonnets Podcast.  This is Episode 4: Pink Floyd, Dorothy, and the Gilded Age.  Before I begin, I’d like to remind you that the website for the podcast is sonnetspodcast.com and my email is sonnetspodcast@gmail.com.  All transcripts for the show are on the website.  So, if you prefer to read, as opposed to listen, I’ve done my best to accommodate you. 

And, now that I’ve said that, let’s get started.  Over the next five or so episodes, I’m going to look at The Sonnets from a variety of angles.  There’s a lot more going on than just the Secret Structure itself.  Broadly speaking, I want to explore how this could have happened and why?  It’s great to study how the Secret Structure changes the way we read the poems.  But, I also want to explore how this changes the way we understand Shakespeare.

Today, I want to talk about the idea of coincidence versus intent.  Then, we’ll determine if it really even matters.  I think now is the perfect time to discuss whether my theory is random coincidence or authorial intent.  Obviously, I believe the secret structure is the author’s intent, but let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment. 

So for the next couple of minutes, I’m going to pretend I’m a condescending skeptic.  To help you and to make it easier to differentiate this character from me, your podcast host, I’m going to read this with an accent.  I’d like to read it with a British accent, but my English accent isn’t that good.   It would be convenient for me to pretend I’m some imaginary snobbish professor at Oxford, but I’m not going to do it.  Instead, I will use an accent I much prefer: my Russian accent.  

Sure, there’s something there, but it’s all chance.  The sonnet format is built on restricting ideas to a certain number of lines and then transitioning on the ninth and thirteenth line.  It’s just formatting.  By this reasoning, if a person created a different sectioning system, it would reveal as much as 11x14.

Moreover, this has already happened.  For hundreds of years, The Sonnets have had three sections, not eleven.  Section 1 was focused on fathering children, Section 2 was focused on Shakespeare's long and weaving love story with a Young Man, and Section 3 was the Dark Lady.  For almost every reader, this was suitable, and no one complained.  

Next, The Sonnets is already the most famous poetry collection ever, and, many would argue, that 11x14 doesn’t add anything.  Plus, there’s a massive learning curve for understanding its intricacies.  Seriously, why bother?  Can’t Shakespeare’s Sonnets just be enjoyed as they’ve always been without extensive homework?  Besides, how many people actually want to read 154 poems, knowing that many of them are derivative?  

The Secret Structure is almost counterproductive because it simultaneously ruins the simple pleasure of individual sonnets while also scaring off readers who don’t want to invest the time necessary to figure out the nuances of eleven sections.  Maybe Shakespeare needed the Secret Structure to help him craft this work, but his silence about it is a big clue that he didn’t think we needed to know about it.  Therefore, the best course is to just highlight the top poems and leave the rest to scholars.  Readers should just enjoy the poems they like and not quibble with the minutiae that will only appeal to a few.

Besides, and this is most important, how can we know that the Secret Structure was Shakespeare’s intent?  Who cares?  This is just random!

(clears throat)  Okay, I hope you enjoyed the accent without it being a distraction to the point I was trying to make.

I’ll pause here with this idea and come back to it later in the episode.  In the meantime, I want to talk about a famous novel: “The Wizard of Oz” by Frank Baum.  We’ll look at this book from two directions.  These two different perspectives are a quite useful benchmark to contrast with our 154 poems.

For The Wizard of Oz, I first want to discuss one of the most fascinating artistic coincidences in history.  This happens when you mix a cinematic masterpiece from Hollywood’s Golden Age with a classic rock album that stayed on the top 200 chart for 14 years.  If you turn on the movie The Wizard of Oz, mute the sound, and start Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, you’ll be watching what is now called The Dark Side of the Rainbow.

If you’ve never seen The Dark Side of the Rainbow, I highly encourage you to give it a viewing.  It’s free on YouTube.  Last night, I rewatched it to prepare for this episode.  The film works for three reasons.  First, The Wizard of Oz is very visual.  The dialogue, for the most part, isn’t necessary for following the plot.  And, if you’ve seen the movie before, you already know what’s happening.  Next, The Dark Side of the Moon is essentially a continuous soundtrack that never stops.  Whereas most music records have stops and starts between each song, Dark Side of the Moon is seamless.  For many listeners, it’s hard to tell where one song ends and another begins.  This absence of jarring transitions removes awkward moments.  Last, and this is most important, the movie and the music album match up quite nicely.  

According to one list I saw online, there’s about 25 moments when the music changes at a perfect moment.  25 coincidences in 2 hours means there’s a wow-that’s-cool-moment almost every four minutes.  That’s pretty often honestly.  For me, my two favorite moments are when The Great Gig in the Sky is playing during the tornado and when Dorothy enters MunchkinLand.  The Great Gig in the Sky sounds like a whirlwind, and the moment Dorothy steps into the magical land of color, the song Money begins.

When a viewer sees this, it’s hard to believe it’s chance.  If you have doubts, look at the cover of the rock album.  It’s black and white light on the left and color on the right, mirroring the movie’s transition from black and white to color.  Surely, this is no coincidence, right?  It’s an out-in-open clue that makes sense once you know the secret, right?  Right?

Well no.  As fun as it is to pretend, Pink Floyd did not write a secret score for the movie adaptation of the Frank L. Baum classic.  We know this because many of the band members are still alive, and they vehemently deny the connection.  The mere suggestion of a connection has drawn their scorn.  According to Roger Waters, the leader of Pink Floyd, this is all just a publicity stunt by a radio DJ.  Once upon a time, there were illuminati-esque theories that Pink Floyd was lying to the public, but the general consensus opinion now is that The Dark Side of the Rainbow is random chance.  It’s really cool, but it's only a coincidence.

That’s example one.  Next, we’re going to examine case number two.

The book, “The Wizard of Oz,” was published in the year 1900.  It is seemingly a children’s fantasy about a country girl who is transported to a magical world filled with fantastic characters.  A talking scarecrow, a man made of tin, a talking cowardly lion.  Fun characters for sure, but that’s all they are, right?  Maybe.

There are plenty of scholars who believe that “The Wizard of Oz” is an allegory about the American Presidential Election of 1896.  To expand on this idea, I’m going to read an essay I found online.  I got it off PhDessay.com.  It appears to be an essay written by a college student, though no name is provided.  I’d love to give that person credit for their words because I like their essay.  So, if that’s you, contact me.

Having said that, I want to jump into this long reading.  It’s about 1,000 words.  The reason I’m quoting the majority of the essay is to show you how far down the rabbithole this goes.  I’m assuming you have some general knowledge of the story.  If not, you might want to take my word for it, and skip ahead.  I will put the time in show notes.

Before we start, I want to set this up by saying that scholars believe the book is an allegory about the Populist Movement headed by William Jennings Bryant.  He’s the presidential candidate who wrote the speech, “The Cross of Gold.”  The big issue of the 1896 Election was the Gold Standard.  Farmers wanted to flood the market with a silver backed currency.  Bankers wanted to maintain the status quo of gold only.  This fight over Bimetallism is most obviously manifested in the book as the yellow brick road and Dorothy’s silver slippers.  In the movie, Dorothy has ruby red slippers.  However, in the book, they’re silver slippers.  Okay, let’s jump into the quote.

In the text, Dorothy is a young girl who is always laughing and playing with her dog, Toto. She lives in the dry, Great Plains of Kansas with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, who is a farmer. They live in a rundown looking house, and all around them is dull and grey. Dorothy represents an everyday woman living in Kansas, just living a normal life during this time period. She also represents their values as well. As everyday farmers, in the historical context, they portray the farmer who works day in and day out, without seeing any benefits from their farming.

In the book, a cyclone appears to come and takes Dorothy and Toto to this magical place named the Land of Oz. It turns out Dorothy’s house landed and killed the Wicked Witch of the East. The cyclone is supposed to represent the Populist Movement and the political upheaval it brought involving William Jennings Bryan, and the Granger movement. The cyclone could also represent a Silverite victory, when the Senate adopted a bill that prohibited the government from issuing money bonds without the consent of the Congress. It was basically to stop the government from using only gold at times.

During this time, farmers suffered from issues involving supply and demand. They were making more and more wheat and grain but the value of it became less and less. As a result, they were receiving less money for their goods. They wanted money to be both silver and gold so it could be easy for farmers, and workers to make the same money, and have the rich make their money. The Land of Oz is a utopia where there was color, flowers, beauty, and birds singing in the trees. In the Land of Oz, lived Munchkins. They were supposed to represent other average American workers as well.

When the Wicked Witch of the East died, they were freed of oppression. The Wicked Witch of the East represents factories and industrialized settings. Many of the farmers from the West blamed their problems on the wealthy and big industry. Later on in the text, Dorothy meets the Good Witch of the North. The Good Witch represents a Northern electorate who had supported populism. The Good Witch sends Dorothy down the yellow brick road to Emerald City to go meet with the Wizard of Oz, who has the power to send her back to Kansas.

The Good Witch also gives Dorothy the silver shoes, which also serves as protection. This can relate to the Bimetalism vs. Gold Standard debate. I say this because Dorothy's shoes are silver and she is sent to go down the yellow brick road, which can be seen as gold bricks. This can be known as gold money. In this time, it was clear that silver vs. gold was important to the agricultural economy. The silver was supposed to be available for the working class, and would increase the amount of money for the working class. 

Next, Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, the Tinman, and the Cowardly Lion.  The Scarecrow represents the western farmers, and how their hardships and troubles from inflation caused them to have doubts and problems with their money. The Tinman represents the American worker who mostly has populist views. He also represents how the worker felt dehumanized and was helpless. His backstory is that the Wicked Witch of the East put a spell on him so that every time he swung his axe, he would chop off a piece of himself. This would make his body smaller, symbolizing that the value of his work was minimized by the government.

The Cowardly Lion represents William Jennings Bryan. He supported the free silver movement. Bryan had a large impact during the Populist movement and fought for the rights of the common people. He wanted to make silver available as money for the working class, and not only support big industry and the rich. Together, all four of them took the yellow brick road to Emerald City. Emerald City represents Washington, D. C. The city is green and stands for money, and the economy. The green spectacles could be used as propaganda to cloud the mind of the American people.

When they get to the Wizard, he is a powerful and majestic character that seems to hold many powers. He orders Dorothy and the rest to kill the Wicked Witch of the West and bring back her broomstick. In the text, they go through many obstacles due to the Wicked Witch. Soon after Dorothy kills the Witch with water. It shows that the Wicked Witch of the West represents the untamed, dry, drought-wrought Western plains. When they return back to the Wizard of Oz to bring back the broomstick, it is revealed that the Wizard was a regular, ordinary man, who really doesn’t hold great power like his title.

He represents any president, presumably from Grant to McKinley. It shows he fooled people into thinking he’s something that he’s not. He helps the scarecrow, the tinman, and the cowardly lion by giving them a brain, a heart, and courage. At the end of the story, the wizard provides objects of self-illusion to clearly make the scarecrow, the tinman, and the lion feel better about themselves. The Good Witch of the South tells Dorothy that all along she had what it takes to go home, and by tapping her shoes three times she was able to go home.

The fact that they had to have a “wizard” “fix” them and then at the end for Dorothy to lose her silver shoes showed that in the beginning, populism was strong but after the election of 1896, McKinley won, the issue of silver decreased. In conclusion, this story allegorically depicts the characters and events related to this chapter in American history. It shows problems with American society, economy, and politics. It therefore shows in some way that this is a political parable.

Unquote.

Now, that’s incredibly detailed, and that’s the reason I shared it.  Both the characters and the plot points all work towards the allegory.  Almost every element of the novel can be connected to the 1896 Election.  I have read other interpretations, so I don’t want to paint the essay I read as being the only way to read the allegory, but still.  The bottom line is that “The Wizard of Oz” is a great way to look at the Gilded Age.  

In high school, in American History junior year, shout out to Ms. Roberts, my class watched the movie and connected the dots between history and allegory.  As I understand it, this is pretty common nowadays in American classrooms.  And it makes sense too.  As an educator myself, I think it’s a colorful way to teach an episode of history, which can easily feel a bit dull.  I mean, how many sixteen year olds honestly care about the fight over the Gold Standard?

Okay.  Now, let’s step back and talk about intent.  Did Frank Baum intend for his children’s fantasy novel to be a political allegory?  Well, it’s plausible.  Baum was a journalist who covered the 1896 election and the book came out four years later.  So, the timeline works, but that might just be a coincidence.  According to Wikipedia, the first instance of a scholar writing about the allegory is 1960.  Maybe there’s something sooner, but this is the first cited example that I found.

That’s sixty years after the book came out, when Baum was long dead.  So what happened?  If “The Wizard of Oz” was a political allegory about a timely election, why is there sixty years of silence?  

Well, we don’t know, but I have a few guesses.  First is that Baum may not have wanted to alienate his audience.  Republicans read books too, as do their children.  Making a pro-Democrat book could cost him half his audience.  Furthermore, William Jennings Bryant lost the presidential election.  So, there might have been plenty of Democrats who didn’t want to relive that defeat.  Additionally, Baum wrote 14 total Wizard of Oz books.  Whatever his original motivations may have been, he obviously realized he had a “goldmine” on his hands.  Politicizing a children’s fantasy novel can obviously be seen as bad business and he had a franchise on his hands.  Who can blame the writer for wanting to sell books?  I certainly can’t.  He made a lot of money and he’s still celebrated today.  Most writers would love to have his career.

So, let’s wrap up “The Wizard of Oz.”  We’ve looked at it in two different ways.  One involves a secret meaning, the other a famous mashup.  Now, in the case of “The Dark Side of the Rainbow,” this had nothing to do with Baum, the filmmakers, or Pink Floyd.  The movie is a fun way to waste two hours, but it’s best believed that this is a random coincidence.  On the flip side, the political allegory seems to certainly be Baum’s intention.  This only involved the efforts of one person: him.  And, it’s just too convenient.  Even if Baum did this subconsciously, it’s hard not to see a more clean-cut allegory.  And, even if this wasn’t Baum’s intention, American History teachers across the country could care less.  His movie fits into their lesson plans.  Again, shout out to Ms. Roberts.

Now, here’s some irony for you.  The novel was popular with children, but now it’s mostly read by adults looking into the historical allegory.  The movie was grand entertainment for the masses, but now it’s either just visuals for a fifty year old rock album or fodder for teaching American History.  “The Wizard of Oz” endures and will continue to survive the test of time, but its audience and their interests are winding as the yellow brick road itself.  

As a final note on “The Wizard of Oz” the book, I read it to prepare for this episode.  Not that this might interest you, but I want to share that one of my hobbies is learning Spanish.  So, that’s how I read it: “El Mago de Oz” en espanol.  I suspect that some of my listeners will criticize the fact that I sometimes struggle with Renaissance English.  Well, to them I have to say, “I read children’s books in Spanish.”  So there!

Alright, this segways us back to Shakespeare.  He’s long gone and not available for interviews, and for whatever he might have to say, he’s forever unavailable for comment.  So, we’re left with just the poems.

Eventually, the question has to be asked, is the Secret Structure just a mashup of poetry and numerology?  This may surprise you, but I think the final answer is: it doesn’t matter.  Last night, I watched and enjoyed the happy accident that is The Dark Side of the Rainbow.  The fact that it’s random chance did nothing to dilute my sensory experience.  When I recently read the novel, “The Wizard of Oz,” I made lots of allegorical connections even though I don’t know which were the writer’s intention.  So, even if the Secret Structure is a coincidence that was quote “discovered” by a random reader like me 400 years after publication, so what?  At the end of the day, there’s a lot to see even if Shakespeare never intended it.  In other words, so what if this wasn’t the author’s intent, this is still a valid way to read the work.

Now, I obviously do not think the Secret Structure was a coincidence, but to those who think it is, my response is that it doesn’t really change anything.  The poems are still there and readers are free to interpret them however they want.  In closing, I wonder if The Sonnets may evolve like The Wizard of Oz.  Will the discovery of the Secret Structure radically alter how the work is consumed?  Could it eventually dominate the conversation, alter the audience, and change the goals of the readership?  Maybe, but probably not.  People will still enjoy the most popular poems as one-off experiences.  They may study what the structure is without reading the whole work.  It’s a massive time commitment after all, and sometimes 14 lines of love poetry is all a reader wants.  I’m not selling my ideas short, but I’m also being a realist.

In the next episode, I'm going to put on a tinfoil cap, light a magic candle, and pull out my ouija board.  I will put my tongue in my cheek while channeling the spirit of the Bard and tell you all the possible reasons why I think he chose to hide the Structure from the world.  I’m hoping for it to be a slightly silly episode, but, at the same time, I’ve seriously been pondering this question for two decades.  I’ve got a list of possibilities, and I think you’ll enjoy hearing them.  Maybe this will lead you to craft up an explanation that I haven’t considered.

As a final reminder, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or shoot me an email.  See you next time.