Wizard Of Oz Manipulation

In Victor Fleming’s film, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy heavily relies on the advice given to her from the other characters she encounters on her journey back to Kansas. However, not all advice she receives is beneficial or truthful. In many instances, Dorothy is given information from people she trusts, such as the Wizard or Glinda, that is blatantly perfidious. By applying Steven McCornack’s Information Manipulation Theories, we can understand The Wizard of Oz as a description of the purpose of deceit through the instances in which Dorothy is manipulated. McCornack’s first Information Manipulation Theory (IMT1) states that there are four different types of expectations surrounding the exchange of information between individuals. These four types …show more content…
However, this is not the case throughout the film. Dorothy is constantly the victim of deception, especially by the characters she trusts the most, such as the Wizard and Glinda. Although the Wizard and Glinda do not explicitly lie to Dorothy, they do intentionally produce information that is deceptive in nature. Here, the Truth-Default Theory (TDT), which analyzes how individuals assess the credibility and detect deception in information received, can be applied (Levine 379). Before an accurate analyzation of the film can be created, a distinction between what is considered deception and what is considered to be a lie must be established. TDT states that deception is “intentionally, knowingly, and/or purposely misleading another person” (379). Therefore, “Lies are a subtype of deception that involves deceiving though saying information known to be false. Other forms of deception include omission, evasion, equivocation, and generating false conclusions with objectively true information” (380-381). With these definitions in mind, it is evident that Glinda and the Wizard are not necessarily lying to Dorothy. Instead, both characters primarily utilize the deception subcategories of omission and evasion to manipulate