The Wizard of Oz (1939)
In the last scene of the MGM film The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale wakes up in her bed to find herself surrounded by her family. She looks round to see the faces of the people she loves and says, “there’s no place like home”. Dorothy’s trancelike repetition of the phrase “there’s no place like home” condenses the meaning of what home means for each of us. Home is a place we associate with familiarity, love, a safe place, a place of origin. When her Kansas home is uprooted by a violent tornado, Dorothy is terrified. She is transported to Oz, a wonderful place that is not her home (‘no place’), but all the time she yearns to return home. Oz is in fact Dorothy’s home, she never left home. Throughout the film she is surrounded by people and things she knows, but all of which have changed to reveal hidden secrets and emotions – creating the sense of unease, and the uncanny. Although Oz is not real, it is both like home, yet very unlike her home. It is no place like home.
Sarah Bale. (2015) Homesick [digitally layered image]
I took the tornado scene in The Wizard of Oz and created a range of images in Photoshop. I wanted them to feel dreamlike, but also capture Dorothy’s terror as her home becomes a place of nightmares.
Sarah Bale. (2015) Homesick [digitally layered image]
I think the intense colour on this image works especially well and evokes the feeling of fear and anxiety. Home, or rather what is going on inside Dorothy’s mind, has become deeply disturbing.
