Re-/deconstructing the Yellow Brick Road: Gender, Power and Tin Man

Judy Garland’s Technicolor journey down the Yellow Brick Road is arguably one of the best loved and most watched films in cinema history. Its bright costumes and cheerful musical numbers still appeal to modern children, and many adults continue to watch and re-watch The Wizard of Oz (1939) with a sense of nostalgia. However, Sci Fi Channel mini-series Tin Man (2007) presents a darker, futuristic “Oz” story, which challenges the patriarchal assumptions of the perennially screened 1939 film. Relying on its audience’s knowledge of the earlier film, Tin Man illustrates how a text can subvert and parody the ideologies of its intertexts without deriding the texts themselves. Tin Man challenges patriarchal assumptions about gender, portraying a female hero who is strong, brave and assertive, but also embraces a more “feminine” style of leadership, rather than performing as a male hero “in drag.”