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According to the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy had come to Oz from Kansas, a place where color didn't seem to exist. But, when told to "follow the Yellow Brick Road", she immediately knew the difference between the yellow bricks and the red bricks beside it. Later on she noticed a purple horse and said that she had never seen a horse like that before. Since the only thing different about the horse was its' color, this must have been what she noticed was different about it. My question is how could she have been able to tell yellow from red and that something was strange about a purple horse in a land that had colors that she had never seen before.

Stormblessed
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Scott Gordon
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    There is absolutely nothing in the film to suggest that Kansas is a monochromatic world. The use of deliberate monochrome is a popular effect used to differentiate between "real" versus "fantasy" worlds. The Wizard of Oz was the first film to use this, primarily to showcase the new three-strip technicolor process – phantom42 Jul 08 '13 at 12:56
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    "a place where color didn't seem to exist" is highly over-interpretive IMHO. Moving from greyscale to color was simply a visual cue and an extraordinary artistic decision. – FoxMan2099 Jul 08 '13 at 13:25
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    @phantom42 Isn't a technique commonly used in fantasy films an appropriate topic for the site? Obviously in an age of full-color films, the information is no longer common knowledge. I was startled by the question, but I think it's great. I hope that whoever's downvoting it isn't doing so just because they think the answer is obvious. – BESW Jul 08 '13 at 14:54
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    I didn't say it's off topic. As it stands, the question is based off a faulty premise. – phantom42 Jul 08 '13 at 15:03
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    Dorothy is being trained to be the next Giver. – Gorchestopher H Jul 08 '13 at 19:38
  • The bigger question, is how could people in the Emerald city recognize color since they were required to were emerald tinted spectacles. – Zoredache Jul 09 '13 at 00:03
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    This is one of less than a dozen questions I've downvoted on this site and I've been active here since it was in beta. This is based on a far to literal interpretation of the film - so literal that it is hard to imagine such a misinterpretation being anything other than intentional for the purpose of making a point or asking a question. – Tango Jul 09 '13 at 08:37
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    This question appears to be off-topic because it is about a point of style in the film that is not intended as literal, but is being intentionally taken as literal when that is inappropriate. – Tango Jul 10 '13 at 06:43
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    I hope all the people here claiming that Kansas isn't really monochrome, have actually been there and aren't just working on hearsay ;-) – Steve Jessop Feb 26 '15 at 10:37
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    Similarly, I saw Pride And Prejudice (1940, Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier) last night. Mrs. Bennet talks about a pink fabric, which is clearly seen in the film to be grey. What's with that? Was "pink" a word for a particular shade of grey back in either the time the film was made or the time it was set? – Steve Jessop Feb 26 '15 at 10:40

3 Answers3

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Kansas's black and white was not literal.

At the time, color film was still nonstandard; it was known, but monochrome films were also common. The audience was accustomed to seeing black-and-white films but assuming that they were meant to be thought of as full-color worlds.

The transition from black-and-white Kansas to colorful Oz thus had more to do with metaphorical—rather than literal—color. Kansas was dreary and dull, uninteresting, without variety. Oz by contrast was exciting, dynamic, engaging, unexpected and interesting, with something new around every corner.

Going from black and white to color signals a change in tone, pace, and content: it invites the audience to share in Dorothy's delight at being somewhere so much more interesting than Kansas. As you've noticed, there is no indication that Dorothy was meant to have actually grown up in a literally colorless world.

Stormblessed
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BESW
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    As a side note, I'm told that in the pre-50th-anniversary release Kansas was actually sepia toned, in order to effect a smoother transition: they couldn't switch film in the middle of a shot, so the Kansas door opening onto Oz was sepia-toned to hide the fact that they'd already switched to color film. – BESW Jul 08 '13 at 11:48
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Kansas is black-and-white, or, rather, gray. From the beginning of the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.

But it was not always monochrome. This is clearly a world where the sun has turned everything gray due to climate change of some sort, but recently enough that the inhabitants have experienced color:

When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too.

It's feasible that Aunt Em would have told Dorothy stories about the bygone era when there was color in Kansas.

sigil
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  • This seems like an overly literal reading of the text. – RDFozz Jun 04 '18 at 20:36
  • @RDFozz, aren't these answers supposed to be explanations that are logically consistent in-universe based on canon material? – sigil Jun 15 '18 at 07:31
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    Hrm - While I personally disagree that Baum intended us to believe that Kansas was literally monochrome, you do have a point. – RDFozz Jun 15 '18 at 15:00
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Dorothy's dress was checked with blue and she brought that from Kansas. In the movie it was just an effect and in the book it was just a way to describe a land that had no doubt been barren due to the travelers heading west (remember the dust bowl).

SFA
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