Juvenile Delinquent - manslaughter and larceny in Oz
J. Amadeaus Scott
My artistic work germinates from my role as creative narrator, exploring relationships between identity and place, specifically in the Midwest. Much Midwestern identity-focused literature focuses on Midwestern identity as narrative-driven. We talk about ourselves, about our lives through stories. It is these narratives - mundane, personal, spatial - that form the premise for my work. And it is these stories that we tell - about our lives, about ourselves, and about our place - that are so often overlooked, but deeply resonant.
The piece, Juvenile Delinquent - manslaughter and larceny in Oz, explores an alternate view of Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz. The perpetrator, Ms. Gale of Kansas, is responsible for the death of the Witch of the East (who is not named) in an act of residential/vehicular manslaughter. Ms. Gale then proceeds to commit an act of larceny on East's corpse - stealing her shoes. Ultimately she flees the scene. This alternate telling reveals a disturbing undertone to the classic narrative, and calls into question our assumptions about the story's main character.
