So note what has gone on here. The "any place in the world" result which is an exciting, adventurous, unknown, and potentially dangerous power is displaced in the pop culture/movie by the mere ability to "take you home" (boring, known, safe), a sentimental, kitschy power at best, (and for some, not a power at all but a punishment).

Note too that the color red has been appropriated by Hollywood. Red is the traditional color of excitement, blood, romantic love, aggressiveness, courage, and adventure (a color in my opinion Baum *should* have used to describe his shoes). Combined with shoes, objects themselves loaded considerable psychic socio/sexual freight no matter what color, the combo makes a powerful Jungian soup. But Hollywood has used this exciting color/object to reinforce its lie to describe something bland, sentimental and boring, further muddying the waters of our cultural understanding. Given the pap they represent, the Hollywood slippers should probably have been brown bedtime slippers, maybe with furry bunnies on them. PLEASE. Let us reserve red shoes for the living. Okay, that's today's lecture.

FURTHER NOTES FOR WoO FANS PUT OFF BY THE LAST PARAGRAPH.

If you are an Oz fan, book or movie, here are some other pins you might consider. There's the Flag of OZ of course so, wearing the flag and the shoes together would make it very clear that you are a WoO fan. There is a heart for the Tin Woodsman (who could be represented by the robot? well, that's a bit of a stretch isn't it...), a brain for the Scarecrow. and the synapse for the Cowardly Lion...(why that you ask? Well, remember when Bert Lahr is discussing his problem he says he wished he had the ‘noive’ [Brooklynese for nerve...a proto-Ebonics usage]...and, given that courage is a mental thing the synapse is not a bad physical representation of the concept, is it?) Also, the Jack Russell Terrier would pass quite well for Toto, that's at least 6 Oz pins right there! Come on down! SIZE: 1"x.5"