I just found this thread on a messageboard and wanted to come back and check out this information:

“Movie symbolism: I read that the Wizard of Oz (probibly the book more than the movie, but still) is all about the international banking conspiracy.

Yeah - that’s true. Apparently the author of the book (Frank L. Baum was it?) deliberately wrote it as an economic/social allegory and was annoyed when lots of people failed to pick up on it
- my US History lecturor explained the whole thing in detail - the characters all represent different parts of American society; I think the Scarecrow = farmers, the Lion = war veterans, the Tinman = industrial workers, and they’re all heading to the Wizard, eg the President, the protest their causes. The Wicked Witches are the Democrats and Republicans.”

Also, the whole thing the next person talks about with Dumbo as being an “esoteric text on magic, drugs, initiation, and the future of human life” is pretty wild as well. Here, I’m just gonna post that shit right in here:

In the story, Dumbo’s mutation is considered to be a useless, freakish handicap. The potential power that Dumbo possesses goes unseen, by him and by everyone else, in the social reality-tunnel of the world he’s born into (the “circus”). He ends up fulfilling the lowest of the roles available to him in that reality-tunnel: the clown; the “butt”, in fact, of the other clowns’ pratfall routines, good only for being on the receiving end of a custard pie (“Shit-Dumbo! Ass-elephant!”).

Dumbo then happens to accidently ingest a hallucinogenic drug. A psychedelic vision ensues…his reality-tunnel breaks down…and joining him for the ride is his “familiar”, a set of eyes that doesn’t belong to the circus, a small voice that tells Dumbo a different “story” about who he is…

A gap in memory. And the next thing Dumbo remembers is waking up at the top of a very tall tree. How did he end up here? His “familiar” guesses the truth: He flew. Dumbo has the power of flight. That’s what his big ears are for.

…At first Dumbo finds it difficult to change his perception of who he is; of the extent of his powers. His familiar introduces him to the world of “ceremonial magick”, and with the assistance of a magickal prop, Dumbo manages – without the use of drugs – to fly.

…Eventually, Dumbo manages to manifest his powers even without the use of the paraphernalia of ceremonial magick.

And the heaviest of animals takes to the sky.

The nightmarish “pink elephants” are just those parts of ourselves – the scary, powerful parts – that we forgot to include when we were drawing the map of who we are.

Ganesha breaks the gravity-chains, smashes through the cages of the circus, soars above the train.

Our starry destiny.

A vision of our Mercury-nature so compassionate, so gently teasing, so *loving*, that it makes me break down crying.

(…On a more sinister note, there are hints in the movie about the involvement of the military in Dumbo’s evolution.)

Fucking great.