Professor Explores Teaching Uses of Movie 'The Wizard of Oz'

University of Pittsburgh at Bradford faculty member Tim Ziaukas traveled to a national conference to present a paper that explores using the 1939 film version of “The Wizard of Oz” as a tool to introduce students to concepts of visual communications.

Ziaukas, associate professor of public relations, presented “Because, Because, Because, Because, Because: ‘The Wizard of Oz’ as Visual Literary Primer” at the Visual Communications Conference in Portland, Ore.

Ziaukas uses “The Wizard of Oz” in his visual communications class to introduce basic concepts of color theory, “sacred geometry” and more.

“Nearly everyone has seen it,” Ziaukas said, “so they all know that visual text very well.” Ziaukas said he is able to talk about some of the imagery in the movie without having to show them the film again.”

“It’s a good place to begin because most of the students know the film so well,” he said.

There are interesting reasons why the sepia-tinted Kansas sequences that open and close the film are dominated by horizontal and vertical images, while the surrealistically colored Oz middle is largely circle and spiral-oriented, Ziaukas said. “The students enjoy exploring that.”

Additionally, Progressive Era allegory from Baum’s novel is combined with sentiments from the late 1930s in the film, Ziaukas said. “The film offers an American isolationist argument that really spoke to the country in 1939. Dorothy is eager to get home to a bleak Kansas in light of a dangerous world where militaristic dictators are planning domination,” he said.

“It’s a rich text,” Ziaukas said, that can be interpreted in a number of ways, especially as an introduction to elements of visual communications.

Visual Communications is the premiere conference of visual communications.

Ziaukas is the director of the public relations program at Pitt-Bradford and teaches public relations, journalism and visual communications. He has taught at Pitt-Bradford since 1994, lives in Bradford and is active with the Bradford Creative and Performing Arts Center as a marketing consultant.