Last week, Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, claimed that in his view there were two sides to the Ford case; “There’s a big picture and there’s a small picture.” He is of course correct as far as Majority Leaders goes but let’s ask him this question: Why is a Senator Harry Reid calling Ford a liar? The answer to that question is quite obvious. Harry Reid doesn’t believe the charges against Ford are real.
In TOTO, the main character, Ford, takes a stand to say, “It’s not true!” The court-martial judge accepted the evidence in toto as true. Recent examples online on the Web to demonstrate that the Tin Man is indeed correct in toto more than the evidence presented by Flake. Yet in my view, the judge who wrote the ruling in toto was incorrect, because in toto the Judge didn’t imply that there was in fact a deception of Ford.
In Hollywood Forever there’s another example of a tin man ruling based on in to. The Tin Man in Hollywood Forever uses his power to create an entirely new reality in which circumstance is used to effect change. The film-makers of Hollywood Forever seem to prefer to leave reality out of the picture entirely. Here in Tin Man we see the clever use of storytelling tactics to make something unbelievable, but completely in its element, seem real.
A similar example can be found in Jaws wherein Michael Duff is placed in a life-threatening situation. He knows that in case of drowning he would turn into a wonderful wizard. The subsequent books describe Michael Duff as a wonderful wizard, hence the name of the film. The problem is that in the sequel Michael Duff is again placed in a dangerous situation and again transforms into a wonderful wizard. Therefore does the story come into conflict with reality?
I believe it doesn’t. The fact that Michael Duff transforms into a wonderful wizard is a fiction. The same can be said for toto, a fictional character in the novel. When you read the book, it is clear that toto is not really a human being but a spirit, an entity separate from our bodies. Although toto seems to have a near-identical physical appearance to Michael Duff (who is a British subject), this being cannot be considered a human being. Michael Duff’s description of toto as “a figure much like a dwarf” certainly describes toto as an entity existing apart from our bodies, yet being part of all bodies.
In the subsequent books the character of toto evolves into a fully realized human being. It is established in later books that toto does indeed have an identity independent of the body and its physical identity. Although this last statement excludes toto from any causal relationship to the body, it is suggested that toto may exist outside the boundaries of time and space and this makes toto the perfect wizard.