Don't Miss The Radical Message of 'Wicked'
Like most revolutionaries, Elphaba is being co-opted.
What makes humans different from animals? Some vegans have been arguing for ages that a living soul is a living soul. But humans who have amassed power—usually by violent force—have created hierarchies of life: not just between species, but also within humanity itself. When we dehumanize something/someone/or a group of someones, we declare that their life is less valuable and therefore less necessary to be saved. Toni Morrison sums this up in her novel Song of Solomon: “Perhaps that's what all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? Or would you take it?”
MANUFACTURING CONSENT
This question is at the heart of the 2024 studio blockbuster film Wicked: Part One. Based on the Tony-winning Broadway musical (which was adapted from the best-selling novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West), Wicked tells the backstory of the infamous green-colored witch from the classic tale The Wizard of Oz. Also adapted from a novel of the same name, the 1939 film starring Judy Garland as a teenaged Dorothy presented the green lady as a wicked witch whom the Wizard of Oz tasked Dorothy with murdering in order for her to get back home to Kansas.
Wicked not only gave the witch a name—Elphaba Thropp, named after the author of the Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum (L-Fa-Ba)—it also gave her a backstory and a total rewrite. Elphaba was never wicked, the story goes. She was simply a young woman born with green skin. Once she learned that the Wizard of Oz was a powerless fraud (as Dorothy later learns as well) and a genocidal maniac, Elphaba sets out to stop his reign of terror. In her choice to go against the Wizard, she is demonized as wicked and labeled an enemy of the State.
But her demonization began long before she got close enough to the Wizard to uncover that the emperor had no clothes. Growing up without a mother in the musical/film, her father, the governor of Munchkinland, withdrew any lovingkindness from her. Other children taunted her for her green skin and were terrified of her telekinesis powers. When she enrolls at Shiz University on a fluke—she accompanies her disabled sister NessaRose to school, gets upset and accidentally reveals her powers, impressing Madame Morrible, the head of sorcery—she’s immediately outcast, mocked and feared.
Though there used to be Animals who talked and studied alongside humans at Shiz, the Animals are mysteriously disappearing, with only Dr. Dillamond, Elphaba’s goat professor of life sciences, remaining on the faculty. Even as a professor, Dr. Dillamond is still below Elphaba in the hierarchy of life. Munchkinlanders like Boq, though able-bodied, are very short and toward the lower end of the hierarchy as well. NessaRose, visibly disabled and using a wheelchair, is slightly above her sister Elphaba and Boq as the beloved daughter of the wealthy governor and a beautiful human possessing a typical skin color and size. At the top, of course, and the most popular at Shiz are Galinda, a blonde white woman of the Upper Uplands, and Fiyero, a white man, and an actual prince.
Casting a Black woman, Cynthia Erivo, as Elphaba is no small thing. Usually portrayed by white actresses like Idina Menzel who originated the role on Broadway, Elphaba is finally being played by an actress who has been marginalized by race. In the novel upon which the musical and now the film are based, Elphaba longs for white skin like her siblings at one point, so, it definitely matters that Elphaba in the film version, as played by Erivo, does not. In a pivotal scene, as Elphaba sings, “The Wizard and I,” and fantasizes about the Wizard “degreenify[ing]” her, the lighting around her changes to reveal the actress’s deep brown skin. This is presumably a signal from the filmmakers—along with the presence of other Black people in Oz and at Shiz— that, unlike in our world, white supremacy isn’t the ultimate determining factor of who is considered human and who is less/not human. There are other factors at play in this fantastical world.
(My main criticism of this otherwise flawless film is that it could use a clearer breakdown of what those factors are! Talking Animals is normal, as are very small people, but green skin is terrifying and scandalous? The math is not adding! But I digress.)
Though Elphaba experiences many things Black women experience—going from pet to threat when a mentor can no longer control her; being betrayed by a white woman like Galinda as soon as solidarity becomes inconvenient—Elphaba’s still not exactly experiencing racism.
Though she’s discriminated against “for the color of her skin,” there is no group of green people in Oz to make up a race of people who are systemically oppressed. The discrimination she faces is actually ableism from a skin disorder, a presumed skin “deformity,” which leads to her dehumanization. Perhaps it’s a distinction without a difference, as all forms of discrimination are intended to remove from its victims the sacredness of life. The more Elphaba does not fit in, the more she is not only dehumanized but animalized.
As soon as Elphaba chooses not to use her powers in service of the Wizard, she is further relegated to animal status. Madame Morrible calls her a “beast” and a “savage” to instill in the minds of her fellow human beings that Elphaba is not one of them and is a threat to their lives. Through dehumanization, Morrible manufactures consent of the humans to take Elphaba’s life from her.
GROVELING IN SUBMISSION
Because Black women are constantly dehumanized in a racist and sexist world, many Black women have found in Elphaba a kindred spirit. Since Wicked premiered, I’ve seen dozens of social media posts from Black women suggesting that Elphaba represents the 92% of Black women like them who voted for Kamala Harris, and Galinda represents the white women who betrayed the sisterhood by voting for Trump (again!). In their analogy, Trump is the epitome of the world’s evils, the fraudulent wizard who has tricked people into raising him into power. Kamala, a Black woman, and Trump’s opponent, and by extension her supporters, must naturally be the Elphaba in the scenario. But there’s a bit of a complication to that interpretation.
At the time of Elphaba’s opposition, the Wizard has been in power for years and is actively committing a genocide of Animals. As the leader of Oz, he is systematically killing, imprisoning, and committing ethnic/species-cleansing in Oz, removing Animals’ ability to speak and pushing them out of the region.
This is made more clear in the novel Wicked: The Life & Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, but capital A Animals are those like Dr. Dillamond, who can talk and think and otherwise behave as humans do. Lowercase animals, on the other hand, are used for food. In the novel, Dr. Dillamond conducts scientific research to prove that there’s no fundamental difference between Animals and humans, and therefore Animals should not be discriminated against. Dr. Dillamond meets a very different fate in the novel for his efforts. (Become a paid subscriber to read my breakdown of the novel vs. the film vs. the Broadway musical coming this week!)
If only Dr. Dillamond had access to Toni Morrison! As she taught us, “the very serious function of racism [speciesism, for our purposes here,] is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
In the past fourteen months of the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians, we have seen livestreamed children begging the world to stop their oppression. We have seen lawyers arguing before the International Court that Israel is committing blatant war crimes under international law. We have seen the International Court conclude that Israel is committing a plausible genocide against Palestinians.
And still, over decades, and now daily in U.S. mainstream media over the past 14 months, we have seen in bold lettering, the Palestine Exception. The NYT, BBC, The Guardian, the Washington Post have invented new forms of passive language to excuse Israelis’ point-blank execution of Palestinian children, the destruction of all universities in Gaza, the explosion of hospitals, the murder of doctors and nurses and hospital directors, pregnant mothers and hundreds of Palestinian journalists. We must follow international law—unless we’re killing Palestinians. We must stop human rights abuses—unless the victims are Palestinians. We must stop genocide—unless we’re genociding Palestinians. There will, as Morrison says, always be one more thing, one more goal post to move on the hierarchy of life. The Palestine Exception means that all lives matter—except the ones that don’t at all.
Who has been dehumanizing Palestinians while committing the genocide in Palestine over the last two years? It’s not Trump. It’s President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and a bipartisan U.S. Congress. Despite the fact that more than 50% of Americans say the U.S. must stop funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Under the Biden-Harris administration, anti-genocide protestors are jailed, fired, demonized in the press and expelled from their schools by the powers who want to continue genocide without opposition. This is fascism. Right now. Our current leaders are fascists. And that means—
My sisters in Christ, I’m going to hold your hands when I say this—Galinda is you too.
Galinda betrayed her solidarity with the oppressed (Elphaba) for an opportunity to advance her own power in the government. Galinda chastised Elphaba for being so combative with the Wizard, putting both of their lives in danger with her quest to save the Animals from genocide. Stop me if this sounds familiar. When Kamala lost—after refusing to bend on her unconditional support for Israel’s genocide—many people chastised anti-genocide protestors for withholding their votes from Kamala, using Galinda’s own words to Elphaba to do so: “I hope you’re happy, how you’ve hurt your cause forever! / I hope you think you’re clever!!”
Some who are against genocide struggled with whether to vote for Harris as her administration carried out a livestreamed Holocaust of Palestinians. Many wrestled with what the best choice would be—stay home; protest the two-party oligarchy by voting third party; or elect Kamala and try to “push her left,” even as she said she could think of “nothing” that she would do differently than Biden if she were president.
A two-party oligarchy relies on illusions of power, illusions of choice to keep the populace in line. It presents false binaries: sacrifice Palestinians for the chance of abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and other civil rights here at home. Way too many voters, way too many American politicians, and way too many journalists believed the false binary and chose what they believed was their own survival. Way too many of us believed in the illusion of power that having a Black woman face of Empire would bring.
But Elphaba refused to be the token colored tool of Empire, even as she was the perfect candidate for State seduction. She was vulnerable, with a fragile support system and a learned self-hatred. She was just starting to make a friend in Galinda and was just starting to learn her own power, thanks to Madame Morrible’s encouragement. She had the world to gain by joining the Wizard and everything to lose by opposing him. The Wizard, Madame Morrible and Galinda knew this and all played on Elphaba’s deepest desires (to be seen, loved, celebrated, and accepted; to do good in the world) and her deepest fears (that despite her best efforts, she would never be loved and accepted). This is how a fascist state keeps control over its population, teasing them with their own aspirations; taunting them with their own fears. Galinda reminds Elphaba that all she has to do is apologize to the Wizard and Elphaba could still have all she ever wanted.
But Elphaba cuts right through the manipulation, straight to Toni Morrison’s measure of humanity: would she save a life, or would she take it? Elphaba recoils at the thought of sacrificing the Animals’ lives and liberation for a faulty sense of her own.
“I don’t want it—I can’t want it anymore,” she sings, and releases her fantasies of human acceptance, aligning herself fully with the Animal world.
The second she finds out that the Wizard is committing the genocide of the Animals, that he needs her complicity to have any power at all, she immediately snatches her power out of his grasp. She rejects him and his illusions of power, safety, even love, immediately. She will not be his tool to oppress others for the sake of “representation.” “Too long I’ve been afraid of losing love, I guess I’ve lost!” She sings. She decides that the “love” the Wizard promises her “comes at much too high a cost.”
She will not be a prisoner to her own fears and ambitions. She will be free.
Elphaba, in all of her fictional glory, shouldn’t be co-opted. She has a moral clarity that aligns with many real-life people who’ve also made real life choices to fight against genocide over the past 14 months—under the pain of death; under the pain of forced unemployment; under the pain of social ostracization, demonization, and imprisonment. These choices should not be minimized. They take courage that most people are socialized to lack. Most people are taught how to be Galinda: to not rock the boat, to choose the path of least resistance, to stomach incremental change and reap the rewards of being a cog in the system.
“I hope you’re happy, how you’d grovel in submission to feed your own ambition,” Elphaba shoots back at Galinda for her choice to abandon the mission to save the Animals and instead try to save herself and “change things from the inside.”
TOO LATE TO GO BACK TO SLEEP
I believe James Baldwin had the overabundance of Galindas in the world in mind when he said that “Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people.”
Elphaba is a rare person of courage, of passion, of love. Her path is not glamorous or easy. Her ostracization and demonization are warnings to anyone who would choose to follow her: Cowardice is free; courage costs.
It is beautiful that so many people see themselves in Elphaba’s struggle—it is no easy feat to survive being systemically othered since childhood because of who you are. It’s wonderful to have Black women examples on screen like Elphaba, overcoming similar struggles and healing their inner child as they find and claim their power. But it is even more powerful that Elphaba’s oppression led her to a place of moral and political clarity: she knew she would never be free, loved or accepted by a system that imprisons, hates and expels the Animals. As long as she could be animalized at the drop of a hat, she saw in the Animals a joint struggle and an inextricably linked fate.
Elphaba flew off on her broomstick not to escape the Wizard but (*mild Part 2 spoiler*) to join the Animals in their fight. This is perhaps the most radical act and character on film in 2024. To reduce this message of solidarity and community struggle to a one-time vote in U.S. electoral politics is to miss not only the point of the character and the film but our own potential to do and be more in real life in the struggle for liberation. The U.S. is still committing genocide with Israel against Palestinians. There is still time to join the fight against our tax dollars doing this evil work.
It is this kind of inspired courage that causes films like Wicked to be intentionally misinterpreted, if we’re even allowed to see them in the future. Filmmaker Adam McKay warned on Twitter last week that he “wouldn’t be surprised to see the movie banned in 3-5 years,” due to it being “one of the most radical big studio Hollywood movies ever made.” He tweeted: “On a pure storytelling level Wicked: Part [One]…is nakedly about radicalization in the face of careerism, fascism, propaganda.”
His prediction isn’t so far-fetched. Netflix has already removed 19 films by and about Palestinians from its catalogue, furthering the erasure of Palestinians and the silencing of opposition to genocide and illegal occupation of Palestine. As South African apartheid survivors and Black American civil rights legends understand: the Palestinian struggle and the Black struggle for liberation are more alike than they are different. If books about Black struggle are already being banned, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that a film starring a Black woman who revolts against a fascist system and might inspire others to do the same would be banned as well.
Would you save my life? Or would you take it?
When Elphaba is confronted with this choice, she sings, “Too late for second-guessing, too late to go back to sleep,” in her show-stopping final number, “Defying Gravity.” She’s woke now and there’s no turning back from her mission for liberation. While the film is still available, I hope those of us who found kinship with Elphaba are led to reflect on the Elphabas that we know in real life, who are in our families, in our communities, in our workplaces and schools yet who aren’t given the love and support it’s so easy to give a fictional character. Who are the Elphabas around you who you witness speaking truth to power and walking in integrity but get shunned and mocked? And what can you do to not only support the Elphabas among you, but to unleash the inner Elphaba that fear and ambition have locked away?
Let the lessons of the film spark us to interrogate deeper what Elphaba was willing to sacrifice and what her choices really mean—not just in the movies, but in our lives. I hope her story inspires us to become our highest, most courageous selves. In order to defy the forces that are coming against us, and the fascism that’s already here, we’ll need to.
Stay watchin’!
Brooke