Feminist Take On Wicked

I saw Wicked. It was magnificent. The actors, the dance numbers, the sets! Check out what they look like, Moorish/Italianate/surrealist style. https://bobbyberk.com/behind-the-scenes-of-wickeds-set-design/ 

Being a musical, it could get away with being mythic, rather than having a complex plot. It turns out Hollywood is still capable of creating magic, just as I was thinking how we needed to create a new movie industry without all the wokeness and pedophiles. But so many creative people are there. Maybe there’s hope. 

The book was written in the 90s, before social justice had been so infiltrated and overplayed – when it was grassroots, about judging on merits rather than identity. I’ve been concerned that the astroturf  woke social justice movements would lead to the reversal of previous progress on equal respect and opportunity for all. That people would be so tired of the crying wolf that they would reject all of it, and that women, minorities, and queer people would be worse off than before. A small silver lining is that the most bullied demographic of all, the neurodiverse, didn’t get much woke attention.

Wicked is about the experience of the other’d and ostracized ( I try to avoid overused woke terms like “marginalized”). It is, of course, about skin color (the heroine Elphaba is green skinned). Having her be a fantasy color is a great way to express the sad alienation people feel when they are surrounded by people of a different color, and how it can lead to bullying. I wondered it was also about neurodiversity, a more fundamental quality than skin deep. Elphaba seemed to be neurodiverse, in the sense that she felt things more keenly than the shallow, mocking normies. 

I do NOT think Wicked is a woke movie, as many have said. The right attacked it, in a stupid way, obviously not having seen it, while the left took it as a sign of their own moral superiority.  But … it’s the ultimate anti-woke tale!  The supposed good girl Glinda is a narcissistic virtue-signaler who leads the mob in attacking Elphaba. Yes, virtue signalers may have moments of authentic kindness, and one of those moments for Glinda was deeply transformative. They may even inadvertently do some genuine good in their quest to *look* good. But when it matters, they will kowtow to the evil power structure, and ignore civil rights issues that won’t elevate their status. It’s performative empathy for the selected victims, while throwing others under the bus.

The big civil rights issue here is that the talking animals are being fired from their jobs and forced into cages and told to stop talking. They are becoming the mute, captive animals we know in our world. I read into this the struggle of women, since in the movie there is hate speech saying “Animals should be seen and not heard”, which was a commandment of the early Christian preachers about women.

It’s remarkable how this mythic book, written in the 90s, presaged the woke dynamics of today. 

So interesting that the movie came out at the time of the election, as Hollywood transitions from woke to post-woke. They had been going broke on woke for a while, turning out pale corporate B movies that seemed to be mere vehicles for lectures, usually about climate change. 

Now I’m all for moral messages in film, as long as it’s done organically and authentically. But for a while now, it hasn’t been. It’s been awkward and preachy. Most people want at least some straight love scenes. Most people are down with diversity, as long as it’s organic and makes sense. Me, I’m an amateur ethnologist, I study genetics and culture, so I feel annoyed if an actor’s looks aren’t a fit for the situation. For example, if their parents both look Northern European and they look Southern European. Or if a well known character gets a race or gender change. 

If representation gets in the way of telling a good story, people reject it. But representation does matter. Clearly that’s why certain guys are pissed off that they are no longer the heroes of every film. But on the extreme end we have the recent Star Trek series where there isn’t a single straight white person on the crew. (Ok,there is one alien played by an actress who might be white (it’s not actually a binary)). I groaned when the ugly alien became the captain. Call me a bigot, but I can’t relate to emotional expression on a face that alien. I was so glad when a black woman took his place. She is a relatable and believable hero. I can see myself in a black woman more easily than in a white man.

In the post-woke era, will Hollywood throw away the baby with the bathwater, and go back to having all the heroes be white men, with other characters being mere sidekicks or love interests? Or will they settle on something that is fair and accurate, like, say, hiring the most qualified actor for the part, who generally looks like the character should look? And have the representations vaguely similar to the general population?

There was a moment in time, around 2015, at the transition from pre-woke (all white men) to woke (all minority women) when I felt represented. There was a woman as the hero of an a sci fi story! It was Ray from Star Wars The Force Awakens. She was not only a woman, but not-blond or freakishly leggy. Pretty, of course; we don’t see normal-looking women onscreen.

As a sci fi geek girl who saw Star Wars when it first came out in the theater, I cried when I felt seen onscreen. I wrote a blog about it at the time. Now, since the woke era, the Marvel universe is full of asskicking female superheroes, but it’s contrived cheesy stuff. 

But Elphaba in Wicked feels authentic. Wicked feels authentic. Its message about oppression and otherness feels authentic. I understand now why the young me loved the book so much. I didn’t know why I was different, but knew that, like Elphaba, I felt things keenly, and that other people seemed to follow the crowd. I wasn’t bullied like her but was sort of invisible. My young self must have loved that in the book, Elphaba, like me, was ushered into popularity by the alpha girl taking her under her wing. I love revisiting books now that I loved as a young person, because with the wisdom of age, I can understand why these stories became part of my myth. And now, as an adult, speaking unpopular truths have led to me being cast out as a wicked witch, like her. We witches have been demonized since Christianity turned us into Jezebels…

Make movies good again! Put the story and writing first and foremost. Keep it realistic, or fantastic as appropriate. May we have authentic empathy for those who are outcast or other’d. And may we all get to see ourselves as the main characters in our epic journeys.