This afternoon I took myself out for a movie date. Just me. My husband doesn’t want to see the movie and there was no reason not to go this afternoon.
I saw Wicked.
Disclosure- the Wicked phenomenon happened WAY after I was out of my Broadway phase. In 2003, when it premiered, I was already deep into my workaholic phase. The term is musical awakening, when you get really into a Broadway show or Broadway musical and it can be defined as listening to the music on repeat. Well, I never had that. There were musicals that I watched many, many, many, many times as a child but they were movies. And only one was based on a Broadway show. Fun fact- I STILL listen to Little Shop of Horrors while doing yard work.
The point is that I missed being obsessed with the musical when it came out. Or any of the hot musicals of the 2000s, 2010s until Hamilton.
Second disclosure- I read the Wicked books years ago. Before I knew it had been turned into a musical. I also read the sequels. Gregory Maguire does some quality work and I highly recommend him.
There will be no spoilers because most of those are out already.
It is a very pretty movie. The music was great and the two leading ladies knocked it out of the park. The sets were great. The pacing was phenomenal and it certainly didn’t feel like we’d been sitting there for nearly 3 hours.
However, at its core, Wicked is about bullying.
Elphaba is different and she is at turns bullied, rejected, and ostracized. Her own father treats her like dirt and rejected her immediately at birth because she is outwardly different than the rest of society. He left her to be raised by the animal nanny bear. She is vulnerable but comes to understand that she will always be the scapegoat, even after scaring away other children who were making her sister cry.
The definition of bullying in the Oxford Dictionary is to “seek to harm, intimidate, or coerce (someone who is perceived as vulnerable).” Elphaba is plenty vulnerable.
I enjoyed the movie but I couldn’t help but overlay today’s political climate over it.
Like the Wizard of Oz says to Elphaba and Glinda, “The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.”
That line disquieted me.
That line explains what is happening with the illegal immigrant rhetoric and is at the base of all the trans laws. Basically pitting the “everyday Americans” against the “other”.
I want to shake people and shout “These people are not your enemy! Stop othering them.”
Othering, or giving people a common enemy, is just another word for bullying.
That line, in this political climate, was chilling and a bit enraging.
How many of the people in the theater understood the correlation? Or were they just watching the pretty movie with the pretty music?
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 