flip the tables, folks. is it time for revolution?
hidden gems in Wicked (2024), part 2.
Hello, hello all. Welcome to my second and final part of musings on Wicked. I hope you enjoy and feel free to share with friends & family! If you haven’t read the first part, head over here to browse through it.
Fear + power = destruction
Let’s contrast Madame Morrible, headmistress at Shiz (played by the great Michelle Yeoh) and her cohort The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) with Elphaba, the so-called Wicked Witch of the West.
I said in part one that everybody has power, some more than others, in different areas. There are groups who use their physique to sway the attention their way. Others have all the money in the world at their disposal. Another kind of power would be charisma or the ability to invite people into this persona that you have which carries confidence, energy, empathy, etc.
We’ve all been victims to somebody else’s deepest desires gone sour. We’ve all been in the ‘wrong’ place at the ‘wrong’ time and had to pay for someone else’s sins. Doubtless you and I have gotten caught up in another’s wild dreams and ended up being used by them in order to achieve their ends, blind as they were. If this is you right now or was at some point in the past, I’m sorry. It hurts and the hurt doesn’t often go away overnight. Thankfully, we know a God who has redemption in store for each us.
So much of today’s culture is based on a power structure, sending everybody scrambling for what they can offer to each other and the world at large. We are all grasping after the wind, as Ecclesiastes says. There’s another component at work, though.
Fear is one of the Enemy’s more fiery tactics, used to topple whole civilizations like Egypt and the Roman Empire. Fear also hacks into each of our lives through comparison, disorders, FOMO, betrayal, false narratives, political machinations, advertisements, etc.
Think about it.
Ads for prescribed drugs to fix any ailment (many simply the result of poor eating, lack of movement, and no way to navigate the stress of life). Alterations to transform you from just you to a goddess-like figure with the breasts, facial structure, hair, eyes, and every other nature-given feature to stun any passerby. Clothing to suit any body type, nevermind the fact that maybe we are encouraging serious bodily unhealth.
Every single teenager finally receives that sacred object: a smartphone. Immediately, whole worlds open up to them. Worlds that are backed by serious FOMO—for the older folks confused with every single word being unnecessarily turned into anagrams, acronyms or abbreviations: Fear of Missing Out. Missing out on that one group chat where everyone is making plans to get together. Missing out on who she’s currently dating. What about that one friend you saw three years ago from middle school who went to Europe? Gosh, even though I know ‘all’ about her life, I still feel like I’m missing out. Maybe if I go to Europe myself, my FOMO will be a thing of the past.
Today’s business is to capitalize on the fear of individual souls. You have a fear? We have a solution. And it’s never to face the fear. Instead we learn to control it. We cover it up, we masquerade. Fears become something we are proud of donning, as if they were something to boast about! The fear of being less than or not seen at all drives us to be proud of our ethnicity or sexuality, as if that were all we were: bags of flesh with an outward appearance. We race up the corporate ladder like our lives depend on it. We are all afraid of losing ourselves. Afraid of losing beauty, strength, youth, individuality, creativity. In short, we are afraid of losing our humanity.
And so we strive, we knock others out of our way to feed our own agendas. We utilize whatever strengths we have been given by the Divine and forge them into weapons to be used, and if needed, used against anybody who stands in the path of our ambition. Fear-mongering, the reigning devil of the 21st century. The wheel keeps spinning and we are all hamsters on it, running, even as our heart gives out and we are crying for a meager water break. As Lazarus begged Abraham from his pitiful place in Hell, a drop of water to cool his burning tongue, so we beg for a oasis.
All there is at the end of our desperate race is a weary and broken down body and soul. Fear has no bounds.
Etched into the Wicked villains are these two evils—fear and power. Madame Morrible rules through magic and raw power, the Wizard through his entirely fake persona. Panicking to stabilize the clout they both own, these two proceed to villainize the woman who is living out the opposite story. Elphaba shrinks from power, wary of it.
That is what Satan does, doesn’t he? He sneaks in, quietly and carefully, and he twists our hearts against what is good, righteous, and whole. And all the time, we are utterly unaware the turn our hearts have made.
Power is just a perversion of glory.
Elphaba was on track to be glorious. Her flying off into the sunset was a paired image to match that reality.
The Wizard and Madame M? Not so much. They were left alone to guard the Emerald City in which they were held captive by their own free will, inside cowering with fear but hiding behind the confidence of their twisted abilities.
Those flying monkeys, writhing in agony upon the emerald palace’s poisonous green floors, is only a sample of what darkness can do when we give in out of fear. It is destruction: the tearing down of something that is natural and the subsequent corruption of that something. Gold, mixed with other lesser metals, loses its value. In one sense, it is destroyed. The original worth it once carried has been removed.
Nessarose’s malformation can be chalked up to her father’s fears. She may have been born the ‘right’ color, but she was born cursed to be stuck in a wheelchair. One ‘evil’ exchanged for a worse one because one man’s fear controlled not only his own life but those around him as well. He feared what exactly Elphaba was, but I think he feared the infamy that would come of raising a green child in a society where green was not ‘normal’. His fear of others’ opinions and losing influence influenced him to ruin his second daughter’s natural body.
Power is never satisfied, and neither is fear. Fears grow as we refuse to face them, which is, ironically, the only real way to achieve glory. And as our fears evolve, so does our reach for power. Some is never enough, and neither is a lot.
Wounds can be our catalyst
You recall what I said in part one, that we all have the chance to choose what we will do with our past stories. We may allow them to write what our creeds will be, let the untruths rule our destiny. The darkness calls to us, offering endless promises. Will we heed it? Or will we follow Elphaba’s example, and turn our pain into empathy? Our loneliness into compassion? Choose to stand for the lesser folk and for a world where justice, truth, and beauty are supreme?
No one will argue with me that we all carry wounds inflicted on our hearts or, our inner being. But don’t worry! There’s always a fix for it, remember? You have a festering wound, a haunting fear? Check out this new anesthetic that will surely fix it…but wait there’s more! This anesthetic will eventually cause you to lose feeling in you entire being, forfeit any real understanding of life, and cause you to grow bitter, angry, lonely, and eventually self-implode! Doesn’t that sound like the perfect cure?
Wounds lead us down three paths, some leading into another for a time, but we must always choose a central one to live by. In a number of scenes which play out in our stories, I find that often the Victim, the Unbeatable, and the Compassionate tend to be roles we cast ourselves.
The Victim is the one who has lost all hope. She is self-focused, internally throwing pity parties in which she bathes in her tears of self-loathing, regret, venemous nostalgia, and jealousy. She has taken the wounds in her life and turned them into her identity, into who she is and who she will always be.
The Unbeatable find himself looking down his nose at his wounded heart and scoffing. He turns away from the evil done to his inner being and finds that in casting himself as the giant and his heart as Jack endlessly climbing the beanstalk, he is unbeatable. He is mighty, strong, and carefree. He does not bother about the way that these wounds find ways to unexpectedly startle him. This path eventually leads to a heart gone stone cold from lack of care. Often the Unbeatable turns to villainy and treachery against anything weaker than himself, because weakness in another is a reflection of the weakness he sees in himself: the weakness of the wounds that are oozing after years of neglect. He has force the wounds in his life into a weapon to use against others and against himself.
The Compassionate is one who’s wounds are there, always there. But she does not allow the creeds written for her to either victimize her nor harden her heart. The Compassionate sees the world through a lens of empathy, understanding, and a firm sense of justice because of the injustices commited against her. She does not hold it against her enemies, knowing that her enemies, too, suffer from evil lacerations. Compassionate sojourners seek the good of the fellow traveler, whether they are Victims, Unbeatables, or Compassionates. She stoops to the lowest of the low because she seeks to bring them up and never inflict her bitterness upon them. She has lived through pain, and acknowledges this. Rather than allow them to define her past, present, and future, she has chosen to allow these wounds to be the greatest catalyst for ground-breaking regeneration and genesis, both for others and within herself.
Wicked’s opening number is No One Mourns the Wicked. A fabulous song, by the way. Through this song there weaves a tale of Elphaba’s origin story, primarily painted with the darker hues of disgust, abandonment, betrayal, and, you guessed it: fear. She comes from a broken home where love is only lavished on those deemed lovable by the social norms of the day. Elphaba, born green, is cast away on her nurse who happens to be the sweetest grandma-like bear—one of those animal characters you just wish was your nurse.
Thankfully, Elphaba is treasured by Dulcibear the nurse. But that doesn’t keep out the voices that are meant to increase her fears and keep her trapped inside the small narrative. One scene shows other ‘normal’ children taunting Elphaba about her unusual appearance, and even though she stands firm against their insults, there is still the outcast little girl inside, her heart weeping for all the bravery she dons.
Later on, the wound seems to be healed, perhaps. Elphaba is now a grown woman, she has put away childish fears and anxieties. Right?
Apparently not.
In the middle of the Ozdust ballroom, amidst swirling dancers all in the weirdest getups I’ve ever seen (unless we count the ostentatious outfits in The Hunger Games or the Met Gala), Elphaba arrives. And she looks witchy. In her black pointed hat gifted to her from Glinda and black long-sleeved gown, she certainly stands out. Mostly for being the most normally dressed person on the dance floor, in my opinion.
Heads turn to stare and mouths perk up in sniveling smirks. Some laugh, others stare in overt shock that anybody could possibly come dressed in that. How somebody like her would think she had a place in ‘normal’ society is utterly astounding and beyond belief.
Right there in the middle of that crowd which must have seemed to Elphaba a crowd of bejeweled wolves, she strikes at the heart of something that makes me weep.
She dances.
In a strange fashion, to be sure. It sort of confused me as a viewer. I didn’t really get it. I don’t think the bystanders at the dance did either. They just laughed.
All movies have highly emotional parts, specifically targeting the audience’s empathy, the scene calling to something inside each of our hearts. No doubt this was meant to be one of them. Heck, it made me emotional too. But oftentimes we ride the waves of emotion, and we don’t delve deeper to understand what causes such intense feeling.
What was being said here? Again, I can’t interpret from the producer’s mind since I’ve never spoken to him, and likely his worldview leanings don’t align with my own. But the underlying truth that is fundamental to any sort of message to be gleaned?
Elphaba refused to back down. And she refused to accept a persona people wanted her to play. She would not masquerade as a victim, and she would not cower in fear. The wounding of her inner being would not keep her from accepting her past, present, and later on, her future. Certainly, she had been abused in her childhood, primarily an abuse of neglect. She’d been cast aside because of somebody else’s fears. And now, those fears were inside her, the only difference being the message they whispered to her.
She didn’t virtue-signal to anybody. And she didn’t complain about her problems. Neither did she seek to dominate with her unique personality.
Actually, it’s revealed that amidst her one-woman show at the Ozdust, inwardly she yearns for love, pursuit, concern, and relationship. Starved as she has been her entire life of relational connection, she has learned to stand on her own two feet, but the tearing inside is still there.
Fiyero seriously disappoints me by his exaggerated lack of perception by saying,
“I’ll say this much, she doesn’t give a twig what anyone thinks.”
Glinda responds,
“Of course she does. She just pretends not to.”
By the end of the movie, Elphaba has decided against the creed that has been written for her by neglectful parents and the world’s laughing derision for her. Instead she moves forward, in spite of all the hurt she has sustained. Her compassion and obsession for the truth is what sits on her chest like a weight, yet it is the lightest weight anyone could ever bear.
If Elphaba had believed the deceptive creed, she never would have learned what it meant to stand, even if she stood alone. And there would not have been a glorious and dramatic exit at the end of the movie. It would likely have been her sinking into the role of Victim or Unbeatable with nary a glance at the spilled flowers on the floor of Dr. Dillamond’s classroom.
Glamorous Glinda — the ‘it’ life
If the first and lowest operation of pain shatters the illusion that all is well, the second shatters the illusion that what we have, whether good or bad in itself, is our own and enough for us. Everyone has noticed how hard it is turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We ‘have all we want’ is a terrible saying when ‘all’ does not include God. - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Green and pink are not the dominant disparities between Glinda and Elphaba, though it makes for well-designed promo posters and social media posts
.Rather it is the contrast in what the green and pink represent. Glinda is beautiful in an angelic, faultless, flawless, picture-perfect, polished, immaculate—you get the idea—way. Elphaba is, well, green. The similarities between the two women end at where they attend school and the wealth of ambition inside them. Otherwise, what makes them tick are not quite the same. Not even close, actually,
Similar to Glinda’s outwardly poised and gorgeous life—not simply her looks but her mannerisms, her charisma, her following, her family, and her position in society—is the ‘it’ life. More commonly known among women of the Gen Z and Gen Alpha as ‘the it girl’. It’s laughable when I see Instagram accounts that are literally selling an entire lifestyle. It also makes me want to rage and then sit down and weep.
Not because its such a horrible thing to share stunning views of from your back porch, or to share a recipe that makes you feel cozy and warm inside. It’s not wrong to sell brands to other people that you truly support and that have really helped you out in some way. It’s the obsessive level in which we have reached, where every social media account anywhere, particularly Instagram because it is so heavily image-based, is selling an ‘aesthetic’, a ‘perfect life’. Or, as I coined it, the Glinda Life. Every ugly blemish is covered, or removed by Photoshop (or more recently, AI).
I used to find myself so caught up with aesthetic Instagram accounts. I edited and finagled and cropped and grew more occupied with my story highlight covers and carousels all looking exactly the way I wanted. What began as an attraction to creating something beautiful and cohesive that represented some of my life ended in me finally deleting my account and the app for good, utterly exhausted by trying to keep it all up.
Unquestionably, the glamorized life is a phenomenon that takes up abode in every heart, whether male or female. What makes the aesthetic ‘it’ life so attractive? Is it that these people seem to live perfect lives? Maybe. But I don’t think the outward appearance is the final word. Contrary to Fiyero’s mantra, that we all should live the unexamined life, I prefer the OG quote, said by Socrates himself: the unexamined life is not worth living. So, let’s examine the deeper issue for a moment.
It’s not so much the cohesion in itself that is attractive to people when they see cottagecore fairy princesses floating about their 100-acre farms and dark academians with furrowed brow bent over a tome twice the size of a Bible in some ancient Oxfordian library. It is what the cohesion or ‘perfect’ lifestyle symbolizes.
Aesthetic lifestyles all made up of one theme or idea gives us control. Control over what we wear, what we eat, what we do, where we go, how we talk, the information we ingest, the people we surround ourselves with, and the ‘vibe’ we give off to the world around us. Not only does control get to be in our toolbelt, but we also get an identity. We get to say we are ‘dark academian’, ‘royaltycore’, ‘goth’, ‘granola girl’, etc. etc. etc. Countless personas are donned as we figure it all out. There’s nothing wrong with pairing photos and experimenting with all sorts of personality types. The tricky part is when those characters we are playing can no longer be distinguished from who we really are. The mask becomes permanent.
These so-called aesthetics morph rapidly into dystopian-like worlds that each of us live in where nothing can touch us. But in return, we cannot touch the outside, the Real. Besides being, let’s face it, exhaustibly unrealistic, there’s another facet I find more dangerous still: the eerie lack of hardship in these manufactured lifestyles.
Nobody seems to notice that the mom with that Lululemon fanny pack, manicured fingers, and Tesla looks exhausted. It’s something in her eyes that can’t be explained away, exactly.
That young guy in his Italian Grandpa (yes, look it up. It’s a real fashion trend. And I like it) outfits, $300 sunglasses, and sharp jawline lays awake at night wondering what will happen when his youth fades away. What will be the point of it all?
What about the girl strutting around in her Old Money pant suit, hair swirled into some effortless elegant concoction, who’s money comes from a husband she married just to sustain her lifestyle?
It’s not that suffering doesn’t exist for these people, it’s just not marketable for lifestyle gurus.
Nobody really thinks that though, when they are scrolling through an Instagram or TikTok feed. Because that is exactly the point. We are not supposed to see (or think about) anybody’s wounds under the achingly flawless life they lead on a stage they’ve crafted. We willingly want to be fed a dreamy oasis where heartbreak doesn’t exist and people don’t get hurt.
Even those who are ‘opening’ up about their trials and tribulations, it’s all just a cleaned up version of the real thing.
As Lewis said, we might have it all, but if our ‘all’ doesn’t have God in it, we have nothing at all. And in order to have God on this side of Paradise, we must have suffering. I can’t get into the problem of evil but if you desire to delve more about this, I seriously recommend reading C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain, which you can find pretty affordably at your local used bookstore, second hand on eBay, or Amazon.
But the crux of it is, we do suffer and some sense must be made of it.
This is where Wicked comes back into the picture.
Glinda’s character is not half so interesting as Elphaba’s. Why? Elphaba has struggled. She has suffered. She has been mocked, cast aside, and shed tears. Trial after painful trial have assaulted her, notably in her home, where she should have felt safest from the unknown world outside. Her character arc wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if it was a horizontal line instead.
Ariana Grande nailed her most important number, Popular. Glinda’s view of life behind the song—absolutely false.
When I see depressing creatures With unprepossessing features I remind them on their own behalf To think of Celebrated heads of state or Specially great communicators Did they have brains or knowledge? Don't make me laugh! They were popular! Please - It's all about popular! It's not about aptitude It's the way you're viewed So it's very shrewd to be Very very popular!
There is nothing for it but to embrace the tribulations we all know are coming, if they have not already broken upon our shores. No amount of popularity will stop the pain, and no amount of good looks will save you when you are drowning. What we can do is accept that life is not a series of perfect Instagram photos and immaculately curated Pinterest boards. Losing control and allowing the waves to take us out might be the best thing that’s ever happened to us.
I don’t believe this song is meant to be praised by viewers. It’s there to contrast the two main characters. While Glinda is passed up for great power, Elphaba is born with it. Contrary to Glinda’s view of life, Elphaba has been ravaged by loneliness and a hurting heart.
Yet, she has risen to a place of venerable glory, courage worthy of being noticed for, and all without being popular or the particular brand of pretty that Glinda is. She has the capacity for noble leadership. It has nothing to do with her background since she was counted as less than nothing. Neither does her charisma play into the picture. She chose authenticity over charm everytime.
What made her so worthy of powerful magic and attention? What draws us to her rather than to Glinda? It was her character. Character is born of discomfort, even torment.
No facade on earth can embody in us courage, nobility, justice, gentleness, and peace.
And with that, I conclude this two-part series on Wicked (2024). If you have stuck around to read both parts, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’ll leave you all with this parting remark.
Friends, we have the capacity to rise above the ‘norms’ that we bow to. How far will you bend before you break?
Going against the tide isn’t about standing apart for notoriety or attention. It’s not about us at all, in fact. We have a duty to stop feeding into the voices that tell us we must conform to be loved and instead have courage to ‘flip tables’. For some, this might mean waiting to move until we hear the voice of God, even if that means others seem to be rushing you to make a decision. Others of us need to move forward, even if that moving forward is small (or really big). Maybe you need to leave behind the community you’ve surrounded yourself with so you can have the freedom to pursue relationships that inspire you, while maybe a few of you need to choose to be vulnerable to find a friend or two who will stick by you, despite the betrayal you’ve experieneced in the past.
Consider your life. Where have you begun to buy into a narrative that you must get with the trends, speak the slang, or buy into a set of beliefs to be loved, noticed, or have some sort of identity? Using this list (written or mental), go through it and create an opposite and much more Real version of the counterfeit that is sucking true life from you. Post this list somewhere you can see, every single day.
Make it your manifesto, that you will not back down when you stand for nobler truths and a higher cause, no matter who or what you lose in the process. The things and people you lost because you wouldn’t conform? In the end, they wouldn’t have been worth your time anyway.
I wish you all good fortune on your path toward glory that awaits us at the end of all things, when we stand before the gates of Heaven and are ushered in with, Well done, good and faithful servant.
(This performance by VanderWaal is absolutely insane, and it perfectly coincides with my articles on Wicked.)