more than wicked

hidden gems in Wicked (2024), part 1.

Story is the lens through which humanity sees and processes life.

No doubt stories have many interpretations because often there are many meanings hiding behind every scene or chapter. But there is something grander underlying the possibly ill, false, or glamorized ideas that movies, books, songs, and other story forms share: Truth. Truth can never be denied. It can be twisted, maligned, and curtailed, but it will always reveal itself in time, to those who seek it.

Since I watched it in November, I’ve not stopped thinking about Wicked which is quite rare, considering the amount of poor quality content in the entertainment industries. Stories that flourish and stand the test of time are those that inherently speak what has been true for all of human history, for everyone, anywhere, at all times. This film really provided me with those truths.

Although I haven’t yet seen the musical itself but only the movie adaptation of the Broadway, I have yet to know how the story ends. I’m excited to watch the performance sometime next year before I see part two of the film. As a huge fan of Broadway and musical theater, I really enjoyed the movie for what it offered on a surface level. The choreography, graphics, cast, quality of singers, and such were wonderful. I didn’t mind Ariana Grande in the role of Glinda, although Ben Shapiro, who admittedly has seen the musical, disagrees. I cringed at the air-brushed feeling that she gave off, a really quite singular comparison with her co-star, Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. I have few issues with the film as a whole, the largest of those being Fiyero, who seemed to be flirting around with both men and women, and more specifically to my dislike, protrayed a sort of feminine-like man who had a flimsy personality.

Most likely, the philosophy of both the actors playing the main roles and the producer of the movie lean toward a liberal man-centric slant. That’s just Hollywood for you. Yet, that is just the thing that I found so incredibly surprising and rather ironic in the storyline of this movie, because the whole film is built on this foundation of Truth, although there may be a denying of it, a placating of it to some regard, or a ‘beating around the bush’ going on in order to not admit to the realities that Truth is always, well, true. It does not change with the tides or wind, nor does it change when men decide that Truth means something other than something real, right, and transcendent beyond human bounds.

Later on, I’ll expound on the themes I took away, but as an aside, all the topics of import probably mean something completely different to those who created the movie than they do to me. What makes me chuckle is that my idea of their ideas is based on the always True, Good, and Beautiful, while what they would say is real and is active justice, equity, and acceptance could only be a mockery of the real thing. As I said in the beginning though, truth will out, no matter how devilishly tricky and elusive it may seem to be in a world where light seems as darkness and darkness as the light.

Something grander than ourselves

When Aslan said,

“My country was made for noble hearts such as your’s, no matter how small their bearers be.”¹

and John Eldredge recounts an instant when he asks His son who he wants to be when he grows up. He writes,

“With a grave severity in his eye he looked at me and said, “I’m going to bring back the West.” His heart knew that he was made for noble things.”²

Eldredge’s sons were apparently invested in the the Wild West, in cowboys and adventures on the range. To his son, those stories were more real than reality itself. Those imaginary worlds anchored him to the future life he dreamed of, while giving him desire to live right at that moment.

Nobility. Stout-heartedness. Standing tall for truths, dreams, all gateways to a world bigger than our own.

Surely, something in the very fiber of your being sings when you think of the great heroes of our own time and times before. Of saints, knights, patriarches of great civilizations. There is so much in the air today of conformity, a mist that plagues us and clouds our vision. We are deluded into thinking that nothing could change, even if we wanted it to, that we must just flow with the tide. There is too much comfortability in the West and not enough of bravery. Something calls to us in fairytales and fantasy worlds where protoganists fight evil dragons, ward off dark spirits, and men vie for the maiden’s hand. There are patterns in story that reveal the true patterns of reality.

Aslan’s answer to Reepicheep’s inquiry as to whether he would be allowed entry into Aslan’s Country reveals how much God prizes noblity, strength, and the heart. He made a point to show how he did not care to measure the mouse by his size and in saying so, implied the same for the greatness of his worldly feats, but rather by the creeds that Reepicheep lived by.

We could call our ‘creeds’ today ‘motivations’, but I think the latter to be a weak and rather overused twenty-first century term that hearkens to New Year’s resolutions, bullet journaling, and goals, which are not bad in and of themselves but I’m talking about something deeper here.

Creeds are verbal manifestations of a person’s beliefs.

And not just any beliefs, but those upon which a human being would stake his life on and base every decision on. Our creeds are often subconsciously taken up and begin to take abode in the inner recesses of our mind and heart. They come from our life experiences both lived on the mountaintops and the valleys. A harsh word or a gentle caress form our creeds. A relationship betraying our trust and eye contact saying “I see you.” These moments, small and brief as they may be in the grand scheme of our entire lives, form who and what we believe in.

In the Christian tradition, we hold to fundamental statements of faith, like the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicea Creed. They sum up the bedrock for how we see the world and live in it. They are based on Christ’s own words and those of his Apostles and early followers, and thus infallible.

Our own creeds woefully fall short of being wholly truthful, and so they fail us.

Yet the beauty of it is that no matter how corrupt or misleading the creed, no matter how we feel as if we did not have a say over what was written on our hearts, there comes a time in every person’s life when we can choose to rewrite, reorganize, and unbelieve what we have previously held as a sacred truth.

It takes great inner strength to revise and rediscover how we ought to live. It is a great upheaval that threatens our bubbles of the known and shakes us to the core.

In the age of digital media galore, falsity, disingenuousness and overall a snobbery toward anything old-fashioned, we need some shaking. Some serious, rude-awakening, earth-shattering shaking. We need to WAKE UP.

Nobility is a choice we can choose that generally becomes character as we repeat the surrender to it over and over again. The same can be said of courage, honor, chastity, charity, benevolence, and generosity. Values with which the human race must be built upon individually and collectively, because our hearts were made to be complete in these graces. Often, we are almost forced to choose these values in scenarios we would otherwise have chosen to fade into the background and adopt the social norms surrounding us.

Elphaba exhibited what it meant to be a person with real potential. We are all people with potential. The potential to stand tall even though we may falter; use our voice for eternal purposes; create a small pocket of this chaotic world where a Garden of Goodness can flourish. In part one of Wicked, Elphaba exceeded my expectations as a character. She portrayed a truly strong female lead, not any of that pish posh they have nowadays like all the female superheroes, action figures in action films, etc. etc.

Wicked has this theme running through it, this question of whether or not people ar really evil or if evil is thrust upon them? There’s something else, though, that I noted throughout: the difference between those with power (so, all of us. We all hold some sort of power in this life) who live life based on how we desire to live it versus living lives in a manner that valiantly serves and defends a reality that is much greater than our own small existences, as meaningful and worthy as they may be.

Elphaba’s world was small where being green was a crime. All she wanted as a lonely outcast, was to be loved and seen by somebody, and she figured, Hey…maybe if I just had something to offer the people in charge here, then maybe I’ll be treasured. Maybe I’ll finally be something to someone and that can be enough for me. Message sound familiar?

In the end, Elphaba did not choose her wish to be un-greened or better still, to be The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s right-hand woman. Standing there in the midst of the ancient powers of Oz and realizing it was all just a giant hoax, her small world fell away from beneath her feet. And she took it in stride, amazingly! Rather than sit and sulk or bend to the injustice she chose to let go of these lesser dreams, because she had a moment of enlightenment: That’s not who I am anymore. I won’t bow to social norms just because they are social norms. And she rides away dramatically on her broom into the sunset.

Elphaba understood something in that instant that many of Gen Z are prayerfully beginning to realize as well: that no matter how flexible we are, eventually we will break. This world has a seemingly endless store of compromises in virtue and moral character.

She chose neither to break or bend. She chose to wake up to the way the world reawlly was. That the ‘love’ offered to her was not really love at all, but instead an affection based on her peformance and her acceptance of the status quo, which was, in other words, abusing ‘common’ folk and refusing freedom to Oz’s citizens or letting it happen whilst standing to the side.

In relinquishing who she thought she was, the labels she’d donned, and the power that she had been striving toward for so long, Elphaba was able to recover who she was intrinsically made to be. In looking outward, she found confidence inwardly.

Hearts of noble worth find this to often be the case when they are seeking ways to behave honorably.

This is why we find Christ reciting to his followers that those who would seek to be first must actually come last. We imagine him washing the Disciples’ dust and feces-caked feet—this Son of Man, King of the universe, bent to wash His creation’s feet. He fulfilled who He had been born to be: the Servant King.

Confidence is found not in retaining or obtaining power but in handling the little (or a lot) influence that we are handed by the grace of the Divine to lift up those who’s eyes look downward.

What could happen if we all looked heavenward, toward the everlasting Kingdom of God Himself? What do you suppose could be accomplished if we all relinquished our own small plays we wish to act in and direct so that we may surrender to nobler causes than our own?³ For indeed, what He calls us to is almost always more grand than what we could write on our own. It would be like us trying to match skills with Shakespeare, and then being just fine with some mediocre replica version of Romeo and Juliet or Henry V.

I think Elphaba ascertained that in order to be who she truly was, achieving her personal dreams would never be enough. Not after what she’d seen in the Wizard and Madame Morrible.

Stand tall, stand tall!

Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!

Thus spoke Aragorn, King of Gondor, Man of Westernesse, as he led his army into Mordor in order to waylay their enemy Sauron, whilst two little hobbits trudged up the side of a spitting volcano to melt a ring.

When will the young people of the West rise to this occasion?

“For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” - Esther 4:14.

Silence.

Compliance.

Bending—just to break.

That is what this world demands, what ‘social norms’ demand. The only thing ‘normal’ about social norms, is that they are absolutely not ‘normal’ in any sense of the word.

My friends, whether you are sixteen years old or twenty-five, we all have a role to play, as I mentioned in the above. But now, we have the opportunity to stand for it.

When we were young, we played the both the hero, the villain, and the victim. In my case, I starred in my own ballets as the lead. I fought fierce creatures of darkness to attain the reward of freedom. I played the damsel in distress, in need of saving from a handsome knight. I crossed sabers with evil jedis and I once shut my brother in the coat closet, cackling as evil as anything, listening to his (real) agonized screams emanting from the other side of the door.

Earlier I said we don’t really often choose the higher path, but instead are often thrust upon it.

Well, I look at the world around us, and I often think to myself, “There is no better time than right now for the heroes of the story to show up in glowing armor and twenty-feet wide wings, like avenging archangels, battering the forces of evil into the dust.

While I believe that this world is only headed in one direction, as the Lord has said (Matt. 24), I also know that each human being is birthed from God’s own hand, and nothing ever created or allowed to exist in His world is forsaken, expendable, or useless in his war against the Evil One.

Much of this war waged on humanity, I’ve begun to really understand, is in the unseen realm. Great forces of angelic brightness strive against the fallen powers of darkness, and our realm is only one in which this centuries’ old fight is taking place. Hence, the import of prayer in a Christian’s daily life.

And yet, these heroes of old—saints, soldiers, kings—they are human beings living in a very much physical world. Perhaps they cannot slay a demon, but they can certainly choose to stand apart from the evil that would besiege them.

Simply said, there is too much lying around, too much tolerance, too much of this so-called ‘kindness’ that is not kindness at all, but an attempt to hide in the sea of the Same. Of the Trend or the Known.

Recall Elphaba’s gentleness toward Dr. Dillamond (played by Peter Dinklage). Her persistence to free the baby snow leapard. The compassion she had for the group of animals that were to be removed from staff at Shiz and worse, have their ability to be ‘human’ stripped from them in the way of their reasoning and speech being forcibly removed.

I particularly enjoyed the scene as she bent to pick up flowers that had poured out of their vase onto the floor of Dillamond’s classroom. It’s clear that Elphaba has empathy and an ardent desire for justice in spades.

Her willingness to leave behind her entire life, forsake her friend, and live a life of outcast and wanted criminal portrays a woman who is going to stake her life on a better world—a world she knows can be, if only she is courageous enough to flip the tables.

There is an individuality which we hold up on this pedestal in America as if all we were is who we decided we could be. Once again, we are dabbling in writing minor plays which could not hope to live up to Shakespearean standards or match the wits of Greek tragedians.

Something else takes more out of us than simply picking our aesthetic, being in our ‘era’, or finding the job/person of our dreams. It’s standing tall, rising above, the cultural complacency to throw light on our unsuspecting friends who are steeped in a magical slumber. It may take more from us, but in the long run, it’s the only thing that will give us anything in return worth keeping.

We go about with our eyes trained on devices, heads bowed, practically being sucked into the fake world of social media. It’s a monster that is devouring souls, and I don’t exaggerate. If you think I am, I’m not sure you’ve understood the memo yet. We are drugged, intoxicated, by the grey world about us. We are living a dystopian existence like that scene from the 2003 adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time, where the three adventurers happen upon a grey neighborhood, each lot complete with identical grey lawn, grey house, and one grey child bouncing the same exact grey ball at the same exact time, spirits completely absent from their bodies, hearts beating to a rhythm that they are longer in tune with.

And yet, we stand idly by, choosing to instead be part of the in-crowd, the cliques, the majority. Why? Well, it’s comfortable. It’s me-centric. And it’s risk free.

While Glinda, Fiyero, Nessarose, and essentially everybody else with abilities of some sort decided to hold back, Elphaba did not. She was already ostracized, already seen as unacceptable in countless ways. Why bend when in the end, she knew she would only break?

Even the prestige offered to her in the Emerald City would not tempt her to turn her back on the truths she held onto and the people she knew needed her. There was no going back after the lies had been revealed: that she was being used by lesser beings in order to obtain and utilize power against those very peoples she wished to rescue. No. There is no sitting idly by, while conformity looms like a shadowed beast in the wake of every person’s heart.

It is so easy to settle.

But why should we when so much is at stake? When these virtues that are the foundation of not only humanity, but the earth itself are built upon, are threatened on every side?

Don’t conform.

Instead, create your own Dumbledore’s Army.

In the words of Harry Potter, “If they can do did it, why not us?”⁴

Thank you for sticking around to read part one of my analysis of Wicked. I’ll be releasing the second and final part in two weeks from today, and I’d be pleased if you checked it out! I appreciate your support and can’t wait to see what 2025 holds for my writing.

1. This quote doesn’t originate with the book but with the movie adaptation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

2. I’ve been reading The Sacred Romance by John Eldredge and Brent Curtis and also the source where I found this gold nugget.

3. I took this analogy from The Sacred Romance and Wild At Heart podcast episodes done by John and Allen.

4. “Every great wizard has started out as nothing more than what we are now: students. If they can do it, why not us?” - Harry Potter, The Order of the Phoenix (2007)