A book—or any form of source material, really—hasn’t truly reached its apex “saturation point” in pop culture until going from book to Broadway musical to movie (or, in Mean Girls’ case, from book to movie to Broadway musical to movie based on the Broadway musical). Wicked has at last reached that saturation point. Or, depending on how you look at it, L. Frank Baum’s Oz books have. It was the first book in the series, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, that served as the basis for MGM’s 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz. A movie that would not only solidify Judy Garland’s (gay) icon status, but also prove the old adage that, apparently, one has to suffer to make great art—as most of the actors on the set of the Victor Fleming-directed film did…in ways that were physical as well as emotional.
This is part of the reason that Jon M. Chu’s film adaptation of Wicked is almost like a poetic “recompense” to those, like Garland, Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion), Buddy Ebsen (the Tin Man), Ray Bolger (the Scarcrow) and Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch of the West), who endured under such atrocious working conditions. Sort of like trying to correct a past injustice by doing it differently (read: humanely) in the current epoch.
While it does little good to the actors who are long gone and already suffered irreparable damage, it’s at least somewhat comforting to know that, for as maligned as the film industry still is, it’s made vast improvements since the days when Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg were running MGM’s show. And, of course, in 1939, the casting for Wicked would never be what it is in the present, including a Black woman in the lead and a paraplegic in a key supporting role. In a certain sense, Wicked offers reparations for Old Hollywood in a similar way to what Ryan Murphy’s limited series, Hollywood, did. (Though it seems all of this “restitution” is coming at the cost of putting all grotesque ethnic stereotypes on Italians, as Ariana Grande herself recently participated in.)
For those who had doubts about the movie’s “worthiness” in terms of holding a candle to the beloved Broadway musical, it should never have been a question that it was in good hands with screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox at the helm (that’s right, Hollywood has allowed not one, but two female writers on a script). It should go without saying that Holzman already proved her writing prowess by being the creator of My So-Called Life. Additional writing credits came between 1995 (when My So-Called Life ended—much too soon) and 2003, including the movie ‘Til There Was You (an unfairly panned offering) and the TV series Once and Again. After that show ended, Wicked would debut on Broadway in ‘03, as written by Holzman and Stephen Schwartz.
As for Dana Fox being a co-writer on the film version, well, The Lost City is the only credential she needs to back up her own screenwriting savoir-faire. And for those noting the changes between the movie version of the musical and the original musical itself, let’s just say that the leaps that were made from author Gregory Maguire’s Wicked to Holzman and Schwartz’ Wicked were far more drastic. To the extent that Schwartz felt the need to comment, “Primarily we were interested in the relationship between Galinda—who becomes Glinda—and Elphaba… the friendship of these two women and how their characters lead them to completely different destinies.”
In other words, it was less about a “faithful” adaptation and more about focusing on a specific aspect/theme of the novel. And, as expected for something as mainstream as a Broadway musical, certain more “unsavory” aspects of the book were omitted. For example, Doctor Dillamond (the goat professor voiced by Peter Dinklage in the movie) is merely fired in the musical, but murdered in the book; Nessarose is born without arms in the book, but presented as a paraplegic in the musical; the Elphaba of the book dies a fiery and watery death, whereas the musical offers her much more of a happy ending than that. After all, Broadway knows it’s just a stone’s throw from Hollywood, so it has to keep things a bit on the lighter side.
Even so, it’s an undoubtedly pointed, and yes, heavy choice to cast a Black woman in the role of someone spurned and maligned by the society they live in (thank fuck Lady Gaga didn’t end up getting the part, as she was in talks for it before Chu became attached as the director—guess she had to settle for Joker: Folie à Deux instead). Cynthia Erivo’s casting as Elphaba is, thus, layered with meaning far beyond the meme-able value of her dynamic with Grande.
And yes, many have pointed out the timely nature of Wicked’s reintroduction to an even larger group of masses, what with authoritarian rule of the Wizard barely upheld by smoke-and-mirror parlor tricks being extremely applicable to the forthcoming administration. Not to mention the overarching theme about persecution for being “different” from what is deemed normal, as well as wielding a scapegoat (that term becomes literal in the form of Doctor Dillamond)—animals—to make people blame them for everything that’s wrong in Oz. For, as the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) tells Elphaba when she unmasks him for the impostor that he is, “Everybody knows that the best way to bring folks together is to give ‘em a real good enemy.” Indeed, it is one of the most tried-and-true tactics in the political book—and yet, America’s own Orange Wizard has still been able to use it without most people being the wiser.
In this regard, Chu’s version of Wicked comes at an apt historical moment that even the creators of and participants in the film couldn’t have possibly envisioned (because, tragically, many still had far too much faith in the idea that the Orange Wizard couldn’t possibly become Führer again). This also extends to the notion that those with real talent, like Elphaba, who actually work hard to hone it are consistently used and abused. Perennially exploited by the very people (with absolutely no skill or intelligence) that have somehow managed to finagle their way into power (as Glinda puts it in her high-pitched sing-song voice, “Celebrated heads of state or especially great communicators/Did they have brains or knowledge?/Don’t make me laugh/They were…popular/Right, it’s all about popular/It’s not about aptitude, it’s the way you’re viewed”). Not only that, but at the same time they’re being exploited and profited from, they’re also being grossly othered and scapegoated.
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