Wicked

This weekend the kids took me to see Wicked, the movie. I didn’t much care for the book, I liked the play OK (though I pretended I liked it more than I did so I wouldn’t be shunned), and the song “Defying Gravity,” often sung by precocious young girls, has at times caused an otherwise reasonable person to wish said child were standing in the middle of a road while the reasonable person had her foot on the accelerator.

This piece will have spoilers if you haven’t seen Wicked and don’t know the story.

But the movie blew me away. Cynthia Erivo is unbelievably great, and Ariana Grande is right up there with her; the two women together are more than the sum of their parts.

The set also served as a recording studio, meaning all of the songs were sung live — difficult to comprehend given the leaping and flying through the air and the massive or delicate vocals, but that’s what they did.

Endearing is that the lesser singers, Jeff Goldblum, for instance, sound lesser, and that’s just fine, because the flawed humanity of the characters is so much… humaner that way. Meanwhile, Erivo and Grande blow the roof off with their spectacular nuance and craft.

Elphaba and Glinda are complex characters to begin with, but the way they’re portrayed here takes it all to another level, especially in this election year.

In a certain way, Elphaba is easy: she’s about otherness. She’s the part of us all that is denied, or rejected, left out and longing for acceptance, and through adversity, unlocks power and courage beyond what we mere mortals can muster. Black Elphaba makes that statement even more poignantly, beautifully. Painfully. Cynthia Erivo is exquisite in her metamorphosis.

Glinda — how and why do we like her at all? Ariana Grande’s comedic timing is masterful, and that certainly helps. But Glinda the “good” is a mean girl, a Heather, using peer pressure and popularity to torment a struggling classmate in order to boost her own status. She punches down, and then we tear up when she finally feels badly enough to stand in the gap. We’re aching as she bravely steps in to usher acceptance of the girl she helped ostracize. As she connects with her. We’re delighted as they bond. Glinda’s ridiculousness is charming and silly, winning over the serious and distrustful Elphaba. We find redemption under her umbrella.

Which is why it’s so deeply uncomfortable when she tightens her embrace of Madame Morrible, choosing to stay with the known betrayers of her best friend, and of her community.

The experience of being betrayed by the popular few and the favored crowd is not a new one to a large portion of Americans. I‘m sure I wasn’t the only one with mixed feelings during the school dance scene of sacrifice and salvation by the same hand.

Glinda is the 53% of white women who voted for Trump, and she’s all the women, not just white, who didn’t vote for Harris for whatever reason. She loves Elphaba, but is willing to sacrifice her for her own sense of correctness, safety, or promise; for the “good” she feels she can do if she lets her best friend fight, and likely die, on her own.

Glinda is in a constant cage fight between her social and moral values, working against her own best interest and the wellbeing of others in the name of a greater plan fueled by grandiosity.

Glinda, too, is all of us.

I left the theater and immediately needed to find clips to watch it again. I wasn’t alone. Hundreds, if not thousands of people had somehow put up bits and pieces of the film, with thousands more like me eagerly revisiting the expression and release of the contradictions and intricacies that live within us all.

As Kermit the frog once sang, “It’s not easy being green,” but it’s nice to know the human condition is something we share, and in this case, beautifully drawn and understood.