Between Lessons on Solidarity and Fascism, “Wicked” Is a Movie for These Times

In an attempt to ground myself at the turn of the year, I recently attended two webinars hosted by abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba. A common thread through both talks was the need for the left — or lefts, as Kaba astutely observes — to abandon purity and embrace difference; to ground ourselves in common purpose to meet what comes ahead. In an increasingly divided world, our consumption of media is politicized in a way that distracts us from forming real world bonds with each other.

That message was surprisingly relevant that same week, when I attended a showing of Wicked. Despite the fact that the film is based on a play that came out two decades ago, I was struck by how the film’s themes reflect our current moment as we prepare for a new Donald Trump presidency. Beneath the glitter and bubbly songs about being popular is a multifaceted story about fascism, propaganda and solidarity — themes that Gregory Maguire began to write about during the Gulf War in the original novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which was first published in 1995. The release of the Broadway play during the Bush administration would thrust Maguire’s observations about Western propaganda about the Middle East once more into relevance in a post-9/11 world. Now, seeing ourselves, and our current struggles, reflected back to us in stories is critical as those of us on the left consider how to become a formidable force in the Trump era.

Watching the friendship that springs between Galinda the Good Witch and Elphaba Thropp, otherwise known as the “Wicked” Witch of the West, and their journey amid the fascistic regime of the Wizard of Oz reminded me of Kaba’s threads around common purpose.

We are all bearing witness to the same atrocities: genocide, climate crisis, the scapegoating of trans people and immigrants, attacks on the media and the evolution of propaganda in real time. The right continues to use these things to separate us and other us from each other, unabated. We may even do it to others who are on the same side, but in different ways of being. I’m not always in ideological lockstep with everyone around me, but I recognize that they’re doing ostensibly good things in the world — advocating for immigrants in their communities, pursuing a carless future, putting on holiday dinners where dozens of community members can come together when they have nowhere else to go. Some of these folks might be treated with scorn for the way they relate to or excuse the different systems that uphold our abhorrent status quo. To me, though, writing them off politically for not being aligned with my particular brand of leftism has done little to bring them along further left, and often does the right’s job of alienation for them. So, when I watched Elphaba and Galinda reach understanding with one another, instead of considering each other totally irredeemable for their choices in a fascistic system, I was moved.

Most people, if they know anything about Wicked at all, know it to be a revisionist origin story on the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. While the story focuses on Elphaba, it’s how her personal struggle is intertwined with the story’s other themes — the scapegoating of marginalized people through propaganda, how that propaganda tells us what’s good and what’s evil, and the ways in which privilege and power shape the lead characters — that makes the film a piece of media worth wrestling with now.

The film opens with a scene familiar to anyone who has seen The Wizard of Oz: the Munchkins of Munchkinland rejoicing in the recent death of the Wicked Witch of the West. They are interrupted when Galinda the Good Witch, played by popstar Ariana Grande, descends in her bubble to confirm the news, as well as complicate the life of the recently deceased. Even as she tries to explain that the Wicked Witch had difficulties in her past, the Munchkins’ revel turns into a mob scene that feels inspired by a Trump rally, where they erect and burn an effigy of the Wicked Witch.

We learn that the two witches were once schoolmates at the ivy-covered halls of Shiz University, an Ozian version of Yale or Harvard, which have become sites of repression and corporatization as students demand divestment from genocide and fossil fuels in recent years. Galinda — blonde, bouncy and very pink — is embraced immediately by her peers, while Elphaba (played by Cynthia Erivo) is looked upon with revulsion for her green skin and standoffish manner. The casting here couldn’t be starker, making Wicked’s racial metaphors even more impactful on screen than they have been in the many runs of the stage show with white Elphabas.

Elphaba, ostracized for most of her life by her Munchkin peers in childhood, her family and her new classmates, finally feels acknowledged by authority at university and learns her powers for which she was scorned for most of her life may just grant her an audience with the Wizard if she “makes good” — and Elphaba’s constant striving for goodness challenges the viewer’s perceptions of good and evil.

But Elphaba’s othering also makes her sensitive to the plight of the talking animals of Oz, who are losing their ability to speak. The animals are used as scapegoats for the decline in material conditions in Oz (namely a great drought and famine); throughout the film it becomes clear that the authoritarian Wizard is marginalizing them to serve his own political purposes. There are some real-world parallels: As our own climate crisis continues unabated, our food systems are in great peril, and right-wing forces would much rather focus on repressing trans folks and immigrants instead of fixing the problems at hand. The right knows that it can benefit from any relational voids that we leave in our wake.

We all know a Galinda — she is someone who believes her various privileges of race, class and ability should grant her access to the proverbial Emerald City, and is shocked when they do not. But Galinda also sees herself as kind and generous, even when her “kindly” actions betray her self-serving nature. She does, however, have radical potential in her, which we see when she refuses to listen to her friends and dances in solidarity with Elphaba, eventually turning a crowd in Elphaba’s favor.

By the time we get to the Emerald City, we see that Galinda is still performative in her protest. She changes her name to “Glinda” to honor one of the few talking animals she has an interpersonal relationship with — a professor who mispronounced her name before he was forcibly removed from his classroom by police. Meanwhile, Elphaba has turned to radical action — freeing a lion cub from the Wizard’s grasp. They are however, united in common purpose, which is rooted in Elphaba’s desire to help the animal citizens of Oz.

Both Galinda and Elphaba’s relationships to power and control are the crux of conflict in the movie, and so they are at odds for the majority of it. This conflict reaches a fever pitch when the two women learn of the Wizard’s plan to create a force of flying monkeys to spy on Ozians. Elphaba is frustrated by Galinda’s subservience and refusal to see the same problems in Oz as she does. Galinda, for her part, thinks that Elphaba could accomplish much more if she just was good in the right way, and chooses to work within the power structures around them because it’s more comfortable for her.

Elphaba rightly points out that they are more powerful if they go against the Wizard together in an effort to push Galinda to abandon the Wizard and her own desires. It’s a singular strategy that we might see as morally correct as an audience, but it is complicated for Galinda by the nuances of real life — treasured interpersonal relationships and support systems, material comfort, a desire to return to “normalcy.” Galinda is not ready to leave behind the privileges afforded to her by her status. Many of us aren’t, and in times of conflict may find ourselves digging our heels in. It’s a test in doing what’s right without centering yourself that Galinda fails, one that we’ve probably all failed at some point on our journey for collective liberation.

Almost everyone can see themselves in Elphaba and her othering. The spurning of her passion and sense of justice by those around her was particularly profound for me when I first saw the show. As someone from a large southern family, I was the neurodivergent, queer sister that was “too loud” or “too much” when I disagreed with authority or their points of view on politics.

Some of us may also see ourselves in Galinda, who is only now having her entire worldview shaken up. The system has always worked for and with the Galindas of the world, up to a point. We might sneer at those people who allow the wool to remain over their eyes, but despite her privilege, Galinda is largely useless in the eyes of the system of Oz; her power is simply a foil in her role of the Good Witch to the Wicked Witch, used by the Wizard to maintain power across Oz. Like a lot of people, it’s not until Galinda is faced with her own actions and the same status precarity that led her into the arms of the Wizard that she is forced to abandon him, and pushed toward joining a broad coalition that ultimately brings about his undoing.

But both Galinda and Elphaba, in their own ways, find it hard to believe something sinister could be happening in Oz, let alone that the source is the Wizard himself. This disbelief — the product of years of propaganda — means the two of them are both on the cusp of potentially being radicalized rightward. Elphaba, however, recognizes the Wizard’s game, and refuses to allow her own marginalization to be used to marginalize others. Meanwhile, Galinda is almost immediately embraced by the right following her decision not to join Elphaba’s cause. It’s a tension that a lot of people who watch this movie may find familiar post-election.

The fight for collective liberation has always been here, and the reality is some people don’t wake up to that fight until it’s a do-or-die situation. It’s understandably frustrating — a frustration we see reflected in Elphaba — but that source of potential conflict must be overcome if we hope to save as many people as possible while the right is bent on sacrificing us all for profit. We need to fold those who we have common purpose with into our movements, even if our methodologies differ. More importantly, we have to seek those people out instead of abandoning them to the right.

The right has everything to gain when we are divided, when we allow ourselves to be cut off from each other for whatever conflicts we have as human beings. Unfortunately, they’ve learned how to coalesce in ways that the many lefts are still trying to figure out.

We can’t immediately discount the Galindas for the role they can play in our liberation; those on the right surely do not, because they wield their power with razor accuracy when the time comes. Anyone could stumble and maybe even fall for the allure of the Emerald City, but that doesn’t make them irredeemable. Some people are on the cusp of joining our movements. We can push them away and tell them they’re not doing leftism correctly, or we can understand that we may have differences, but ultimately also have a common cause.