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Revolution the musical: Wicked for okay · The Spectacle

• 0:00
  Sam.
• 0:43
  Hello and welcome to the spectacle where we gathered. Three here are going to dissect Wicked for good and how it possibly has not defied the gravity of the franchise. And. And that it is maybe bad question.
• 1:04
  Mark, but it has good right in the name.
• 1:07
  It has good right in the name. And that was a mistake. That was a fucking mistake. And you can hear all about our fraught thoughts. Call back to part one after we hear a jingle from another show on the Channel Zero Network of anarchist Podcasts.
• 1:33
  Now on the Channel Zero Anarchist Podcast.
• 1:35
  Network, tune in to the Beautiful Idea.
• 1:38
  A project from a collective of several anarchist and autonomous media producers scattered around the world.
• 1:44
  We're bringing you interviews and stories from the front lines of autonomous social movements.
• 1:48
  And struggles, as well as original commentary and analysis. Episodes include action news, interviews with frontline organizers, and deep dive discussions. Check out thebeautifulidea show and the Channel Zero Network for more information.
• 2:02
  And we're back. And who do I have here with me today in this little cadre of anarchy? Musical reviewers. Raiders, Shit talkers.
• 2:14
  You got me. I'm Miriam.
• 2:16
  And I'm Rosa.
• 2:17
  And you may remember us from the first episode where we talked about Wicked. We've also talked about Newsies, Les Mis, Assassins. I feel like there was another one. Did we? How many episodes have we done? How many musicals have we done?
• 2:32
  Well, we've also talked about Wicked before.
• 2:36
  Yes, yes, yes, Regular Wicked.
• 2:38
  Not permanently Wicked.
• 2:40
  Yes, yes, yes. What are yalls? Kind of like first. First impressions. Miriam, what was your first impression of the movie or first reaction? First thing that you wanted to punch someone in the face over?
• 2:54
  Well, so my very first reaction was like, oh, is this movie good? Actually, because the very first scene we have Elphaba doing terrorism, and that is cool to watch and interesting and sort of more overtly like political direct action than anything we see in the first movie. We see her directly sabotaging the wizards construction project. We see her liberating enslaved animals. We see her kicking ass, beating up cops, throwing her broomstick, and then jumping on it and riding it like a skateboard, which is just very cool to do.
• 3:31
  Like, if you want your movie to succeed, have someone ride something that isn't a skateboard. As a skateboard, I think this is just the road to success.
• 3:43
  Oh, yeah, no, they should teach that in film school. Just show that scene of Legolas sliding down the. The elephant with on a shield or whatever. Yeah, yeah.
• 3:52
  Marty McFly ripping that scooter apart. Yeah, skateboards. People want skateboards.
• 3:59
  The filmgoers want to See, non skateboards ridden like skateboards. I was. I was disillusioned in the movie very early on. Although I will say, one of the things that was consistently good throughout the movie. Camera work much better this time around. I could see the costumes, I could see the sets, and I loved the costumes on the sets.
• 4:17
  So.
• 4:17
  So, like, thank you for holding the camera still. Thank you for letting me look at things. I enjoyed that. The first movie should have been shot like this movie, and I. I would have liked it a lot more. But in like the second scene, I had this realization because, like, okay, I like musicals. I don't. I don't know if you know that about me, but I. I do enjoy a musical and I've seen many of them. Not, you know, as many as I would like, but I. I've seen quite a few musicals. And I realized in the second scene that the makers of this movie were not liking musicals in the same way that I am and that they were not enjoying themselves playing with musicals in the way that I would like. Because in the second scene, we see Glinda, now the, like, face of the wizard's regime, walk out to a. An onto like some kind of terrace like thing in front of an adoring crowd who are like all jubilant and excited about something. And she walks out singing with her arms outstretched. Y' all can't see this, but I have my arms outstretched. Crucifixion style, straight from the shoulders, 180° of Glinda arm. And I'm sorry, but like, when your character, who is a blonde figurehead of a fascist regime, walks out to face an adoring crowd with arms outstretched, you do not have her arms stay at 180, straight out side to side. You bend the fucking elbows at a 90 degree angle. You do the Evita arms. Like, you can see now I'm doing the Evita arms. Not because Evita is a great musical, but because we've seen musicals before and like, we're here, we know what we're doing. We're watching a musical. Like, it's weird to not do the Evita arms, right? For some reason, I found this very disappointing. I don't even like Evita. I don't know why I found this so upsetting, but the arms staying straight. There are other parts of the movie staying straight that I took issue with, but this was the first time. Okay, am I crazy? Did anybody. Was anybody else bothered by the lack of Evita arms?
• 6:20
  I can't say I was specifically bothered by the Lack of Evita arms. But I do think I had a somewhat similar moment with Glinda's two wands. We get pageant child Glinda, who is given, yes, it's a toy, but it's a egg on a stick. It's pretty beautiful.
• 6:44
  Yeah, it looks cool as hell.
• 6:46
  It's got very Tiffany ish, Lalique Petals, etc. And then we get grown up Glinda being given a wand. And is it fancy? Is it pretty? Kinda, sorta. But it looks a little bit like it was on sale at Claire's with very sort of. I don't know, they didn't even bother to make the little plastic light rays look like crystal. Which really, if you're gonna have your character go from pageant kid to fascist figurehead, like, that should be a real Faberge egg on that wand. Like that should have, I don't know, a tableau of the Emerald City in it or the Winter palace or something.
• 7:49
  Right?
• 7:49
  Like, they couldn't have gotten Swarovski to like, knock something up?
• 7:54
  Seriously?
• 7:55
  Yeah. Okay, though, I mean, yes, Glinda's the head of this fascist regime, but I really liked the childhood Glinda scene. That was actually maybe one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
• 8:11
  Say more about that, I think, because.
• 8:13
  It'S like Glinda is. And whatever. I am a little bit of a Glinda sympathizer, I will say, but not about her actions, about what I want her to do. And kind of like the failings of this narrative, which is that in the childhood Glinda wand scene, it's like you're seeing a child rife with possibility who wants to believe in magic and wants to inspire people and. And adult Glinda takes the wrong lesson from childhood Glinda because she's found real magic, which she can't do. And everything is a facade for like the wand, the bubble. They're all these tricks, these facades, these. They're not even like they're illusions, but only in the metaphorical sense. And she knows that. And it's like. Like watching her feel like be deeply bothered by that was actually, I think one of the more tragic and good parts of the movie to me is that I can see how bothered Glinda is by knowing that these things are fake. And so what she does go to is a hope or like the magic of inspiration. And that's what she tries to lean into as an adult. But she kind of does it for the wrong reasons and with the wrong purpose. And I think that she could have that character could have done so many better things, made so many better choices.
• 9:48
  And what's really interesting to me about that scene actually, is we see her wanting a thing, right? We see her coming in, wanting to be able to do magic. And at the end of the scene, having failed to do magic, she is instructed, well, actually, what you should want is this different thing that you already have, which is everybody loving you. And. And we see her throughout both movies, sort of ostensibly want everybody to love her. Like, ostensibly want popularity as. As kind of her end goal, but be constantly kind of sidelined by the fact that she really does genuinely want to do magic and is bothered by the fact that she can't. And, like, that is actually an interesting. An interesting conflict for the character.
• 10:31
  And I think there's a way that that scene is the first point in the movie where we explicitly get told that one should not believe in things or want things. Even Glinda. I mean, Glinda later on has a whole thing that. Where she's. She makes it very clear she is supposed to believe in less. She's supposed to want less and be content with her lot. She's not supposed to want excitement, she's not supposed to want power, she's not supposed to want love. And when the villain is oper or one of the villains is operating from a. I should want less and be less. It really makes the movie's position against belief or principles or desires really transparent.
• 11:29
  Yeah. This movie hates the idea of people having, like, sincerely held beliefs that they are willing to fight for, like, so much. And there's a couple of moments where that I think, becomes, like, really upsettingly clear. I. I was surprised by it because of the opening. Because the opening seemed to be such a. Like, hell, yeah, she's doing it. She's fighting, you know. But what we see very quickly is, look, from the first. The end of the first movie, Elphaba knows the wizard has no power, right?
• 12:04
  Yeah.
• 12:06
  She then spends an entire movie as a powerful magical practitioner. She spends an entire movie fighting against somebody who. Who she could easily defeat if she were to fight him with direct force. But she doesn't.
• 12:21
  She could take that up whenever she wants. Yes.
• 12:24
  Literally, at any time. But she doesn't do that. Instead, she engages in a losing propaganda war with somebody who does not care about the truth, but who does have, like, a pretty cool practical effect. Zine printer that I kind of want. But by engaging in this losing propaganda war with somebody who does not care about the truth, she refuses to win. And, like, frankly, it's giving Democratic Party. It's like. It's this real refusal to acknowledge the presence of power. This, like, refusal to admit that you have power and the refusal to use power in favor of, like, well, what if we just keep arguing with somebody who can't be argued with?
• 13:07
  Yeah, really jumping to the end here. I kind of love that Elphaba and Fiyero leave Oz because Elphaba does spend the entire time trying to subvert people's prejudices and expectations and finds that that is impossible and is like, I'm out. I'm like, this is the best character development in the movie is giving up on changing people's minds. Right.
• 13:33
  She decides that rather than changing people's minds, she just has to go with what they already believe.
• 13:37
  I mean, two things on this connected to the movie's position against believing in anything. It also very much agrees with the Wizard's truth is what everyone believes in. Which I wrote down Ford history as bunk. And I think that there's a line in that scene or that song that's very explicitly citing that line from one of America's favorite Nazis.
• 14:06
  I think the line that you're talking about, where I come from, we have people who believe all sorts of things that aren't true. We call it history. I think that might come from the movie. I think that might come from the wizard of Oz. I could be wrong about that. And if I were really committed and had a work ethic, I would have watched the wizard of Oz today.
• 14:25
  But I didn't, which I feel like. Also, if it is from the 1939 film that also very much has Ford's history as funk in mind. But the other thing is, yes, I liked the Alphaba and Fiero getting the out of town, but why is that the right answer for them, but the wrong answer for the animals? They actually created a organized resistance, an underground railway, if you will, to get the out of. For exactly those same reasons. Like, I think the politics of the explicit politics of this movie are like, what they are most opposed to is the Underground Railroad as meaning self liberation and actual collective organization for freedom.
• 15:22
  Yeah, yeah. It's a really strange line. I want to jump back to a weird thing that came out in our first failed recording, but, like, within, like, the structure of the movie. So in the first, I've. I've never seen the stage show, so I'm like, in watching them, I'm, like, limited by not knowing what happens. And in the first movie, they have this framing narrative of Glinda telling The people of Munchkinland a story. And I expected to go back to that at the end of the first movie or like the beginning of the second movie. And like, it didn't. It like came to like midway through the second movie in which we realize that it's like Glinda actually has this opportunity to use her powers of persuasion and inspiration for good and has actually chosen not to because I assumed she was telling a story and she's not. She's not telling the people of Munchkin Land this tragic tale about why everyone hates this person that they shouldn't hate. She's just in her head being unable to decide what to do and, and.
• 16:36
  Ultimately coming to the decision not to clear up anything.
• 16:40
  Yeah. And it's so fucking weird.
• 16:44
  I think I was totally wrong about that line being from the wizard of Oz, by the way. Sorry about that.
• 16:49
  Sorry, everyone.
• 16:50
  No, but I, I think that's really central to the whole thing. But there is no moment where the actual bigotries get challenged.
• 17:02
  Right?
• 17:03
  They are left absolutely unchanged. Like Elphaba allegedly dies as a martyr to the cause of changing. Absolutely nothing. Like Oz is still an autocracy. She doesn't. In like the deal she makes with Glinda, she gives up the grimory and does not get anything. Like, no animals are freed in that arrangement who have not already freed themselves. Glinda later on makes a declaration restoring the order that we see at the beginning of the first movie where animals are, are second class citizens.
• 17:51
  And I'm sure their return will go great because people who have taken the positions and possessions of displaced people are like, famously chill about giving them back.
• 18:03
  Yeah.
• 18:04
  Elphaba doesn't even give Dillamund his glasses back.
• 18:07
  Okay, what the fuck is up with this? I'm so confused. Like, so presumably the animals can talk again at the end of the movie. Did they just not want to pay Peter Dinklage?
• 18:19
  I think that's got to be it. I think they were like, well, we.
• 18:23
  Got to cut costs somewhere.
• 18:24
  This guy charges so much.
• 18:26
  Yeah, like, because, you know, Dr. Dillon couldn't talk for the first chunk of the movie. And then at the end I was like, oh, he's going to say something like thank you. And then it just, it's just a goofy little silent image of Dr. Dillamond in the classroom. And I'm like, what the fuck is go. What?
• 18:48
  They can't have wanted us to believe that his, his lack of speech is permanent because we see him back in the classroom. Like, we are to assume he Begins teaching again, which, like, I mean, it is. It is possible for somebody to teach without being able to verbalize. But, like, the assumption would be, I think, that he can speak. So, yeah, not having him speak is just pure. Not wanting to pay an A list.
• 19:13
  Star to say one line.
• 19:16
  To say one line. Yeah. I was so fucking confused. I was like, so nothing has changed.
• 19:23
  I think my problem, he also can't read the blackboard. Like, Elphaba has his glasses in her little. In her little lair. He doesn't have them in that last scene.
• 19:37
  For me, like, the whole, the. The problem with the entire, like, revel, you know, what should be a revolutionary storyline is that it. I feel like nobody who makes mainstream Hollywood movies and tells stories in this context can imagine a revolutionary as anything but a savior figure. So we only see Elphaba rescuing animals, and we only see her, like, trying to lead them and tell them how they should be resisting. We do not see her, like, acting in solidarity with animals who are doing their own liberation or anything like that, because that's not the story that, like, Hollywood is used to telling about revolutionaries. And as a consequence, we basically see Elphaba turned from what could be a really cool revolutionary figure who works with the existing animal resistance networks using the power that she has as a magic practitioner, you know, all that stuff. Instead, she's basically her Hermione trying to free the house elves, which is like, one of the worst pieces of writing on the planet when it comes to, you know, telling stories about resistance struggles. Like, that's basically the vibe we, we see her trying to lead a struggle that did not ask her to lead and explicitly rejects her leadership. And then we see her when she actually has the moment where she could destroy the wizard and his power. She says, you once asked me what my heart's desire is, and now I know the answer. I want to fight you until the day I die. Which, like, girl, you can't fight him until the day you die unless you are giving him every advantage and refusing to win. You want to fight him until the day he dies, which should be today in about three seconds. Because you're a witch and he's just some guy.
• 21:35
  Yeah, yeah, Very frustrating. I think Elphaba is just too focused on her thing is that she's like, I don't care what, that people hate me because I'm green or whatever. And it's like she's kind of obsessed with people's perception of her and misaligning and misconstruing, like, everything that she Does. I don't know. It's a hard movie and it's like the narrative of basically nothing being resolved at the end of the movie, except that the wizard is no longer there and like animals are second class citizens again. It's like if you deposed. It's like if Trump was deposed tomorrow, you know, and we got literally any other Democratic politician. If we just got Biden again, you know, which I guess has already happened. I guess this has already happened. It really.
• 22:28
  Biden has, has so much in common with Ariana Grande.
• 22:31
  So much in common.
• 22:36
  Biden famously also has a four octave range.
• 22:41
  It's like deposing, you're deposing authoritarianism for the most mediocre and like still up ruler that you could have. It's so weird. And that's like seen as like good to people. I don't know.
• 23:00
  I would say, though, I don't even know that it goes that far.
• 23:05
  Yeah.
• 23:06
  The wizard, who is a autocrat whose power is based on fake magic is replaced by Glinda, who is just as much of an autocrat. She's just supposed to be nicer. Who also is not a magic worker.
• 23:24
  And the people of Oz never know that they've been bamboozled.
• 23:29
  Well, and the other thing that really struck me on, on the second watch, because I watched this movie twice, which is too many times, by the way. The wizard is a fascist, right? And he's a fascist who is like not particularly well explored in terms of like why he's doing this or why he wants to do this. We, we sort of see him being like, yeah, we gotta be mean to the animals because that's how you unite people. Whatever. But the fascist who has like, to me real resonance in terms of actual fascists operating today is Nessa Rose.
• 24:03
  Yeah. If I may, because so unfortunate.
• 24:08
  She does everything she does for like these very petty personal reasons. And if there's one thing we see currently with fascists, it is the pettiness and personalness of what they do. Her taking civil rights away from Munchkins because her boyfriend tries to leave her, you know, is not dissimilar to Elon Musk campaigning against trans people because his estranged child is happy as a, as a trans woman. Her whole motivation being about. I just want to return to the way I felt when I was in school. Like, that's what American fascism is. The whole like, remember what they took from you and it's just a fucking Pizza Hut ad from the 80s is like, that's where Nessarose is. She doesn't like, adulthood. And so she becomes a fascist and enacts fascism on the region she has control over when she could have protected it. Right. We see her explicitly refuse to protect it because she is more interested in this nostalgia where she's trying to hold on to Bach because of, like, what he represents about this moment in her youth where she felt good. And, like, instead of recognizing that, like, yeah, people have a lot of fun in college, and then. Then we're. Then they have to do shit. Instead of doing that, she becomes a. An Oz fascist.
• 25:37
  Yeah. I hate to say it, and, you know, maybe this is what I'll get canceled over. Nessa Rose is a femcel. Yeah. And it's fucking weird. I don't know. The character of Nessarose in general is like. It's this really hard character because she is someone who experiences marginalization, inequity, and discrimination based on, like, who she is and blames possibly the only person who supports her and who actually loves her as the reason for that. And it's so fucking weird and hard. I had such a hard time with the character of Nessa Rose. And then she uses her little position of power to, like. She literally stops Bach from leaving because he doesn't like her and isn't in love with her and is like, well, I'm gonna punish you for not being in love with me and keep you around until you are. And I'm like, this is fucked up.
• 26:46
  I think what we see with Nessarosa's storyline is the movie attempting to rewrite a really problematic storyline from the stage show and not doing a good job at all. Okay, so the. The storyline in the musical is that Nessa has been in this relationship with Bach since school. And then Elphaba, having gained the ability to do magic, shows up and enchants the slippers so that they can make Nessa walk, whereupon she, like, no longer needs her wheelchair. And Bach says, well, now that you can walk, I'm no longer. I mean, he doesn't say it in these words. I don't remember what words he says, but he basically says, well, I. I'm not. I don't feel guilty enough to be your boyfriend anymore, so I'm gonna leave you. Because I've been in love with Glinda this whole time that he. He has only been dating her out of, like, pity or whatever. Whereupon she gets mad rightfully, and. And does the.
• 27:43
  Like.
• 27:43
  That. That part seems like being mad would. Would make sense in that situation. But she then does the curse that results.
• 27:49
  Yeah.
• 27:50
  They're all bad. But, like, that was a really problematic story. Yeah, no. Bad. They should not. Nobody, Nobody here needs to be doing the things they're doing. But that's a problematic storyline. Like the. The, you know, oh, her disability gets fixed, you know, and then her boyfriend leaves her because she doesn't need him anymore. Like, that's bad. But then the attempt to rewrite it, maybe worse.
• 28:11
  Yeah, yeah.
• 28:13
  Like just turning her into a fascistic, like, as you said, femcel child.
• 28:18
  Yeah. Yeah. I wanted Nessarose to be a cool character when I first saw Wicked last year. And I was like, this is. I'm. I cannot believe that I'm watching this play out on a movie screen. Yeah. Which leads me to a really strange. So speaking of rewriting things. And it's like, this is, you know, it's an adaption of a musical that's based on some books that are vaguely based on another movie. And there's, like, Lineage, which is based on a book. Yeah. And for the musical of Wicked in general, like the stage show and this and the movie, imo, it could have ended with a little bit of additions after Defying Gravity.
• 29:08
  Yeah.
• 29:10
  And that would have been a better story. And that's my problem with this new movie is that, like, there is no discernible narrative arc going on in it. And because all of the climax happens in the first movie, if we have.
• 29:25
  To have a movie that takes place after Defying Gravity, I would like to see how Oz is doing in like five years.
• 29:33
  We do see that. And it's Returned to Oz, which is amazing.
• 29:41
  Ah, what is. Okay, wait. As are a resident or.
• 29:44
  No, is it Returned to Oz or Ozma of Oz, the fellow.
• 29:47
  So Return to Oz is the film. Asma of Oz is the book. Asma of Oz is about how a trans girl rules Oz, which is kind of cool, I will say, by the way, while we're talking about the original Oz books, does not. I do not feel like we can mention Baum without mentioning that he was a genocidal racist. Not. Not something that, like, I just don't feel like you can, like, talk about this guy without mentioning that also in those books, the wizard sticks around. I don't remember how he gets back from the hot air. I don't remember. It's been decades. But he does stick around. Also would have been interesting to see how Oz dealt with him if he had stuck around in the Wicked verse, but we don't get to see that.
• 30:32
  Yeah, Rosa. And maybe Miriam, maybe. You seem also knowledgeable. Of this. But for the second part of the. For. For Good. How does For Good kind of stack up against, like, whatever is going on in the Wicked books?
• 30:49
  So I reread Wicked after watching the first movie, and I should have at least flipped through after watching For Good. It bears some resemblance to it, but not a whole lot. I believe not a whole lot. Largely because of how much they destroyed Maguire's character of Fiero, who, for folks who don't know, is a black barbarian with heavy facial tattooing who is not a, like, golden boy of the kingdom. He is kind of a freak from beyond the borders. And he and Elphaba do have a single night together, after which he is responsible for the cops finding her and she does go to ground up in his ancestral castle. But I think that's about where it stops. I don't think that he becomes the straw man in the book, though I am not totally sure.
• 32:09
  In the book, when they have their one night together, does Elphaba put on the biggest, chunkiest gray cardigan for sex purposes? Because that was one of the many things that confused me in this. Well, like, it is difficult to understate how unsexy the build up to. As long as your mind is like they stand on opposite sides of the room, like gravely stripping. And then Elphaba puts on the biggest sweater you ever saw. And I love sweaters. I'm not saying sweaters are bad, but it is a peculiarly unerotic choice.
• 32:46
  Yeah.
• 32:47
  Also, she takes on and off her overcoat, I think twice before she even gets down to one layer, and then puts on a sweater.
• 32:55
  It just doesn't convince me, which is. I don't know if it's time to talk about. How about this movie's refusal to admit that it's gay. But it did not convince me that these two heterosexuals wanted to have heterosexual sex with each other. Heterosexual.
• 33:11
  Oh my God. Yeah. Let's talk about how not why, why isn't. Why isn't it gay? Why, why can't it be?
• 33:20
  Why is it gay? It's just so gay. Why can't it just be gay?
• 33:25
  I know. Like, Glinda is clearly in love with Elph. Like, clearly.
• 33:31
  Yeah. I feel crazy. The whole movie seems to know this, but then also wants us to derive some kind of like. Like wants us to have any kind of feeling about Elphaba ending up with Fierro. Like that's a thing we should care about. They barely share screen time in this movie. Elphaba and Glinda spend more time holding hands than Elphaba and Fiero spend in a room together.
• 33:55
  Yeah, yeah. Which is a fun corollary with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo's press tour stuff is that they're just like in contact. In physical contact with each other, like for the entire. Every interview. I'm being a little hyperbolic, but they're like, they're like holding hands and like fidgeting with each other's fingers and like fawning over each other. And I'm just like, why don't we get this in the movie?
• 34:25
  Gals being pals, just witches being bitches. I don't know. That was said complimentary, which is being, you know, parentheses complimentary, of course.
• 34:37
  And the scene where Elphaba locks Glinda in the closet.
• 34:41
  In the closet.
• 34:45
  Is then followed by the. The through the door love scene that if it has to do with anything, it's the. The Cocteau. Or is it the Cocteau prison movie or the. No, yes, the Cock. I think it's the Cocteau movie where prisoners are having gay sex through doors and holes.
• 35:16
  Cool.
• 35:18
  Yeah. I think if your female leads say I love you to each other and then one of them locks the other in a closet, you know what kind of movie you're making, right?
• 35:28
  Yeah.
• 35:29
  You have.
• 35:30
  Yeah.
• 35:31
  Someone has to.
• 35:33
  Well, Ariana and Cynthia, I believe, ad libbed the I love you during rehearsal, which does lead me to believe that perhaps the two of them, you know, maybe made two multi million dollar budget movie musicals instead of just having sex with each other. People subliminate things in all kinds of ways. But you know what, what can you do? They knew it was. They knew those characters were in love.
• 35:58
  Yeah.
• 35:59
  It's. It's weird that anything about the movie asks us to pretend that that that is not the central romantic relationship of the movie.
• 36:07
  Yeah.
• 36:09
  And especially that. That Elphaba is going to settle for dick made of burlap.
• 36:21
  Okay. A Fiero. Scarecrow. Scarecrow. Straw man. What is his character's name? The Scarecrow. Scarecrow.
• 36:29
  Scarecrow.
• 36:30
  Scarecrow. He is, however, strong.
• 36:32
  Yeah, yeah. One thing that I. And this is where the movie really poorly telegraphed something. Or didn't because it didn't telegraph. It was that I actually love how much Fiyero is in love with Elphaba. And like Jonathan Bailey portraying that was actually kind of awesome. Like just the. I need to help this person. I will become the head of the military so that I can help find her, so that I can help her and not harm her. He's like co opting the military for his own purposes, which are completely contrary to the purpose that the military is supposed to do. And I really like that. And I put it together later. But I was like, oh. I was like, wait, why would. Why would the Scarecrow be on this revenge quest with Dorothy and the Tin man and the lion? Which. Golly. The Lion. Holy fuck. Like, I'm sorry. Yeah. What you're upset that you were removed from captivity. Holy. Somehow self. But what they don't telegraph is that. And it gets muddled is that I'm like, oh, the Scarecrow goes on this quest with Dorothy so that he can protect Elphaba from Dorothy. And that is not connected in the movie.
• 37:57
  I think I could be. I think I could believe that the Scarecrow meets Dorothy when she finds him on the. On the yellow brick road and offers to accompany her to the Emerald City because he's like, look at this poor lost kid. Also, I might want to go punch the wizard. That could work. And then I guess also the like, oh, I don't have a brain thing could be like a good way to cover up his actual backstory, which is like, oh, me, I'm the leader of this country's military and I'm out trying to subvert it to my own purposes.
• 38:30
  Yeah.
• 38:30
  But yet once they get to the point where it's like, oh, we're going to go kill the witch, he's like, yes, I'll come with you on this mission, Small child. That is. That is an untold story. There is.
• 38:44
  Yeah.
• 38:46
  Oh, I want to come back to the Lion. So if it's. If it's more on Scarecrow, Fiero, keep going.
• 38:50
  Yeah, okay. Or sort of go back to the Lion.
• 38:54
  Well, I think the lion stuff is the same gesture as Elphaba's first scene with the animals. Organized exodus where it's. The lion is the trope. Is the anti abolitionist trope of the slave who didn't want to be freed.
• 39:18
  Yeah.
• 39:19
  And again we're in this. Elphaba could be being, I don't know, like fucking William Lloyd Garrison here in a. Like following the lead of enslaved people liberating themselves. But is not. And everything that we're shown with the animals is right from that. That zone of the like anti Garrisonian nominal abolitionists. The like non anti racist abolitionists physician of the early 19th century.
• 40:00
  Right. And this was a fixable writing, like problem with the writing. Right. If they wanted to keep the Cowardly lion in that, like to have him sort of have that motivation and stuff all they needed to do was, like, a quick scene implying that he has spent the intervening years in the hands of the regime.
• 40:21
  Yeah, right.
• 40:22
  All that's all you need. Like a quick shot implying that and Elphaba going, you know, oh, my God, what did they do to you? Like, there you go. You can still have him spouting all of that, but now we understand as an audience that he is not spouting, like, the truth of the condition of the subjugated animals, that he is being used as a mouthpiece by the regime.
• 40:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think with the. Okay, so back to this idea, I think of, like, why. I think the second part of the movie was. And the musical, the show in general was a bad idea, is that, like, you. A lot of the reason that we can't have. We know from the beginning that we cannot have Elphaba win because in the. In the wizard of Oz movie, the Wicked Witch is melted with water. You know, it's like all of these characters have fixed outcomes, and we know that going into the story. And usually that works and can be really fun. Like Romeo and Juliet, you find out in the first fucking, like, 10 lines of the play that the protagonists are going to die. Which, in my opinion, makes it a horror play, because you spend the whole time hoping that it's not true. But in this case, we know that it's true. We know these outcomes. And then characters are trying to get. It's like they're trying to assign them values and motivations and things like that to flesh them out that are contrary to our conceptions of those characters. But not in, like. Not in the way where, like, our conception of the Wicked Witch is changed and altered by seeing it from her perspective. It's just messy and muddy and I don't know. That's the. I really think that this whole, like, Wicked as an origin story for the Wicked Witch really could have just ended a little bit after Defying Gravity and it would have been a perfectly acceptable story. And that, like, picks up right as the wizard of Oz begins. And that, like, the rest of it was, like, a little unnecessary. That's my.
• 42:43
  I guess I. I just want to see Elphaba engaged in revolutionary struggle, you know, like, especially because she seems to want that, too, at various points in the movie. It's. It's almost like the narrative just won't let her. Because she would win. Right? Because, like you said, it's a foregone conclusion that she will lose. So we have to have some reason why this, you know, character with liberatory intentions and all the power to do. To accomplish her goals. Doesn't.
• 43:14
  Yeah. And it's like the whole line, we're unlimited. I'm like, no, you're very limited by the constraints of this plot. Was my joke.
• 43:26
  But I think, no, it's true. Also, when they come back and say. And she sings, I'm limited. It is some of the. In a show with a lot of bad writing, that is some bad writing.
• 43:40
  Two things. One, I realize it's not the Cocteau blood of a poet I was thinking of. It's the Genet. A song of love with the. With the men passing smoke through the wall through a straw because only one of them has a cigarette that I think the closet scene is about.
• 43:59
  I think you might be giving the director more credit than is due. But okay, the.
• 44:04
  The author is dead. But I think that. That. That all of that is absolutely true. But it's mostly true if Elphaba is the protagonist and Elphaba is not the protagonist. Elphaba is the enabling, for lack of a better phrase, magical Negro in these movies. Glinda's the protagonist, and it's about her rise to power through being diverted from wanting wonder and magic and the ability to change things in the world to. What can I get if people like me? And in the same way, it's not a movie that has any problem with the idea of wicked witches or that thinks that wicked witches don't exist or if they exist, should be perhaps treated as human beings. Madame Morrible is an actual wicked witch, and she is the villain of the movie. She is the yellow peril behind the charming Yankee charlatan. She is the Dem. Current U.S. democratic Party's idea of Putin as the actual evil behind Trump, who is who, like, may go a little far, but he's perfectly fine. He's just a charming Yankee Charlotte.
• 45:45
  I will also say this movie really did not. Really, really did. Michelle. Yo. Dirty.
• 45:53
  Yeah, like the.
• 45:54
  The first movie, I think worked fine. Worked with her, you know, in a way that was good. And this movie did not. And it was near the end when we see her doing magic where she's, like, waving her arms around in a cool, witchy way, casting spells, and it looks cool as hell. And like, she just. She sells the. Out of it because she's Michelle Yeoh. She is good at this. Where I was like, oh. All they needed to do was let her showcase her actual talents instead of, like, forcing her to awkwardly sing, you know, out of her. Out of her natural range. Like, I, I, I'm so mad. She's so good and she comes off poorly in this movie and it is not her fault.
• 46:38
  No.
• 46:38
  Yeah.
• 46:39
  They did not deserve her talent.
• 46:43
  And, and part of that is also nobody else is, is using their arms to cast spells. She is, you know, wait, don't we.
• 46:55
  See Elphaba do, don't we see her like waving her arms over the book? I could be misremembering. I was.
• 47:00
  I think we, I think we see her doing some like, sort of circle gesture Y stuff and some pointing, but not the kind of very in film especially marked as either East Asian martial arts or straight up picking opera kinds of work that Madame Morribal does in the, that big. In the tornado casting scene, which I think does some work towards like, she isn't just any peril.
• 47:39
  Okay, so that's interesting that they used it that way because in the stage version, Elphaba's spell casting is prefigured in that dance scene at the Ozdust. And that was, by the way, one of the. I'm sure I talked about this in the first episode and I don't want to get too much into the first movie, but one of the most baffling choices of the first movie was to take a scene where Elphaba shows up at the club and dances weirdly while everybody else is dancing squarely. Like, she basically does a goth dance while everybody else is doing like a sock hop or some shit, you know, and then, and then everybody is staring at her. And then Glinda joins her in the goth dancing instead. Turned it into a weird silent interpretive dance where there's no music and it's like, what is happening right now anyway, that goth dancing is how she casts spells later. Like she waves her arms around in a way very reminiscent of how she was dancing at the Oz Dust. So it. Which is like, that's a cool use of choreography. A cool and good use of choreography. And they did still use that dance in the movie to like, you know, underscore her connection with Glinda. But they took away that connection to, to her magic.
• 48:56
  Yeah.
• 48:57
  In a way that both sort of makes her magic less interesting and also, as you say, kind of others Madame Morrible's casting in a way that, that I hadn't considered.
• 49:08
  Yeah, well, I feel like there were more opportunities in storytelling in this movie to be like, magic is complicated. Magic is hard to understand and like, comes with, you know, great power and great responsibility because you can like, fuck things up really easily. And I don't really, but I don't really feel like that was actually the message of the movie, you know. No, but it kept happening for sure. The only like, positive use of magic we see in the entire movie is Elphaba flying.
• 49:44
  Yeah, that's true.
• 49:45
  Everything else is like, oh, you kind of that one up or. Oh, golly. Yeah, you really, really like Monkey Pod, this one, you know, it's like they. They use magic as like a monkey wing, you know, monkey winged.
• 50:04
  It's almost like this movie doesn't really want people to exercise what power they have.
• 50:10
  Yeah, it doesn't. It wants them to kind of get in line or leave, like, I don't know. But. Okay. One thing that I do love about Wicked in general, kind of like as like a pop cultural thing is. And I want to do a whole episode about this because there is a fascination with the public mind over thinking things that the establishment thinks is terrorism is cool and because it's like, it's like that whole thing where like, people are like, it's like, oh my God, I. I resonate so much with Elphaba. And it's like there's some meme that someone made that's like who people think they are and wicked. And it's like Elphabelle, you know, like cool witch, like revolutionary. And then it's like who they actually are. And it's Glinda, which is spineless liberals, you know. But there is like a really fun fascination that people have with identifying with the witch. And you see it throughout so much media, like Star Wars. Star wars is about some terrorists who blow up an instrument of power. And that's fucking cool. And there, there's no other option. And I wish that's how Elphaba felt, you know, There is no option except to blow up the Death Star. And I wish that's how Elphaba felt about Oz or the wizard of Oz.
• 51:42
  Yeah.
• 51:43
  Not the country.
• 51:45
  So.
• 51:47
  So calling Glinda a spineless liberal is interesting because she is the one who, when given actual power, does something with it.
• 51:57
  It's true.
• 51:58
  I'm not saying she does what, what we want her to do with it, but she is the one who actually gets rid of the Wizard.
• 52:04
  It's true. It's true. Calling. I. I'm also a Linda apologist and I like that she realizes that there's no other option except to like, manipulate things from behind the scene.
• 52:15
  The. The movie is not interested in what people do when they do direct action. The movie is only interested in what people do when they Manipulate public opinion. And because of that, we get Glinda attempting to send messages by writing them in the clouds. The one thing she knows Madame Morrible can control. You know, Glinda. So. Yeah, sorry, Elphaba. And you know, she does that also because the Wicked Witch of the west in the movie does write messages and clouds. And it's cool. But like, it goes back to that thing of, like, her engaging in this losing battle that she has chosen to engage in rather than the one she could win.
• 52:55
  Yeah.
• 52:56
  And it bums me out.
• 52:59
  Yeah.
• 53:00
  I also think Glinda gets. Gets to do good things or gets to do better things because. Specifically because she's an ex Nazi.
• 53:14
  Right.
• 53:15
  It's the thing where in the liberal zone, one must believe uncritically in the ex fascists in a way that one may never believe anything from an actual anti fascist.
• 53:36
  Yeah.
• 53:37
  Like Glinda is Werner von Braun in this picture.
• 53:43
  Yeah. I just still think that Glinda really. You know, if Glinda did tell the story of the first movie to the people of Munchkinland, I kind of think the people of Munchkin Land would have come around.
• 53:58
  Absolutely.
• 54:02
  I mean, we're all on. We've all seen the story and we're on Elphaba's side.
• 54:07
  Exactly. Tell the people of Munchkin Land the truth. I don't know.
• 54:14
  It's like, I mean, this is the movie's message. You watching this, of course get it. But the public is too dumb.
• 54:28
  Yeah.
• 54:28
  I think cannot be trusted. And so all that matters is the right authoritarian ruler.
• 54:35
  Yes. I think this is exactly the problem with, like, a lot of stories that purport to be about, like, the public and what the public believes and what the public thinks, where it's like, yeah, well, you're smart enough. You're the audience. We're talking about the public.
• 54:52
  Yeah. I think it's this thing where it's like, okay, this is a strange comparison, but I'm going to compare this to the Watchmen because it's kind of the same thing. There is for those who aren't familiar with the plot of the Watchmen. It is about a hyper intelligent public figure kind of in mass, bamboozling the entire planet because of how he thinks that that will achieve a lasting peace. And about a private detective superhero who like, refuses to put up with that because it's like people. Because people are dying, there's blood on the hands of like this truth. And he wants people to know the truth. And it's. It's this idea that, like, people cannot be. The public cannot be trusted to handle true things or, like, make decisions with all of the information. And I don't. I hate that. I hate that. That's, like, kind of the message.
• 56:00
  Yeah. No. 100%. And, like, I wonder if there's also something in there about the refusal to just be gay. Right. Just as we are told. Well, the Munchkins could never. The Munchkins could never understand, like, the. The actual truth of this story. Also, the viewing public could never actually go for just a movie about lesbian witches.
• 56:27
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 56:29
  It's. It's all got to be couched in lies and euphemism and subtext. I mean, calling it subtext is generous.
• 56:38
  But you know what I mean. Yeah. I feel like we're kind of coming up at the end of our time, so I'm wondering. Closing thoughts, and maybe we can kind of recap some of our characters in a classic spectacle outing of our team. Not our team.
• 56:55
  One closing thought, which is just to come back to the very end of the movie where we kind of get. I don't know, it's a, like, Scarecrow of Arabia moment where, as Fierro and Elphaba head out into the desert, are they trekking to the promised land? What are we meant to see ahead of them? Is it Kansas? Is a sort of Kansas as Zion thing, or is it a sort of Dune, the desert itself is Zion thing or what?
• 57:36
  Yeah, I kind of view the desert as kind of like, God. I think this is what it's called in Star wars, the world between worlds. Or like, the nothing in the Neverending Story. It's just like, a sea in which, like, different worlds are, like, bubbling and floating around, you know? I don't know if that's how the world is built, but I'm assuming they will just get to another world at some point or many worlds and drop into it.
• 58:05
  I think. I think my closing thought is, number one, I hope they don't make any more wicked movies. I think it's crazy that they made two. Two was a lot. Three would be definitely too many. Look, I. I like musicals. I'll. I'll keep watching them. I do think it's so interesting that in a movie that is so focused on the idea of goodness, there's, like, very little engagement with morality. We. We don't actually engage in any sort of ethics throughout the movie. And, like, maybe I'm the weirdo for wanting there to be some ethical discussion, but, like, it's weird that it doesn't Come up and not to just, like, continually go back to Stephen Sondheim. I can talk about musicals without talking about Stephen Sondheim. Although. But why would you. But I do think it's interesting that he had this show's number in 1986, because in into the woods, the witch says, you're not good, you're not bad. You're just nice. And like, that's it. That's actually Glinda. That's actually kind of Elphaba, too.
• 59:13
  That's.
• 59:14
  That's. This show. It's not good. It's not bad. It's just nice.
• 59:20
  Yeah.
• 59:20
  And I. But I will say I enjoyed being able to see the costumes and sets this time around. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to my complaints the first time. I'm assuming that's why they shot this one.
• 59:32
  So much better. Yes, that is why they shot it. My closing thoughts are, I love seeing people cheer on what the establishment would call terrorism and what I would call revolutionary liberation and maybe do better. So our different characters, Elphaba, our team.
• 59:59
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:00:01
  If she gets her shit together.
• 1:00:03
  Yeah. She's a baby activist. But. But yes.
• 1:00:06
  Yeah. I want her to read Nonviolence and its Violent Consequences, you know?
• 1:00:11
  Yes.
• 1:00:13
  She just has the one book. There's the one book in this world, so that's the only thing she's read.
• 1:00:21
  Madame Morrible, our team.
• 1:00:24
  Oh, she's the OG Fascist. Yeah, she's like the. The truest fascist of the. Of the. Of the show.
• 1:00:32
  Except also, I want to know about her motivations.
• 1:00:35
  She has motivations.
• 1:00:39
  Exactly.
• 1:00:40
  Wild.
• 1:00:42
  Like, I. I can't tell whether she thinks that she is trying to preserve hierarchy or whether she's on some other tip altogether. She's definitely not on our team right now.
• 1:00:58
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:00
  I take back what I said. She's not on our team, but she hasn't been given enough development for us to know why she's doing what she's doing. Because she is sort of just evil. Like, that is her only characterization.
• 1:01:14
  Yeah.
• 1:01:15
  And we don't. Yeah, we don't know. Like, we don't. We. We don't know why the wizard's doing what he's doing either. Like, he says he's scapegoating the animals in order to hold on to personal power. But then when it would actually serve him to stop scapegoating the animals, he's like, well, some animals just can't be trusted. And it's like, what? You just hate animals?
• 1:01:33
  It's incoherent, coherent. Nessarose.
• 1:01:37
  Nessaros. I mean, she should have been written better, but she's. She's bad.
• 1:01:42
  Nesterose can get crushed by a house.
• 1:01:45
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:48
  I'm assuming same answer. Bach.
• 1:01:51
  No, Bach is. Bach is like, Is on our team. He's. He's the one who is like, holy. You're gonna sign that order? You shouldn't do that.
• 1:02:01
  Oh, weird. I kind of.
• 1:02:02
  Bach should have been allowed to be the Danny K character who he was halfway written as.
• 1:02:08
  Yeah, I guess I just found him also a little insufferable. Like, what? Whatever. His. His. His.
• 1:02:15
  His actual flawless people on my team who are insufferable.
• 1:02:19
  I'm like, his flaw is not realizing that Glinda does not like him and that he shouldn't date people because he thinks dating them will make him more desirable to the person that he likes. These are my fuck you, Bach moments.
• 1:02:35
  I definitely. If Bach is on our team, he needs a real talking to about his relationship style and the way he treats women. But he is one of two characters, or I guess. I guess three, who is like, it is bad to marginalize animals.
• 1:02:50
  True, true, true. Fierro. I fully believe Fierro would die for the revolution and would have gone so fucking hard to topple the regime if Elphaba had actually wanted to do that.
• 1:03:09
  Yeah. I believe he would die for the revolution if the girl he liked was on the side of the revolution. Like, I don't think he has any politics. I think he is fully guided by who he is in love with. And that's. That's okay, I guess, if. If the person he loves is on our team, he is also on our team.
• 1:03:26
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:28
  I don't disagree with any of that, but my basic reaction to him is the line from, who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I'd divorce you if you existed.
• 1:03:43
  I'm just, you know, I feel like I'm more on his team now. Life is fraudless when you're thoughtless. And.
• 1:03:56
  It would have been nice to see him talk about why he likes Elphaba. Right. Like, does he like Elphaba because of her commitment to animal liberation? Is that part of what he respects about her?
• 1:04:07
  I think he just likes her. I think he probably has some strange fetishization stuff going on. Tbh. I can't back that up. And maybe the last character that we'll do, Glinda.
• 1:04:24
  See, this is the only tough one.
• 1:04:26
  Yeah.
• 1:04:27
  I mean, no, but also, I feel like she could be talked around, but.
• 1:04:33
  Then she could get be talked around again by yeah, kind of. Whoever.
• 1:04:39
  I feel like if. If both she and Elphaba could be. If you could really talk to both of them about the concept of power and action, because we know that that's what she wants.
• 1:04:51
  Yeah. Glinda's sort of like the. She's like the. The friend who just won't acknowledge their privilege and complicity in a power dynamic and ultimately will probably accidentally or on purpose, like, betray the revolution.
• 1:05:11
  How much of her do you think would be fixed if she would just admit she was in love with it?
• 1:05:21
  I think a meaningful amount. But I think you're right that in a certain way, Elphaba and Glinda coming down solidly is about them as a unit. And I would worry about what would happen if they broke up.
• 1:05:37
  Yeah. Similarly with, like, Fiero.
• 1:05:39
  See, now that would have been an interesting second act.
• 1:05:41
  Yeah, it's just a. It's just about two lesbian witches in a poly breakup drama circle. And that's why the Wicked Witch and Oz are at odds.
• 1:05:54
  And Chestery has to sit them both down and give them some talking, too, about the concrete realities of the situation.
• 1:06:02
  Yeah, Honestly, I'd watch that over, like.
• 1:06:04
  You cannot undermine the revelation. You cannot let your breakup undermine the revelation.
• 1:06:07
  Yeah. Cool. Well, that seems like a good place to put it. I'm personally, once again, glad that this franchise is hopefully done for good. And I like to think that it hopefully, overall, did good. I don't know. It's hard to wrap up.
• 1:06:28
  Anyways, I hope more witches kiss each other.
• 1:06:33
  Yes. Yes, that's. That's the line we're going out on. I hope more. We hope more witches kiss each other. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, then you can actualize a world in which more witches kiss each other. And also, if you like the podcast, you can do things that support it. You can listen to it. You can support our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can check out our website, tangledwilderness.org you can check out other podcasts that we put out Live like the World Is Dying, or the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast. And you can also check us out on patreon@patreon.com Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, where for a variety of tours of support, you can get different things. Like, you can get a cool zine mailed to you every month, or you can get me to think or acknowledge a thing of your choosing, whether that's you, a rad animal, a concept, or, like, I mean, I hope we could get some like musicals on here maybe if you're listening and you want to support a cool musical that you like, then sign up for our acknowledgement tier and get us to shout out a cool musical. But we would like to thank Being kind and talking to strangers Na? Ulixi and Alder Tikva's Favorite Stick the Waterfront Project Nico the Kao Initiative Groot the Dog the Black Trowel Collective Dolly Parton and Edgar Mallen Poe Accordions the Experimental Farm Network Arguing about what to Shout Out Tenebris Press I hope the Musical Potatoes Staying Hydrated Brought to you by Hannah Simone Weil Rockstar the Astoria Food pantry the Athens People's assembly of Athens, Georgia Opticuna, TSNB Baby Acab and her three great pups would also make a cool musical. Sarah Mr. Crafty your Canadian friend Mark Tiny Nonsense I think a great title for a new musical the Golden Gate 26 the Ko Initiative the incredible Ren Arai Alexander Gopal A Future for Abby Hyun Hee Max the Enchanted Rats of Turtle island, which is obviously a musical Lancaster chooses Love Karen the Canadian Socialist Rifle association the Massachusetts chapter of a different Socialist Rifle Association Feral in West Virginia Blink Cat Shulva Jason, Jenny and Phoebe the Cats Aiden and Yuki the Dog Sunshine Amber Ephemeral Appalachian Liberation Library Portland's Heatron HackerSpace Bold Field the People's University of Palestine Julia Carson Lord Harkin Community Books of Stone Mountain, Georgia Princess Miranda, Janice and Odell Ally Paparuna Milica Theo SJ Page, David, Dana, Micah, Chris, Micaiah, Nicole and Tikva the Dog and the Immortal Center Stage Hoss the Dog.