“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” said Dorothy when the great tornado brought her to the wonderful land of Oz. Since L. Frank Baum’s first published novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and Victor Fleming’s 1939 film adaptation, the land of Oz has been part of the American consciousness. Dreams are made and shattered on the metaphorical Yellow Brick Road that leads to the Emerald City.
The new film “Wicked” (2024) takes the story we are all familiar with and asks what happened in Oz before Dorothy arrived. It’s directed by Jon M. Chu and based on the eponymous stage musical, which is based on the 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. Although much of the buzz around “Wicked” has focused on “queering,” it is the concepts of propaganda and tyranny that drive the film.
“Wicked” opens with the death of the Wicked Witch (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda’s (Ariana Grande) announcement to the people of Oz that indeed, the news is true. She then proceeds to tell the story of the Wicked Witch — that she wasn’t always evil and perhaps had wickedness thrust upon her.
The Wicked Witch, whose name is Elphaba, is the product of her mother’s love affair and is rejected by her parents because of her green skin color. As expected, Elphaba is going through life as a misfit and outcast, but she is highly intelligent and compassionate. Her paraplegic sister gets accepted to Shiz University (a sorcery school), but it is Elphaba who gets more attention from the dean of the school, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), and is immediately admitted. Her roommate is none other than the Good Witch, Glinda (whose actual name is Galinda). Though they couldn’t be more different, they become friends.
Not everything is hunky-dory in Oz. Here, animals are persecuted for their differences and put in cages to prevent them from learning to speak. Elphaba has a strong sense of justice to speak for the voiceless and decides to visit the one and only Wizard of Oz to fix the problem.
To her dismay, the Wizard (played brilliantly by Jeff Goldblum) is a fraud. Elphaba is invited to his castle to create flying monkeys that will be perfect “spies in the sky.” Scheming together with Morrible, the Wizard tells Elphaba that dissent will not be tolerated.
“When I first got here,” says the Wizard, “there was discord. There was discontent. And back where I come from, everybody knows that the best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.”
“We’re doing this to keep people safe,” Morrible says, in turn. We’ve heard that one before. Many things have been done “for the security of the state,” and they are never good.
Although slightly bumbling (in a very Jeff Goldblum way), the Wizard is nevertheless manipulative. Goldblum’s Wizard oscillates between a P.T. Barnum figure and a dictator with Morrible at his side. It is Morrible who is responsible for spreading lies about Elphaba. It is Morrible who names her the Wicked Witch and says she must be destroyed. Morrible effectively begins the propaganda campaign against Elphaba, exploiting her physical differences with the intent of crushing her free will.
The people of Oz accept it because they’ve already been living in a society that has kept them artificially happy, as long as they don’t ask questions. They are living in an illusion, in Plato’s cave, and the shadows are their reality. They are weak and would rather blame an external factor for their problems rather than take responsibility for their actions (or lack thereof). In other words, they have made themselves into slaves and require a dictator to exist.
Propaganda is a powerful tool, and we have seen this phenomenon throughout many totalitarian systems, even in soft, shape-shifting totalitarian impulses in the United States. In some ways, the ideological lie becomes worse in nations that fundamentally and foundationally resist tyranny. But it is precisely this contrast between freedom and small acts of tyranny that are insidious. People can be “asleep” through many different means, but it always includes a refusal to see the truth because then one must act. In “Wicked,” Glinda opts for an existential blindfold. The alleged goodness she embodies is nothing more than an affectation.
“Wicked” is not an excellent film. At times, it meanders and is sensory overload by virtue of being a musical. But in the final moments of the film, the larger idea is revealed: What is reality? Do we possess free will to choose truth over a lie?
In the final song, “Defying Gravity,” Elphaba sings that if she’s “flying solo,” then “at least, [she’s] flying free.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has identified “the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation” as “a personal nonparticipation in lies!” Elphaba could have chosen to be part of the Wizard’s machine, but that means she would be living by lies.
The Good Witch Glinda turns out to be morally weak. Glinda, who prizes herself as “good” and “kind” (and has no problem telling this to everyone), knows Elphaba is not evil, yet she chooses to stay behind. In a sense, she becomes an obedient agent of the Wizard and Morrible, exposing her claims of virtue as empty words.
Glinda acts as if she has no choice at all, but it is ultimately her shallow character and artificial strength that determine the course of her life. Unlike Elphaba, Glinda has no sense of true justice and does not speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Luckily, for the characters who need a redemption arc, the story is “to be continued.”
Emina Melonic writes about culture, film, and books. Her work has been published in Claremont Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, Modern Age, and The New Criterion, Law and Liberty, among others. She’s currently writing a biography of Edward G. Robinson and a book on Ronald Reagan’s Hollywood years.
Jesus Christ is King
