Note: Spoilers, sort of, for Wicked, but not anything you’ve not already seen in trailers.
Once upon a time, the European Renaissance to be exact, portraits were riddles. They were...
...multisided portraits in which the sitter’s likeness was concealed by a hinged or sliding cover, within a box, or by a dual-faced format. The covers and reverses of these small, private portraits were adorned with puzzlelike emblems, epigrams, allegories, and mythologies that celebrated the sitter’s character... The viewer had to decode the meaning of the symbolic portrait before lifting, sliding, or turning the image over to unmask the face below.
Flash forward about four-hundred years and we’re still discerning the meaning of faces. Especially, women’s faces. Now that women (of wealthy families) are no longer primarily ornamental, the problem of what to do with a woman’s face remains one big question mark. Powerful women, even more so.
The movie version of the Broadway musical Wicked is already a major event. As for Frozen and Barbie, licensed merch of all kinds is everywhere. Coded phrases -- “Let it go,” “I’m Kenough.” -- have entered common use. My own “Defy gravity” shirt should be arriving any day now. And, FYI, “black is the new pink.” And, while we’ve seen plenty of powerful women in movies and musicals in recent years, this movie feels different. Bigger. More complex. Not just a tale of two powerful women, but also revisionism writ large. This ain’t your grandmother’s wicked witch.
Like many people, I assumed that revisionist fairy tales had their start in 1986 with the Broadway release of Sondheim & Lapine’s Into the Woods. If you’ve watched only Disney’s 2014 movie version, you’ve literally seen only half of the show. The first act, the safe act, is frequently performed in schools and is known -- officially, in print, on the cover of the rented scripts -- as Into the Woods, Jr. This is the version Disney released. The full production, the grown-up version, continues into the PG-13 second act to examine what happens after “Happily ever after.” What happens when the giant Jack killed turns out to have a surviving spouse? What happens when the cavalier princes who saved their princess brides from various forms of wickedness are called upon to settle into staid married life? How does a little girl deal with the PTSD after surviving a wolf attack? (Look for almost direct quotations from personal security specialist Gavin de Becker’s writings in The Gift of Fear in Little Red Riding Hood’s reflection song “I Know Things Now.”) When the seemingly simple stories of Act One are unpacked and examined, we learn a lot more about ourselves and the subtleties of what may or may not be justice. And, we learn to be very, very careful what we wish for.
Wicked, produced seventeen years later, is nevertheless very much a child of Into the Woods. Despite the title and what shows up in the credits, Stephen Schwartz & Winnie Holtzman’s version takes more from Sondheim & Lapine than it does from Gregory Maguire’s 1995 ice cold, cynical novel. (Maguire’s novel has spawned several sequels; it does have fans. What can’t be debated, however, is it is nothing at all in spirit or story like Wicked the musical.) Like Into the Woods, Wicked grants a greater humanity and deeper levels of meaning to what are initially seen as two-dimensional, symbolic creatures inhabiting a nice, safe fairy tale. While researching for this post, however, I discovered that revisionist fairy tales are nothing new. In fact, layering meaning upon meaning is part of fairy tales’ intrinsic nature. There is always someone winking on the edge of the frame. As early as the 1500s, we see a series of Italian stories about “facetious” knights. Born from spoken-word stories shared by the working classes, fairy tales have always been used to satirize royalty and the clergy, to toss about a few risqué jokes, to mask taboo or revolutionary topics in symbols that just sneak by the censors. Perhaps one reason for Wicked’s power is that its two main characters inhabit a political world, an Oz with injustice and secrets, and upon which they ultimately have substantial impact. It's not just all the magic flying about. Nothing is Oz is what it seems, magic or otherwise.
Perhaps it’s also that Elphaba and Glinda, like Frozen’s Elsa and Anna, have each other’s back no matter what. “Together, we’re unlimited,” as the song says. These women and the legacy of the Broadway musical are so powerful even now, a month before the film’s release, they’ve begun to draw backlash from two groups of people, one whose resentment is easily predicted and another that's a bit of a surprise. The first group attempting to verbally batter these women is threatened men throwing around obscene “jokes.” (I’ll let Cynthia Erivo give you the details below.) No surprise, there. Whenever weak men get scared, they make remarks about women’s bodies, all the while longing for the old days when their mere verbal shaming of a woman could ostracize her, or worse.
The second group is more surprising. Many fans of the original Broadway musical seem to have taken their fandom too far. Instead of being fun, a source of joy or insight, their preoccupation with Wicked has gone sour and become saturated with unhealthy, unearned egotism. I’m reminded of way back when seeing teenagers hold up an LP or a cassette and describe it with a strange, hostile vehemence as “their” music, as if they somehow should be personally admired for what they had no role in producing and instead merely listened to.
“Let’s go do Wicked!” Mary Kate Morrissey, “Elphaba,” Broadway & Tour, 2015-Current
To date, there have been on Broadway alone 37 Glindas and 46 Elphabas, but to these hypercritical “fans,” only the (yes, brilliant) performers who originated the roles (Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth) are granted any legitimacy. While happier fans of the musical, including the current Broadway cast, are looking forward to the film, some “fans” are already claiming, for instance, that Ariana Grande “can’t” really be singing and that they must be using a recording of Kristen Chenowith. That Erivo and Grande both insisted on singing live on set or that Grande has already held her own in an impressive career singing in every musical style there is apparently doesn’t make a dent in this random resentment by the “true” fans. It’s a bizarre sort of stinginess, clinging to only one version of a musical that has been staged by brilliant designers, directors, performers and crew all over the world in wonderful, varying ways. (Fans and industry professionals are still waxing rhapsodic about productions years ago in Brazil and Japan.) I almost feel sorry for the hypercritical “fans.” How tragic the loss of all the beauty and fun they’re not letting themselves experience. Almost feel sorry. The truth is, they’re being real bastards about the whole business.
When Wicked was first produced on Broadway, it was introduced to the public with an intriguing, stylized poster, with Elphaba and Glinda making a sort of yin-yang symbol. The two witches are obvious friends and sharing an especially delicious secret. Elphaba’s face is hidden except for her smiling lips in a glamourous red. Glinda’s blue eyes are wide open and full of mischief. She herself is wearing a witch’s hat similar to Elphaba’s, but in white. (She never wears this hat on stage.) The perfection with which these young, happy women form a visual team, a completed puzzle, communicates their friendship as a central theme of the musical. Fantastic.
Now, here, is the movie’s homage to this iconic image. Elphaba is lipstick-free, displaying her normal-for-her green lips. Her eyes are wide open and her gaze meeting ours. On close inspection we discover her dark eyes are actually hunter green, as are her freckles. [Watch in the trailer/film how, when Elphaba dons her signature hat at the Ozdust Ballroom, at first her eyes are obscured. The eventual unveiling of Elphaba’s eyes is very much a symbol of Elphaba’s courage, of her facing the world, of her self-respect, of not giving a twink what anyone else thinks (even if she secretly does.)] And, in this second version, Glinda wears the same gown and tiara she wears when forced to pretend to celebrate Elphaba’s death with her fellow Ozians. This Glinda’s eyes are almost closed, more hidden and introspective. There's nothing fun about this secret.
In the stage musical, this progression of age and experience happens between the first and second acts. (See Mary Kate Morrissey make the transition 9 minutes into this video.) Elphaba’s and Glinda’s makeup, hair and clothing styles -- and performances -- change from that of young college students to that of fully grown women. This is the same progression we see here in these two images. They are still very much a team, but the witches in this second version are mature, have suffered, have been threatened, and need all the brains, heart and courage they can muster to deal with it all. Also fantastic. And, when those two images dance together in meaning? Brilliant.
And, yes, I do think this is all on purpose. I think the creators involved all thought long and hard about this homage image, contemplated it, and made careful choices. Instead of making any effort to understand why the film’s homage version differs from the musical’s, here instead is what the hypercritical “fans” came up with. I don’t blame Erivo or anyone else involved with the film for being royally flipping pissed.
Hypercritical pseudo “fans,” I have a challenge for you. Instead of mainlining the details of a franchise to the point it’s making you brittle and destructive, how about instead creating something of your own?
Instead of seeing the brilliant shared message of the two images, we get a sad, childish and clueless clinging to the familiar. There is only one cure for this unhealthy level of misplaced ego. Hypercritical pseudo “fans,” I have a challenge for you. Instead of mainlining the details of a franchise to the point it’s making you brittle and destructive, how about instead creating something of your own? Your own characters. Your own designs. Your own music. Your own ideas. How about you dare to put your own original, carefully and lovingly honed message out in front of an audience. How about being passionate about work that really is yours. Do you dare? Do you have the brains, the passion and the courage?
the 2014 film adaptation of into the woods covers both acts. there are minor alterations made from the original stage production, but nothing so drastic as the removal of the second half of the play.