An Addendum: Wicked & the Anti-creativity Witchhunt
- kbrigan
- Mar 31
- 2 min read
The first poster is out for Wicked: For Good. Let's start by looking at the whole thing, because OMG monkeys.
Now, let's look a little closer. Remember what I was saying about the transition from girls into women? Let's start with the Witch Formerly Known as Galinda:
On stage, Glinda spends much of Act II in a fully-blue dress. And, while her makeup doesn't change much, her acting and singing performances certainly do. I don't think she tosses her hair even once, for instance. Her songs ride in lower keys and even in harmonies she'll sometimes take the Mezzo/Alto line, whereas Act I is all coloratura Soprano.
In Glinda's For Good costuming, we see similar changes, except that costume designer, now Oscar-winner, Paul Tazewell drives home Glinda's transition further by showing us the blending of her childhood pink with adult blue.
Interesting, that the Wise One (Kristin Chenoweth) who interacts with Glinda in Wicked: Part One shushes her as she starts to sing an ornamental soprano line. The delightful metatext, of course, is the veteran Chenoweth teaching some manners to the young upstart Grande-Butera, but, within the film's reality, I confess I also see a gentle instruction to Glinda that it's now time to put away childish things.
In both the stage musical and the film, the brilliant Winnie Holzman backs up the message with Glinda's earlier dialog: "This must be what other people feel like. How do they bear it?" At first hearing, that line is a joke about Glinda's pampered naivete, but -- like her accurate observation in "Popular" that most people are less fortunate than she is -- it's also a far more complex acknowledgement that Glinda is fully aware of the mechanics of privilege and is drawn to become someone smarter and stronger, even if it hurts.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the West...
Yes, the same people who were intimidated by Cynthia Erivo a few months ago have already started nitpicking this image. Deal with it, cowards, because this Witch don't care.
We see the same makeup changes here as for Elphaba on stage -- heavier eyeliner and deeper facial contours. Tazewell, however, differs from the stage version here also. Instead of the stage version's intricate, shimmering black dress we see Elphaba in the most powerful of leather Power Suits. She is all about Authority. Not only is she now the one wearing the pants, those boots (which should have their own fan club) are all about dominance.
Get ready for the blow back, film fans, because a fair number of reviewers will, no doubt, wind up fearful and reactionary seeing acceptable, familiar girls grow up into powerful, taboo, almost-never-seen women. Plenty of people will simply not know how to handle Wicked: For Good. How appropriate.
The witch is arguably the only female archetype that has power on its own terms. She is not defined by anyone else. Wife, sister, mother, virgin, whore -- those archetypes draw meaning based on relationships with others. The witch, however, is a woman who stands entirely on her own.
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