I’m happy to report that Wicked provided all that I wanted: a few hours of entertainment.
I’m happy to report that Wicked provided all that I wanted: a few hours of entertainment.
I was a blank slate when I entered the movie theater to see Wicked: I’ve never read the books, nor have I seen the Broadway production. Just minutes into the first song, I was confused. We watch a nurse, who is a talking bear, assist with the birth of Elphaba; her parents express shock and disgust upon seeing her green skin. I wondered, why is it so alarming that Elphaba was born green in a world where there is a talking bear OB-GYN? Surely, in a land with sorcery, it should be easy to explain — or even correct — someone’s unusual skin tone. Then I soothed myself with this simple thought: It’s just a movie. I realized that not everything in a fantasy needs to make logical sense. I decided to adopt a more carefree attitude, participate in the childish exercise of make believe, and go along with it all.
And I had a great time. The whole two hours and 40 minutes flew by because every aspect of the movie contributed to character development and the plot; no time was wasted on superfluous details or unnecessary conversations. I felt immersed in the land of Oz, invested in the characters, impressed by the exceptional singing, and invigorated by the catchy music. Wicked is essentially a strong antidepressant pill to be swallowed with an oversized blue slushy: I walked out of the theater with an improved mood and the lyric “you’re gonna be pop-uuuu-lar” stuck in my head.
Since I’m a writer at a conservative publication in such a polarized society, people probably expect me to provide a comprehensive account of where the movie veers into progressive propaganda. But Wicked is refreshingly free from political commentary on controversial issues; in fact, for those nearly three hours, I forgot entirely about the real world and all our heated debates. The only grand moral message in the film is that, even though one female lead is branded as “wicked” and the other as “good,” there’s bad and good in each of us — and that’s a valuable lesson worthy of reflection.
If the creative team behind Wicked had an agenda, it was simply to make an enjoyable movie. Yet film critics have strained themselves in writing about Wicked by performing ideological surgery; they dissect the movie into unrecognizable parts, then hastily stitch the pieces back together to make some dubious preconceived argument about politics. Instead of “give me the man and I’ll give you the crime,” movie critics of all political stripes have essentially said, “give me an excerpt of a scene, and I’ll give you all my complaints about society.” Writers at the New York Times naturally deemed Wicked a story about racism with a hint of celebratory “queerness.” Some reviews by conservatives create the impression that the movie’s script was lifted from the guiding document of some Satanic cult.
Just as a food critic doesn’t review a new bakery by pulling apart a croissant flake by flake, we shouldn’t hyper-analyze a movie by extracting small snippets and nebulously associating them with current controversies; such an exercise is better suited for a lackluster English class in high school. Instead, we can resist the temptation to make every movie a pawn in the culture war. I’m happy to report that Wicked provided all that I wanted: a few hours of entertainment. You should go see it, don’t take it too seriously, and just let yourself enjoy it. You’ll probably leave humming some songs.