Dorothy remarked,” Toto, I’ve a experiencing we’re never in Kansas again,” as she described the incredible 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. On the symbolic Yellow Brick Road that leads to the Emerald City, dreams are made and shattered.  ,
The new film” Wicked” ( 2024 ) takes the story we are all familiar with and asks what happened in Oz before Dorothy arrived. It was written by Jon M. Chu and is based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 tale Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Although much of the” Wicked” buzz has been focused on “queering,” the film’s themes of propaganda and tyranny are what drives it.  ,
” 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. The Wicked Witch is the story that she then tells, informing her that she wasn’t always bad and that she may have experienced depravity.
The Wicked Witch, whose title is Elphaba, is the solution of her mother’s love event and is rejected by her parents because of her natural skin color. As expected, Elphaba is going through life as a loner and outcast, but she is extremely knowledgeable and compassionate. Her paraplegic sister is accepted to Shiz University ( a sorcery school ), but Elphaba is the subject of more attention from Madame Morrible ( Michelle Yeoh ), the school’s dean, and is immediately accepted. Her roommate is none other than Glinda, the Good Witch ( whose real name is Galinda ). Though they couldn’t be more diverse, they become friends.  ,
Not everything is hunky-dory in Kansas. Pets are imprisoned for their differences in this country and placed in cages to stop them from picking up language. Elphaba chooses to explore the one and only Wizard of Oz to solve the issue because she believes in justice and can speak for the oppressed.
To her dismay, the Wizard ( played brilliantly by Jeff Goldblum ) is a fraud. Elphaba is entrusted to make flying primates for his tower so they can serve as” spies in the sky.” Scheming along with Morrible, the Wizard tells Elphaba that protest will not be tolerated.
” When I first got here”, says the Wizard,” there was discord. There was anger. And where I come from, everyone is aware that the best way to unite people is to offer them a real great enemy.
” We’re doing this to keep people safe”, Morrible says, in turn. We’ve heard that one before. Several things have been done” for the security of the state,” but they have never been successful.  ,
Although slightly bumbling ( in a very Jeff Goldblum way ), the Wizard is nevertheless manipulative. With Morrible by his side, Goldblum’s Wizard alternates between a P. T. Barnum number and a tyrant. Morrible is to blame for spreading falsehoods about Elphaba. She is called the Wicked Witch and is allegedly required to remain destroyed, according to Morrible. Elphaba’s bodily differences are effectively used in the beginning of Moralrible’s propaganda campaign, which uses her physical differences to sabotage her right to life.  ,
As long as they don’t ask any questions, the people of Oz are delighted because they have already been living in a world that has deliberately delighted them. They are living in an idea, in Plato’s cave, and the dark are their reality. They are fragile and prefer to blame an additional factor for their issues over accepting responsibility for their deeds ( or lack thereof ). In other words, they have created a dictatorship and are now prisoners.  ,
Propaganda is a potent tool, and we have seen it in a number of autocratic techniques, even in gentle, shape-shifting totalitarian emotions in the United States. In some ways, the intellectual lie worsens in countries that ultimately and ultimately reject tyranny. Insidious, however, is precisely this distinction between liberty and little acts of tyranny. Individuals may “asleep” through a variety of ways, but it always requires an inability to discern the truth, which requires an action. In” Cruel”, Glinda opts for an existential blind. The reported compassion she embodies is merely an anachronism.  ,
” Nasty” is not an outstanding film. It occasionally meanders and is visual overloaded due to the artistic nature of it. But in the last moments of the picture, the larger thought is revealed: What is real? Do we have the capacity to choose reality 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 visible essential to our independence” as” a private nonparticipation in sits”! Elphaba might have chosen to work for the Wizard’s system, but doing so would have led to lies.
The Good Witch Glinda emerges as socially poor. Glinda, who rewards herself as “good” and “kind” ( and has no problem telling this to everyone ), knows Elphaba is not bad, yet she chooses to stay on. She ends up acting as the Wizard and Morrible’s faithful agent, exposing her promises of virtue as bare words.
Glinda acts as though she has no other options, but finally her thin figure and arbitrary power determine the course of her life. Glinda does not respond for those who cannot speak for themselves, unlike Elphaba, and lacks a sense of genuine justice. Fortunately, for the heroes who need a redemption circle, the tale is” to be continued”.
Emina Melonic writes about culture, drama, and ebooks. 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 people. She is currently working on a book about Ronald Reagan’s Hollywood centuries and a history of Edward G. Robinson.
