Wicked Could Not Have Come At A Worse Time For America

When Wicked first debuted on Broadway back in 2003, the musical was a stirring, thoroughly inventive tale of an unlikely friendship and society’s cruel rejection of its misfits. Today, though, against the backdrop of campus unrest and a disturbing spike in antisemitism—both all too conveniently ascribed to Israel—the message of the just-released, box office record-breaking film version is much darker. Wicked is ultimately a story that offloads responsibility for actual wickedness, laying blame on society for creating its monsters while absolving them from their wrongdoing. And at this moment, it should give audiences pause.

Growing up, the original Wicked Witch of the West from the 1939 classic film, The Wizard of Oz, visited my nightmares often. Played by Margaret Hamilton, she is frequently described as one of Hollywood’s most chilling villains. The character was so menacing that Hamilton endured decades of harassment from Wizard fans. In recent years, Hollywood has made hay of series and films that “rethink” our culture’s heroes and villains: Johnny Lawrence’s Karate Kid bad guy is actually a victim of neglectful parents in Cobra Kai; relentless bullying is to blame for transforming Joaquin Phoenix into a homicidal maniac known as The Joker; and Namor, the violent antihero of Wakanda Forever, is consumed with raging vengeance because his people were colonized.

So it is no surprise that the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked, which conferred a sympathetic origin story to one of cinema’s most enduring villains, would find favor now. A prequel toThe Wizard of Oz, it asks audiences, “Are people born wicked or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?” The question itself is a red herring perfectly framed for an era that talks a great deal of agency, but very little of accountability. Yes, of course many wicked people have tragic backstories, but being a victim is not an excuse to victimize others.

As the audience learns, Elphaba (who will become the Wicked Witch) is first rejected by her father and then mocked by peers for having green skin. While her magical abilities make her stand out, she is ultimately exploited for them by the people she admires the most, while attempting to emancipate a vulnerable group in Oz. At the end of the film, Elphaba transforms into the Wicked Witch of the West before our very eyes, but instead of seeing her as the vicious, terrifying monster we know her to be, we are enchanted by the strength, resolve, and beautiful voice of this freedom fighter.

At no point in the film are we reminded of Elphaba’s future sins, as told in L. Frank Baum’s 1900 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which include being a malevolent ruler of the Winkie Country whose people she enslaves and sending wolves, crows, bees, and Winkies to attack Dorothy and her friends. When the witch’s winged monkeys capture Dorthy’s crew, the witch then assaults and enslaves them. In a 2006 interview with CBS, Wicked author Maguire explains that he wrote the book to question if Hitler and Saddam Hussein were as wicked as the world told us they were. In other words, in Maguire’s view, The Wizard of Oz was propaganda against the witch, and his revisionist story sets the record straight.

When society has been primed to feel sympathy for villains with difficult pasts, young Americans will begin posting videos on TikTok expressing support for real-life monsters like Osama bin Laden, as many did this past November. Atrocities like the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel–a massacre beyond our worst nightmares–will be put into “context.” When I saw the Namor storyline in Wakanda Forever back in 2022, I immediately feared that this framing would further justify violence against Israel, “the colonizer.” Just a couple years later, pseudo-intellectuals like Ta-Nehisi Coates openly excuse Hamas’s barbarism.

In a recent interview with Trevor Noah, Coates, author of a controversial new book giving a one-sided account of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, explains, “I grow up under that oppression and that poverty and the wall comes down, am I also strong enough or even constructed in such a way where I say this is too far? I don’t know that I am.” That Coates brazenly uttered those words and that Noah was not appalled at Coates’s confession, tells us that lack of accountability for evil has become normalized.

And the data back this up. Last April, a Harvard CAPS-Harris survey asked respondents about who they support more in the war between Hamas and Israel. They found that 43% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 support Hamas. We should not fall prey to this kind of moral relativism, even when it is perniciously slipped into catchy dance tunes. While challenging upbringings might allow us to understand where a person comes from, adversity cannot excuse the Hitlers, Sadams, Sinwars, or Wicked Witches of the world.

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