I’m going to dispense with most of the typical movie review trappings for what I’ll write here, including plot, delving into the original source materials, and the (kind of obvious) political subtext. Instead, I’m just to going to call attention to what I saw and why those details are meaningful to me, and also perhaps situate them into some sort of cultural and historical lineage. Have you ever heard the phrase “friends of Dorothy” in reference to gay men? There’s a reason why that phrase exists, which extends far beyond the stereotypical reverence gay men were known to have for Judy Garland (whose death jump-started Stonewall). In an era not so long ago, gay life was a life lived underground, both socially and in terms of individual gay men’s psyches. Our lives, historically, had to be sublimated due to deep levels of social shame, which still persists today in most places around the world, even if it’s slightly less overt these days. In many cases, gay men’s real lives were secondary to their fantasy lives. The lives that they imagined for themselves as escapes from prejudice and persecution are the reasons why films like The Wizard of Oz, as well as Wicked and Wicked: For Good, 1) came into being in the first place, and 2) became reliably long-lasting cultural outlets and touchstones for gay men to enjoy their own collective mental space and claim a corner of existence for themselves. (Whew.)
Some of these things are so obvious that they’re barely worth saying, but alas. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion were all clearly coded as gay. Not even “coded.” Just GAY, full-stop. And not shy about it either. Back in 1939, that was a novelty, and a necessary one. Since you couldn’t live your life openly out in the wider world itself, you could do that up on the screen, while Dorothy and Toto led the way, because you couldn’t trust anybody else, but you could trust a wide-eyed Kansas farmgirl and her cute little dog, so you just follow them to get to where you need to go: over the rainbow, through a tornado, across sprawling fields of opium high-inducing poppies. (In Wicked and Wicked: For Good, those fields of poppies are broad stripes of rainbow colors. I mean, just go ahead and overdo it. We won’t mind at all.)
And the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion all re-appear here, though briefly, and in each case they’re the products of a type of twisted nightmare. And that’s where Wicked: For Good in particular gets really interesting. The Wizard of Oz is, in its entirety, both intra- and extradiagetically, a fever dream. So when Wicked: For Good tilts into the nightmare realm, which it does often and deliciously well for anybody who’s got even a slight goth sensibility, the effect is nearly overwhelming in the best possible way (especially with a pair of Real D glasses on, trust me…the two fangirls seated next to me were pretty much totally losing their minds during all of those scenes, as was I). Just like the characters in these films themselves, you are forcefully shoved right out of the theater and into an alternate virtual reality, perhaps the land of the Shifting Sands, as L. Frank Baum coined it, an endless pastel dunescape that surrounds the Land of Oz and protects it from outside intrusion (as well as keeping its citizens from ever leaving, or at least not without the penalty of death in the vast majority of cases).
What would L. Frank Baum (who named Elphaba from the sounds of his three first initials) think of his legacy? Would these films inspire him, move him, overwhelm him? I think he would probably be extremely pleased, and also quite surprised. His books about the Wizard of Oz were popular enough in his own lifetime that his publisher wouldn’t let him abandon writing them, even when he wanted to move on. He was married to a woman in his own era, but who knows how else he might have identified more inwardly. He had a clear interest in outsiders, and social justice, and (way ahead of his own time) transgender-identified characters as well. I could say a lot more right here, some of which might border on mere conjecture or speculation or suspicion, so I won’t. All I will say is (and the finale of Wicked: For Good also makes this abundantly, gorgeously clear): the human heart is the desert dunescape of the Shifting Sands, whether we tread that beautifully treacherous terrain alone, or in the fortunate company of others.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment