It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green: ‘Wicked’ spells for struggle and solidarity

On the ruby-slippered heels of DO editor-in-chief Ellen McGirt’s conversation with Wicked director Jon M. Chu, columnist Alexis Haut decipherates the film’s lessons for a design community going through shiz. 

Wicked wears its societal allegory on its protagonist’s green skin. 

The 2024 blockbuster is the top-grossing film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical whose source material is the 1995 L. Frank Baum novel that flips the script on Wizard of Oz by reimagining the Wicked Witch of the West as a scapegoated revolutionary. (A confusifying lineage, indeed!)

In the movie, Elphaba Thropp (an incandescent Cynthia Erivo) has been green since birth, and she’s been an outsider just as long. She’s been called everything from an “artichoke” to a “repulsion.” 

With Elphaba, Wicked mimics how those who appear different are treated in our real world. Her green skin can be read as a metaphor for race, disability, gender expression — the list goes on. What makes Elphaba’s story worthy of cinematic presentation is also what makes it ordinary: She is a force for good in a world that would prefer she weren’t part of it. She is an unflinching advocate for her disabled younger sister Nessa Rose (Marissa Bode). She has an almost spiritual connection to nature. She stands in fierce solidarity with Shiz University’s beleaguered animal professors.

That’s right. At Shiz, the university that is the setting of much of Wicked’s first installment, many of the professors are wizened animals who teach an honest history of Oz. In a spooky modern parallel, the animals are snatched from their homes and classrooms and stuffed into cages for teaching a curriculum considered seditious by the powers that be. 

There’ve always been surprisingly practical, prescient lessons for present-day politics embedded in Wicked’s world of singing Munchkins, talking goats, and flying monkeys. 

As Electric Lit notes:

Critics read L. Frank Baum’s novel as an allegory about populism and monetary policy in the 1890s. When [Broadway’s] Wicked first premiered in 2003, creators Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz cited both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as inspiration for their Wizard. The Wizard of Oz has long been a mutable figure. His showman-like qualities and desire to dampen economic discontent by scapegoating vulnerable groups have led people to compare him to presidents from William McKinley to Donald Trump.

Premiering just days after Trump’s re-election, the film adaptation draws parallels to our fraught political moment that are impossible to ignore in the deft hands of director Jon M. Chu (In the Heights, Crazy Rich Asians). The child of Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants, Chu was raised in Silicon Valley — an apt analog of Wicked’s Emerald City, with its monied sheen and overblown promises of technocratic magic.

In an onstage interview at the Great Place to Work For All Summit on April 10, Chu told Design Observer editor-in-chief Ellen McGirt that, after having his first child: 

Everything about story switched for me — the story of the world that was taught to me by my parents, about America being the greatest place with this yellow brick road toward this person that was going to give you your heart’s desire if you followed all the rules. And I had gone through so much that some of the story I didn’t believe anymore. And then I thought, for my children, I want to set a new story for them. Something as optimistic and as beautiful, but prepare them for the disappointment that that yellow brick road was never meant for you. But there is another road. It’s a little rougher, but you get to do what you want to do.

Tune in to the latest episode of our flagship podcast The Design of Business | The Business of Design to hear the conversation in its entirety. And read on to learn how Chu builds on Wicked’s rich political heritage, with lessons for resistance at a time when the veil is lifting on our own false prophets. 

*Spoilers for Wicked are ahead.

1. Speaking out can be lonely

Wicked’s most disturbing scene opens with students buzzing about a classroom, flirting and joking as they make their way to their desks. The mood is as light as the sunbeams streaming in from the windows circling the classroom’s rotunda, until the panicked interjection of their goat professor Dr. Dillamond (voiced by Peter Dinklage) breaks through the joviality: “Today will be my last day here at Shiz. You see, animals are no longer permitted to teach.” As if on cue, a trio of guards wielding whistles and nightsticks bursts into the classroom and drag Dr. Dillamond out by his horns. The students sit stunned. But not Elphaba. She leaps up and challenges her classmates’ inaction: “Are we all just going to sit here in silence?” 

Enter their new history professor, a human in a drab brown suit wheeling in a trembling lion cub in a tiny cage. Their class will now be a study of the future, he says, one where animals are caged and never learn to speak. Elphaba looks toward classmate Glinda (Ariana Grande) in the hopes their newfound friendship will buy her some solidarity. “What are we going to do?” she pleads. 

“I’m sorry, ‘we’?” responds Glinda’s boyfriend Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) as the couple cowers in fearful compliance. Righteous anger bubbles in Elphaba’s eyes. She slams a bouquet of poppies she picked for Dr. Dillamond onto her desk, triggering her mysterious magic. The flowers float about the classroom, shimmering trails wafting in their wake. Elphaba’s peers and fascist new professor slump over in sleep. Within moments, the lion cub is free.

2. But you never know who your actions will inspire

And it is Fiyero who frees it! For reasons the movie does not make clear, Fiyero is resistant to the poppies’ sleepy spell. He and Elphaba remain awake in a clear example of what it looks like to not sleep on injustice. Fiyero grabs the cub from his cage, a move that surprises Elphaba because of his previous dismissal and obvious self-absorption. The two carry the cub off campus to a forest opening lush with greenery. Elphaba asks Fiyero what spurred his altruistic action, to which he has no substantial answer. 

The scene then hints at a half-baked romance between Elphaba and Fiyero, one that would certainly cause friction with Glinda. Yet the impact Ephaba leaves on the prince is far more substantial. The next time she sees Fiyero is on the train platform just before she departs to see the Wizard. According to Glinda, her himbo boyfriend has changed since that day Dr. Dillamond was captured — so much so that he is THINKING, an action that both shocks and alarms her. The awakened Fiyero appears by Glinda’s side, a poppy inserted in the buttonhole of his lapel. He confesses that he thinks about their liberation of the lion cub a lot, tears springing from his usually impassive eyes.

3. So beware of empty promises 

Glinda gets political on the train platform as well. As soon as Fiyero confesses that Dr. Dillamond’s kidnapping has been haunting his thoughts, Glinda insists that she is haunted too. Not one to be left out, Glinda insists that she also wants to “take a stand.” She makes a characteristically public one. Clapping her hands and tossing her hair, she gathers the throng of students also on the train platform and proudly announces that she is changing her name from “Ga-Linda” to “Glinda” to honor Dr. Dillamond’s inability to pronounce the “Ga” sound. The crowd erupts in applause and praise of her supposed bravery.

According to Glinda, the name change is an expression of her outrage. However, several scenes later, she has the opportunity to take a more meaningful stand and instead turns her back. When Elphaba learns that the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Shiz headmistress Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) want to use her powers to harm and surveil animals throughout Oz, she is disgusted, but Glinda insists that Elphaba “hear them out.” Elphaba runs deep into the Wizard’s castle, horrified that she has just turned a fleet of anguished monkeys into flying spies. Glinda heeds Morrible’s demand to chase Elphaba down and bring her back. 

4. And when they try to steal your swag, remember the light will always be yours

In a painfully realistic example of empty leadership, the Wizard reveals that he has no powers. That is why he needs Elphaba. She is the only one who can read the Emerald City’s magical spellbook and make its many hostile spells come to life. Not to be outdone, Glinda also makes her desire for magical powers plain the moment she arrives at Shiz. She begs Madame Morrible to mentor her and later fumbles around with her training wand. But she too lacks Elphaba’s innate abilities. Those powers are what make Elphaba special, and what ultimately help her find freedom. On a newly activated broomstick, she escapes a life of having her magic appropriated. “And if I’m flying solo, at least I’m flying free,” she sings as she rises. 

As she ascends into the sky, the irony of her banishment becomes increasingly clear. Her green skin has made her an outcast in a city made up almost entirely of green. But it’s Elphaba who gets the last laugh. As she sings the final notes of “Defying Gravity,” she’s triumphant, hands thrown open and a smile creeping across her lips. Green lightning flickers across the sky as the electricity in the Wizard’s castle blows out. The Emerald City needs Elphaba for its light, and she can just as easily take it away.