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WICKED, Part 1
My wife and I saw WICKED, Part 1 this Thanksgiving weekend and it got me thinking. This film will win awards — it’s a soaring work of art. But why do authoritarians and fascists despise, diminish, and dismiss such art? It’s because in a world they demand to be rigidly black and white — “they are wicked, we are right” — art remains malleable. Art diversifies us. Art doesn’t obey.
Art becomes what common people need it to be exactly when they need it most. In a world that tyrants and wannabe strongmen insist limiting to a palette of white and black — “we are exceptional, they are dangerous” — art is every shade of gray. Or, in WICKED’s case, green.
Yes, the story of WICKED predates this present political moment by many decades. Yet, its story could not be more current as the most powerful offices in the United States are taken over by the profoundly unqualified — those who, like the similarly unqualified Wizard of Oz, resort to calling the most vulnerable citizens in the land “wicked” in order to provoke the public’s fear and consolidate power for themselves.
Sometimes art is comprised of colors yet to be seen. But art also has the ability to hide its representations in plain sight. Common people understand it emotionally, even if they can’t always immediately put what they just saw and why it struck a chord with them into words.