Which Witch?

Thoughts on Moralism and Wicked: For Good

I have been listening to the Wicked soundtrack a lot. In the car, on my runs, while I cook dinner, you can find me straining for high notes I haven’t hit since the last time I obsessed over the album, when I was seven years old.

Wicked was one of the first Broadway shows I saw, and certainly the first CD I played into submission. I played that cast recording on repeat until only “Something Bad” and “Wonderful” were listenable, and we all know those songs are not what a seven-year-old girl goes to Wicked for.

For Halloween that year, I dressed as the Wicked Witch, complete with green face paint. But, when I was mistaken for just a witch, I corrected them–“I’m actually Elphaba.” I felt a compulsion to remind them that there was a name, a story–hell– a whole musical dedicated to moralising the once irreprehensible character.

Then, the people of my Virginia suburb thought I was speaking gibberish, but more so, they considered me to be a freakish theatre kid. It’s validating now to know Elphaba is a household name.

While the theatre kid label stuck, I strayed from Wicked, favouring much edgier, less popular musicals. (Popular–get it?) I thought Avenue Q did deserve the Tony over Wicked, actually.

Still, I quietly hoped to sing “Defying Gravity” on stage one day, maybe as Elphaba’s understudy in the thirty-second touring company of Wicked in Appleton, Wisconsin, during the Saturday matinee.

That was then. As you may know, I’ve stopped performing. But, I’m still listening to Wicked. Coincidentally, I have been talking to my therapist a lot about what it means to be “good,” and more so, what it means when someone accuses you of being…well, wicked.

You see, I’m not so sure if I’m a good witch or a bad witch. That’s the question posed in The Wizard of Oz, but there’s no villain in Wicked. Elphaba isn’t a bad witch; she’s just the victim of bigotry and authoritarian propaganda!

Now, I don’t have green skin or ride in on a broom, but I, like most of us, have faced my fair share of snap judgments. Most of all, in high school, where I was often told I was “intimidating.”

Friends and boyfriends would say it to me in the past tense, “Oh, when I first met you, I thought you were so intimidating.” They’d smile and nod at me, as though they’d just handed me a tiara and sceptre.

At first, these comments would make me stutter and apologise, but eventually I recognised them as what they were–thinly veiled prostrations disguised as compliments. I learned to say “thank you,” and crack a joke at my own expense.

I will admit, I’ve done very little to assuage the accusation. Like Elphaba, I’ve learned to keep most at an arm’s length. I wear all black and never back down from a confrontation. I don’t disguise my intelligence or shrink myself to fit in.

To the untrained eye, I am arrogant and calculated. I’ve been accused of being ruthless and manipulative. I understand I won’t be everyone’s Good Witch, but I pull back the Wizard’s curtain for a select few, and I let them see the woman behind it.

These days, when I encounter someone who doesn’t like me, or worse, thinks I’m a bad person, I choose to believe that by knowing me, they are being presented with a part of themselves they dislike.

Wicked, in part, and a decade of therapy has taught me that we are more similar to those we dislike than we are dissimilar.

Take Elphaba and Glinda, for instance. When they first meet, they loathe each other.

Elphaba is disturbed by Glinda’s need for attention. Yet, she poses the question to herself, in the second act, “Was I really good, or just seeking attention?”

Glinda is made to feel inferior to Elphaba’s talents and goodliness. She wishes her friend would do more to blend in, as we see in the final song of Act One, “Why couldn’t you just stay calm for once–instead of flying off the handle?”

Ultimately, their similarities bring Elphaba and Glinda together as friends, two close friends, two best friends.

Where the stage musical lacks, in my opinion, is in the idea that a man, Fiyero, could fracture Elphaba and Glinda’s friendship. Let’s say it together: Glinda loves ELPHABA. She is strangled by heternormativity, but that GA-Linda is GA-AYYYY.

The movie does a better job of fleshing out the larger political plot and Elphaba’s activism, so the rift between them feels less male-centred. It’s all too reductive and stereotypical to imagine a strong, female friendship could end over a man.

However, there’s been more than one occasion where my relationship with my scarecrow, Lennon, has caused someone to accuse me of being a bad person. While these haven’t been the only times I’ve been charged with wrongdoing, it makes me wonder, “Am I a bad witch?”

There’ve been people in our lives who’ve thrown the proverbial bucket of water over my head, in hopes I’d melt. There is a general idea that I don’t deserve him, or I’ve ruined him, in some way. Like he’s a precious stone, I’m sullying with a spit-shine.

Lennon, our couple’s therapist and I have agreed that those accusations were levelled because I told Lennon he could set boundaries with certain people in his life, and toxic people don’t like boundaries.

I’m lucky to be surrounded by friends and family who wholeheartedly support Lennon and me, who believe we deserve each other. More importantly, Lennon reminds me every day that I’m a good person, whom he loves.

But, still, I am trying to understand those who see me as a villain. The times in my life I’ve been told I’m a bad person (thrice, if you’d like to count along at home), I thanked each person. I thanked them, like they had warned me to bring an umbrella with me on a cloudless day.

In a way, it felt like a suspicion confirmed. Because while my exterior portrays easy confidence and assuredness, in actuality, I’m a nervous, flighty, socially awkward person.

I’m reflecting on Jon M. Chu’s choice to include childhood versions of both Elphaba and Glinda, in hopes it would contextualise and justify their behaviours, in ways the plot does not.

When thinking of my own younger self, I feel a bizarre mixture of sorrowful pride. I was a privileged kid; I was loved and defended fiercely by my mother. I had two funny, smart older brothers. At some point, my father blew away in a hot air balloon. I had crooked front teeth and long, red hair. I was obsessed with musical theatre, and skipped school often to go to auditions. I was, though, an incredibly lonely child. I spent most of my waking hours tucked in my bedroom, with my stuffed animals, re-enacting entire acts of musicals.

I was ruthlessly bullied as a child. I had to transfer schools five times during my K-12 years. I faced the typical taunts and name-calling. Kids from school would ding-dong ditch my door, and I’d run down the block, following the sounds of their shrieks, hoping they’d come to ask me to play.

It got increasingly worse in middle school. I had a friend leave a voicemail on my home phone once, the contents of which I won’t share, because they were 12 and I can’t imagine what they were going through at home to think leaving a message like that was funny. But it forced me to my knees in front of my mother, asking her to let me change schools once again.

I don’t tell you this to garner sympathy, and I wish I were being over-dramatic. I say this because I fear I’m a Glinda.

I could stamp my foot and cry that I didn’t get my way, and someone would bring me a pastry, but no one could give me the love I desired. I want to be everybody’s friend today, because as a child, I had so few.

I know now, I’m very lucky that middle school, high school and college were not the best years of my life. I recognise now, if they had been, I wouldn’t have met Lennon, or María, or Ashlon, or Amanda or the dozens of people in my life I feel have changed me “For Good.”

I’m afraid I’m a Glinda because the youngest audience member of Wicked: For Good can see that Elphaba is wrongfully accused of her villainy. But there’s a larger population who’ve left the theatres this weekend, purporting Glinda to be the villain.

She’s the face of an oppressive regime; of course, she’s the bad witch. I think Chu tried his best with Glinda’s flashbacks and the new song, “The Girl in the Bubble,” but ultimately the musical fails to fully justify Glinda’s decision to stay with the Wizard, to turn a blind eye to his abuses.

I think Elphaba’s line in Defying Gravity sums up Glinda’s greatest fear best: “Too long, I’ve been afraid of losing love, I guess I lost.”

As much as we like to claim we’re an Elphaba or a Glinda, aren’t we all a little bit of both?

Both characters have been shaped by the love and praise they have and haven’t received in life. Elphaba becomes The Wicked Witch of the West, for she’s been taught that being good will win her love. Glinda becomes the Good Witch because it was the easiest route to the love she craved.

I can’t say the same hasn’t been true of myself. But as Wicked would show us, neither witch is beyond redemption.

Because there are so few villains in life. Most of us are trying to live by a code of ethics that’s been shaped by our life experience.

Based on my life, being “good” means being kind when you can, being understanding when you have to, and making it up when you misstep.

Everyone must form their own definition of good, live by it, and hold the ones they love and themselves accountable to that definition. “‘Good’ can’t just be a word. It has to mean something.”

Being a good person cannot be determined by one action, nor can being a bad person. There has to be a consistent, concerted effort to show up every day as the best version of yourself.

I’ve been accused of being a bad person; the people who pointed their fingers did not do it out of love, and did it with little evidence or care. If I were to allow myself to believe those accusations, I’d be cackling on a broomstick, high in the sky.

Instead, I thank those people and try to be better with that information in tow.

I surround myself with people who challenge me, but believe in my ability to be good. I do the hard work of trying to be better, as I think most of us do.

And most importantly, I don’t fully rely on the love of others anymore, knowing that I have a reservoir of love within me that I could live off of at any time.

And I don’t listen to those who try to bring me down. Because “If that’s love, it comes at much too high a cost.”