28 April 2025

By Luca Marie Steiner

Art imitates life, and, Oz forbid, we miss the political meaning of “Wicked.” It is not just about witches or among the highest-grossing musical theatre productions, the stage play and film are purposefully political and flip the ways we consider morality, power, and what it means to be misunderstood. Political allegories are not seldomly inherent to stories, both written and on camera. Their most distinctive characteristic comes from the ability to mask political takes that are too controversial or uncomfortable if expressed explicitly. In their reflection on actual political realities, they are alienating the known and making critique (or awareness) more accessible. This disguise and provocation of cognitive dissonance is the very intention of the much-anticipated Broadway musical’s adaptation “Wicked.”

The 1900 novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” first introduces the Wicked Witch of the West, an unnamed, intrinsically evil representation. “Wicked,” however, names her Elphaba who has been marginalised since birth because of her green skin colour and builds up her depth and agency as a character in consequence. It pleads the cause of a misunderstood, empathetic, and defiant girl. In the same practice, Glinda, the Good was a righteous and high-minded archetype in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and is now laden with privilege and inner, ethical conflicts. The film expands each character and plays with the accepted opinions held about them: their goodness and wickedness. On this account, the sympathetic rewriting suggests that Elphaba is not wicked by nature, but wickedness was forced on her. Her experience exposes systemic oppression, political corruption, and societal tendencies or imperiousness to assign blame during times of crisis. 

In history class, the graffiti “Animals should be seen and not heard” sets the plot in motion and is the ideological construction of biased and misleading nature that the Wizard of Oz upholds. It is the disregard with which Animals and their contributions are treated that mirrors political realities of ideological marginalisation, fearmongering, and institutionalised prejudice. Elphaba learns about the actual, unjust effects of this as she eavesdrops on a group of Animals around Doctor Dillamond, picking up mentions of speech permits, protests, and disappearance of those Animals who were wilfully targeted. In a moment that is as final as desperate, Doctor Dillamond reveals that Animals are no longer permitted to teach before he is taken into captivity himself. The directive seems overbearing, high-handed, and likely issued by the governing authority of Oz: the Wizard. 

A regime commences, but Elphaba’s consciousness of it is biased. After all, he is publicly viewed to have a foresighted saintly power, knowledge, and influence. She thinks his goodness to be inherently true, so she also holds it as an opinion, specifically in the moments in which she perceives the wrongs inflicted upon the Animals. “Someone’s got to tell the Wizard. That’s why we have a Wizard,” she says, earnestly and naively. It tells on her uncompromising but green belief system that marks an innate morality of leadership, or kindness, that is bound to change: Elphaba’s bid for justice assumes that ignorance, rather than intent or systemic malign, underpins the Wizard’s inaction. This thought will be challenged as she comes to understand the structural discrimination and oppression possible under the Wizard’s reign: he is the deceiving, uncontrolled, and authoritative sovereign. When faced with the widespread civil unrest among his people, he answers with a common enemy: the Animal race. The Wizard blames them for reasons of expediency and constructs a propagandistic narrative in which the Animals are neither to be trusted nor liked, resulting in the removal of their rights.

Upon meeting the Wizard and being granted her heart’s desire, the consequences of finding herself to care hold so inwardly true that Elphaba asks him to help the Animals. Not her own gain or to be de-greenified.

Eventually, she comes to see his true colours, antithetical to the inherent morality and goodness she once believed him to exemplify:

ELPHABA

Seditious Animal activity? What are you …?

GLINDA

I’m sure the Wizard has a good reason …

ELPHABA stares at the Wizard, realizing …

ELPHABA

It’s – you. You’re behind it all. People, turning against the Animals … it’s because of you.

His responsibility for the oppression of the Animals takes on his all-consuming interest to maintain power and to him, it is no particular choice but a simple duty and means to an end to instil fear and prejudice in his people. Knowing he built his regime on wilful persecution is not just inscrutable to Elphaba. It is altogether impossible for her to side with him and be complicit in his wrongdoings and abuse. And she flees. For her to run and to know is ultimately a declaration of war to a system whose structure relies on silence and social manipulation, so Elphaba will be painted as the Wicked Witch and enemy by the end of the film.

Since late 2003, the stage play put a political allegory in plain sight that was so purposefully written for its audience to take note of American politics and political realities of the late 1990s to early 2000s. “Wicked” is a clever and skilled take that, unfortunately, cannot seem to outrun being timely and relevant. When the film adaptation was first considered in 2012, no one could have anticipated the weight its release would carry as it coincided with the 2024 US presidential election. It is one thing to see the political meaning on stage safely confined in Oz: the tale of power, who holds it, how it is maintained. It is another thing entirely to see it unfold in real time, outlast its original context, and see those in power purposefully shift blame. But, to quote the “Wicked” source material and novel by Gregory Maguire, “Surely the curse was on the land of Oz, not on her. Though Oz had given her a twisted life, hadn’t it also made her capable? “

Further Reading

Exploring the Politics of Wicked, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_NjQonmX8M

The Politics of Wicked: The Musical’s George W Bush Era Vibes Hit Hard in the Trump Years, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/politics-wicked-the-musical-george-w-bush-trump 

The Right Thinks ‘Wicked’ Is Too Woke, https://www.thecut.com/article/wicked-right-wing-backlash-candace-owens-ariana-grande.html