We drove through the snowy streets of north Minneapolis . It being a Saturday morning, steely cold, not many people were out. But we drove slowly anyway. I soon learned it was how Paul drove.well, but slowly.
always. ………
OK OK…enough of this disingenuous nonsense…where am i really?
Stuck deeply in the mire of the sheer horrible fact that Donald Trump seems to have won the election and will rise, once again to power…as if he ever let go of power in the first place!
Our country is in genuine danger
of becoming the worst of the worst…like every other intolerant nation in history, punishing all who are not like the white penis- ed population…..
America…the united States of….shone on the hill because it was all about inclusion…even if we did massacre nations of red-skinned people to reach our supposed ideal…. and now….the sheer underbelly of our nation’s true soul is exposed and it is filled with spiders and snakes.
And then …now…you have the movie premier of WICKED…a tale for our time if ever there was one…a black actress portraying a green-skinned heroine….polar opposite to her BFF who is all delicate pink and pretty….i mean could the metaphor be anymore blatant? And the amazing character of the Professor who is a goat? And how his animal kind is being exterminated because they are “animals” not human?
A truly specifically pointed tale of how our world is today….fear and loathing of “the other”….i mean, what else did Trump run his campaign on but fear and loathing of “the other’?
I saw the original Broadway production of WICKED and it was powerful and astonishing but now i see what Hollywood is doing to it and i am appalled and sickened because it is taking a true powerful tale of horror and friendship -despite-all and wrapping it up in a multi-million dollar Christmas package of such grandiosity and glitter, it will teach generations of Elphaba and Glinda wannabe’s that all you have to do is sing pretty and wear the right clothes, pink or green, and make people cry when you sing about true friendship without really voting for true friendship…and that makes it all ok if you can look like Ariana Grande…small, pink, pretty, four-octave-range perfect singing voice….
WICKED is too powerful a story -based on the even more powerful Frank Baum writings of Dorothy and her OZ journey, when the message was at heart the same but much more simply presented….so the essential story matters,,,,but the upcoming movie is once again coating in bright pink candy ,glittery pink nutrion-less thick gloppy candy, the deeply humane ideas that hatred breeds nothing but Evil…and it sings in the most beautiful songs of how singing and hugging and crying and singing some more will make it all ok, because once you’ve used your $500– a seat tickets, (I wonder how much the movie tix cost???)you can go home and FEEL GOOD ABOUT THE BASIC WAYS YOU HATE EVERY DAY.
This movie will fuel countless MFA programs in Musical Theater, as countless young women will strive to be the next Ariana Grande or Cynthia Eric…certainly not to be the originals Idina Menzel or Kristin Chenowith who are now showing wrinkles and aging,,,good forbid our heroine, our pretty in pink and green heroines, should ever age….aging makes us look like “THE OTHER” and we cannot have that can we?
So, the timing of the movie premier of WICKED could not be more perfect, as we sink into the true filthy sewage of Trumpism and hatred and denigration and destruction of all things we not only do not understand, but of those things we do not WISH to even know about…..god forbid anyone colored green or otherwise , colored even the subtlest shades of grey, anything that is not pure Black and White, god forbid we should attempt to understand, learn and accept that life is not , once again, life is not a Hollywood movie.
So, i shall see WICKED, the movie…how can one not, when one is attracted to all things that glitter and shine? But i will approach it with the jaundiced cynical eye of one who knows that life is far more complex and seriously multi-colored and multi-leveled than we as a species ever permit ourselves to accept.
WICKED and the candy-coated poison apple of easy acceptance.