1939/2024: A ‘Wicked’ Parallel

"This feels like 1939" has multiple layers of meaning for us on our first outing to see the film adaptation of "Wicked."

The author’s selfie outside of the Lake 8 in Barberton, Ohio (November 20, 2024)

Spoilers ahead… 

I planned on going to see the movie adaptation of Wicked: Part I (Directed by Jon M. Chiu) on Friday night November 22 when it formally opens. A few nights ago I saw some friends posting about going to see it, when I realized that select theaters were running early access screenings this week. As an avid fan of both the Judy Garland version of The Wizard of Oz (1939) and the Broadway show Wicked brought to life by Stephen Schwartz, I’ve been waiting for this film adaptation of Wicked for over a decade. I hopped on my phone after realizing there were early access screenings available and found one on Wednesday night in Barberton, Ohio, a small Ohio city south of Akron where I live.

The theater called Lake 8 was a far cry from the modern cineplexes where I am used to seeing films. It was an older style theater in a quaint downtown area. I easily found a parking spot in front of the theater on a quiet street cascaded by hanging lights. My first impression was, “This feels like 1939.” I felt such an immediate connection to my original childhood experience with The Wizard of Oz, my first favorite movie, I rushed to take a selfie in front of the theater before going in to grab my popcorn. And I sent the selfie to a few of my close friends before the show started with that 1939 sentiment, the year that The Wizard of Oz debuted. 

I teared up from the opening frames of the film, emotional to finally see this missing piece of the Wizard of Oz saga come to life. I expect many of the musical theater snobs in my life to nit-pick at the performances and members of the academic establishment from which I escaped to turn their noses up at its camp. I feel that the film was beautifully conceptualized and the casting was perfect. And I am not speaking in hyperbole when I say that Ariana Grande was born to play the role of Glinda the Good. The magic that the ethereal Cynthia Erivo brought to Elphaba Thropp, the real woman behind the villain I was raised to see as the Wicked Witch of the West was to be expected for someone of her superior talent. Yet the vulnerability she brought to the role was astounding and the cause of most of the tears I shed while watching the film. 

I went to see Wicked the first time for myself (there will be more outings) because I knew I would need the space to cry like the tender-hearted child I can be in the back of the theater as the credits rolled. As I cried it fully struck me, “My God…1939.” 

The Second World War officially started on September 1, 1939 when the Nazi German army charged by Adolf Hitler invaded Poland; just six days after the U.S. premier of The Wizard of Oz. While not without criticism from various quarters, many of us who oppose Donald Trump’s rise to power in the United States see the clear parallel to Hitler’s playbook, especially the use of xenophobia and scapegoating to embolden their claim to power. These themes are potent in the story of Wicked, originally shared with the world as a novel by Gregory Maguire in 1995.

When I took in a production of Wicked on London’s West End in early 2017, not too long after Donald Trump’s first administration began, I quaked when considering just how much Donald Trump and his tactics reminded me of the “Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” In both the 1939 film and especially through Wicked, we see the Wizard as a very weak man with no real power. He manipulates people with fear and the stoking of division. He strips the most intelligent beings (the animals in Wicked) of their literal and figurative voices. Tactics which, in Wicked, he credits to learning from his place of origin (which we know from The Wizard of Oz to be the midwestern United States). He is willing to use powerful women, like Madam Morrible, to serve at his pleasure in exchange for protection and status. He tries to do it with Elphaba, someone who originally admired his facade, yet in her integrity she was quick to call foul. And then he vilified her for it, stoking the narrative that turned her into one of the most renowned archetypal villains in modern Western pop culture. 

All of this should sound very familiar if you see Donald Trump for who he is; and if you recognize that the “wicked witch” archetype is one that, for centuries, the Christian-centered patriarchy has assigned to women they would like to use and yet can’t control. And for those of us who are terrified of what is to come when Donald Trump formally reassumes power on January 20, 2025, the timing could not be more perfect for the film adaptation of Wicked. May it inspire us to consider what choices we will make when confronted with the reality of government-sanctioned, hate-based discrimination like we see in Wicked. How we will defy gravity in the weeks and months and years ahead?

I loved Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz as a scared child misunderstood by her family, her churches, and her school. I took refuge in that fantasy world of Oz as presented to me by the dream factory of MGM studios. I connected with Dorothy’s need to seek outside answers to get home, only to discover that she had the answers in her all along. Dr. Dillimond, the wise (scape)goat, cautions his students in Wicked as he is being hauled off by Oz’s version of the Gestapo, they are not getting the whole story. And neither did I as a child. While some of the more academically esoteric or right-leaning interpretations of Wicked see it as the origin story of how Elphaba got radicalized into terrorism as the Wicked Witch of the West, this is unfair. Elphaba is the feminist icon that we women described as nasty witches need right now in 2024 and on the road ahead as we navigate the Wizard’s next regime.