Thoughts on Wicked

[ceebeegee]

So I finished Wicked a few days ago. Um...hmmm. Color me somewhat underwhelmed. I love the premise, and the weird, carnival-mirror version of Oz is a great idea and fun to explore. But I do not find Elphaba a satisfactory protagonist. It took me a little while to figure out why and it's this--she doesn't do that much, and what little she does do is never carried to its dramatic conclusion. In college she carries on Dr. Dillamond's research--does this go anywhere? Other than teaching Chister how to mimic, not really. In the Emerald City she does one fully realized thing--she has the affair with Fyero (I guess you could say she falls in love, allows herself to be vulnerable). But the dramatic conclusion to that, the apology to Sarima--piddles off into nowhere. She lives there for years and never apologizes and makes her own peace with what she did--yes, I realize that Sarima wouldn't let her but you have to develop that, you have to raise the stakes. If she couldn't do the thing that brought her to the Vinkus, why did she live there for so many years then? Did her feelings change then, did she somehow come to terms with what she did? You can't just have her plop down and then not raise the tension, develop it further. Getting back to her time in the Emerald City, she most noticeably doesn't do something--she fails to kill Madame Morrible. Of course later on she does--or does she? He tries to make it a big mystery--did she or didn't she kill Morrible at the end--but her pathetically bragging about it, while still unsure of what she actually did, just undermined the whole thing and I didn't care in the end. I shouldn't feel that way about the protagonist confronting a major villain.

She really doesn't do much magic at all, and doesn't seem very devoted to or even interested in its practice or study. In fact other than Animal rights, I'm not sure what she stood for.

The lack of decisive action is really noticeable when Dorothy enters the picture. All she does is track her and wait for her! She doesn't do SHIT to confront her, stop her, talk to her--that whole subplot was a major disappointment. I found myself much more interested in Dorothy than in Elphaba. (I will say, I thought the whole section where she sends the dogs, the crows and the bees gripping--like her destiny was inevitably approaching. Of course this was helped by everyone's knowing how the Witch ends up.)

She's really not a terribly likable or admirable character, IMO. Maguire's elliptical writing style doesn't help that much--sure, Baum was WAY in the other direction as a writer (but of course he wrote for kids), rarely did Baum write anything particularly witty or clever. But Maguire seems to be opaque for the sake of being opaque. It's kind of annoying, there's no payoff. Why did Morrible enchant the three girls and why didn't they end up carrying out her plans? What was the point of the Philosophy Club sequence and how did it affect the participants? Why did her friendship with Glinda peter out? And why am I supposed to care about Sarima and her sisters and the children?

Although reading the synopsis of the musical--wow. They really DID change a lot! It's interesting, at first I thought "why the hell did Maguire allow that?" then I thought "well, they aren't his characters to begin with!" I did think the aftermath of the Witch's murder was beautifully depicted, and it's a shame that was changed.

Comments

[namfle.livejournal.com]

Yes, she was *supposed* to be Evil (or, literally, wicked), based on Baum's original treatment. I can't imagine that Mcguire thought for a second that someone would read "Wicked" without first either reading the original book or else seeing either the movie or "The Wiz." SO, when you open up to that first page of prose, you do so knowing how the Witch turns out, and I'm fairly certain that's the base from which Mcguire was writing. I think he then derailed himself, forgot what he was supposed to be doing (or more specifically, where the Witch's character was supposed to be at her fated end) and totally munged the ending in a poor attempt at making his story fit the existing canon.

Frankly, I think "Wicked" might have been a better read if you've never even heard of 'Oz,' since he goes so deeply into describing the world and reinvents pretty much everything he touched of it anyway. Going further, I think he should have taken the story OUT of Oz, put his own fantasy universe moniker on it, and have at it. I think the end product would have been so much better.

-elf-

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

totally munged the ending in a poor attempt at making his story fit the existing canon.

And why bother? He changed so many other things, why not change the ending as well?

An opportunity I thought he missed was to have the actual Oz books (as written by L. Frank Baum) as some kind of storytales actually told within the Maguire Oz universe--as either propaganda, an attempt to explain the seemingly miraculous, as religious mythology, or whatever. Although I guess that could come in the later books, since Dorothy's journey would be most appropriate.

Also, Oz in on Earth. Dorothy and the Wizard aren't "from Earth" (at least in the Baum books), they're from "the Great Outside World," they all exist in the same time and (roughly) same place. Dorothy even sails to the Oz continent in Ozma of Oz, and she walks to it in The Road to Oz (although helped by magic). And they worry about airplanes being able to fly over and find Oz. It's not like Narnia where they're literally in a different world and can only get there when summoned by Aslan or by magic or whatever.

God, I'm such a fanwanker sometimes.

[namfle.livejournal.com]

"He changed so many other things, why not change the ending as well?"

Right. At that point, he SHOULD change the ending, get rid of the Oz trappings and just run with it as his own creation.

I suspect we could bitch about this book for hours on end.

-elf-

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

Between the obessively knowledgeable fanwanker and the outraged writer, I suspect so!