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

[king-duncan.livejournal.com]

I think the book is primarily about Elphaba's paralysis- she overthinks everything, trying to be good (or wicked), and ends up a pawn of everyone.

[namfle.livejournal.com]

It's funny, I never even got to notice the "Main character is passive" portion of the story. I was too wrapped up in how much it was totally and utterly failing as an Oz story.


We start off with a thesis question: What is the nature of evil? Through Elphaba, we are taken through the author's study of exactly that: what makes a person evil. We are then taken through the steps of examining both nature (she's born green, with teeth and a dangerous temperament) and nurture (she ultimately becomes jaded by the mistreatment of those she identified with, and separately learns to love passionately, only to lose it rapidly and violently) as causes for being evil. Up until the last section, there's no clear answer to the question. Despite being a nasty baby, and being mostly shunned and chastised for most of her life, she is still, at heart, a good person. So what is it that turns her evil?

We open the last chapter to find that the answer is... an obligation to a pre-determined ending. WHAT? The Elphaba we see in the last chapter is such a departure from the rest of the book that it was jarring. It seemed to me like the author got on this roll and was just writing away at this story, when at the turn towards the home stretch realized he was playing in someone else's back yard and couldn't make any structural changes. We're left with this horrible kludge where he tries to basically jam his story in with a mish-mash of the Book and Movie versions of the story, resulting in one of the biggest wastes of my time that I've had in a while.

On a professional level, "Wicked" made me angry. It was poor story telling coupled with a misguided attempt at the deep exploration of what ordinarily would be a worthy topic of discussion. What's worse, the opening to the story is SO COMPELLING and postulates such interesting questions and ideas that I feel the book created it's own very high bar, then utterly failed at matching it in the end. It's the sort of thing that makes me want to beat the author and shoot the editor for letting the author go that far.

-elf-

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

Was she really even supposed to be evil in the end? If she was, then I think that one flopped--it didn't read that way to me, she wasn't really trying to kill Dorothy and her "murder" (if you can call it that) of Morrible--well, Morrible was a bad character who'd had Dillamond killed, that's not on the same level as killing an innocent, and I'm not sure it makes the case for evil. But her treatment of Dorothy is the real litmus test, and she seemed more annoyed and exasperated than anything else.

I wonder if they're planning to film this. With the better script and the right actress (i.e., someone who could make her more compelling) as Elphaba, it might be interesting. Certainly Return to Oz and The Wiz prove that creepy-clown Oz can work quite well. (Well, maybe The Wiz didn't work that well--sorry, Diana, you were WAY too old, get Stephanie!--but it certainly is interesting! Those scenes in the subway! Aaaaugh!!!)

[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-

[defy-gravity99.livejournal.com]

I have had my problems with this novel over the years. I've read it several times, still trying to find what scholars and critics find most fascinating. I don't think I've found it yet, haha. I love the premise (why not look at things from a different perspective?) but instead it stumbles off in the direction of a political novel. And when I first read it, I had no idea that's what it was. And slogged through it Second time around, I was still struggling through the passages (or pages, possibly the whole darn novel) about the politics.

And while the nature of evil is the attempt, what we receive from Maguire is how people's perceptions of something "different" is inherently evil. Elphaba becomes a political pawn, which is not good when she is supposed to be the main character of the story. And that's another gripe. She doesn't get born until midway through the beginning section, shows up pages into section 2. Finally we get mostly her in section 3. Back to spotty appearances in 4 and then the ending. (Maybe I'm the dense one, but I don't get it) She hardly shows up in her own story, as if Maguire is giving us glimpses of her, so we'll never know who she truly is.

What I adore about the musical (and we all know I adore the musical) is that they almost re-wrote the story. There are very few cases where this works, but I think it does for those reasons you mention about her passivity (is that the right word?). Taking the basic premise of the girls in college and fleshing the show out to be about two women and their choices. And not about them as secondary characters in their own stories. (And Elphaba is far from passive in the musical. She does follow through. She does magic. She becomes an Animal activist.)

The musical becomes more about perceptions of "evil" as well. And is the Good Witch really wicked and the Wicked Witch really good? The musical is driven by the women (even Norbert Leo Butz, who played Fiyero, said in an interview that he knew this was a WOMAN'S show and that he was proud to be a part of it, knowing that they were the focal point) What I disliked (or was aggravated by) in the novel, I found in the musical. (Then throw in the gay guy relating and it's a whole different level).

[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]

That gives me some hope for the musical, then. It's back on my list. :)

But MAN did that book piss me off.

I think you're right, the concept behind the book is awesome and attractive, but the execution is almost amateurish. No, not almost, it IS an amateur's attempt at it. It's a fan fic from a writer who has either little understanding of the source material, or else little respect for it.

-elf-

[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!

[king-duncan.livejournal.com]

Trivia: I just heard recently that the movie producers were planning to use Stephanie Mills, till Diana told them she could get them Michael Jackson.

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Michael *was* great as the Scarecrow but he doesn't quite balance off how terrible she was. Her earlier Oscar nom notwithstanding, she's really not actor and couldn't quite pull off playing a character so much younger. I know they they tried to change it so that she was older but then that gets weird too--why is a grown woman so...young and babyish acting? And then there's all the EST stuff they shoehorned into the script.

Having said all his, I still think it's a fascinating movie.