Episode Transcript
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There's pandemonium. People are running in the
streets in panic because, oh, the wicked witch is coming.
Like, suddenly there's a wicked witch.
There hasn't been a wicked witchbefore, as far as we know.
And now there is one. And she's the great enemy.
And oh, by the way, she's green.Welcome to Witch Hunt, the
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podcast reviewing the portrayal of witches in literature,
theater and film. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
And I'm Sarah Jack. Today we investigate the
treatment of witches in the Wicked movie.
And we're reviewing the Wicked movie because it's something
that we obviously enjoy, and it's something a lot of people
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out there enjoy, and we want to be able to enjoy it together
while also critically evaluatingthe role of the witches in the
film. So we saw the Wicked movie
today. And Sarah, I'm really curious,
how did you feel when you walkedout of the theater?
I didn't want to leave, I wantedto walk right back in and watch
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the next showing. That's the same way that I felt
actually though, even while the movie was going on, I was like,
I can't wait to watch this againand catch more of the details
and everything. Because I kind of had to live in
the front of screen mostly to focus on what they were saying
and singing. But I wouldn't be able to just
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sit back and and enjoy everything.
We've spent several weeks preparing for this event,
reading, watching. So there's been all this time
looking forward to being in ounces in the theater.
And so being there was fantasticand I wasn't ready to leave Oz.
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It was a really, it was really just a great creation of the
world of Oz. I thought their rendition of Oz
was quite excellent. Maybe we want to talk about
Galinda's entrance into the filma little bit.
Oh boy, do I Galinda's entrance is so spectacular, and if you
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love the Good Witch in the 1939 MGM film, this is very evocative
of her coming in in her bubble. It's I love the way they show.
They pan up to the sky and you just see this like light
twinkling in the sky, moving. You think, oh, it looks like the
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sun, but 'cause it's so bright and spectacular, but it keeps
coming down and then it's a bubble with Galinda in it.
It's amazing. Yeah, and she, Cynthia and
Ariana have now created these characters that I, I don't, I,
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they will never be matched in their, the combination together,
their partnership, their friendship.
And we'll be talking about that more, I'm sure.
But I fell in love with Galinda immediately and I'm sure you
know my love for Glenda the goodwitch from MGM, you know that
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sets the stage and but Galinda was just marvelous right from
the get go. Yeah, she's spectacular.
They really cast the movie very well, I thought.
All of the actors just fit perfectly the character, you
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know, I don't know if they they cast it and then they did some
rewrites to to make it perfect for them.
But all of the songs just came straight from the musical and
they were able to sing them perfectly.
And you know, you look at peoplelike Christian Chenoweth and
Idina Menzel and the vocal talents that they have, and then
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you see Ariana and Cynthia able to pick that ball up and run
with it and they just nailed every note.
It was literally pitch perfect and beautiful.
I just thought, you know, the whole the story between the two
characters was just beautiful. They don't start out liking each
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other, but they come that way. I'm just gonna state that I have
not been to the musical, but I've read and I've read and read
and, you know, seen lots of Oz and talked to experts.
But the first look into Oz todayin that theater was not sparkly.
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Right out of the gate is the darkness.
There was a really problematic moment for me, one that I
struggled with a little in the first scene.
Well, spoiler alert here if you're not familiar with the
musical, the first scene of the movie is basically similar to
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the beginning of Oz. Once Dorothy lands in Oz and the
Wicked Witch of the East is deadand the Munchkins are
celebrating Ding Dong and all that.
And so the beginning of Wicked is similar in that they're
actually celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the West,
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which then the whole movie goes back explaining like the story
from the beginning of the beforeshe was the Wicked Witch of the
West when she was Alphaba, the you know, and goes through her
life and adventures and misadventures.
But in the first scene, while they're celebrating the death,
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they burn a giant wooden effigy of the witch, which really
evoked the terrors of the European witch trials and also
modern day persecutions of people accused of witchcraft.
Absolutely. I almost cried.
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So you know, my experience as a child watching the 1939 film,
you know for sure that the the witch was evil.
You just, it's not just as soon,but you know, you knew then and
it's this huge relief. This monster's gone.
You just hear that a witch is dead.
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You see her feet there. And the celebration makes sense.
It's comfortable. It is a celebration of
conquering evil. But if you've read Wicked, if
you are familiar with the characters at all, and I think
also when you have an awareness of what's happening in our world
to innocent women and children and men, I've learned to not.
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So I automatically think it's not a witch.
I don't see celebration in killing a witch because of the
reality. And I'm fully aware, fully aware
that this is a fairy tale. It's a fairy tale I love.
But it was hard to start right there celebrating and watching
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the burning of this effigy, especially when there's been
things in the news this week of deaths of innocent people, but
also of effigy burnings. And so I couldn't, I was like,
for a minute there. I wasn't in the fairy fairy
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tale. It was hard to see it.
It's huge. I mean, it's not, it's huge.
Yeah. It's.
Like Burning Man size effigy basically.
And truly, obviously, it goes into the story and you begin to
fall in love with Alphaba. It's horrific to realize that
that was her. That that is.
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Yeah. I mean, yeah, I wanna say it's
not just about the things that Isaid it does.
As a descendant of women that were hanged for witchcraft, it
was very upsetting. I'm not saying it was the wrong
choice. I don't have an answer.
I don't know what I think of that.
I think that it is a portrayal of mob mentality against accused
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and alleged witches. That's the flip side of, you
know what I was saying, my initial shock at it happening.
Part of me did feel like this shows what happens.
This is like a visual for peoplethat you instantly connect to
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the historic witch trials and most, but you know, once you
know about the modern witch trials, this really just evoked
images that we've seen of peoplebeing burned alive for this.
So it was difficult to see. But I also see it as, hey, this
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is a moment where we can talk about this and maybe shed some
light on what's happening now. Like you said, the mob mentality
in the manner that they were rejoicing.
Everybody's getting caught up inwhat everybody else's everybody
else's celebration. And you know, they just like
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this thing. But the image was just so.
It's so visceral, and it really just kind of knocks you out for
a moment. Why, if you know?
Yeah, I'm really curious if if they did screen test, if they
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what kind of responses they weregetting and if they just ignored
them. You know, I think people would
have been, I think, I mean, it'svery horrifying to watch.
And part of the when you're looking at it from the fairy
tale perspective, you associate water or a, you know, a falling
house with which death. But it's just a different
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feeling to watch a giant witch burn.
Now, that said, if I wasn't aware of what's going on today,
I might, it might be my reactionto it might have been measured a
little bit more. But still, the thought of all
the innocents, the 10s of thousands of innocent people who
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were actually burned, or at least their bodies were burned
at the stake because of witchcraft accusations in
Europe, still knowing, just knowing about that makes me feel
some kind of horror at seeing it.
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Yeah, it was horror. It was horrifying.
Yeah. But like you were saying
earlier, then you go, it's kind of a dramatic switch.
You go from this burning effigy to then Glenda starts telling
the story of Alphaba and she begins with, well, Alphaba's
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mother having a relationship that then leads to Alphaba's
birth. So you see this little, like, I
find it a little adorable, greenbaby coming out.
Everybody who's present for the birth is like shocked and
repulsed by it. So that had another tie to me
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from that had another tie for me.
In reality, I read an article this week about a little girl
that was born with albinism. And in the interview the mom
responds how disappointing it was, how hurtful it was that
when her family came to meet their child, they only stayed 5
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minutes. And that's like a real
experience that just happened just a little bit ago.
I do think that birth is a celebration.
It's supposed to be a celebration, and it wasn't.
Yeah, for Alphaba's family. Right.
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Yeah. The green skin color is
obviously a device to mark Alphaba as being different than
all the other characters in the movie.
It's really just a signal of herotherness.
But like you said, real people go through very similar
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experiences where a baby's not born the expected skin color,
and people don't know how to react to that.
There's a lot of superstition. We just did an episode about
that earlier this week, and there's so many myths about
persons with albinism especially, but also, you know,
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people who are born with anything that marks them out as
being different than other people.
If you have a disability, you'remarked out as different right
away. If people can see it, then they
start thinking about you as being kind of different and
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maybe less than other people. You made a good point when you
said they don't know how to respond and I do think that
there is that the shock causes people to not respond.
The that scene is so beautiful with her birth.
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One of the things that we just had a really wonderful
conversation with Paul Laird andJane Barnett earlier this week.
And one of the things that I believe Jane brought up and they
spoke about looking forward to how is this going to look off
the stage on camera? And I loved the dimension that
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that room, the birthing room had.
It had the the family and the characters and the animals just
like all around. And the baby goes up.
It was really a fascinating scene because even though there
was this, the father's in the background not responding well,
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she's still being elevated. That's a good point.
There's there's something to that where it begins with her
being elevated and then later onin the movie she's also
elevated, like physically liftedabove the ground.
So you kind of can see her at two stages of life having a
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similar experience. And we know that flight is so
important in portrayals of witches.
Of course, the original Wizard of Oz book and film had the
Wicked Witch of the West flying around the country on her broom.
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So you've got that back again, and that's wonderful.
But you you wait for it. It builds up a lot of
anticipation for that first actual flight moment.
Yeah, so. Yeah, flight is such a key
element in even in frank bombs. I mean, Dorothy, the the Wizard,
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how do they get to Oz? It's through the air.
Mm. Hmm.
And how did the Wizard get to Ozthrough the air in his balloon?
And, you know, so it's common, like the Oz stories tend to
begin and end with, you know, whether it's at the end of The
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MGM film, the Wizard taking off in the balloon to go back and
leaving without Dorothy, or, youknow, the way this one ends with
the song, the performance of Defying Gravity.
Just leave that as a hint for now.
It's very effective. I really loved the way that they
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closed this movie, but we'll come back to that after we talk
about the middle a little more. I really want to talk about
alpha buzz magic that they do show like right out, right out
of the womb that is flight. Like the magic that they show is
the flight, but I also will havethe props, like all the props,
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like all the details. Every little prop was so fun.
It looked like, you know, you just wanted to go play with
Galinda's shoes and the poppies and the the spectacles and
glasses and I wanted to try all of his hat on.
Like the props were really marvelous.
I loved the way that they used the poppies in the scene when
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Professor Dillimonde is removed from the classroom and another
professor comes in with a lion in a cage and Alpha Bug gets
furious about the way they're treating this lion.
She's used to animals walking around freely and being able to
converse. And this cage is supposed to
suppress the lion's ability to learn to speak.
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And she gets really upset about that and begins her, like,
social justice quest for the animals.
But she puts everyone to sleep using poppies, which of course,
if you know the 1939 film or theoriginal L Frank Baum book, the
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poppies put Dorothy to sleep while she's walking the yellow
brick road. And so I thought, here they are
using those poppies again. They found a way to to tie those
things and, you know, have that element included.
This movie wanted to send some social justice messages and you
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know, the animal culture that was under attack and being
persecuted is something that is very, there's so many examples
in our history and in our modernworld that that speaks to.
So that is another one. Like with the burning effigy,
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that's not gonna maybe affect everybody the same way, but I
feel like what you see happeningwith the professor and the
animals is not as subtle. Not that a burning effigy is
subtle, but it was a clear statement.
It something that everybody's going to recognize, something
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that's going on today that is reminiscent of the treatment of
the animals, the persecution andsuppression of the animals
because the animals, they're in wicked, the animals begin,
they're basically like humans inanimal form.
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They speak, they're intelligent,they can have friendships with
humans and so forth. They're suppressed and animals
start disappearing. I really loved that they
included the scene with Doctor Dilleman talking to his animal
friends in the in his room. And they're having a little
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secret hush hush meeting becausethey can't be caught meeting
together anymore because that would look seditious to the
wizard and, and his side of things, which alphabet doesn't
realize that the wizard's behindit at first either.
What's going on with the animalsand them being banned from
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teaching? They're being banned from
preaching. They're being banned from
basically any involvement with humans other than as what we
think in the real world, the role that animals play as pets
and workers and so forth. So they're, they're really
suppressed and treated as subhuman.
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They're totally dehumanized. And, you know, like with that
cage, they don't want the animals to speak anymore.
They want them to be quiet. And the board, when Doctor
Dilleman flips it over and in the earlier scene says animals
should be seen and not heard, which is very upsetting.
It's very upsetting. These animals are contributing
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to society. They're intelligent.
They have, you know, they're not, they're being devalued, but
they're actually are very valuable to society.
Yes, yeah. And like I said, through through
your own personal lens, you'll see things going on now and
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you'll know things that have happened in the past that really
remind you of what's going on with the animals.
There are so many for me. I hope people think about it,
it's just not a stretch of the imagination whatsoever.
There's so many different ways that you could apply that to
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today's world and to the world of history because, you know,
this cycle of persecution has been going on.
And we've talked about this a little before, the label, which
as just meaning, you know, in other bad person who's dangerous
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to us could be a witch, Whoever the witch in that sense of the
word is changes from time to time.
And so, you know, the witch has been Jewish people, the witch
has been black people, the witchhas been feminists, the witch
has been the LGBTQ. There's been so many witches
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over time. It might be the people in the
country next to you who are the witches.
And I mean, this is anywhere in the world.
These kinds of things have been applied where we just label
somebody as being this bad guy. And they said something about it
in the film. There's a part where they talk
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about how the wizard talks abouthow to unite people.
You create an enemy, and so he created the animals as being the
enemy because he was tired of discord in ounces.
Yeah, but then in the next breath they they trade that in
for Alphaba. She's there, not the enemy.
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Boom, Metamorable trades it in. Well, the animal that their
usefulness was done and it was pretty much squashed.
I mean, they it appears that they'd gotten that handled and
so then the new enemy is off of a.
Yeah, there's like announcements.
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You hear Marble's voice all overOz and they show it at Shiz.
They show it in the Emerald City, people.
There's pandemonium. People are running in the
streets in panic because oh, thewicked witch is coming.
Like suddenly there's a wicked witch.
There hasn't been a wicked witchbefore, as far as we know, and
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now there is one and she's the great enemy.
And oh, by the way, she's green,so she's easy to spot, so easy
to hunt her down and treat her as being different and different
than human, because she doesn't even look like us.
Would you like to talk about thefriendship and love?
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Yes. And wicked.
I definitely do want to talk about that.
It was amazing. It's such a good story because
Golinda and Alphaba start out like their first like big song
that's the two of them together is loathing.
And they just talk about how they loathe each other and well,
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they sing about how they loathe each other, but they're always,
even before that song starts, you know, they're at odds with
each other at every moment and then they get stuck rooming
together and they hate it and they hate each other and or
loathe each other. So they're not off to a great
start. But then Linda, or Galinda as
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she's known at the time, Galinda, well, there's this
dance, you see, and Galinda getsa boy to ask.
Elphaba's sister, Nessa Rose, wehaven't talked about yet to ask
her out to the dance because she's just sitting there by
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herself while everybody else is running off to the dance club.
And she in the film and in the musical, she's a wheelchair
user. And Galinda thinks that, oh,
this will look like I'm doing a nice thing by getting the boy to
do a favor for, you know, this girl.
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But really she's just trying to get the boy out of her own hair.
But Nessa Rose is so happy. She beams at Alphaba and just is
so like glitter faced. I would, I don't know, that's
not a thing, but maybe it is a thing.
She's just so happy that Alphabadoes something nice for Galinda
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and then Galinda does something nice for Alphaba and then they
become really good friends. And the scene where they had
that, that's one when I was about crying, I was starting to,
well up a little because it justtugs at the heartstrings.
The way, you know, Alphaba's isolated on the dance floor and
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everybody's laughing at her because she's wearing a funny
hat and Galinda goes and dances with her, does the goofiest
alphaba dance. Kind of reminded me of the
Elaine from Seinfeld, but it's just crazy.
Your arms flailing kind of dance.
Yeah. Little shoulder moves and little
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like whatever this thing was and.
Yeah, yeah, I just was, I mean, I was there.
I felt like I was right there inthe the the film just really
pulls you in. And there's another brand out
there that we know as magical, but this one had the magic.
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This I, I mean, I have been to the magic place recently and in
my seat in my theater, I felt Alphaba and Glinda's magic and
Oz's magic. They really pulled that off.
And that scene really does it. I mean, it is you feel her
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isolation and this is something that really was a nod to the
thread of courage from the original versions of Oz.
They don't ever necessarily say courage and wicked, but Alphaba
was demonstrating that there in that scene.
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I think so. And you're just like that
turning point where Glenda decides that she's going to go
have fun with Alphaba, with the silly dance.
It's such a key moment. It is, you know, Alphabet was
purposely, you know, vulnerable right then.
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And Glinda took the opportunity to become her friend right there
in front of everybody. Yeah, it was so powerful.
And this movie, The movie, and Iknow the musical also, they
bring that friendship. Female friendship is so powerful
in both of them. That's particularly a big reason
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why Wicked's been running on Broadway for over 20 years and
has a touring show and shows in other locations.
And it's so massively successfullargely because of that
friendship story that you don't really expect from a story
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involving the so-called Wicked Witch of the West that oh, she
once was young and she had friends.
It's really amazing so. So we just talked about all of
that. We danced around Fiero.
We we got to talk about all of that without bringing him up.
But how fantastic was he? Yeah, and dancing through life.
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His grand, his big entrance intothe scene and the song Dancing
Through Life. It's been stuck in my head since
I got out of the theater, along with maybe a dozen other songs,
but that one keeps coming through because it's so fun.
But they do a lot in the scene also of dancing through life, so
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it's important. And Fiero, the character Fiero
in first Wicked movie, he's veryinteresting.
He's a deeper guy than kind of he comes off across at the
beginning. He seems just shallow and self
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absorbed and he's they make him the ultimate goof off character.
He doesn't want to take anythingseriously.
He wants to dance through life. Yeah, I think it's interesting.
So he's one of the main male figures.
Wizard is one of the main male figures, and neither one is
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quite what they say they are. I don't know what that means.
No, and one has power because hepretends to be powerful.
The Wizard where Prince Fiero, he's a Prince from the Winky
Country, which they don't reallyget into what that is in the
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movie, but it's very heavily featured in the this book, the
original Wicked. And so he actually is born with
real power over people, or at least his parents have authority
over people. Yeah, he has authority where the
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wizard usurps authority by beingable to read a handful of words
out of the grimmery, which is the ancient magical text in a
language no one can read in ounces.
OK, I want to talk about Jeff Goldblum here.
OK, Fantastic. It was so great.
(32:22):
Yeah, but I, I loved, I loved her trip to, I loved her
invitation to Oz. I loved her trip to Oz.
I, you know, the Wiz mania, the that was all fantastic.
And I had seen an interview withthe director and Jeff and
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Cynthia and Ariana and that hugeOz head was right there on the
stage for the interview. I thought it was going to play a
bigger part in the film, and it is amazing and remarkable.
But they just got right to Jeff.They got right to the wizard
himself. He couldn't wait to meet
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Elphaba. Yeah, I was surprised when he
walks out from behind the head on his own because we're so used
to what happens in the 1939 filmwhen Dorothy goes there and
they, like, Toto runs around andfinds the man behind the curtain
that you're not like, don't pay attention to the man behind the
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curtain. And he's in there on his
microphone telling people don't,don't pay attention.
Like where? Here.
Yeah, Goldblum Wizard walks out voluntarily because he's eager
to meet Alphabet, because, as isrevealed several minutes later,
he has a plan for her. He has something that he needs
(33:49):
her to do for him. Yeah.
OK, so then actually I want to say another thing about my
experience watching this. We get to this point in the film
and I remember thinking, how come I haven't been scared yet?
There hasn't really been anything scary.
I I was thinking it was probablymore like childhood fear that I
(34:12):
was hoping would be evoked a little bit more and it wasn't
there. But that changed too.
Once Elphaba has the Grimmery, the next few scenes are just
brutal. And I just, man, that was that
was something. I'm talking about the flying
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monkeys. Yeah.
That was scary and it was scary what was happening to them, but
they were scary. Yeah, what happens to them when
they're transformed to sprout wings all the sudden from their
back? These gigantic wings just
breaking through the flesh and clothing and coming out.
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The poor chistory, the head of the Emerald Guard is riding on
the floor and like you really feel his pain and what he's
going through. The facial animations on those
monkeys were just really powerful.
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You first see it with one and then they go into another room
and all the guards that were lining the hallway are all on
the floor and jumping on walls. There's trying to like, not feel
this pain anymore. And you know what I felt like
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when Elphaba meets him before she walks up to the Grimmery and
is able to read it, it's like they were kind of, unless I was
imagining it, 'cause I was just so pulled into the story, I
wondered if he had been able to talk before and couldn't talk.
Like I felt like he wanted to say something to her, 'cause I
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feel like they just, like, paused on his face and his eyes,
you know, we're looking at her and they showed her eyes and I
just was like, we know why he can't talk.
He lost it. Yeah, I really want to see what
they do with him in the in Part 2, because he has a pretty
(36:22):
significant role in Gregory Mcguire's novel Chester A, and
it does involve speech in his role there, so be interesting to
see what happens. But yeah, when the the once the
flying monkeys go after Alphaba because Moribel goes out there
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and tells them that Alphaba's responsible.
It wasn't the wizard's idea, it was Alphaba who did it.
And they need to go after her, and they're all in a lot of
pain, and they fly off in a rageand suddenly they're flinging
themselves at windows as Alphabaand Glinda make their way down.
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This, you know, one of those loghallways that they only make for
movies like this with a lot of windows.
And it's up really high above the city, the Emerald City.
They're up real high. And these monkeys are flying and
full force, like throwing their bodies out these windows.
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And the first time it happened, like everyone in the theater
jumped a little bit. So it comes as a surprise at the
beginning, but they are, they'refearsome, you know, adversaries.
That Grimmery was amazing. The way it opened, the way the
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spells came up off the page and the language that she read the
spells in. I was so thrilled.
Yes, I loved that she did the spell and she's pronouncing
these mysterious spell words like, which is what you think
(38:16):
that a spell is like. It's some mystery language, you
know, repetitive repeating of syllables and things, kind of
magic. Maybe I missed this.
You know, when they're there's acouple times that alphabet's in
the forest. She's it's not scary really.
And I know with Oz, there's the The MGM Oz, there's the scary
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trees and I don't feel like theythere are any Easter eggs or not
to talking trees. I would have liked to have seen
at least a face on a tree, but maybe I missed it.
Yeah, maybe they're saving that for the second part.
Could be, but I did the one of the other Easter eggs that was
in it was when they're rescuing the cub and they bicycle out of
(39:02):
there and put the cub in the basket like Toto it in the
basket I'd. Love to see that because it like
seeing Alphaba on the bike. It reminded me of MGM watching
the Wicked Witch and the mean Lady in Kansas riding the
bicycle and Dorothy's sees her like riding in the air around
(39:26):
the house while it's flying in the Cyclone.
You know it just I had that image of her.
I guess I can't hear the music from that sequence, but you guys
know the music I'm talking aboutfrom?
And then you just you mentioned the cyclone and I feel like the
the just the little nod, there was a little nod to wind when
(39:49):
Golinda's like, I like the air and she puts her hair out the
window like that was a little one.
And then obviously there's a storm later.
But yeah, I just. Yeah, that storm's spectacular,
too. Yeah.
Yeah, I love the the green flashes in the sky.
Very awesome right at the end inthe Defying Gravity sequence.
(40:14):
I hope you're happy. I really look forward to being
able to see the stage musical because I want to see the songs
in that kind of environment and presented like that.
Yeah, I know there's there's a lot of power in going to see a
live performance and you can really feel very close to a
(40:40):
story by being in the same room as the people acting it out and
singing and playing instruments and all of that stuff.
You get to see this whole world coming to life in front of you
and it feels very immediate. I'm ready to go see The
Nutcracker. I was thinking about A Christmas
(41:02):
Carol, but like the film also brought a lot of immediacy.
I thought with the ability to doclose-ups, you know, you can pan
back and see the whole world, oryou can get really close and
intimate with somebody's face and you really get pulled in
(41:24):
that way by being able to see the nuances, the little micro
expressions and so forth in people's faces.
So, Josh, do we consider Madam Morrill a witch?
She is a witch. She is a sorceress.
(41:45):
You can call it by different names.
She's a professor of magic. She's a spellcaster.
She's a lot of things. She's not labeled witch by
anybody in the movie. That's important to note where
(42:05):
Alpha Bug gets labeled the Wicked Witch at the very end.
None of the other characters areactually.
Even Glinda's not called a good witch in this first film, so.
Other little friends keep sayinghow good she is.
That was so funny. That was adorable.
Her, her and her friends and theher friends.
(42:28):
Just every time she does something that's outwardly seems
like she's doing a nice thing for somebody, they're just like,
oh, she's so good. She is such a good one.
She's so good. Like all through the movie,
they're just saying that reinforcing that she has this.
She's able to build a reputationas being almost saintly or, you
(42:55):
know, whatever. She's she's the good witch
without the label witch yet, even though she she did because
of Elphaba got her into the sorcery seminar.
And they call it sorcery, not witchcraft, which is also
something to note. But it it's interesting because
(43:16):
we also know just going back to the original Oz and people are
familiar enough with this story.This isn't giving much away for
what happens. We know that they're in the
original Oz. There's a Wicked witch of the
East and a wicked witch of the West, and then you have a good
(43:36):
witch of the South and a good Witch of the North.
So there's like the four corner cardinal directions.
All are represented by some kindof witch. 2 good ones and two
evil ones or wicked ones I should say.
So we know that we're going to see Glinda become the Good
(43:58):
Witch, but we don't know yet who's going to be this Wicked
Witch of the East, who's Alphabet's counterpart.
So I don't want to reveal who that is yet.
If you're not familiar with the novel or the musical and you
haven't seen the film yet, because that's not going to
(44:21):
happen be revealed for another year when Part 2 comes out.
So anyways, we have these, you know, one wicked witch, a
sorceress, a phony baloney wizard, a learning Glinda
student of sorcery. So you can see there's kind of
(44:44):
basically you could just say there's four witches if you
wanted to, even the one's a male.
When you were just reminding us that it can be anyone who's an
accused witch today, that made me think about childhood Alphaba
being used to like her. Her childhood character is
(45:08):
there. Alphaba as a child is in this
film more than once, but they don't show many of the
characters that young. So I was just thinking about,
you know, obviously, unfortunately there are children
that are branded as witches today, too.
Yes, and watching Alpha Bug growup, you can see that people are
(45:34):
suspicious of her at an early age.
In you said coming out of the womb, she's already doing magic.
She does this involuntary magic whenever she's upset.
So it's just this emotional driven magic and she in right
(45:55):
when she comes out of the out ofthe womb into the room, she
levitates all these objects in the room up to the ceiling and
it's quite remarkable. And then there's a scene where
children are picking on her and she gets angry and something
happens to those children and then she gets yelled at by her
(46:17):
father. What have you done now ulfiba?
And do you think that there was purpose whether?
I mean, it's really illustrated in the film, but Elphaba's
character seems to be the one that feels the most.
And I don't mean those those necessarily just those moments
where her magic flares up. But she's the one that is
(46:39):
thinking and looking outside, you know, what is popular and
really evaluating what's happening.
And then she's also the one thathas power in the form of magic.
She has now see, she's an interesting portrayal of a witch
(47:00):
because she has this innate power, but she's also othered
and therefore she's people try to render her powerless.
She fights back and so, but she also, you know how
(47:23):
stereotypically a witch is like a poor old Crone who lives alone
in a like on the edge of a swampor deep in the woods somewhere.
And Alphabet doesn't have that upbringing.
She's the daughter of the governor of Munchkin Land.
(47:44):
And so she's born into privilege, just like Glinda is
or Golinda born into privilege. They both their families have
servants and Alphaba is raised by a nanny.
And so her family has resources.So what I'm thinking is that,
(48:12):
you know, people have this imageof the of oh, they always went
after the poorest people. And certainly they, you know,
that happened a lot. You look at a case like Sarah
Goode in Salem. You know, she's out asking
people for gifts because she can't support herself and her
husband can't support the family.
(48:33):
But you also have people caught up in witch trials who were
middle class or even who were wealthy, like Philip and Mary
English in Salem. Witch trials were the wealthiest
people in Salem and got caught up in it.
So when I look at Wicked, I'm seeing all these different kinds
(48:57):
of witches in it because they all have different backgrounds
and characteristics, and their lives really shape what kind of
witch they become. And I think it's something to
reflect on that wicked the film,the most evil thing is the mob
(49:26):
mentality or the group think it is the character, you know, on
either side of each other, the neighbor, the friend together,
you know, those that are extinguishing the animals, those
that decide the alphaba is the wicked witch.
(49:46):
I don't know in the future what wicked she may do.
But from what we've seen of the story, there wasn't an evil
source of power, but there was an evil source of hurt happening
to citizens in ounces. Yeah, she's not sworn in
(50:08):
allegiance to any kind of devil figure or anything like that.
Her power, she came by her powernaturally, which is interesting.
But I think, do you think, you know, Alfred Baum kind of put
flipped witch stereotypes on their head by introducing the
(50:28):
idea that there could be a good witch.
And then Wicked, the novel took that further by introducing the
concept of, you know, a Gray area kind of between wicked and
good, where which is the realitythat everybody actually lives in
is the space between wicked and good.
(50:50):
Nobody's entirely either 1 And Ilove exploring that area.
And then in Wicked and in the movie, you really see all of
those shades that come between this black and white world of,
(51:10):
of good and evil. You see everything that's in
between. And another way that they they
changed the portrayal of witchesis, and I guess L Frank Baum
really started it because the wizard, the male figure, the
(51:30):
patriarch of Oz, is a phony. He can't do any real magic.
He does the other kind of magic,which is sleight of hand and
illusions and things like that. So he has the big giant head
that talks, you know, and it's supposed to be him.
He also takes other forms in thebooks.
(51:52):
So, you know, he's effectively powerless.
I mean, he has all the power, but it doesn't come from
himself. It comes from these lies that he
builds around himself. Whereas the women actually like
have Madam Warble is a powerful sorceress, Alpha Buzz a powerful
(52:15):
witch. Glinda, we know is coming into
your power. So you've got really, it's a
patriarchally run world, but suddenly you've got these three
powerful women in it and what's that going to do?
How's that going to shape the next movie?
(52:36):
I've been intrigued by how it's the wonderful wizard, but it's
also the terrible wizard. And they did say terrible.
He did say terrible in Wicked today.
And I was kind of, I was like, glad to hear it because I think
we always, you know, think the powerful and wonderful and
terrible. You know that other movie that
(52:58):
came out last decade, Oz the Great and Powerful.
He's both great, which can mean a lot of different things, and
powerful, where we know that really he's not so powerful, but
he has everybody believing that he is.
So was there anything else that you loved or that really
(53:22):
surprised you? I was like really happy to see
the Ruby slippers slipped in there.
They had both. They had the silver and the
Ruby. Yes, yeah, those slippers,
they've it was interesting that in in this one, the slippers
(53:42):
they mentioned, because Elphaba and Nessa Rose's father gives
jeweled slippers to Nessa Rose. And that's a significant moment
where he's got a gift for her, but he's got nothing but
grumpiness and anger for Alphaba.
(54:04):
So that's another moment that actually means like isolating
Alphaba. Yeah, and she feels like she
deserves that because she blamesherself for Nessa's
disabilities. When Elphaba and Nessa Rose's
father gives Nessa those shoes, he says these were your
(54:27):
mother's. They're not.
At this moment in time in Part 1, the shoes are not special
yet. She doesn't even put them on.
Then she's seen in a scene rightafter that with not those shoes.
On shoes, Yeah, she must put them, tuck them away because
they're so special. Being from her mother.
(54:48):
Who she never in Wicked the movie and I also in the musical,
Nessa never never knows her mother because her mother dies
giving childbirth to Nessa Rose.So, which is a little different
than what happens in the novel. What's your favorite scene from
(55:10):
a staging standpoint? There are like, I really love
one of the dances when they're in the spinning contraption and
running around on the ladders. I thought that really took a lot
of coordination to line up that scene, the choreography and the
(55:32):
moving, literal, moving parts ofthe set.
Yeah, I got very excited. I'm pretty sure I almost
clapped. I didn't, but I was like when I
like saw what that room looked like and them putting the books,
I was like, Oh my goodness, they're going to be dancing
there. It's going to spin around.
(55:52):
It's going to be awesome. Yeah, Now, you know, if you were
to ask me my favorite scene of the film, that's the defying
Gravity sequence, the part when Alphabet takes flight for the
first time. I found that to be very powerful
and also very just entertaining and cool.
(56:15):
You know, it's very action-packed and dramatic and
bold and just watching, you know, the stunt work in the film
is incredible. I've watched a lot of behind the
scenes stuff in the lead up to this and just the number of
times they had actors on wires flinging them through the air at
(56:39):
like top speed and the, and theywould be singing.
You can watch their their mouth moving the whole time, but
they're only how do you even concentrate while you're being
flung through the air like that?So there's a lot of really cool
scenes. There's a lot of great action in
it. We've talked about a lot of the
(56:59):
emotions and the themes and the undertones and and that kind of
stuff, but there's it's an action film too.
It is an action film, yeah. Yeah, so if you don't like
musicals but you like magic and awesome special effects and
stunts, it it's really a great film.
(57:21):
Oh, and you know, the other partthat was really great too is
just the the script, like what they're saying and the very
special new words that sound like words, you know, that are
words you know but don't sound like themselves.
That was amazing. I love the ASEAN language with
(57:43):
words like herindable. They're quite fun.
They just take take a word and throw A twist on it so as the
audience you still understand what they're saying.
But it's kind of sousian or something.
It's a fun way of ossifying a word.
(58:04):
'Cause there's almost nothing that I could criticize about
this film. I loved it.
A lot of the stuff, it was like this.
You're like looking and seeing so much at once, but then at
other times you really are only seeing like a a little bit, you
know, a more magnified smaller space.
I liked that variety because oneof the good things that I really
(58:25):
like about that you can do with musicals is make the scenes
really come. Like there's a lot so much
movement at once. In other words, all the dancers,
the choreography, people are moving different directions,
coming at each other away from each other.
(58:47):
You know, you're seeing all these different kinds of people
moving around on the screen in different ways at the same time.
Yeah, and they really in this, in the film, the props and this
the the little props and the bigdifferent like so much is used
in the choreography. It's great.
Yeah, that's another thing I love about musicals, and they
(59:08):
did that especially well in thismovie, using the entire, like,
the sets were practical pieces because every piece of it is
used in some, somewhere in the choreography.
You've got Galinda gliding, hanging on a ceiling fan at one
point going in a circle. You know, people are jumping off
(59:32):
walls. There's ladders, there's all
kinds of moving parts. Which I really want to point out
that I felt like that was a realstatement.
You had Glenda singing in her room that she, you know, it, it
was, to use the word that Jane Barnett used this week in her
interview with her, that I lovedfrothy.
(59:53):
It was a frothy room and Glenda's frothy and she does
this frothy little flying aroundin this room.
But the sky is not the limit there when alphabet actually
flies the Sky's limit. And I really, I saw, you know,
that comparison as significant. Yeah, that reminds me of
(01:00:13):
something else I wanted to say about which representation you
have. The pinkness, another word that
Professor Barnett used earlier this week, the pinkness of
Glinda and her Golinda's room isjust so stuffed with pink,
primarily. There's a few other colors in
(01:00:35):
there, but it's overwhelmingly pink.
And so, you know, pink of coursebeing a color traditionally
associated with females. Well, alphabet there in contrast
is in all black, which, you know, a color certainly
associated with females, but it's like so different than
(01:00:57):
pink. Pink is like we associate it
with cheerfulness and happiness and fun and bubbly see things
and gentleness. And black is like a strong, like
harsher color. It's a more powerful color.
It is associated with evil. But Alphabet just wears black
(01:01:25):
like she belongs in it and she'snot weighted.
She's she's nice. Thank you for joining us on
Witch Hunt TuneIn Monday for a special interview with experts
on Wicked and the representationof witches on stage and screen.
Till then, have a great today and a Wicked tomorrow.