Digital crusade by anti-woke warriors against a vapid film for teen girls should be sending a wake-up call to Hollywood
The “war on woke” has a new target and her name is the Wicked Witch of the West. If you’re a fan of the musical Wicked, you’ll also know her as Elphaba, the moniker imagined by Gregory Maguire in his 1995 prequel to L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. As played by Margaret Hamilton in the 1939 movie, she was the nemesis of Judy Garland’s Dorothy; as played this year by the musical theatre star Cynthia Erivo, she has conservative men across Britain and America bursting their blood vessels.
Since Maguire came up with his novel – an extravagant piece of fan-fiction that suggests this “witch” might simply have been misunderstood – it has been reinterpreted as a stage musical and now as a movie in two parts. Wicked’s target market consists of teenage girls who see themselves in this backstory for Elphaba and her college-friend-turned-rival, Glinda the Good Witch. In the 21 years since Stephen Schwartz’s adaptation opened on Broadway, the show has been a cult phenomenon among young musical fans, blithely ignored by everyone else. Now the screen version has brought into mainstream conversation and the land of Oz has become a battleground in America’s culture war.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk
Digital crusade by anti-woke warriors against a vapid film for teen girls should be sending a wake-up call to HollywoodThe “war on woke” has a new target and her name is the Wicked Witch of the West. If you’re a fan of the musical Wicked, you’ll also know her as Elphaba, the moniker imagined by Gregory Maguire in his 1995 prequel to L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. As played by Margaret Hamilton in the 1939 movie, she was the nemesis of Judy Garland’s Dorothy; as played this year by the musical theatre star Cynthia Erivo, she has conservative men across Britain and America bursting their blood vessels.Since Maguire came up with his novel – an extravagant piece of fan-fiction that suggests this “witch” might simply have been misunderstood – it has been reinterpreted as a stage musical and now as a movie in two parts. Wicked’s target market consists of teenage girls who see themselves in this backstory for Elphaba and her college-friend-turned-rival, Glinda the Good Witch. In the 21 years since Stephen Schwartz’s adaptation opened on Broadway, the show has been a cult phenomenon among young musical fans, blithely ignored by everyone else. Now the screen version has brought into mainstream conversation and the land of Oz has become a battleground in America’s culture war.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading… US news | The Guardian