Why Wicked Is A Great Animal Rights And Activism Movie

Showing Wicked to those who don't appreciate it is like casting pearls before swine... except that would be an insult to the swine, who are quite intelligent.

“Everyone deserves a chance to fly!”

— Elphaba, Defying Gravity

!Spoilers For Wicked Ahead!

Exposition

If I had a nickel for every time I came away from a Jon Chu movie starring Michelle Yeoh with a deep appreciation on multiple levels, I would have 2 nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice (the other one was Crazy Rich Asians, which is also a great movie IMO).

But Wicked (Part 1) was on another level, and perhaps in ways which transcend the intentions of the creators, as all great art tends to. Base-level, it’s a great film. The fantasy is ethereal, the colors are vibrant, the musicals are fire, the acting is great (IMO; I feel like I tend not to care about acting unless it’s really bad). Elphaba and Glinda have a great enemies to friends (to lovers, in my headcanon) arc, and their menage-a-trois with the beautiful bicon Fiyero is titillating. Elphaba is the classic underdog, scorned and overlooked by almost everyone, and she fights tooth and nail for her dream—to meet the Wizard. And she does, and then, plot twist, the wizard is evil! She has to fight him and his minions, and the first part ends there. If we stopped there, that would probably be better than 90% of superhero films these days, but it’s the rest that really makes Wicked stand out.

Character

Take the character development of the main trio: Elphaba, Glinda, and Fiyero. Elphaba is the main focus, as she should be. But there’s a beauty in seeing how the three of them bring out the best in each other; how they need one another to become the best versions of themselves.

This is perhaps most clear with Glinda, who begins the film as a privileged, snobbish, popular girl who both takes for granted and craves the validation of others, particularly powerful others. But we can see from the beginning that she has the instinct to be good within her. The moment of transformation for Glinda comes after Glinda, jealous of Elphaba’s favor with the magic teacher, maliciously gifts Elphaba a witch hat under the guise of helping her look good for a school dance. Glinda gets exactly what she wants, with the other students mocking Elphaba as she dances alone, but Glinda has a change of heart and joins Elphaba in her dance despite the remonstrations of her peers. It’s beautiful because it’s the moment that Elphaba’s innocence and queerness encourages Glinda to exit her gilded cage and authentically embrace her compassion, to become that which she always pretended and wished to be, even if it meant losing the esteem of others.

But we also see this with Fiyero, who presents himself as a shallow, prince-next-door type of guy, a Dionysian figure who disrupts the order of the school for his own hedonistic desires and whims. But we see that he, too, has a heart. The moment of transformation for him comes when their goat (literally) history teacher—Dr. Dillamond—is brutally removed from the classroom and replaced with a slick human, complete with baby animals in cages. Before the authorities can take Dr. Dillamond away, Elphaba protests, but is shut down by the authorities. Even so, after Dr. Dillamond is dragged away, Elphaba’s emotions cause an influx of poppy, which puts everyone but her and Fiyero to sleep. Elphaba’s earlier protest is what inspires Fiyero to shake off his veneer of superficiality, and it is he who leads Elphaba in rescuing the baby animals from the cages.

And while Elphaba is the catalyst for the others’ transformations, she herself is also crucially transformed. Fiyero is the one who gives Elphaba the courage to break the rules for the first time, freeing the animals in the cages when they have the opportunity. And when Elphaba confesses to Glinda that her father hates her because her greenness caused her mother to take a remedy which resulted in her sister’s paraplegia and her mother’s death, Glinda’s self-confidence serves as the perfect antidote. Glinda—free of the abuse and ostracism which has shaped Elphaba—matter-of-factly observes that this is not her fault, and that she should not internalize the blame that her father has cast upon her.

Wicked Archetypes

Abstracting now from the characters, there are 3 archetypes which are explored beautifully in the film: the Activist, the Leviathan, and the Scapegoat. 

The Activist is personified in Elphaba, and more broadly, in the trio of main characters. Activists are united and defined by a deep sense of compassion for all and quest for authenticity. Activists see those who are excluded, mocked, and even vilified by others and feel an urge to heal the hurt and to right the wrong. Often—as in Elphaba’s case—this compassion is nurtured by our own experience, where we understand how terrible and unjust it is to be shunned, even as we may blame ourselves for our own exclusion.

The Leviathan is personified by the wizard of Oz. Here, I define the Leviathan in the Hobbesian sense: an entity of supreme authority who cannot be challenged, or perhaps, cannot even be understood. The Leviathan has traditionally been understood as the State, but I define it as any sufficiently large and impersonal organization; so Walmart is also a Leviathan (see South Park for an illustration). There’s a beautifully layered intricacy to Wicked’s representation of the Leviathan. When we are first introduced to the wizard, we see that he is cloistered in his palace, inaccessible even to the people of the capital city of Oz, and is a giant and formidable mechanical mask. We then see that the real wizard is just a regular old guy, Jeff Goldblum. The beauty is that the physical reality is the precise inverse of its symbolic reality: there, it is the giant machine and the cult behind it which is the true Wizard, the Leviathan, and Jeff Goldblum is the mask and the mouthpiece which it uses to speak to humans.

Leviathans are often worshipped as benevolent Gods. In our world, the Leviathan of ultimate temporal authority was fused with, say, the Catholic Church in Europe. When that fell away, the Leviathans of choice became the State or the Nation or the Ideology. In the purest form of this reality, the Leviathan is conceived of as infallibly good—they only act in accord with the good; or even better, definitionally good—their actions are what define the good. But this concept cannot stand alone within even the most pious minds, and so the evil and sin we see in the world must be laid upon a Scapegoat; too often, such blame is not random but perverse. So it is that the Catholic Church has blamed nonbelievers and heretics for their own plights in the pits of Hell; so it is that ethno-states have blamed migrant workers for disorder and poverty within their borders; so it is that the great meatpacking corporations and agricultural cooperatives blame animal activism for robbing the security and livelihoods of small farmers. And so it is that the Wizard and his puppets cast the blame, first upon the literal goat Dr. Dillamond and later upon Elphaba.

Whether through direct experiences or not, Activists are those who confront the betrayal of the Leviathan’s cult. In their purest form, they see that there is no infallible benevolence—at least, not within any Leviathan. The Leviathan is a cold, impersonal machine which mechanically fulfills certain directives; to be sure, it is benevolent to some all of the time and some some of the time, but it is not benevolent to all all of the time. No Activist can travel alone, yet at some point, all must do so. Elphaba could not have become who she was without Glinda and Fiyero, yet at the end, she had to take her own way. And Glinda’s choice provides a beautiful contrast to Elphaba’s. From many perspectives, it might seem that Glinda betrayed Elphaba again, but her actions are too ambiguous. Glinda’s argument with Elphaba stems not from a wish for personal glory, but from the wish that her friend’s dream—to be with the Wizard—comes true. Glinda and Elphaba ultimately disagree on the best course of action, but reaffirm their friendship. As an animal activist, this echoes my own experience, where activists range from extreme defiance—breaking into factory farms to rescue piglets—to extreme cooperation—working with chicken farmers to reform the industry from within. It is poetic that many have cast judgment on Glinda in a film where the surface-layer message is clearly that those labeled “wicked” are not as wicked as they appear.

Is Wicked an Animal Rights Movie?

Yes.

Obviously, in a literal sense, the answer is yes. But what about in a symbolic sense? Don’t the animals stand for marginalized individuals?

Yes. Yes they do.

I think this—that is, having animals symbolize marginalized individuals—was the intention of the movie and its predecessors. Everything is a metaphor: the difference in appearance of animals stands for a difference in appearance of different races, ethnic groups, etc.; the loss of speech stands for the loss of a voice as one’s rights are stripped away. In this movie, the animals are the concrete symbol for the broader, more abstract category of individuals who are marginalized and oppressed.

Yet which group of individuals is most discriminated against for different or unfamiliar appearances? Which group truly has no speech to advocate for themselves and has their voices silenced by walls of steel and countless miles of isolation? Which group is hunted down, captured, experimented upon, shoved in cages, and displayed as spectacles? Of course the movie is about all marginalized individuals, and the most marginalized of these individuals are non-human animals.

I will note here that it is strange that we find it politically appropriate to make these comparisons, but only in one direction. Thus, slavery, colonialism, and genocide are debasing because it is treating humans like so much cattle, but when animal exploitation is compared to slavery, colonialism, and genocide, this is somehow offensive. Imagine if, having compared their situation in the British Empire to slavery, White Americans were suddenly offended if an enslaved person dared to compare their place on the plantation to taxation without representation! It is the insecurity of still-oppressed individuals, who interpret such a reverse comparison as lumping them in with the animals while elevating the exceptionalism of the oppressors. But the truth is that all people—rich and poor, White and Black, oppressor and oppressed—are equal in their animal-hood. It is not that we are animals and they are not; no. We are all animals. 

Thus, Wicked is an animal rights movie not only because it is literally about animal rights. By virtue of symbolically representing all oppressed groups, Wicked has—purposely or not—represented non-human animals along with them. And by choosing non-human animals as the symbol, Wicked has implicitly on some level recognized that today, it is non-human animals who bear the greatest and most neglected cruelties and injustices in our society, who form—in their world and in ours—the archetype of the Oppressed.

Denouement

Though now the plot is fully spoiled for you, I hope I’ve given some insight into why I think Wicked is such a great story and movie. Even if you’ve already watched it, I think it’s quite worth watching. And if you just read this and haven’t yet watched the movie, give it a watch! It’s really fun, and I’m sure there’s lots more to unpack than I’m able to here. For me, I’ll probably give Wicked another watch sometime—perhaps with friends. And I’ll certainly be waiting to see Wicked Part 2 this December.

P.S., happy Veganuary! Though it’s almost over, if you’re not already vegan, good news! There’s 11 other months of the year to go vegan, and the next one starts tomorrow!