Had the plot of “Wicked” been written within the past year, critics would be tempted to call the new movie almost too on the nose. Over the past two decades since its Broadway debut, the story has always felt timely, but today its themes regarding political scapegoating and discrimination feel even more shockingly relevant. Unfortunately, like the citizens of Oz, it looks like these are lessons that we are going to learn the hard way.
Though the main character is ostracized for being green, the main target of legal discrimination in the story are the animals. They are assigned the primary blame for every problem in Oz, from political instability to an environmental drought. They lose the right to work, teach and preach, then literally lose their capacity to speak. Witnessing these injustices, Elphaba (not yet the Wicked Witch of the West and powerfully portrayed by Cynthia Erivo) travels to the Emerald City to ask the Wizard (Jeff Goldbloom) to protect the animals and restore their rights, only to discover that the Wizard himself has orchestrated the campaign against them. As he states: “The best way to bring people together is to give ‘em a real good enemy.”
Though lacking in terms of both magic and musical numbers, America has just witnessed an ascension to power based on this very same principle. Through demonizing immigrants, Donald Trump turned them into an enemy and united his supporters against them. He has blamed immigrants for everything from rising housing prices to violent crime in spite of any credible evidence to back up these claims. In Utah alone, immigrants are vital members of our community making up 8.5% of the population, contributing $613 million in state and local taxes, and close to 10% of them are entrepreneurs, according to the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity. And, for the record, undocumented immigrants are 37.1% less likely to be convicted of a crime, according to the CATO Institute. Yet the lies worked. By providing an enemy, even an innocent one, he rallied enough people against them to once again carry himself to the presidency.
Immigrants aren’t the only group that have been demonized and silenced for political gain. It was recently reported that the Republican Party has spent around $215 million dollars on television ads painting transgender people as a threat to American life. To be clear, there are only about 1.6 million transgender individuals over the age of 13 in America, meaning that they spent about $134 dollars for every trans person currently existing in the United States. All this in spite of the fact that reports indicate that trans individuals pose no increased threat to anyone around them, and they are in fact far more at risk of experiencing physical and sexual violence.
Even though immigrants and transgender individuals are by no means the cause of America’s greatest problems, they have become our favorite scapegoats. Like the animals of Oz, they have been silenced, demonized and, in some cases, literally caged. The consequences of this are broad and disturbing, not only because important problems continue to go unaddressed but it can also lead to increased hate crimes against scapegoated populations.
The film offers a solution to this problem, though the antidote is not perfect. Connection and contact with those that are inaccurately vilified enable the people of Oz to see through the Wizard’s lies — but that notably does not completely protect them from the propaganda. This dichotomy is seen clearly between the principal characters of Elphaba and Glinda (Ariana Grande). After their professor Dr. Dillamond (Peter Dinklage), who happens to be a goat, is arrested and forbidden from teaching, they both express frustration due to his innocence. While Elphaba refuses to support the Wizard and his plans, choosing instead to sacrifice everything she has known, Glinda stays behind. Glinda is ultimately unwilling to sacrifice the benefits that Oz’s institutions have afforded her; she is left in a state of cognitive dissonance visible both in the film’s opening and closing scenes as she struggles to balance her place in a corrupt system and her desire to still use her power and influence to perpetuate goodness.
What this means for us in America is that connecting with immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities can help us see through the lies told about them, but that does not guarantee that we will not be complicit in their suffering. To advocate for someone else is an active choice, and it is far too easy to become complicit especially when it means protecting our own comfort.
We may not be able to defy gravity, but we can choose to defy the weight of the lies and attacks that target our friends, family and neighbors. In doing so, we can push back against immoral leadership and hopefully begin to change our communities for the better.
(Scott Sawaya) Scott Sawaya is an economics student at Brigham Young University.
Scott Sawaya is an economics student at Brigham Young University. He is also a teaching assistant for the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity course and the secretary for the school’s Antiracism Club.
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