Disability and Conformity in Wicked

By Trevor Pacelli
​​She was green. She was bullied. She was used. She was ostracized. Sound familiar? Elphaba, along with her wheelchair-bound sister Nessarose, are modern representations of what it’s like having a disability. Yet sadly, Elphaba is taken the extra mile by being rejected, even by her own father, for being green. Perhaps she can find a place of belonging in the miraculous Emerald City? Turns out the answer is no, as that’s where the man she hoped would help wants to use her and gets her framed for crimes she never committed. Without its second act, this adaptation of the famous Broadway musical comes off more as a cautionary tale of what happens to someone with a disability who’s treated as less-than.

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Wicked does have unfortunate issues with its filming style, but the hidden details in the Oscar-winning sets and costumes make for a worthwhile experience that show why it’s so essential to embrace diversity. The designs not only give a mesmerizing sense of culture to this fantasy world, but also show how each character’s background is unique based on the environment they came from. Elphaba, being an outcast, wears dresses with textural motifs like ferns and mushroom gills since she’s so close to the green of nature where the animals thrive, conveying why she wants to fight for the advocacy of animals. Whereas Glinda in her first scene wears a translucent dress with embroidered shimmering bubble patterns, including a silver crown made of circles that resemble bubbles. She’s a much more delicate and pleasant piece of nature, albeit one that lasts only a few seconds before the wind prematurely breaks her mainstream admiration.
The rest of the cast, big and small, wears outfits that spark attempts at either flaunting their true selves despite societal pressure to conform, removing their individuality. No two students at Chiz University wear uniforms that are exactly alike, as each has a personal take on what they’re forced to wear, and their hairstyles give no regard to the system! Over in the Emerald City, everyone wears green, and groups of costumes are all designed to look identical, meaning the city under the rule of the wizard is where people go to lose their individuality. Whereas, the wizard wears a suit decorated with random trinkets to give the impression that he’s a traveling carnival man whose mind is anywhere but in the present moment. Yet he’s not the only puppeteer over Oz’s perceptions of the “other.” Madame Morrible, the headmistress of Chiz University, has hair like a cloud that represents her control over the weather, which represents her control over Elphaba’s fate. Together, it’s like the wizard and Morrible are the gatekeepers of disability integration into society.
The students under Morrible’s control are also being sucked into her tornado of conformity, as visualized by certain set pieces in the fun yet secretly tragic Dancing Through Life number. The upbeat song’s choreography centers around a bookcase made up of different rotating drums and ladders that the students dance inside of, which director Jon M. Chu referred to while filming as a “tornado wheel.” Besides looking cool as a spectacle, this tornado wheel gives the impression that the students are happily singing about enjoying life before their existences are cut short—all while they’re sucked into the deadly tornado that is the educational system. Thus, the students began bullying Elphaba because they willingly let themselves get sucked into Madame Morrible’s twister of expectations on how they must conform to the system.
The movie’s tone continues to grow deceptively optimistic with the fast-paced Popular number everyone knows and loves. Glinda’s artificial pink aesthetic is revealed to not only be her version of self-expression, but more so her attempt at starting a trend everyone around her must conform to. Who would be her easiest victim to persuade other than the most desperate one of al—Elphaba? During this song, she even pulls out a pair of ruby slippers and taps them together three times before handing them to Elphaba! Just like in The Wizard of Oz! This detail doesn’t just come off as a cute easter egg, it also gives the vibe that Glinda’s handing Elphaba a piece of forbidden fruit to lure her into her own library twister! That parallel becomes only more apparent when looking at Nessarose’s silver slippers, which are subtly shaped like the swirls of a tornado. Yes, it looks sweet on the surface: a popular girl helping her new friend feel more confident, but the actual meaning of the song is way darker.
Any viewer could pull so much from how the hidden details in the designs connect to each other, but at the end of the day, it’s just trying to throw meaning to a movie that otherwise doesn’t have much to say. Someone who looks deeply enough could potentially be moved by a commentary on how the government wants normal citizens to team up against those who are different, or perhaps how it’s easier to blame them than others already in power. Yet that ultimately doesn’t provide any practical answers on what to do about those problems. Its immediately tangible message at the end of the day is simply, “Hating people who are different is bad,” and doesn’t go a whole lot deeper. At the end of the day, Wicked is a smorgasbord of messy spectacles with low-contrast cinematography that somehow looks both brightly colorful and depressingly muddy at the same time. Basically, it’s nothing besides a long pop music video that cares more about triggering viral TikTok trends than telling a deep story.
Ultimately, you’d be better off watching the stage show, but if you haven’t yet, or can’t afford it, then watching this fun movie, as well as its second part this fall, will be a satisfactory substitute. Either way, you’ll feel moved by seeing why the Wicked Witch of the West needs her overdue chance to defy gravity.
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Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus, the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo.