Are People Born Wicked?
The Wicked trailer opens with a question: “Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?”
It’s not easy to ask or answer such a thorny question, and not a likely one to be tackled by a Broadway musical! But how we answer that question has profound implications for how we respond when we feel threatened by “bad” people.
When I first heard about the musical, I resisted going to see it. I was a big fan of the 1939 movie with Judy Garland, and I didn’t want anything to spoil it for me. The ad for the musical said, “So much happened before Dorothy dropped in.” Maybe things did happen in Oz before Dorothy got there, I thought, but what more did I need to know?
I had been reassured that good little girls could conquer evil – and that I was a good girl, too!
I felt sure the movie had satisfied my need to spend time with Dorothy, the Wizard, the Witches (good and bad), the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion. I even thought I knew everything there was to know about the Wicked Witch of the West.
Whatever happened in Oz in this supposed imaginary “before” time was of no interest to the little girl who still lived inside me.
Yet finally I caved, and went to see the musical—which opens with a song celebrating Elphaba’s death.
This caught me completely off guard. The Ozians seemed as confident as I was that Elphaba was irredeemably wicked. But they sounded angry, and a bit vindictive. Glinda is greeted with cheers, as all good leaders are when they have successfully defeated a violent enemy.
For the cheers and the ballyhoo to take place, however, that people are born wicked must be undeniably obvious. It must seem ludicrous to think of wickedness as anything other than a genetic trait, like hair or skin color. The wicked are completely different from good people, so celebrating their deaths is good and just.
But there is at least one doubter in the crowd, someone who thinks it’s worth questioning the conventional wisdom:
OZIAN:
Miss Glinda, why does wickedness happen?
GLINDA:
That's a good question.
Are people born wicked?
Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?
After all, the Wicked Witch had a father
And she had a mother, as so many do
By daring to engage these questions, Glinda humanizes the witch, dissolving the distinction the Ozians were so keen on keeping between their good, dear, earnest selves and the terribly wicked witch.
It’s a distinction I was intent on maintaining, too. As I sat in the theater hearing this annoyingly perceptive opening song, I thought, what if I was wrong about the witch? What if she wasn’t as different from me or Dorothy or as wicked as I thought?
I began to worry that my resistance to seeing the musical revealed a blind spot in myself. What if I had lived my life a bit too confident that there is a sharp distinction between good girls like me, and wicked others? A confidence that allowed me to feel justified in hating, dismissing, or canceling those who might be flawed human beings like me?
Since this musical premiered in 2003, the partisan divide in the US has widened and deepened to such an extreme that many of us have begun to behave badly. Algorithms and social media have created silos that so reinforce our own sense of goodness and our sense of others as willfully malicious, that in our very righteousness we might act like bullies and persecutors. In fact, we might get mad at others for not being big enough bullies to the “other side”!
International relations have soured, too. The release of the movie version of Wicked feels uncomfortably relevant on all fronts. As Cassandra Garcia noted in her review, "it is a sharp critique of societal biases and the use of scapegoats as political tools." It arrives at a cultural moment when many of us feel convinced that we have found evil and feel justified in taking some pretty extreme measures to root it out.
We might imprison the evil one for life, or drop a house on them, or launch a war to annihilate them from the face of the earth. We might fight for legislation or lead a boycott or publicly call someone out destroying their reputation.
But what if we have made a mistake, and our wicked witch is not irredeemably wicked? What if, by seeking to destroy them, we have become wicked ourselves? What if people have wickedness thrust upon them – by us?
In my book, I explore the existence of evil and the reasons that some people have wickedness thrust upon them by good people like you and me. I hope you’ll continue to journey with me as we explore the path to being truly good, as Glinda longs to be by the end of the musical. I’m looking forward to the release of Wicked: Part 2 in November, and continuing this conversation with you as the terrible tragedy of thrusting wickedness upon others unfolds in Oz.
Until next time: Remember to always mourn the wicked. It’s what good people do.
