Depraved, the film musical primarily based on the beloved Broadway present of the identical title, is without doubt one of the largest hits of the 12 months, opening at No. 1 in North America over the weekend and already producing some early Oscars buzz. Audiences got here in ready to like Depraved’s well-known energy ballads and lady energy core, however one side of the story appears to have caught folks unexpectedly: its considerably clunky but remarkably sturdy political allegory.
“I seen that Elphaba is like Kamala Harris and the Wizard is like Donald Trump,” one fan posted on Reddit. “A charismatic chief who gaslights a group that this girl is depraved simply because she’s standing up for a marginalized group of individuals within the society, how may that be [political]?” director John M. Chu joked.
For a foolish, spectacular present about friendship and speaking animals, Depraved truly does invite political interpretations. Its allegory can each elicit eye rolls and nonetheless really feel eerily prescient greater than 20 years after its stage debut.
Depraved the musical is predicated on a 1995 novel of the identical title by Gregory Maguire, an anti-fascist treatise wherein the Wizard turns into a Hitler-like despot. The musical wouldn’t go fairly to date when it debuted on Broadway in 2003, nevertheless it did get in various hits on the George W. Bush administration, which had ordered the invasion of Iraq solely months earlier.
In Depraved, the Wizard is revealed to be disenfranchising the speaking animals of Oz, on the grounds that to unify the remainder of the nation, he has to provide them a typical enemy. But the Wizard’s persecution of animals — and, later, of Elphaba — is rooted in a lie, in the identical manner that Bush falsely claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction earlier than invading.
A few of the references are obviously apparent: When Dorothy’s home falls on the Depraved Witch of the East, Glinda echoes the Bush administration’s favourite Iraq Warfare euphemism in describing it as a “regime change.” “Is one a crusader or ruthless invader?” sings the Wizard, referencing Bush’s notorious description of the invasion of Iraq as a campaign. “It’s all wherein label is ready to persist!”
Critics’ responses have been blended. “As a parable of fascism and freedom, Depraved so overplays its hand that it severely dilutes its energy to disturb,” Ben Brantley declared in 2003 on the New York Instances, including that the present “wears its political coronary heart as if it have been a slogan button.”
In the meantime, writer Daniel Handler, although shocked by such a darkish interpretation of sunny and magical Oz, discovered himself drawn to the thought. “It’s arduous to not surprise if the witch, a tough determine reworked by tough occasions, isn’t exactly what our stage wants,” Handler additionally wrote within the New York Instances that very same 12 months. “And maybe, the present suggests, ‘depraved’ is what the W stands for” in George W. Bush.”
Singing the identical lyrics right this moment, the Wizard suggests not Bush however Trump: a pacesetter consolidating his energy by scapegoating marginalized teams and slowly however certainly denying them their rights. In the meantime, the distinction in technique between rabble-rousing progressive Elphaba and conciliatory liberal Glinda may hit house significantly arduous for Democrats within the midst of their post-election recrimination.
Each Elphaba and Glinda idolize the Wizard and dream of working at his proper hand. When Elphaba learns of the plight of Ouncess animals, she heads straight to the Emerald Metropolis to hunt his assist, sure that if he learns that the animals are being focused, he’ll rush to their help. The Wizard suggests he may achieve this if Elphaba makes use of her magic as a part of his administration, however when she learns that it’s the Wizard behind the assaults, she disowns him, a lot to the dismay of practical-minded Glinda.
Depraved was born to be an allegory of American politics. It may possibly’t fairly be the rest.
“I hope you’re glad the way you’ve harm your trigger endlessly,” Glinda sings. Elphaba, in any case, is alienating a possible highly effective ally. “I hope you’re proud, how you’d grovel in submission to feed your individual ambition,” replies Elphaba, who has determined she is not going to work with anybody who’s utilizing his energy to harm Ouncess speaking animal residents. Might you learn this second as an allegory over how Democrats ought to deal with trans points going ahead? Positive, it appears like a stretch, nevertheless it’s not as far-fetched as you may think.
In a manner it’s odd to assume that Depraved’s political messaging feels so prescient, since most Depraved followers would agree that the political subplot is the weakest a part of the musical. Depraved lives and breathes by the fraught friendship between its two leads, not by its duelling visions of activism.
Nonetheless, in one other sense, Depraved was born to be an allegory of American politics. It may possibly’t fairly be the rest. That’s what Ouncesstories are for.
A lot of the most kids’s fantasy classics of the Anglophone world are English: consider Peter Pan, Narnia, The Sword within the Stone, and Harry Potter. They have a tendency to consider what it means to be a superb king, about wild magical beasts lurking within the forest, about being an island nation.
The Wizard of Oz, although, is an American fantasy. A map of Oz, which is formed like a rectangle with its lengthy facet horizontal, is a simplified map of America, as if drawn by a toddler: unimaginably huge, spanning the inhabitable entirety of a continent from east to west. (Ouncesis bordered by toxic deserts quite than oceans.) It’s a nation the place farmers domesticate fields of corn and wheat and orchards of apples; the place industrialists construct huge, glittering cities; the place the west is filled with tough and unsettled land. And it’s a nation ruled by a con man who’s mendacity to the folks he guidelines.
When L. Frank Baum wrote The Great Wizard of Oz in 1900, he imagined the Wizard of Ouncesas somebody who was well-meaning if ineffectual and a contact dishonest. “I’m an excellent man — only a dangerous wizard,” the Wizard explains to Dorothy within the 1939 movie. Nonetheless, the Wizard can work as a remarkably cynical metaphor for all of the damaged guarantees of the American dream. The Wizard is a person who will promise you every part however offer you nothing, after which he’ll inform you the reply was inside your self all alongside.
It’s this metaphor that provides The Wiz, the all-Black reimagining of The Wizard of Oz from the Seventies, its surprisingly sharp chew. In The Wiz, Dorothy and her buddies are Black people who find themselves promised sure basic rights by a authorities that by no means plans to pay up. (Depraved gestures at an identical critique by casting the Black actress Cynthia Erivo because the racially othered green-skinned Elphaba.)
“Public workplace is the final refuge of the incompetent,” the Scarecrow scoffs in The Wiz, after studying that the Wizard is a washed-up politician from Atlantic Metropolis. “Incompetent!” the Wiz crows. “That’s me!”
Depraved, in the meantime, isn’t a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz a lot as it’s a revisionist historical past. As such, it’s essentially skeptical of figures in authority — way more so than Baum, who finally changed the Wizard with the virtuous and practically infallible fairy queen Ozma.
The premise of any story that tells you that the villains of your childhood are misunderstood is that the storytellers have been mendacity to you. In Depraved, the Wizard isn’t only a very dangerous wizard, however a really dangerous man, too. He lies maliciously and with strategic function.
The Wizard can work as a remarkably cynical metaphor for all of the damaged guarantees of the American dream.
Elphaba and Glinda, right here, develop into simply two extra dreamers who journey to the Emerald Metropolis like Dorothy and her buddies, as a result of they need the Wizard to provide them their hearts’ want: safety for the speaking animals of Ouncesas they develop into steadily extra persecuted.
But the Wizard they encounter isn’t solely incapable of granting them such a request, however actually plans to pervert it, utilizing their harmless needs to enact extra violence. He plans to take Elphaba below his wing and have her do magic on his behalf so he can extra completely persecute the sentient animals he plans to spherical up and extra effectively spy on the remainder of his residents.
Ultimately, the Wizard names Elphaba the Depraved Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch of the North as a result of he can belief Glinda to keep up pleasant relations along with his administration, whereas Elphaba refuses. He’s America ruled not by a con man however by a powerful man — an authoritarian dictator.
That is the form of metaphor a revisionist historical past can give you, and a part of why Depraved feels so bizarrely pressing at this second. In a subversion of a childhood basic, no authority determine might be trusted — which is what makes these tales so enticing when folks you don’t belief have discovered their manner into positions of energy.
