It’s 2 am,
I’m very tired, and it’s time to talk about Queer Coding again. Specifically, it’s
time to talk about why I’m so tired of female characters whose close relationships
have to be severed by the end of the show in order to safely reassert a world view
in which men are the only option on the table. Honestly, why can’t I just have a
lesbian once in a while?
This is not
a new frustration for me, of course, but
it has certainly reared its ugly head once again after watching Wicked. (Yes, I’m aware it’s not a
course text, but bear with me.) For anyone who doesn’t know, Wicked follows two smart, snappy young
witches in the magical land of Oz. They sing, they dance, they have fantastic
chemistry and clearly mean everything to one another. They’ve even got a nice
bit of color symbolism going on, with Elphaba—the titular wicked witch—constantly
dressed in black and green, and her roommate Glinda—the “good” witch—a perfect confection
of white and pink. The two of them spend the entire show torn between their
love for one another and their competing drives. And then they both fall for…Fiyero?
Don’t worry. I don’t remember him
from The Wizard of Oz either. As it
turns out, Fiyero turns into our old pal the Scarecrow by the end of the musical,
though the irony of a literal strawman hetero love interest seems lost on the production
itself. Instead of corvids, this scarecrow is frightening off homosexual subtext…
Poorly.
Now,
listen. I don’t have anything against stories of powerful and platonic female
friendship. If that was what this show managed to be, I’d be a happy camper.
But instead, Wicked sort of reads like
a winky, campy love story that never was. Elphaba and Glinda’s first duet is
called “What is this Feeling?” and while the lyrics would have us think the
answer is intense animosity, the blocking for the number looks more like the two
actresses are about to start wildly making out onstage than about to kill one
another. As for the song’s first line, “What is this feeling, so sudden and
new?”
…Well, anyone
who’s had the classic Gay Epiphany Moment™ can tell you the answer to that question, and it’s not “unadulterated loathing.”
Wicked then goes on to make these two
young women play out the tried and true college roommate narrative: enemies to…not lovers? They hate each other at
first, of course. Elphaba—green-skinned, short-tempered, and socially isolated—hates
Glinda because she thinks she’s shallow. And Glinda—wealthy, popular, and a bit
of a ditz—hates Elphaba because…well, because she really is quite shallow, but also because Elphaba’s surliness and constant
outbursts probably make her a terrible roommate.
Eventually, of course, they come to an understanding. Glinda realizes she’s been
cruel and Elphaba realizes that maybe shouting at everyone isn’t the best way to make them stop staring. It’s all very heart
warming and Legally Blonde.
Except that
it also includes a deeply unnecessary
love triangle. Fiyero—he of the tight pants, blasé attitude, and incredibly cliched
bad boy charm—serves virtually no purpose in the plot, other than to drive a
wedge between the two girls. I’m not complaining about the eye candy, but there’s
not much else there. He could be replaced with an especially pretty footstool and
the story would be almost entirely the same. In other words, he’s the equivalent
of that one female character they put in 300
so none of us would start to wonder if maybe the Spartans were gay. (They
were, but that’s not the point.)
But you
know what? All of that would be fine.
It wouldn’t be that much worse than any other unnecessary love interest. For
all my complaining, I like Fiyero. He’s cute, and he likes Elphaba, and he
saves a lion cub at one point, so he’s got Nice-to-Animals brownie points. I’d
be totally cool with it if not for one thing: The Wicked Witch of the West is heavily queer coded.
Let me back
up a second here. I’m not talking about Elphaba. I’m talking about our cackling,
green gal pal from the original movie. Like many historical images of witchcraft,
the Wicked Witch is portrayed as gender nonconforming. She has features
typically associated with—large nose, long chin, and heavy brows—and she is
contrasted with Glinda and Dorothy, both of whom are covered in frills and bows
and other markers of traditional femininity. What’s more, the Wicked Witch’s power
is totally independent of male influence. Where both Glinda and Dorothy are
expected to defer to the Wizard, good old Witchy is single, evil, and loving
it. She is a solitary female figure, without need for masculine protectors or
benefactors. And though Dorothy ultimately turns out to have had the power in
herself all the time, she uses that power to return herself to a safely
domestic sphere. What’s more, with all the “my pretty” talk and desperate
desire to capture young and innocent Dorothy, the witch’s threat to the girl has
a distinctly sexual slant.
So here we
are, with a villain coded to violate traditional notions of femininity, patriarchal
domination, and even sexuality. We set out to tell a story that humanizes her.
One in which she gets to tell her side of the story. One in which she and
Glinda once had a close, meaningful relationship. And what do we do, to make
our emerald sorceress more likeable?
We give her
low self-esteem surrounding her looks a cliched romance with the first vaguely
male figure ever to say an almost kind word to her? We have her give up her
ideals and life’s work to be with this walking, talking TV Trope? We sever her
friendship with Glinda at the end of the play and leave her with no one except
this actual scarecrow in her life,
because otherwise it might seem a little too gay?
WHAT?
Look, I’m
not saying Wicked is homophobic. It’s
a fantastic musical that does a lot to portray strong and nuanced relationships
between women. As a show that’s at least partially for kids, it reminds them to
examine the narratives of power and to question who the real villains are. It’s
catchy as heck.
It just
also makes the intensely boring choice of a heterosexual Wicked Witch.
It
sanitizes Elphaba before it rehabilitates her, and frankly that does nothing to
undo the harm that a history of queer coded villains has done. If we decide
that Elphaba has to be straight and traditionally feminine to be likeable, then
aren’t we accepting that being anything else actually is linked to wickedness? Because if we can only relate to villains when
they’re safely ensconced in heteronormativity, then how radical is this
reclamation project really?
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