Everyone wants to “make room for it.”Defying gravity,” from Powerhouse Music wickedBroadway musical-movie blockbuster. But behind the in-your-face theme of women competition And friendship, raw loveand unfortunate circumstances being greenThere’s a deeper undercurrent: the isolation that comes with standing up for what you believe in.
The story — L. 1900 reimagining of Frank Baum The Wizard of Oz — explains how the infamous Wicked Witch of the West came about. Like the musical, the movie takes place in the Land of Oz and follows Elphaba Throop (Cynthia Erivo), a kind but stern young woman ostracized her entire life for her green skin, as she enters Shige University to cultivate her powerful witchcraft. . Power is where he meets, houses, and eventually befriends Galinda Upland (Ariana Grande), an aspiring magician who has been loved and popular throughout her life.
But what seems to be overlooked is the root of Elphaba’s supposed evil: her fear of mistreatment of animals and her determination to free them. In the Land of Oz, the creatures are regular members of society, living and working with other Ozians—until they are silenced and forcibly removed from public view.
yes, wicked It’s a fantasy story, but if one pays a little more attention to Elphaba’s origin story, it’s hard not to see parallels between the movie and the real-world state of animal welfare. The reality of animal cruelty is no stranger than fiction wickedBut unfortunately much more cruel. And those who want to expose this abuse and bring about change are ridiculed, jailed and, much like Elphaba, considered outcasts and evil for their position.
How the animal rights message in Wicked connects to real life
From early in her life, the movie shows that Elphaba has felt a connection to animals, at least in part because of the prejudice she has faced in her own life. When Elphaba is born and is found to have green skin, her father rejects her. She is mostly raised by Dulcibia, her nanny who is a brown bear and who sympathizes with Elphaba and sees the good in her, while her father scolds and punishes her for being different.
Years later, when Elphaba is admitted to Shige University after showing her magical powers, she is ostracized by most of the student population for her skin. He finds solace in his studies, especially his class with Dr. Delamond, who teaches goat history. It is in her class where the animals’ disenfranchisement becomes apparent to Elphaba: Delamond tells the students that he is one of the few animal professors left, blaming the animals for the massive drought in Oz years ago. Later in class, Delamond notices that someone has written “animals should be seen and not heard” on the other side of his chalkboard.
Elphaba learns more about animal oppression by overhearing conversations with Delamond and other fellow animals about stories of animals losing their ability to speak, being forced out of their jobs, and abandoning Oz altogether. This becomes Delamond’s own fate, when he is violently removed from his classroom and replaced by a new human instructor who demonstrates his latest invention of how to prevent animals from learning to speak: a cage, with a frightened lion cub inside. “Can you imagine a world where animals are kept in cages and never learn to speak?” Elphaba asks.
In the real world, animals don’t speak (at least, not in a language we understand). But caged animals? It’s a reality that much of the world largely accepts in exchange for food and entertainment—though few understand what it actually looks like.
Humans raise approximately 75 billion animals for food annually, and while caging animals is not a new practice, modern factory farming has taken animal confinement and exploitation to new extremes. For example, female breeding pigs are kept in “gestation crates”, small cages barely larger than their bodies where they are essentially immobilized, forced and artificially inseminated and undergo repeated cycles of pregnancy and birth. Chickens, whose eggs are often sold with misleading claims like “humanely raised”, are also stuffed into cages so small they can’t fully spread their wings (and even “cage-free” eggs can mean thousands of chickens together A space too small for all of them, effectively living on top of each other.)
And when disaster strikes, these trapped animals have nowhere to go. A hog farm fire in August killed more than 1,000 pigs (a regular occurrence on factory farms), while the pork industry lobbied against fire code updates that would have required sprinklers to be installed in their barns. When Hurricane Helen hits Georgia, the nation’s top chicken-producing state, millions of chickens are likely to die.
Inhumane confinement is the tip of the iceberg. Multiple investigations have uncovered the churning reality of factory farms. At a pig farm, an undercover investigation found pigs gasping for air after being poisoned with carbon monoxide, while others were fed a mixture of pig parts and feces. A year-long investigation into livestock auctions across multiple states found that animals such as cows and goats were violently abused by being kicked, dragged and thrown. While these particular findings are only snapshots, such cruelty is ubiquitous, consistently reflected in investigations of the meat industry.
Although farmed animals may face the worst and largest scale of abuse, they are not the only animals confined. Zoos, where animals are removed from their natural habitats and forced to live in very small spaces, are primarily entertainment for the public. While zoos contribute to conservation efforts, they also incur costs for the animals housed in these facilities, such as “the zoo“Animals in zoos have been recorded engaging in repetitive behaviors such as pacing and self-harm.
Elphaba, animal rights activist
At the end of the movie, Elphaba meets the Wizard of Oz and is given the opportunity to work under him. While there, he tells the wizard that his heart’s desire is to help animals, to which the wizard seemingly agrees.
But after tricking him into casting a spell that causes the wizard’s monkey servants to grow wings painfully on their backs? (Original story of The famous flying monkey), the wizard reveals that he can now use it to spy on other creatures. Realizing it’s witches behind the subjugation and villainization of animals to retain power, Elphaba refuses to use her magic to help him further and runs away—but not before being identified as a wicked witch and a threat to all of Oz by Madame Morrible, her witchcraft instructor. .
Vegans, vegetarians, and animal rights activists can probably relate — especially those who put their freedoms on the line. In recent years, a group of activists have been criminally prosecuted for rescuing sick and injured animals from factory farms. In November 2023, lawyer and animal rights activist Wayne Seung was convicted for his role in helping members of Direct Action Everywhere remove 70 chickens and ducks from two factory farms in Sonoma County, California. He faced up to 3 1/2 years in prison, but was released after 38 days in jail, much of it spent under conditions that experts say Equivalent to solitary confinement.
Even non-activists who highlight the climate, public health, and moral harms of factory farming and animal abuse are accused of being fundamentalists, or wanting to take away people’s burgers. As Elphaba stands up for Doctor Delamond after she is ridiculed when she mispronounces Galinda’s name, those who question animal cruelty and its consequences are often ridiculed and socially ostracized for speaking out against the status quo.
Like Dr. Delamond, Dulciebear, and the Flying Monkey evil, Animals are in real life sentient beingsAccording to a growing body of research. As in humans, research shows this Animals feel pain And they experience joy. and in wickedMost of Elphaba’s classmates seem to ignore the treatment of animals in Ozian society, even Galinda who (often on the surface) wants to do good. It’s not too different from how our real world approaches animal welfare – basically, our society accepts the subjugation of animals, even if it involves large-scale cruelty. Perhaps this helps explain in part why the animal rights activism parts of the film are often left out of the conversation: restricting animals and stripping them of autonomy is considered normal in our reality.
Its second installment wicked It is slated to hit theaters in 2025. Although the first part focused more on Elphaba’s radicalization through animal rights than the Broadway musical, it still treats it with a lighter touch than Maguire’s. wicked The novel, all (very) catchy songs and sweet depictions of unlikely friendships allow the audience to hit home more than the animal rights message. how much Wicked: Part Two It’s not entirely clear that the focus will be on animal rights – but it would certainly be more interesting to see the movie try to fight animal rights better than its predecessor.
