Depraved, the film musical based mostly on the beloved Broadway present of the identical identify, is among the greatest hits of the yr, 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 woman 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 lady 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 really 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 through which the Wizard turns into a Hitler-like despot. The musical wouldn’t go fairly to date when it debuted on Broadway in 2003, but it surely did get in quite a lot of 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 present 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.
Among 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 Battle 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 through which label is ready to persist!”
Critics’ responses have been blended. “As a parable of fascism and freedom, Depraved so overplays its hand that it significantly 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, creator 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 remodeled by tough instances, isn’t exactly what our stage wants,” Handler additionally wrote within the New York Instances that very same yr. “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 residence notably 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 might probably’t fairly be anything.
“I hope you’re completely happy the way you’ve damage your trigger eternally,” Glinda sings. Elphaba, in spite of everything, 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 won’t work with anybody who’s utilizing his energy to harm Ouncess speaking animal residents. May you learn this second as an allegory over how Democrats ought to deal with trans points going ahead? Certain, it appears like a stretch, but it surely’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 might probably’t fairly be anything. 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 an inclination to consider what it means to be an excellent 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 aspect horizontal, is a simplified map of America, as if drawn by a baby: unimaginably huge, spanning the inhabitable entirety of a continent from east to west. (Ouncesis bordered by toxic deserts somewhat 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 stuffed 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 Fantastic 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 unhealthy 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 little thing however provide you with nothing, after which he’ll let you know the reply was inside your self all alongside.
It’s this metaphor that offers The Wiz, the all-Black reimagining of The Wizard of Oz from the Seventies, its surprisingly sharp chunk. In The Wiz, Dorothy and her mates are Black people who find themselves promised sure elementary rights by a authorities that by no means plans to pay up. (Depraved gestures at the same 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, is just not a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz a lot as it’s a revisionist historical past. As such, it’s basically skeptical of figures in authority — way more so than Baum, who ultimately 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 unhealthy wizard, however a really unhealthy 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 mates, as a result of they need the Wizard to present them their hearts’ need: safety for the speaking animals of Ouncesas they develop into steadily extra persecuted.
But the Wizard they encounter is just not solely incapable of granting them such a request, however in actual fact plans to pervert it, utilizing their harmless needs to enact extra violence. He plans to take Elphaba underneath his wing and have her do magic on his behalf so he can extra totally persecute the sentient animals he plans to spherical up and extra effectively spy on the remainder of his residents.
In the long run, 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 robust 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 traditional, no authority determine will be trusted — which is what makes these tales so engaging when folks you don’t belief have discovered their manner into positions of energy.