Bites, Camera, Fashion: Cynthia Erivo makes ‘Wicked’ worth the trip to the theater

Bites, Camera, Fashion: Bites, Camera, Fashion is a column from Davey McNelly, who is disabled, likes films and makes poor choices while trying to simplify his life. 

“Wicked” has been a real love/hate thing for me. When I lived in Chicago, I was managing a small non-profit that mostly served unhoused people in three shelters close by. I got to meet a lot of cool people who had run into some hard luck and a lot of working class people who couldn’t make ends meet. You know, capitalism.

One of those worked in the box office of a theatre downtown and would bring me and others free tickets when the shows didn’t sell out. I saw a lot of musicals because of it, and “Wicked” was one of those. I also had cable for the only time as an adult (it came with the rent). During commercials of “Keeping up with the Kardashians” (in my opinion America’s greatest sit-com), the advertisements of “Wicked” played constantly, with the song “Defying Gravity” becoming an earworm that I still haven’t shook out onto the ground. 

Having not read the book, I gave it a shot. My heart sank when Elphaba’s sister, Nessarose, rolled out in her wheelchair and was immediately marginalized. No one wanted to go to the dance with her. No one knew how to act around her. It’s a whole subplot in the musical, which I otherwise would have enjoyed. Instead, I shrank into my wheelchair, remembering that people with disabilities are just easy vessels to draw pathos from (want to win an Oscar? Be able-bodied and play a disabled character!). When she took her first steps out of her wheelchair, I wanted to throw up. Why can’t we let wheelchair users be worthy of love, respect, and let us just be who we are, instead of trying to cure us? I love using a wheelchair. It’s part of me. And I’m not going to be treated as a whole person until our art reflects that.

So how did the film stack up? Was it better?

First things first.

Bites

I’m going to be honest here. I was coming back from Columbus on Thanksgiving day a little shaken from the Columbus Police being called on me for parking in the street waiting on a friend to get home. Three cops pulled up and shined their flashlights in the window. Cops don’t know what to do with me, a wheelchair user driving a van. They apologized and left us be, saying someone called for possible nefarious activity.

I normally try to have at least five Thanksgiving meals. Call them fall harvest meals, pre-winter gatherings, however you want to decolonize it. But we all know what’s happening. It’s a holiday where all you do is eat, drink, and take a nap. It’s nice as holidays go but bad in what it stands for, especially as Palestine continues to be colonized. COVID and a lack of invitations cut short my meals. I was in a mood to do something even though it was late, so I found myself veering brazenly into Movies Ten like that meme where the compact is swerving towards a bad decision. 

So I’m going to be super bold and review my partner’s Mom’s Thanksgiving spread, as well as mid-western thanksgiving in general. My partner’s Mom held a delicious friends-giving, with an excellent turkey, a mushroom and regular gravy that changed my mind about how good gravy can be, and many of the usual sides, with a few surprises.

The cranberry lobby wins again (look them up). There was a cranberry fluff and straight up cranberries plopped out of a can and sliced. Somehow it was best if you mixed them together. Delicious.

The green bean casserole, the most divisive of sides, was the best I’ve had. I’m generally not a fan.

I’m a big fan of sweet potato casserole, and Marti mixed it up with ricotta to balance out the sweetness. Nice.

Some people treat mashed potatoes as a side. For me they are the main event. I always joke that I am trying to get to 100% butter, which means it’s half potatoes and half butter. We can dream. These potatoes didn’t quite get there (I have to be honest, Marti!)

Camera

There is a lot going on in “Wicked.” Multiple characters change their mind about each other over the course of many songs. Ariana Grande doesn’t have the musical theatre singing chops or acting to cut it as Glinda, while Cynthia Erivo is excellent as Elphaba. Her Black-ness, added to her green-ness, gives a nuance to the role, and her acting and singing, especially in “Defying Gravity,” carry the film. She is an outcast in multiple ways, especially because she has talent. And she can join in the current fascist system of Oz and follow the Wizard, or decide to go against everyone and everything, even her now-friend Glinda.

The last 20 minutes of the movie, with the special effects and performance by Erivo, make it a must-see holiday film.

Michelle Yeoh (most famous for me for “Everything Everywhere All At Once”) plays a wonderful professor, while Jeff Goldblum was gifted to us by God to play a genius with an evil streak. It’s somehow perfect that his singing is so poor.

In the end, it’s still a mixed bag for me, and I am ready for the next “Wicked,” where Glinda is played by a wheelchair user and no one bats an eye.

Other films of note: “FLOW,” by director and animator Gints Zibalodis, is an excellent animated film about a post-human world in which climate catastrophe is dealt with by, well, a cat and a ragtag group of animals. It’s transcendent, scary, and has only non-verbal communication. The shading is also really good.

Fashion

I want to focus on hats for a moment.

Everything in life is a social construct. We make reality what we want it to be, collectively. I wear hats because I’m (mostly) bald and get cold easily. Elphaba is given a witch’s hat as part of a cruel joke by Glinda. She thinks everyone will like it but when she shows up at the dance in all her intersectionality (Black, green, woman, Munchkin, witch), she is further ostracized. She doesn’t take off the hat. Instead, she embraces it, and realizes that it more fully shows who she is.

I hope that you (and we), in this New Year, embrace those parts of us that make us different, and become who we ought to be. We owe it to ourselves to defy whatever is harming us and the world.