This One Detail That ‘Wicked’ Left Out Is An Important Part Of Elphaba’s Coming-Of-Age Story
When it comes to all things musical theatre, I criticize because I care–especially when it comes to a girl named Elphaba Thropp and her journey of self-discovery, advocacy, and betrayal. So many elements of 2024’s big scrren Oz adventure are pitch perfect, but I’m sad that the Wicked movie cut the Emerald City green glasses from “One Short Day” and I’m gonna talk about it!
In L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the citizens of the Emerald City wear spectacles with green glass lenses. It’s required by order of the titular wizard. They’re actually locked to the heads of visitors and citizens alike. Dorothy and her companions are told that the glasses protect them from the brightness of the all-green city. But in actuality, the buildings and other accoutrements are “no more green than any other city,” Baum writes. The glasses just make them look that way.
The Broadway musical Wicked doesn’t go the lock and key route. (One can imagine that would be difficult in a quick change scenario.) But Glinda and Elphaba do wear green glasses when they arrive at the Emerald City for “One Short Day.” So do the background dancers. And the glasses have a profound affect on the green girl. Nobody notices Elphaba’s green skin because the glasses make everyone‘s skin look green. She’s able to blend into the crowd. And that’s what Elphaba has always wanted, right? Standing out is uncomfortable at best and leads to bullying at worst, especially as an adolescent and/or young adult. It tanks your self-esteem. This is something that Winnie Holzman, who wrote the script for Wicked on stage and screen, understands all too well – she is, after all, the creator of My So-Called Life.
“I want to remember this moment always,” Elphaba says in the stage show at this moment. “Nobody’s pointing, nobody’s staring. For the first time, I’m somewhere that I belong.” Glinda replies with an affectionate “you look positively emerald,” and then the song continues.
The green glasses are a symbol or metaphor in Wicked and The Wizard of Oz
It’s a short, sweet, effective way to represent what happens when weird kids who don’t fit in leave their conformist suburb or small town and go to a big city. All of a sudden, nobody cares that they dress differently. They’re not ostracized for being too loud, too smart, too anything. They find people who are just like them, or people who are different in other ways and don’t judge. It’s not always a big city that does the trick for the Elphabas of the world. (Though it’s not unrelated to why urban areas tend to be more politically liberal and progressive…) Finding your tribe or community after being outcast can happen at all kinds of places. One could discover this kind of safety in anonymity in college or at a record store, library, gay bar, etc.
It’s not the most necessary detail to the larger plot of Wicked. But as a character moment it’s so necessary. This moment of belonging shows what Elphaba has to lose by turning against the Wizard, Madame Morrible, and Glinda when she chooses “Defying Gravity” at the end of Act/Part 1. She could have had the life she always wanted in the Emerald City. Things were really starting to go right for her.
Of course, in both iterations there is a darker side to all of this. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the glasses create the illusion of a green city and represent how easy it is for a leader to get his people to perceive things in whatever way he wants. In Wicked, they also represent the illusion of tolerance. The people of the Emerald City aren’t actually more open-minded than the people in other areas of Oz. They’re just wearing green glasses. They believe the lies that Morrible and the Wizard spread about Elphaba as easily as anyone else. And that rings true in our world as well. There are times when a community might seem safe only to betray you later on. And there are times when you shouldn’t want to fit in because that means aligning yourself with, err, something bad.
So why weren’t the Emerald City green glasses in the movie?
Some Wicked (2024) behind-the-scenes footage does show Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande wearing green glasses while rehearsing the “One Short Day” sequence. There’s also a moment in “The Wizard and I” with Elphaba and colorful glass that seems to foreshadow the Emerald City effect. However, in the final product, the glasses and Elphaba’s lines about finally belonging are absent. Even if Glinda and Elphaba had been wearing them, they would have been the only ones. That kind of ruins the effect. It would have just been a nod at the original story instead of an actual plot point.
What happened?! Did they forget to make extra glasses for the background citizens? Did they run out of green glass? Is this because The Wizard of Oz (1939) also ditched the specs for their “The Merry Old Land of Oz” musical number? I, for one, really hope they didn’t cut this detail to make room for Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth’s fan service-y cameos in that scene. I’d rather Elphaba have this win, personally.
Even Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the much more dense and nuanced novel that inspired the musical, touches on this in a way. The green glasses are not in the book. But Glinda makes an observation about her dear friend as they part ways that also highlights how urban life–even under the Wizard’s tyrannical rule–suits Elphaba in a way it doesn’t the proverbial good witch. “Glinda craned her head to see Elphaba drift back into the crowds,” Maguire writes. “For all her singularity of complexion, it was astounding how quickly she became camouflaged in the ragamuffin variety of street life in the Emerald City. Or maybe it was foolish tears blurring Glinda’s vision.”
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