Everyone wants room for “Defying Gravity,” the power plant’s anthem Evila Broadway musical that became a blockbuster movie. But behind the themes of female rivalry and friendship, unrequited love and the unfortunate circumstance of being green, there’s a deeper undercurrent: the alienation that comes with standing up for what you believe in.
The Story — A 1900 reimagining of L. Frank Baum The Wizard of Oz — explains how the notorious Wicked Witch of the West came to be. Like the musical, the film is set in Oz and follows Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo), a kind but tough young woman who has been ostracized all her life for her green skin, as she enters Shiz University to cultivate her powerful magic. powers. Here he meets, lives, and eventually befriends Galinda Upland (Ariana Grande), an aspiring witch who is loved and favored throughout her life.
What seems to be ignored, however, is the root of Elphaby’s supposed wickedness: her horror at the mistreatment of animals and her determination to set them free. In Oz, animals are normal members of society, living and working alongside other Ozians – until they are silenced and pushed out of the public eye.
Yes, Evil is a fantasy story, but if one focuses just a little longer on Elphaba’s origin story, it’s hard not to see parallels between the film and the real-life state of animal welfare. The reality of animal oppression is not only stranger than fiction Evilbut unfortunately much more cruel. And those who try to expose this abuse and create change are ridiculed, imprisoned and, like Elphaba, ostracized for their stance and seen as evil.
How the animal rights message in Wicked connects to real life
From the very beginning of her life, the film shows that Elphaba felt a connection with animals, at least in part because of the prejudice she faced in her own life. When Elphaba is born and it is discovered that she has green skin, her father rejects her. She is mainly raised by Dulcibear, her nanny who happens to be a brown bear and who sympathizes with Elphaba and sees the good in her, while her father scolds and chastises her for being different.
Years later, when Elphaba enrolls at Shiz University after showing her magical abilities, she is ostracized by much of the student population because of her skin. He finds solace in his studies, especially in the class of Dr. Dillamond, the goat who teaches history. It is in his class that the disenfranchisement of animals becomes clear to Elphaba: Dillamond tells the students that he is one of the few animal professors left after the animals were blamed for the widespread drought in Oz years ago. Later in class, Dillamond discovers that someone has written “Animals should be seen and not heard” on the other side of his board.
Someone wrote on Dr. Dillamond’s board, “Animals should be seen and not heard.”Universal Pictures International/Wicked trailer
Elphaba learns more about animal oppression after eavesdropping on a conversation with Dillamond and the other creatures about stories about animals that lost their ability to speak, were forced out of their jobs, and left Oz entirely. This becomes Dillamond’s own fate when he is forcibly removed from his class and replaced by a new human instructor who shows off his latest invention to prevent animals from learning to talk: a cage with a frightened lion 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 languages we understand). But keeping animals in cages? That’s the reality that most of the world widely accepts in exchange for food and entertainment—even if few understand what that actually looks like.
Humans raise about 75 billion animals for food each year, and while caging animals is not a new practice, modern large-scale farming has taken the confinement and exploitation of animals to new extremes. For example, female breeding pigs are kept in “gestation crates,” small cages barely larger than their own bodies, where they are essentially immobilized, forcibly and artificially inseminated, and forced to go through repeated cycles of pregnancy and birth. Chickens, whose eggs are often sold with misleading claims of being “humanely raised,” are also crammed into cages so small they can’t fully spread their wings (and even “cage-free” eggs can mean thousands of chickens together in 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 left more than 1,000 pigs to die in flames (a common occurrence on large farms) after the pork industry lobbied against updates to fire codes that would have required sprinklers to be installed in barns. When Hurricane Helene hit Georgia, the country with the highest production of chickens, it is likely that millions of chickens were killed.
Inhuman detention is the tip of the iceberg. Multiple investigations have revealed the sickening reality of factory farms. At one pig farm, an undercover investigation found piglets were wasting air after being poisoned by carbon monoxide, while another was being fed a mixture of pig parts and faeces. A year-long investigation at livestock auctions in various 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, these forms of cruelty are pervasive and constantly reflected in meat industry investigations.
While farm animals may face the worst and most extensive abuse, they are not the only animals to be kept. Zoos, where animals are driven from their natural habitats and forced to live in much smaller spaces, are largely a form of entertainment for the public. While zoos contribute to conservation work, it also costs the very creatures that are held in these facilities such as “zoochosis”. Repetitive behaviors such as pacing and self-harm have been reported in animals confined in zoos.
Elphaba, animal rights activist
At the end of the movie, Elphaba meets the Wizard of Oz and gets a chance to work under him. While there, she tells the Wizard that helping animals is her passion, to which the Wizard seemingly agrees.
But after tricking her into casting a spell that painfully sprouted wings on the backs of the wizard’s monkey servants (the origin story of the famous flying monkeys), the wizard reveals that he can now use them to spy on other animals. Realizing that a wizard is behind the subjugation and villainization of animals to stay in power, Elphaba refuses to use her magic to help him further and escapes—but not before Madame Morrible labels her an evil witch and a threat to all Oz. , her witchcraft instructor.
Vegetarians, vegans, and animal rights activists can probably relate—especially those who put their freedom at risk. In recent years, a number of activists have been prosecuted for rescuing sick and injured animals from large farms. In November 2023, attorney and animal rights activist Wayne Hsiung 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 prison, most of which he spent in conditions that experts said amounted to solitary confinement.
And even non-activists who simply point out the climate, public health, and moral ills of factory farming and animal cruelty are accused of being radical or wanting to take away people’s hamburgers. Just as Elphaba pokes fun at Dr. Dillamond after he 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. Dillamond, Dulcibear and the Flying Monkey Evil, animals in real life are sentient beings according to a growing body of research. Just like humans, studies show that animals feel pain and experience pleasure. And inside EvilMost of Elphaba’s classmates seem to ignore the treatment of animals in Ozian society, even Galinda, who (often superficially) tries to do good. It’s not too different from how our real world interacts with animal welfare – our society largely accepts the subjugation of animals, even if it involves extensive cruelty. Perhaps this helps explain part of why the animal rights activism parts of the film are so often left out of the conversation: Animal restraint and deprivation of autonomy is considered normal in our reality.
Second installment Evil is set to hit theaters in 2025. While the first installment paid more attention to Elphaba’s radicalization through animal rights than the Broadway musical, it still handles it with a lighter touch than Maguire Evil a novel that allows all the (very) catchy songs and sweet depictions of unexpected friendship to hit viewers harder than the animal rights message. How many of Wicked: Part two Whether it will focus on animal rights is not entirely clear – but it would certainly be much more interesting to see the film try to fight animal rights better than its predecessor.
