A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Is Glinda Good?

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

A Bit Fruity was due for a good old-fashioned film analysis. Wicked is a kids movie that is actually for adults, holding up a mirror to our increasingly fascistic reality and asking us to question our struggle against it — or place within it. Glinda the Good Witch, thoughtfully delivered by Ariana Grande, is both easy to love and easy to hate. But while some characters’ politics are obvious (a fascist Wizard, a radical Elphaba), Glinda’s are harder to pinpoint. Today, we attempt just that. Support me + listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Work smarter, not harder, with Factor meals ready in two minutes: www.factormeals.com/fruity50. Get 15% off a cuter, more sustainable way to clean at www.blueland.com/fruity. Me on Instagram. A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, and welcome back to A BitFruity, the podcast where we, as connoisseurs of queer media, hold space for the lyrics of Defying Gravity. I know you think I just tried to shoehorn that joke in there, but that's literally what we're going to be doing today. Today, we are talking about wicked, and it is just me. So, brace yourselves and pray that I don't fly off the handle. But Matt, why are you talking about wicked? You don't need to. This isn't a film podcast. I know. That's what makes me so nice. This is a podcast where we tend to talk about politics, the internet, gay things, and unless you've been living under Iraq, you're probably aware right now that wicked is what is currently

occupying the intersection of all three of those things. And as someone in gay media who wants to hold space for that moment, here we are. I talk about politics and wicked is a deeply political story. I talk about gay things, and one could argue that Wicked is a deeply gay story. I had no intentions of making an a bit fruity episode about Wicked, but I want to tell you what landed us here today. So I saw Wicked on Thursday night, and I saw it with a few friends, and as I was leaving the theater, my literal first reaction to the film was, oh my God, Glinda is Megan Kelly

Well Kelly's court is back in session on the docket today dirty words in disguise for the princess of pop Britney Spears pushing the envelope on obscenity getting rather crass in a crafty way

on her new hit recording Love me, hate me all of the boys and girls are begging to and then she says If you seek Amy Doesn't make any sense, does it?

It's not supposed to. If you say it quickly, with no space in between the letters, it basically spells out the F word and then me. So it's all the girls and boys are begging to the F word and then me. Now, I know you may have some questions about that thesis. Not trying to jam my thesis down your throat right up front here. I promise we will get to it. Anyway, I decided I wanted to make an episode interrogating and investigating

the politics of Glinda, a deeply complex and complicated character, as we'll get into. So I went and I saw it again. This time, so I could, you know, sit in the corner and basically take notes throughout the movie, which I did. And that was yesterday. And I have to say, for some reason, upon leaving the theater the second time, I was absolutely in tears in a way that I was not the first time.

You know, I take SSRIs and any of my SSRIs out there are going to know, it makes really hard to cry. It's actually like the one thing that I miss the most from before being on SSRIs. Now, I totally don't regret taking SSRIs. They, in many ways, saved my life. But I do miss crying. And something about the fascist politics of Oz getting in the way of Glinda and Elphabah's budding and beautiful and complicated relationship, I was like in tears.

Like, fuck the wizard. Fuck Madame Morrible. And you know what? Dorothy to while we're at it, just because. Hey, get back on track, Matthew. So what I want to talk about today is, yes, the political allegories and wicked, but specifically questions around Glinda, who I think is one of the most psychologically complex and conflicting characters in the show.

Is she good? Is she wicked? Is she liberal? Is she conservative? Is she gay? Before we get started, if you would like to support this show or would like more content from me, You can get that on Patreon.

The link to the Patreon will be in the episode description. I also do live streams over there, some more in real-time commentary type stuff. So it's a fun time, I think. Go see for yourself. Now, before we get into the wickedness, I would like to lay some groundwork for this episode. There is so much wicked lore dating back to the original publication of the 1995 novel by Gregory McGuire. and then that novel was adapted into a stage production which premiered in 2003,

starring, of course, the original cast, Kristen Chenowith as Glinda and Adina Menzel as Elphaba. Which, by the way, love Adina Menzel, love Adina Menzel. I'm a gay man. I love Adina Manzell. But thinking once again about how intense the allegory of Elphaba being green is to racism, why was Elphaba not always played by a black woman? Love Adina Menzel. This is not Adina Menzel Shade. This is a casting decision question. Anyway, obviously, the reason that we're here today is because the novel that was turned into a stage

musical is now being turned into a film musical with Cynthia Arrivo starring as Elfaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda, Jonathan Bailey, starring both in my heart and in the film as Fierro. The film that just came out is part one of two. Part two is being released in a year. And there are differences between the film adaptation, the stage adaptation, and the book. But just so we're all on the same page, we are going to be centering this conversation and this episode around the movie that just came out. And particularly on the story of part one, because that's what's in the zeitgeist right now. And I think it gives us enough to talk about. I have 13 pages of notes, so it gave me enough to think about.

I want to start off this episode by talking through some of the major plot points in Wicked. So if you haven't seen the movie yet or have gone 25 years without ever seeing or hearing about the show, no shade to you, all good. But if you are someone who's very concerned with spoilers, then maybe wait until you've seen the movie to continue listening to the episode. If that's something you care about, if you've already seen it or you just want to keep rolling with the episode, I am going to explain the basic plot of the first actor. of Wicked right now. Wicked tells the intertwined backstory of Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba the Wicked Witch, two characters which were already familiar with from the 1939 classic film, The Wizard of Oz, based on the 1900 book by Frank L. Baum. This is a long time ago. This story has existed for a long time. We go into Wicked, thinking obviously that Elfaba is the Wicked Witch of the West and that Glinda

is the good witch. And wicked serves to complicate that narrative and some would argue flip it entirely. Wicked opens where the Wizard of Oz ends with the citizens of Oz learning that the Wicked Witch of the West has just been killed by a little girl, you may know her, named Dorothy. Dorothy was messy as fuck. Glinda visits the people of Oz to confirm the news and basically all of Oz is throwing a celebration at the Wicked Witch of the West has been killed. They're burning statues of her, there's posters everywhere, exaggerating her features, and painting her as this sort of monstrous villain who's finally been defeated. During the opening song, No One Morns the Wicked.

Glinda is attempting to celebrate with the rest of the Ozians, who she's just confirmed the news to, but she's clearly pained. And Ariana Grande does a great job of showing that pain in small, weighs with her face. Before Glinda flees the scene and Ozian asks her if the rumors are true that Glinda and Elphaba were once friends. This is such a messy thing also. Imagine being at a celebration burning down statues of this lady and then being like, wait, Glinda, is it true that you were buddy-buddy with her? Glinda initially says yes and then she walks it back immediately. She's like, well, we didn't know each other.

And then she walks that back and says, well, we crossed paths back at school. This basically sets the scene for Glinda to narrate the rest of Wicked, which is the backstory, starting from when they were young children, of how Glinda and Elphaba came to be in one another's lives. Glinda grew up in upper class spoiled brat, while Elphaba was the daughter of the mayor of Munchkin land, but not biologically, because actually Elphabah's mom. had an affair with an unknown traveler, and as such, Elphaba was born green. Elphaba spends her whole childhood shunned and silenced by her father, as well as bullied by the rest of the world at school,

and any time she went out in public, for being green. This is that very clear racism allegory I was talking about. Anyway, Elphaba and Glinda end up at Shiz together. Shiz is, like, I don't know, the University of Maryland of Oz. Glinda and Elphaba get assigned to dorm together and initially they hate each other. Glinda hates Elphaba for the same shallow reasons everybody else does. Elphaba hates Glinda because Glinda represents, you know, everyone who's always been mean to her and is also a glaring example of societal inequality and blind privilege. Eventually, Glinda and Alphaba grow to become best friends, maybe even more lesbians. Just kidding. I mean, I'm not just kidding. But this is not that big.

But it can be, if you want it to be. But they become closer through a series of events in which each of them grow empathetic towards the plight of the other. Elphaba is naturally drawn towards social justice, which makes a lot of sense because she has been for her entire life exposed to inequality and discrimination. Elphaba also, even though she knows it's shallow, laments the fact that she's green and admits to the viewer, but not to the people around her, that she longs to be a normal color. She pities Glinda for her. for being so shallow and vapid, but also secretly longs for some of the access and power and beauty that Glinda has always naturally had access to. Glinda, on the other hand, finds personal fulfillment in helping Alphaba achieve beauty and status. This is where the song Popular comes in. Popular. You're going to be popular. Just kidding. You don't follow me for singing.

This is, by the way, a large part of why Glinda helps anybody with anything. She's obsessed with good deeds, but ultimately only insofar as they can advertise her as a good person to others. She cares less about the good thing that she's doing for someone else, and a lot more about how that will reflect back on her own image. In short, Glinda and Elphaba each have what the other lacks. Glinda has riches and beauty and popularity, but lacks a purpose bigger than herself. Meanwhile, Elphaba has a deeply held sense of purpose, but lacks beauty and popularity. And that divide initially yields loathing, unadulterated loathing between them. But it ultimately allows them to foster empathy for one another and eventually even love.

And whether or not that's romantic love is for you to decide. Meanwhile, a fascist project is underway in Oz. One of their professors, Dr. Dilliman, who is a goat, explains to them how animals have long existed in Oz on basically, equal footing with humans. Shiz, for example, used to be full of animal professors and scholars. But as a result of political and economic turmoil, animals like Dr. Dillamond are being removed from society and stripped of their right to speak by a government that's

blaming them for all of the problems in Oz. In other words, they're being scapegoated. Scapegoated. Scapegoated. Dr. Dillamond is. a goat. Scapegoat. Oh. Animals in Oz are basically a stand and symbol for oppressed groups in society, something which makes wicked so applicable to so many different points in history. Because at various points in history, the plight of the animals in Oz could symbolize the

plight of Jews in Nazi Germany, or when thinking about the United States right now, really resembles the scapegoating of, for example, trans kids or undocumented immigrants. People who are essentially being pushed to the margins of society to make people feel better about the fact that they can't afford the price of groceries. Elphaba's life of facing anti-green discrimination has made her privy to identifying with other marginalized groups, and so she takes up the marginalization of animals as her cause. Glinda initially doesn't really understand this because Glinda has a hard time thinking of anyone but herself. Dr. Dillamond eventually gets taken away by the Ozian cops, who, if I had written the novel, I would have made the copse pigs. Meanwhile, Madam Morrible,

who is one of the more notable professors at Shiz, she teaches magic. She's one of the only people who's basically been nice to Alphaba since the beginning, because she was always able to recognize that Alphaba had the natural powers of sorceress in a way that Glinda and the other students don't. Madam Morrible is training Elphaba in the background to meet the wizard, which Alphabet is super ecstatic about because that's all of their lifelong dreams. And she also hopes that she'll be able to ask the wizard to grant her one biggest wish, which at this point is to be de-greenified. She's also hoping that the wizard will be able to do something about the plight of the animals, because the wizard in the story is kind of set up as an allegory for like God or Jesus. You know,

a false prophet who arrived one day, who promised that he could solve everybody's issues and understand the world in a way that nobody else fundamentally could. And of course, he's unable to do any of those things. Eventually, they do get an invitation to meet the wizard, and Elphaba goes and brings Glinda with her. They go, yada yada, Elphaba realizes that the wizard has no power, but also realizes that he's been the mastermind behind the fascist oppression and rounding up of the animals. The wizard, knowing that Elphaba has magic that he does not possess, wants to use her and her magic to aid in his fascist project. He promises Elphaba a place in the castle where she can live and essentially a spot in his, you know, cabinet and says that if she stays, then Glinda can

join them. Elphaba refuses. She starts running away. Glinda chases after her, tells her to stop fighting and just apologize to the wizard. Madame Morrible gets on the Aussian loudspeakers and declares Elphaba a wicked witch and an enemy of the state. Fuck Madame Morbel. Michelle Yo, you are so lucky that you had such a great performance in everything everywhere all at once because you are so convincingly evil and wicked that I actually almost started disliking you as a person.

Queen. Elphaba creates a magic flying brune that she can use to escape on and she asks Glinda to come with her. insert defying gravity which we are about to hold some space for the lyrics of elphaba and glinda at the end of the film share this tender and decisive moment elphaba decides that she's going to flee and you know become an enemy of the state so as to not abandon her morals but glinda doesn't have it in her to do the same she stays behind and ultimately joins the wizard's fascist project both of them have so much love and respect for each other at this point that they are genuinely devastated to say goodbye. And when they wish each other well in this last scene, they really mean it. And that's the end of the film. For we talk about Glinda, I want to talk a little bit about how Wicked represents fascism. There's the things that are really obvious, right? The scapegoating and othering of the animals, the silencing of dissent, the silencing and dehumanization

of anyone who speaks out against the fascist project. But one of the sneakier ways that they employ fascist tactics in Wicked, which I thought was really interesting, is the way that the story leans into associating goodness with physical beauty and wickedness with physical ugliness. You know, it's not a coincidence that Glinda the Good Witch is played by a petite, conventionally beautiful white lady, and why Elphaba is green. As Elphaba is running away from Madame Marble and The Wizard at the very end of the film, you hear, hear Madame Morble on the loudspeaker saying, her green skin is but a manifestation of her twisted nature.

Later on, but actually at the beginning of the movie, when she's already dead, the posters that you see hanging around at the celebration of her death are all exaggerating her physical features, like her nose. I found this to be really harrowing because it reminds me a lot, and this is something I've talked about on this podcast before, because it is a very reliable way to dehumanize people, right? Think about how the Jews were depicted as rats and vermin and lice during the Holocaust.

I'll put up some images of those posters on the screen, but it's really disturbing. And it also reminds me of the way trans people are depicted in media now. Think about the types of queer people that libs of TikTok chooses to put on blast. They usually can't pass as cis. They oftentimes are hairy or fat. And by the way, I don't think there's anything wrong with any of that. and I don't think it makes anyone any less deserving of respect, but that clearly is the message of a page like Libs of TikTok,

is that if you are visually gender non-conforming or fat or hairy, that outward failure to conform to traditional standards of beauty must be a reflection of your inner wickedness. Just think about all the viral tweets that you may or may not have seen, but they piss me off, so I'm happy that I found a place to talk about them. these viral tweets comparing current assistant secretary of the Department of Health, Rachel Levine, who's a trans woman, who's currently the highest ranking trans person ever to be in federal government, with RFK. You know, there's all these viral tweets like this one from Twitter user,

normal Catholic girl, who said, Department of Health 2020 versus 2024. And on the left, it's a picture of Rachel Levine. And on the right, it's a picture of RFK Jr. And the idea of holding up RFK Jr. as the pinnacle of health in any sense is very funny to me, but it's RFK Jr. shirtless, looking muscular, looking ripped. And the idea here is that Rachel Levine is a worse and less competent person because she, what, is trans? Also, not that it's really my business to speculate, but it's pretty clear to me that RFK takes some sort of performance-enhancing drugs or like HGH or testosterone or something for his muscles to look that way at his age. So the idea that because he looks like that is he's inherently healthy or healthier than Rachel Levine is just

ridiculous. But what we're describing here more generally is phrenology, which is a pseudoscience that basically takes the shape of someone's skull and uses it to draw conclusions about their character. And you can see how and why that that's been used by fascist movements many times. throughout history. It's what happens in Oz, and it's what's happening in America. Which, by the way, sometimes, like, liberals online try to do a sort of woke phrenology where they're like, why do all conservative men have a similar face? Why does Charlie Kirk have this inherently conservative smile? Guys, don't do that. Trying to make inferences about someone's character or politics by the way they look, it's a real slippery slope. And when that same line of thinking gets

used against you, you're going to realize why it was never good to begin with. Sorry, just a little rant. Like, guys, we don't want to do left-wing phrenology. It's not a good look. You know, I do this whole operation myself. I research and film and edit this podcast. I do all the social media stuff. It's all me. It's all me. And I'm not complaining. I love my job. I do. But one does run out of time to do, you know, other things that you need to be a person, like cooking. And so I would like to thank Factor, not only for sponsoring today's episode, but also just, you know, for existing. Factor is a meal delivery service designed by nutritionists and prepared by gourmet chefs. And everything is ready in two minutes. I mean, that's the kicker for me. There's no shopping, there's no cooking,

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If I could, I would, but I can't, so I don't. If you would like to try Factor, head over to FactorMeals.com slash fruity 50. and use the code fruity 50 for 50% off your first box and 20% off your next month. That's factormeals.com slash fruity 50 with the code fruity 50. Thank you so much to Factor for sponsoring today's episode, and let's get back to the show. Okay, we've discussed fascism. Now let's discuss Glinda. Ariana Grande, please come to the stage.

I think Glinda is such a rich text. You know, you could argue that at its core, wicked completely subverts the idea of the wicked witch and the good witch, revealing Alphaba to actually be the good one, the hero, if you will, and Glinda to be the real wicked witch. And while I certainly agree that Alphabah is good, I think drawing a conclusion on Glinda and her politics and her motivations is actually a little more complicated.

Elphaba's politics are somewhat straightforward. She's a leftist and likely a black leftist at that. She's been racially discriminated against her whole life and practices intersectionality by standing in solidarity with other groups against the institutions that oppress them all. And for doing this, she gets labeled as a treasonous terrorist. Does that sound familiar? Elphaba, it's worth noting, also has a lot less to lose than Glinda. Glinda comes from an upper-class background, and coming into the film, she lives her life in such a degree of comfort and wealth that she literally cannot understand when something doesn't go her way.

That's her origin, total delusional self-absorption. Like I said, she does have a pension for helping others, but only when it serves her own image, and not if it requires taking any sort of risk or sacrificing her own comfort. And on top of that, sometimes she misdiagnoses what she's even trying to help. A little bit of a pink savior complex, if you ask me. Like, when she first gets to Shiz and she sees Alphaba for the first time, she, unprompted, apologizes to Elphaba for the fact that she's green and says that she'll help Elphaba work through it. To which Elphaba replies, I don't really have to work through it. Mind your fucking business. It's fine.

Elphabah's sister, who I've failed to mention up until this point, is also at Shiz. end in a wheelchair. Her name is Nessa. Glinda pities Nessa in the most patronizing, ablest way possible by continuing to call her tragically beautiful. Throughout the story, though, and through her relationship with Elphaba, I would argue that Glinda becomes a little more aware, a little more observant, a little more caring, dare I say it, a little more awoke. And by the end of the film, she's genuinely supportive of Elphaba's decision to take a revolutionary fight from the outside kind of stance, but, you know, not enough to join her. Ultimately, Glinda devotes her life to upholding a system that she knows is corrupt. She knows that the wizard is full of shit,

but she commits to helping him with his fascist project, which involves dehumanizing minorities and to humanizing her best friend because what she values most is comfort and power. So where exactly do Glinda's politics land. And if you want this to be a Glinda roast, it's not going to be that. But if you want it to be a Glinda celebration, it's also not going to be that. I'm a Glinda skeptic, and I'll tell you why. I think if we were to project our current political landscape onto Glinda, she would represent various aspects of conservatism, of evangelical Christianity, of liberal centrism,

and of white feminism, all of which have circles that overlap at different points. At her absolute worst, and perhaps at her introduction, Glinda could be seen as a conservative hack who cares about nothing and no one but herself and preserving her wealth and comfort. This is how we're introduced to Glinda, but there are also various points later in the film where she betrays the fact that there's still a lot of this in her underlying ideology and worldview. Like right before she and Alphaba get on the train to go to Oz, which is about two-thirds of the way through the film, Glinda is complaining to Alphaba about how her boyfriend, Prince Fierro, has been really emotionally removed from the relationship ever since the day that Dr. Dilliman,

the goat teacher, was taken away by the police, the Aussian Gestapo. Fierro was really taken aback by that and hadn't been the same since. And Glinda, recalling this, says, who knew he cared so much about that old goat. Glinda, I think, is also a pretty heavy-handed parody of evangelical Christianity. You know, for most of the film, Glinda is very fixated on the aesthetic of kindness. She's much more concerned with everyone thinking that she's kind, but much less concerned with the material outcome of how she treats other people. Does that sound familiar? Glinda's a very bless your heart type of kind. If you're from the South, you know what I mean.

She's very, she's very, I love gay people. I love them enough to tell them that their sin is taking them to hell. I love homosexuals, if you can believe that. I love them enough to tell them the truth, because I know that there is hope for the homosexuals that if they're willing to turn from sin the same as any individual, that they can be ex-homosexual, the same as there can be an ex-murder, an ex-thief, or ex-anybody.

You know it's not an episode of A Bit Frutie unless I invoke a little Anita Bryant. Glinda's only kind when it's in service of improving her own image, and she's capable of immense cruelty as long as she believes that she's being kind. In many ways, I think the fact that Glinda ends up being known as the good way, which is kind of a parody on how we view goodness. You know, if you look the part and you sound of the part, the material consequences of your actions don't really matter.

Finally, I would like to see Glinda through the lens of liberal centrism and performative white feminism. Walk with me here. Once Elphaba and Glinda become friends, Elphaba begins drawing the attention of Glinda's hot boyfriend Fierro. Jonathan Bailey, by the way, you have never looked better, and I almost bought the heterosexuality. I almost bought it. And then you did dancing through life, and your enthusiasm towards the tap dancing was just a little too high.

Your homosexuality betrayed you. Try again. Anyway, Fierro starts to become attracted to Alphabah's deep investment in social causes, a type of passion for something outside of herself that Glinda is fundamentally incapable of having. But once Glinda realizes that Fierro is really into this about Elphaba, Glinda starts glomming onto social justice in the shallowest way possible. Like, at the beginning of the film, Glinda's actual name from birth is Galinda, like, G.A. Linda. But Dr. Dilliman, the goat that got taken away, he could never say that correctly because he was a goat.

And so he'd be like, Gah, uh, uh, Linda. Oh my God, though. Goat impression on the A Bit Fruitie Pod. So Dr. Dilliman would always call her just Glinda. And so after Dr. Dilleman gets taken away, and Glinda wants to virtue signal so that her boyfriend will like her more, she, in front of everyone, says, I'm changing my name from Galinda to just Glinda in honor of the animal rights cause. Ariana Grande captured the humor of these bits so well. but also this is very Facebook social justice profile picture frame. It's a very June 2020 Instagram Black Square.

You know Glinda would have been all over Blackout Tuesday. But Glinda also genuinely does support Elphaba in her cause until the moment she's tasked with sacrificing her own comfort or betraying her wealth or reputation or status or good graces in the eyes of power. Then she turns back. It's giving liberal. It's giving white feminist. So by the end of the film, it's not that Glinda doesn't care.

She does, especially about Alphabah. But she's unwilling to sacrifice her place in the hierarchy of power or put anything on the line in order to stand in those values. Next, I want to talk about what I think is actually the most interesting and illustrative thing that Glinda does, is her absolutely soul-rotting pursuit of power. Glinda's ultimate ambition in Wicked, more important to her than justice for the animals, and ultimately more important to her than her relationship with Elphaba, is achieving status and power within the political establishment

of Oz. That and wearing the cundiest false lashes I've ever seen on a witch. She wants to live in the palace and work for the wizard, even after it's revealed to her that the wizard is some fraudulent hack. Pause. I know we're keeping this episode and this analysis relegated to the part one movie, but I'd like to insert here that yes, ultimately in part two, she does, little spoiler, use her power against the wizard. And I know some people are going to comment pointing that out. But even if we factor that in here, we'd have to acknowledge that in the process of eventually coming around to wielding her power against the wizard, she does an incredible amount of harm, both in the scapegoating of minorities and in fueling the

dehumanizing propaganda against her best friend while working on the wizard's behalf. So perhaps that's all a nod to the limits of trying to, you know, change the system from the inside. But back to this movie. Glinda turns her back on Alphaba in the final hour because she wants a spot in Trump's, I mean the Wizards, Cabinet. Trump announces Glinda as Secretary of Glamour. And ultimately, although she sacrifices the love and friendship of her life for it, she does get it. She's made Glinda the Good Witch.

Pause. I want to talk about Megan Kelly. Megan Kelly is a conservative news commentator and former Fox News host. She was a frequent flyer on Fox from... 2004? Are that 2004? Yeah, 2004 to 2017. In 2015, during the Republican presidential primary debate on Fox News, which Megan Kelly hosted, she asked Donald Trump if a man of his temperament was fit to be president. Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its

downsides, in particular when it comes to women. We've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slabs, and disgusting animals. Your Twitter account... Only Rosie O'Donnell. No, it wasn't. Thank you. For the record, it was well beyond Rosie O'Donnell. Yes, I'm sure it was.

Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women's looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president. I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. This was the first time that he ran for president. This was like 16 lives ago. The next day, in an interview with Don Lemon, Trump made wildly memorable and misogynistic comments about Megan Kelly, including an insinuation that she was on her period while she was moderating the debate,

and that's why she put even the slightest amount of pressure on Trump. She gets out. She gets out. and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions. And you can see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. This led to a long media row between Megan Kelly and Donald Trump. And there was, by the way, some conservative media backlash to it at the time. Like, there were other conservative pundits who were like, Donald Trump, that was out of line. You can't say shit like that. But, you know, that was many moons ago.

Back when some people in conservative media had, had fucking spines and were willing to criticize him. A year later, in 2016, amid a lawsuit against the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes, alleging that he had been sexually abusing female employees at Fox for years. It was revealed that Megan Kelly internally came forward as a victim of his harassment. This whole ordeal was fictionalized, by the way, in the movie Bombshell, where Megan Kelly is perfectly played by Charlize Theron, and you should pause this podcast and go watch that movie. It is so good. And that movie's from 2019, and it makes the rest of Megan Kelly's career arc even more pathetic and sad to watch. That lady went through so much misogyny, sexual harassment,

so much bullshit while she was at Fox News. And the fact that she landed where she is today is just, well, give me a second. Shortly after the 2016 Roger Ales harassment suit was the 2016 Republican National Convention, where Megan Kelly wore a, you know, strappy black dress. First of all, she looked so good. And I hate saying anything nice about Megan Kelly, but she looked fabulous. And for this strappy black dress, she was absolutely lambasted by conservative media pundits. And so amidst the falling dominoes of anti-Megonel of anti-Megonelie, she was briefly portrayed by popular media as this sort of feminist figure, and for one brief and fleeting moment, she took up the cause. She left Fox in 2017 when her contract expired and had a two-year stint hosting a daytime talk

show on NBC, where she briefly ditched the conservative news commentary for something honestly a lot more mellow. Also, this is really random and something I have never spoken about, but my aunt went on this briefly existing Megan Kelly talk show. So you're probably wondering who my aunt is. My aunt was in a cult. My aunt was raised in the cult, The Mooneys. Her name is Lisa Cohn. She wrote a book about it.

I talk to her all the time. I love her so much. Shout out Lisa. But when my aunt was promoting the book that she published, I guess, six or seven years ago, she did a daytime talk show, sit down, an interview with Megan Kelly, who, as far as I'm aware, was really nice at the time. I'll link my aunt's book about growing up in and then escaping a cult in the episode description,

I suppose. Didn't think I was going to talk about that one today, but is, I suppose, a small world. Megan Kelly's little daytime talk show stint ended in October 2018 when she did a segment defending blackface and discussing how back in her day you could wear blackface in a hollow costume and it was okay before the wokes came along. What is racist? Because truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on black face on Halloween or a black person who puts on white face for Halloween. Like, back when I was a kid, that was okay as long as you were dressing up as like a character.

There was a controversy on the Real Housewives of New York with Luann. And she dresses Diana Ross. And she made her skin look darker than it really is. And people said that that was racist. And I don't know. I felt like, who doesn't love Diana Ross? She wants to look like Diana Ross for one day. I don't know how like that got racist on Halloween.

Megan, girl, you make it so hard to defend you. So after being canceled by the blue-haired woke left for being racist, she returned to the cozy arms of conservative news media, launching a now very popular serious XM podcast, the Megan Kelly show, where she, as of this morning, is on a. defending Trump's Secretary of Defense pick Pete Hegeseth from his own sexual assault allegations. This allegation should not tank his nomination. It's not fair to cost him a position like this based on an unsubstantiated accusation. It doesn't become more substantiated because it wound up in a

police report, maybe slightly more, because she's at least taking the risk of, you know, potentially perjuring herself when she goes down this lane, but not more. much. Here's the thing. Fuck Megan Kelly. But also, I can't help but feel like she's lost a bit of her soul in all of this, right? I mean, while Trump was campaigning this time around for president, Megan Kelly spoke at one of his events and was on stage hugging him, hugging the man who, because she criticized him once, made a joke on air about blood coming out of her vagina. I don't really at the end of the day have much sympathy for Megan Kelly because I really think she's made her bed. And not only that, but the rhetoric that she spews and the platform that she's built to

spew it hurt so many people. I mean, the stuff that Megan Kelly has been saying about trans people is just reprehensible. But if I dig deep in my soul, which for just this moment I'm willing to do and look for some Megan Kelly's sympathy, just as I try to do with the other people I talk about on this podcast like Riley Gaines. I see people who have found everything they've wanted in terms of power and success and money and fame. And yeah, they got it. Megan Kelly got it.

But at what cost to her integrity and her truth and her soul? Megan Kelly has to go to bed at night knowing that speaking honestly about the horrific misogynistic abuse, both physical and verbal, that she's received from all of these conservative men around her, stands in the way of her professional ambition and having the career that she wants. And so the question is, is it worth it? And maybe for her it is. But it's not without a cost.

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Caitlin Jenner, a rich and famous former decathlete. That means I think 10 sports. Good for her. partially responsible for the spawn of the Kar-Gener dynasty publicly came out as transgender in 2015 with a cover of the Vanity Fair magazine where she's posed like a pin-up girl. It's a beautiful cover shot by Annie Leibovitz. And personal side note, I remember the day that this magazine cover came out. I was in high school. I first saw it when I was sitting in art class with my other gay friends and we were so excited. Caitlin was at the time and honestly probably still,

the most famous person to have ever come out as transgender. And we were fucking stoked. But after an exceptionally brief stint of solidarity with other trans people, Caitlin ultimately took up the cause of being an extraordinarily wealthy white woman, campaigning for Republicans, and even briefly running a campaign for the Republican governor of California in 2021. Caitlin Jenner for governor. Like, what the fuck timeline do we live in?

As you may have heard, don't know if you've heard, the Republican Party took a sharp right turn into the politics of the anti-trans culture war over the last few years. And while that has happened, Caitlin Jenner has not wavered. She spent the last three years groveling in submission at the feet of a party that not only hates her, but does not see her as a woman. And, by the way, isn't afraid to tell her that whenever they have the opportunity to. Right after Trump won the election a few weeks ago, Caitlin Jenner got brunch with Donald Trump, his granddaughter, and Elon Musk, a brunch from which Caitlin posted a photo to her Twitter account where there were thousands of replies from Republicans calling her a man.

And so, like Megan Kelly did with women, Caitlin Jenner betrayed her trans community in pursuit of power, and she's gotten what she wanted, right? She has a literal seat at the table with some of the most powerful people in the world, but at what cost? And I can't help but feel similarly about Glinda, minus, you know, the vehicular manslaughter. A lot of people, in my opinion, rightfully, criticize Glinda's decision to align with power over her morals or over her best friend.

But something that I want to acknowledge, something that I want to throw in the mix, is, isn't Glinda ultimately punished too? In defying gravity, Glinda and Elphaba sing to each other. I hope you're happy now that you're choosing this. I really hope you get it and you don't live to regret it. And this is what I was thinking as I left the theater crying last night. You know, ultimately, which of them lives to get it and which of them lives to regret it? The superficial answer is easy.

Glinda is made the good witch and is beloved by Oz. Elphaba is punished and shunned and relegated to the outskirts of society and dehumanized for the rest of her life. But despite all of this, Elphaba gets to hang on to her moral. She retains her moral compass. She never wavers from her own belief system. She, of course, doesn't have the microphone to honestly communicate those morals to the rest of Oz, but to herself, to her inner self, she never has to lie. She lost everything, but she kept her soul.

Glinda, on the other hand, is forced to abandon not only her relationship to Elphaba, but the truth of the fact that she ever had a relationship with Elphaba, because that truth is not viable to power. You know, at the beginning of the episode, I talked about the beginning of the movie, which the first song is No One Warns the Wicked, where Glinda is sort of forcing herself to take part in the celebration of the death of her best friend. But there's a real painful look in her face, and when asked whether or not she was ever friends with Elphaba, she lies. And you can tell, again, by the great acting of Ariana Grande, that that lie is really kind of eating her from the inside.

The relationship that Glinda had with Elphaba, whether friendly or romantic, who knows, it's up to you, my little gay listener, was arguably the most meaningful relationship Glinda ever had, or at least that we know. know about. And so the only way for her to hold on to power and status and reputation and fame is to lie about this fundamental part of herself in a way that I feel really parallels the situations of Caitlin Jenner or Megan Kelly. People who, to be clear, I have a lot of disdain for for the harm that they cause on others, but for whom, on a psychological level, I think it's interesting to look for the places where I can find sympathy for them. Like, in the end, I think Elphaba and Glinda are both punished. Elphaba's punishment is more obvious, but one could argue that Glinda's punishment rots her deeper to the core. And so lastly, is Glinda the real wicked witch?

After I watched the movie for the first time, and I decided I wanted to make a podcast about it, my original title for this episode was, Glinda is sort of a fascist. A little harsh, a little clickbeady. I know, I know. But after watching it the second time, I really, realized that writing her off as a spineless, self-absorbed, unforgivable right-wing narcissist might be feeding into the very thing that Wicked is warning against, which is, I think, an oversimplification of who is Wicked and why. The truth, well, you know, my truth, is that I think throughout the story of Wicked, even if just in the Part 1 movie, which we're focusing on today,

Glinda reveals herself to be capable of genuine good. She does have a rare moment of selflessness when she takes up friendship with Elphaba, knowing that the rest of Shiz would judge her for it. She's a conflicted and contradictory person, like I said at the top of the episode. But by the end, she clearly has a lot of love for Alphabah, and I also think she has good intentions. And those good intentions aren't enough. Because without commitment to principles and a belief system that prioritizes people over power,

and ultimately, you know, her prioritization of comfort over change, she is susceptible to being corrupted by power and becoming a tool of the fascist project, which is what happens. And that, to me, cuts to one of the core questions wicked asks us, which is what makes someone wicked. How does wickedness happen? I think that Glinda can ultimately represent the banality of evil, or in this case, the banality of wickedness.

The banality of evil is a theory coined by philosopher Hannah Arendt, who, in examining why the Holocaust was able to happen, observed that many people's unwillingness to question systems of power or even think for themselves is what ultimately allowed these systems to act in the most evil way possible. So basically, I don't think Linda is wicked, but she's not quite anti-wicked either, and everyone, including her, pays the price. well folks how did i do how did i do i you know what i was afraid to do an episode by myself i've gotten used to like the podcastiness of like okay it's always going to be me and someone else we rallied back at fourth and da da da da da da and when i talked about doing this episode on patreon people correctly pointed out like you can basically pluck any gay person off the street in new york city and they will have this conversation with you but i was like let me challenge myself let me see if i can do an episode myself So here we are.

I hope you liked it. I hope it was coherent. I am a little bit nervous of entering this like fictional film slash book slash musical analysis space as someone who doesn't typically do that kind of thing. But I got to be honest. This was fun for me. This was a fun little thought exercise. I thought the movie was absolutely fabulous. I thought everyone in it did an amazing job.

Cynthia Arrivo, Jesus Christ. My goodness. I hope you enjoyed this episode. if you did, feel free to share it with, like, I feel like everyone's having these conversations right now, anyone who's seen the movie. So share it in the family group chat. I don't know. Send it to Megan Kelly. Who gives a fuck? I love you so much. Thanks for being here. And until next time, stay wicked. Oh, God, that was so fucking corny. Jesus Christ. Stay fruity. I love homosexuals.