I heard on some radio ad the last few lines of a song, dramatic and inspiring by a girl who sang that no wizard was going to bring her down. And I thought Gad, is that "new" Oz-thingy just some self-esteem tripe? So I read the all lyrics and looked up the synopsis of "Wicked."
This is appalling. At least with Schwarz we don't get quite so much innuendo of you're-a-big-girl-now-that-you've-discovered-sex. (See "Into The Woods," for example.)
And tangentially, I always found those to be rather creepy lyrics for older men to be writing, but girls and women are their main audience and lap this stuff up, so they must be onto something.
But must we, once again, have the A&H crowd tell us that the bad guys are really just victims, misunderstood by the peasants and other Tea Partiers, good at heart but made out to be bad in a really noble, poignant way? As if this were some significant new theme in literature that will uplift us all, rather than a rather transparent rationalization of their own attitudes? John Gardner did it best and it still sucked.
Appalling.
4 comments:
I haven't seen the play, but the music is quite nice; the book, on the other hand, is awful. I can usually finish almost any book, but I quit halfway through Wicked because it was just so awful. Terrible characterization, pointless plot, and it just kept going and going to no real end.
Haha, that is funny, I also got halfway through the novel "Wicked" and thought it was so awful that I could not finish. It was disgusting and grotesque, and the author's portrayal of the characters is horrid.
The play story line is quite a bit different than the novel, but I am still not interested in seeing the play. I hear it has kind of an animal rights bent, and since the whole point of the story is moral relativity, I have no interest.
I actually finished reading "Wicked"....and didn't like it at all. It's a book written in the vein of "take a common, popular story that everyone knows and turn it upside down for kicks".
I haven't seen the play...but I do have the sense that is more lighthearted than the novel...at least I would hope it is.
I was going to point out that the musical is a much softened version of the book, but it looks like a few people beat me to the punch.
The book is a travesty - a blatant attempt to reformat a beloved story to fit the social commentary of the author. Machete was a subtler piece of art.
Post a Comment