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#glinda the good witch
that-ari-blogger · 2 days
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Inciting Incident (Thank Goodness)
One of the most popular songs in Wicked is sung by Galinda, and centres around the idea that the society she lives in is corrupt and that she is the only one who knows how it really works. But is she right about that? Does she actually know as much as she thinks?
I think the answer is complicated, and that's the fun of it. I think that Glinda has intellectually grasped that the system is flawed, but I don't think she's emotionally wrapped her head around it. Case and point, the complete and utter cognitive dissonance that is Thank Goodness.
Let me explain.
SPOILERS AHEAD: (Wicked, The Trekkie's Tale)
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Thank Goodness is actually two songs. Thank Goodness itself, and a reprise of No-one Mourns The Wicked. So, it's a rehashing of the first act, opening with Glinda conversing with the crowd, the difference is whether or not she is appearing to agree with it.
In the first Glinda tries to argue for Elphaba's morality, and it frames the entire story. But now, Glinda stands idly by and goes along with all that the chorus says while they get more and more worked up by lies that she knows to be untrue.
You would think that the two segments of the song being in agreement would mean that they go well together, but they really don't. Thank Goodness and No-one Mourns The Wicked do not fit with each other at all, in my opinion.
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So, what does this mean?
I think that this song shows Glinda lying to herself, and finally starting to crack and realise what is happening.
Glinda spends this song deflecting from the problem, instead of confronting it head on. She relies on popularity and giving the people what they want to distract them.
My ex-girlfriend is being hunted by the masses for something she didn't do, but look over here, I'm getting married!
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"Like some terrible green blizzard
Throughout the land she flies
Defaming our poor Wizard
With her calumnies and lies!"
The obvious thing here is the tense. This is happening now, as opposed to something the characters have lived through and made it out the other side of. It is more immediate.
But the other thing that I want to point out is the wall that the Ozians are putting up. The reason Elphaba can't get through to anyone is because they think she is lying, because who are you more likely to believe, someone who you trust implicitly, or someone who everyone around you says is dangerous?
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The song is broken into four sections. The introduction, Glinda's two reflections, and Madame Morrible's story, which prompts her to change her mind a bit.
"When you bowed before his throne
He decreed you'd hence be known
As Glinda the Good, officially!"
The following is an excerpt from The Trekkie's Tale, a Star Trek fanfic first published in 1974.
"Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky," thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. "Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet - only fifteen and a half years old." Captain Kirk came up to her...
"Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us."
This is the archetypal Mary Sue story, a format where the protagonist gets all that they want and more. The world revolves around Mary Sue, and as a result, it isn't particularly compelling. She wins everything, then she saves the day and dies, and everyone mourns her.
Nobody online seems to be able to agree on whether this story was a satire of general fanfiction trends or not, a fact that I find rather funny.
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But compare that to the story Madame Morrible is telling about Glinda. Allegedly, the wizard gave her the title for... not much actually. In Morrible's version of events, good people get things just because, and nobody is asking any questions.
Essentially, Glinda is getting all that she wants on a silver platter, with no questions asked, no strings attached. Well, one string attached.
"Then with a jealous squeal
The Wicked Witch burst from concealment
Where she had been lurking, surrpetitially!"
I mentioned in my post on Defying Gravity (maybe go check that one out) that the central conflict that ended Elphaba and Glinda's relationship was that Elphaba was prepared to sacrifice everything, and Glinda wasn't. But Glinda did have to give up something to achieve her dream, and I don't think she quite understood that until now. To get the power she craved, Glinda had to lose Elphaba.
This song is essentially bludgeoning Glinda over the head with the fact that this tradeoff was not worth it.
That is the dissonance inherent to Glinda's entire character. She recognises the flaws in the world around her but has convinced herself that it will be worth it when she gets to power.
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I don't think that Galinda would have realised this, and I am making a point of differentiating Glinda and Galinda. In my mind, Glinda is the version of this character who fell in love with and was changed by Elphaba. The two characters are incredibly similar, and one is an evolution of the other, but it is the influence of Elphaba that makes the difference.
Galinda was seeking power for the sake of it, a person who got her way because she couldn't understand anything else. But Elphaba changed that and gave her a purpose for seeking to climb the ladder. I think Glinda believed she could make a difference from within the structure of Oz, probably to help Elphaba.
Glinda has got everything she theoretically wanted, but at the behest of the reason she was doing it, and now that she is here, she can't even initiate the change she wanted to change. Glinda made the wrong choice, and is only now realising it.
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"We couldn't be happier
Right, dear?
Couldn't be happier
Right here
Look what we've got
A fairy-tale plot
Our very own happy ending."
If you are wondering why I've been leaving Glinda's monologues until the end, it is because they make my case for me, and make analysis rather difficult as a result. I have been saying over and over that this musical is about dreams and reality colliding, and that is explicitly stated in these verses.
The fact that there are two of these mirrors the two sides of Glinda's character. The first is the side that craves the attention and has got everything that she wants, then the song reminds her of Elphaba, and she tries again with a more nuanced perspective.
"Though it is, I admit
The tiniest bit
Unlike I anticipated
But I couldn't be happier
Simply couldn't be happier
Well - not simply
'Cause getting your dreams
It's strange, but it seems
A little, well, complicated"
This is literally what I've been saying. She's got what she wanted, but not in the way she wants. It's complicated, and that facade of hers is finally cracking.
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That duality is mirrored by the time signature, which is maddening. The song oscillates between a ton of different signatures, and if someone with more musical knowledge understands anything more about this than me, please give me a hand.
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From my, admittedly limited, understanding, this feels like a lack of surety. Glinda doesn't know what she wants or thinks anymore, so she can't decide what she is singing.
It also gives an incredibly informal tone, as the lack of structure matches how a person speaks, almost. There have been two characters who have distinct speech patterns in this musical, Madam Morrible, and Glinda. The script of both of whom is written in recurring patterns and rhythms, making up words to match the metre of their sentence. It's pompous and pseudointellectual.
This is most obvious in how smooth the start of Defying Gravity is. There, Glinda doesn't have to change how she talks to match the song, because she is already speaking in the right rhythm.
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Cynthia Erivo's rendition of this song in PBS's Wicked In Concert is phenomenal and I highly recommend you check it out, not least of all because removing the crowd gives the song a completely different vibe.
But here, halfway through a song, she gives up with artfulness and just speaks her mind. It's still a song, so you still get the rhythms and melodies, but that is breaking down, and is gone in the script from this point forwards. That's partially why I say Glinda and Galinda are different people, they sound different to each other.
There are a few almost exceptions to this rule, and I say almost exceptions because they come really close to breaking the mould, but don't.
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In this exception, Glinda is trying to convince herself that she is happy. The song is limited to one thought, the idea that Glinda should be happy, and there can't be anything wrong. She has got everything she wanted, and that would make her happy, right? Happy is what happens when all of your dreams... That's the word that throws her off, dreams.
This is no longer Glinda's dream.
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This song is a microcosm of Glinda's entire arc in the musical. She follows the story laid out for her, but is changed by the journey until it no longer fits. She has changed, and now she can't do anything about it.
Ironically, Glinda has gained all the authority she could dream of, but she is more powerless and has less agency than she started with, and all of that happened without her notice.
"There's a kind of a sort of, cost
There's a couple of things get, lost
There are bridges you cross
You didn't know you crossed
Until you've crossed."
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Final Thoughts
Genuinely, my favourite trope in a story is a character undergoing character development and not realising. For example, the "nobody's that heartless" line in The Emperor's New Groove.
But Glinda is my favourite example of this because of the way in which she reaches her conclusions. She is smart, possibly the most intelligent character in the entire musical, but her biases cause her to make some serious leaps of logic and ignore several things that would change her worldview until she runs headfirst into them.
Also, the stagecraft of this song is simple in order to not distract from Glinda's thoughts, but that means a lot of these photos are remarkably similar. I apologise for that.
Next week, I will be looking at Wonderful, and how it forms a neat little mirror of Sentimental Man, so stick around if that interests you.
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fancyhdraws · 29 days
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Inspired by that time singer, dancer, actress and black cultural icon Josephine Baker was sailing across the Atlantic on the SS Normandie to take part in the Ziegfeld Follies Broadway musical revue. She heard her equally famous friend, Billie Burke, was on the ship as well, who was not only Ziegfeld’s widow but also a popular actress - you'd probably know her as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. Josephine invited her to dinner and Billie was said to have agreed.
Josephine entered the first-class dining room in a gown by Erté, causing the room to burst into a standing ovation. Billie arrived shortly after, her entrance gaining an even warmer reception than that of Josephine's. But when she approached Josephine's table, Billie gave her nothing more than a look of distaste and coldly passed her by. But Josephine appeared unbothered and finished her dinner alone. Afterwards, she climbed the grand staircase and caused the audience to once again erupt into another standing ovation as she flashed them a dazzling smile, allegedly saying, “I assume she belongs to the black-hating race.”
| Instagram |
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jryno · 2 months
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WICKED (2024) dir. Jon M. Chu
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dippy-sketch · 8 days
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more gelphie for the soul (real ones know what performance i used as a reference)
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friendofelphie · 1 month
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So, I know that Wicked the Musical is a different beast than Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.
They’re different in tone and theme, and they aren’t trying to be the same thing. I usually don’t even think of them in the same breath; Maguire’s Oz is a different world than the one we see on stage.
However, there is one change made for the stage show that I think is a weakening of the story: the decision to have Elphaba fake her death, and run away with Fiyero. I get it, it’s a musical; Elphie melting at the end of her own story is a bummer. But Wicked is a tragedy, and I always thought it was a little bit of a cop-out to give Elphaba a happy ending.
Then I realized something: The book is Elphaba’s story, but Wicked the musical is very explicitly told from Glinda’s point of view. There’s the whole “I did know her once… at school,” thing that turns into an extended flashback.
Maybe Elphaba didn’t fake her death. Maybe the ending of the stage show is Glinda imagining, and hoping, that’s what happened. Perhaps Elphaba turned Fiyero into a scarecrow, and then they ran away together. Maybe it was all Elphaba’s master plan. Probably not. But for Glinda, it’s helpful to imagine — and always, in the back of her mind, to believe that’s what happened.
No one mourns the Wicked. Glinda doesn’t want to mourn. She wants to believe that somewhere, somehow, her friend is still out there.
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inthedarktrees · 1 year
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Sheryl Lee | Wild at Heart
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songbirdieart · 2 months
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DID— DID I FORSEE ELPHIE FRECKLES BACK IN 2022???
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"Glinda swooned at the same moment. Elphaba thrust out strong arms and scooped Glinda in mid collapse." — Wicked (1995)
I'M THEIR DAUGHTERRRR
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sillentless · 2 months
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Celebrating the first Wicked teaser!1!1!
(sorry for the repost, something was bothering me)
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lalalychee · 5 months
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halo dressed up as glinda the good witch for halloween 🩷
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Imagine Gelphie but in the original Oz books.
Just an elegant benevolent goddess with her little one eyed gremlin wife who hates people, can see everything, and may or may not try to steal your toes. And your little dog too.
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azural83 · 11 months
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Why changing glinda's dress color is not a good idea:
It erases the visual cues of her development. After the first act,both her and elphaba's outfits reflect their impact on each other,with elphaba wearing purplish magneta and glinda wearing blue,just like elphaba's first outfit
Pink and warmer colors in general are meant for first act!glinda,representing her bubbly and energetic personality while the color blue shows her maturity and her inner sadness. The movie dress just looks too cheerful for her current state
Come on now who on their right mind decided that the bubble dress wasn't perfect enough and downgraded it to whatever grande is wearing
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In all seriousness I understand that they're trying to pay homage to the original wizard of oz movie but glinda's dress serves an important part in the narrative,it'd be really disappointing if they just got rid of it
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mamaspark · 2 months
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I finished Glinda the good witch today. She is so pretty! Only a few blocks left.
I discovered the Easy Press products. The pressing solution and the pen. You fill the pen with the solution. The pen has a broad flat tip. You run it along the seam you have sewn and then press. This gives the flattest seam I’ve ever seen! I did use my clapper after I pressed but I do that normally to flatten my seams. This stuff works like a dream and doesn’t gunk up my iron. I love it! A total game changer for precision piecing.
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tododeku-or-bust · 3 months
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The Good Witch
To my friend @toiletpotato: I'm gonna be real. I don't know a thing about Wicked, but after many attempts at drawing Glinda's actual blue dress... I recognized I am not at the skill level required yet to do so. My bad 😅. So I drew you a Glinda inspired by it! Thank you for being so supportive of me; as soon as I see you in my notifs, I know whatever I did was a hit. (I be like "Well Potato saw it! 😤")
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luckwearerbilbo · 23 days
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https://x.com/Gingerhazing/status/1302464666887581696?s=20
God I wish this happened in the musical
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onefootin1941 · 8 months
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Billie Burke as
Glinda the Good Witch in
The Wizard of Oz, 1939
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