[no one mourns the wicked]

[tellitslant]

Oh, what a week. Although there were certainly some very nice things that happened, it was also a week in which everyplace I needed to go was closed when I got there, my course convenor not only didn't know that I was teaching on his course but insisted that I was in the wrong and wouldn't believe me without checking with the office that I knew my own teaching schedule, and where a group of us got trapped by a broken lock in the tutors' office and had to have a maintenance man climb in through the window to let us out.

Yeah. It was a week.

Saturday I went up to London (see also: rail improvements meaning that the 50-minute journey took two hours. Each way.) and saw Wicked with some friends. I was already kind of vaguely annoyed about the fact that we're getting an Oz the Great and Powerful movie this year, but now I'm even more annoyed.

The Wizard of Oz - book and movie, and the other books and movies too, really - is really a female-centred universe. Wizard is all about pitting different kinds of female strength against each other, and the unmasking of male posturing, and the innate power of the girl, and even the surprising importance of pink. :P And Wicked is again about female relationships - Elphaba and Glinda are the love story of the show, and whether it's read as a romantic relationship or an erotic friendship or whatever, their partnership is still the core of the story. And yet despite the success of the musical and the relative success of the books, we're getting Oz the Great and Powerful, which I suspect will be all about how he actually isn't all that bad really.

Bah.

The more I watch/think about the musical (which is not all that often - I hadn't seen it for four years), the more invested I get in the tragedy of Glinda. The current London Glinda (Gina Beck) really sells just how much Glinda is affected at the beginning/end of the show. Don't get me wrong, I looooove Elphie, but... Glinda. <3

So now I'm off to re-find all the fabulous fic that hasn't disappeared from the interwebs. :P

Comments

[soupytwist]

The Oz movie is ABSOLUTELY going to be about how he's a poor misunderstood guy who isn't really so bad (or who we're at least meant to identify with as having understandable reasons for his badness). Which in almost any other universe wouldn't be nearly as obnoxious, but to have that be the first big movie in the universe since the original is absolutely goddamn annoying.

*headdesk*

[jae]

What is a 'course convenor'? Is that like what we'd call a 'TA programme coordinator'? If it is, then HOLY SHIT.

-J

[tellitslant]

I don't know, because I don't know what a TA programme coordinator is. :P I think not, tough - that sounds like someone who has responsibility for al lot of TAs? The course coordinator is the faculty member whose course it is - s/he does the syllabus and generally te lectures, and we do the actual teaching. So what happened is that the person who assigned the teaching didn't tell the convenor anything, the convenor didn't bother checking, and THEN he didn't believe me when I told him (and I ended up missing the first lecture). The incompetence frankly doesn't surprise me given some of the other stuff that's happened this term, but the insistence that I had to be wrong REALLY ticks me off.

[jae]

Oh, okay. That's not quite as bad, but still pretty bad!

-J

[tellitslant]

It's just - argh. And not only is it in itself a crappy idea for a film, but give that there's a relatively popular media property already existent? AND the trailer is just so DUDELY and all the marketing is about the witches being interchangeable and ugh.

[ariestess]

I'm looking forward to the pretty of the new Oz movie, but that's about it. I'm not thrilled about it being all about him and pretty much negating the agency of the female characters, given the history of the whole universe of Oz.

And now I'm itching to listen to Wicked again...

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way! A lot of people are assuming this movie is based on one of the other books in the series, but it's not -- and all the Oz books dealt with children, mostly girls, who were somehow disenfranchised in some way. This movie just seems like someone said, "Hey, we need to make a proper grown-up version of Oz. WITH A PROPER DUDE THIS TIME."

[kkglinka.livejournal.com]

The trailer for Oz gives me man-cootie hives every time I see it. Oh, I'm sorry. Did the female narrative offend your sensibilities? So precious of you to fix that.