Thank you for this, Marcelle!! I am all on team Elphie-Galinda, but I kept getting hung up on the third verse of this song. I love your analysis. I am so grateful for all y’all do. You continue to help me untangle the compulsive heterosexuality in the world around me and dare to imagine differently :-)
Love this analysis and it's so good to remember the ways compulsory heterosexuality limits our critical abilities. I have a funny relationship to this song, which I remember first singing in its compulsory cishet sense when I first met my not-yet-out trans wife and thought she was in love with someone else. Joke's on you, gender binary!
Having read the book long before the musical was created, I feel tied to the love between Fiyero and Elphaba because it was so compelling and tragic.
And yet, the musical and movie have discarded so much of the book's plot, changed characters, drastically, and thrown in more ties back to the Wizard of Oz. So I'm willing to let go of the book. But, especially as played by Jonathan Bailey, I want Elphaba to win him because that would be satisfying to me as a cishet woman, I can easily relate and that would be a very satisfying plot point personally.
And yet.... While you went way deeper than I did, I definitely saw queer coding everywhere, more with every rewatch (7 views so far). Maybe a thruple is where they'll land? I would love that on so many levels. It would satisfy my need to identify with a relationship with Jon... I mean Fiyero. It would fit the feel of the movie, the queer coding would be satisfied. It would fit my current need to fight facism in the American polical climate.
I will have to read your analysis again next time I listen to the soundtrack and again while watching that scene in the movie, along with watching the deleted forest scene which really highlights the romantic interest between Elphaba and Jon... Fiyero. Huh, maybe that's why they deleted it....
Thank you for this delightful analysis! I also love that you wore a mask to the movies - self-care and community care FTW! The surgical ones can be a bit leaky around the edges, though :( If you're open to trying KN95s, I'd happily send you some!
Thank you for this, Marcelle!! I am all on team Elphie-Galinda, but I kept getting hung up on the third verse of this song. I love your analysis. I am so grateful for all y’all do. You continue to help me untangle the compulsive heterosexuality in the world around me and dare to imagine differently :-)
Love this analysis and it's so good to remember the ways compulsory heterosexuality limits our critical abilities. I have a funny relationship to this song, which I remember first singing in its compulsory cishet sense when I first met my not-yet-out trans wife and thought she was in love with someone else. Joke's on you, gender binary!
Having read the book long before the musical was created, I feel tied to the love between Fiyero and Elphaba because it was so compelling and tragic.
And yet, the musical and movie have discarded so much of the book's plot, changed characters, drastically, and thrown in more ties back to the Wizard of Oz. So I'm willing to let go of the book. But, especially as played by Jonathan Bailey, I want Elphaba to win him because that would be satisfying to me as a cishet woman, I can easily relate and that would be a very satisfying plot point personally.
And yet.... While you went way deeper than I did, I definitely saw queer coding everywhere, more with every rewatch (7 views so far). Maybe a thruple is where they'll land? I would love that on so many levels. It would satisfy my need to identify with a relationship with Jon... I mean Fiyero. It would fit the feel of the movie, the queer coding would be satisfied. It would fit my current need to fight facism in the American polical climate.
I will have to read your analysis again next time I listen to the soundtrack and again while watching that scene in the movie, along with watching the deleted forest scene which really highlights the romantic interest between Elphaba and Jon... Fiyero. Huh, maybe that's why they deleted it....
Thank you for this delightful analysis! I also love that you wore a mask to the movies - self-care and community care FTW! The surgical ones can be a bit leaky around the edges, though :( If you're open to trying KN95s, I'd happily send you some!