C.S. Lewis Gave The Perfect Explanation As To Why Wicked Doesn't Work As A Film

What has been will be again,

what has been done will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun.

―Ecclesiastes 1:9

The words of King Solomon remain just as true today as they have even been. One of the strange outcomes of this universal principle is that you can sometimes find a review for some recent work of literature written long before the work being reviewed was actually published. C.S. Lewis provides us with just such a review of Wicked. The popular musical first appeared on Broadway in 2003, but C. S. Lewis had effectively told us what to think about it all the way back in 1943, with the publication of Perelandra, the second installment of his ‘Space Trilogy’.

In Perelandra, a man named Ransom travels to the paradise planet of Perelandra in order to prevent its version of Adam and Eve from falling into sin. Shortly after his arrival, a demon-possessed man―called ‘the Un-Man'― also arrives and starts trying to tempt the Eve of Perelandra. As part of his temptation strategy, the Un-Man tells twisted stories in which good guys are portrayed as villains, bad guys are portrayed as heroes, and men are only stirred into action by rebellious women.

The heroines of the stories seemed all to have suffered a great deal--they had been oppressed by fathers, cast off by husbands, deserted by lovers. Their children had risen up against them and society had driven them out. But the stories all ended, in a sense, happily: sometimes with honours and praises to a heroine still living, more often with tardy acknowledgment and unavailing tears after her death. [...] At last it dawned upon him what all these stories were about. Each one of these women had stood forth alone and braved a terrible risk for her child, her lover, or her people. Each had been misunderstood, reviled, and persecuted: but each also magnificently vindicated by the event.

The precise details were often not very easy to follow. Ransom had more than a suspicion that many of these noble pioneers had been what in ordinary terrestrial speech we call witches or perverts. But that was all in the background. What emerged from the stories was rather an image than an idea--the picture of the tall, slender form, unbowed though the world's weight rested upon its shoulders, stepping forth fearless and friendless into the dark to do for others what those others forbade it to do yet needed to have done. And all the time, as a sort of background to these goddess shapes, the speaker was building up a picture of the other sex.

No word was directly spoken on the subject: but one felt them there as a huge, dim multitude of creatures pitifully childish and complacently arrogant; timid, meticulous, unoriginating; sluggish and ox-like, rooted to the earth almost in their indolence, prepared to try nothing, to risk nothing, to make no exertion, and capable of being raised into full life only by the unthanked and rebellious virtue of their females. It was very well done. Ransom, who had little of the pride of sex, found himself for a few moments all but believing it.

The point-by-point parallels between the Un-Man’s stories and Wicked are unmistakable. One might almost think lyricist Stephen Schwartz and author Winnie Holzman used the text from C.S. Lewis’s novel as a guide for Wicked. There is the unkind father, social ostracization, the friendless heroine who stands up for a just cause, the male hero who is only stirred into action by the heroine, etc.

Wicked presents an image (rather than a realistic concept) of a powerful, beautiful woman soaring majestically through the sky, triumphantly singing about how nothing is going to hold her down:

Too late for second-guessing!

Too late to go back to sleep!

It's time to trust my instincts,

Close my eyes and leap!

[...]

And if I'm flying solo,

At least I'm flying free!

To those who ground me,

Take a message back from me:

Tell them how I am defying gravity!

I'm flying high, defying gravity!

And soon, I'll match them in renown,

And nobody in all of Oz,

No wizard that there is or was,

Is ever gonna bring me down!

These are lyrics which could have been penned by a literal demon, a modern Mephistopheles, trying to tempt women into lives of selfishness, debauchery, and bitter loneliness, viciously resistant to the idea of ‘guidance’ or the thought of showing humility toward anyone.

Here is the truth: On their own, women generally have childlike, terrible judgment―even going so far as to venerate witches, if you can believe it! In general, women need a man's patriarchal guidance in order to behave in a virtuous manner. This is because the reality a woman believes herself to inhabit is defined by her emotions―which are erratic and destructive when acted upon without reflection. When women don’t have a man (a husband or father) to guide them, they will generally end up behaving in a sociopathic and monstrous manner.

Here is what the Scriptures have to say:

Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

―Ephesians 5:24

Wicked portrays a woman discovering her own exceptional power and reveling in it. This is a terrible example to present to young women―not just because women have terrible judgment as mentioned above, but because power itself does not actually satisfy women. It will not make them happy. Any joy it brings is fleeting and empty. For women, when the power they acquire does not come bundled with a man, it leaves them horrendously bitter and angry. They were not designed to be able to handle it on their own. They are the “weaker vessel” after all, according to Scripture.

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