Fr. Mike Schmitz Explains Why He Believes The Erasure Of Good And Evil In 'Wicked' Is "Wrong"
Father Mike Schmitz, known for his Bible in a Year and Catechism in a Year podcasts, recently shared his thoughts on Director Jon M. Chu’s Wicked film.
In a recent video upload, Fr. Schmitz starts off by praising the songs, the lyrics, the music, and the singing. He would also praise the film for recognizing that everyone has their own story and their on their own journey.
However, he then criticizes the film’s erasure of good and evil. First, he says, “I think there's a difference between explaining and explaining away. Like it makes sense. We all have a story, right. We all have our journey. And there's reasons why we do what we do. There's something powerful and wise about trying to understand our story. These are the reasons. But there's also things that are like, ‘Oh these are my excuses.’”
He explained, “There's such a thing as, ‘Wow, I really have a short temper and I have it for these reasons. I just you know sometimes X Y and Z. Versus ‘I have a short temper. You know why? Because people picked on me when I was younger or because I'm Irish or because whatever the thing is, that's how I'm built.’ One is a reason and I understand that I can maybe actually get better. The other is an excuse that means I don't have to get better. There's a difference between explaining and explaining away.”
Father Schmitz then notes that this is not exclusive to Wicked, but many post-modern stories, “Ultimately, in this story and many stories like it — because it's not just this one right — many stories like it, a lot of postmodern stories, it's not like, ‘Let me understand what's going on here.’ It's, ‘Oh if you only understood you realize that it's not so bad.’”
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Next, he takes issue with the fact that the film removes the fact that there is good and evil.
He says, “Ultimately, in the story Elphaba, The Wicked Witch of the West, isn't actually wicked. She's just misunderstood. It's her only perspective. And actually the Good Witch Glenda isn't actually good, she's just popular.”
“And again I would say that there's a degree to which we need to be aware of that,” he continued. “The more mature we are the more we realize that just because someone's misunderstood doesn't mean they're wrong or bad. Just because someone is popular and people like them or famous doesn't mean that they're good. That totally makes sense.”
Returning to the film, he said, “But in this they're telling a story where we're erasing the difference between good and evil and saying it's all a matter of perspective .Bad is just actually misunderstood and good is just popular. Then you realize that there's no good and no evil. And yet L. Frank Baum’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a story of people, good and evil, of vice and virtue, of like there's a real right and there's a real wrong.”
“To rewrite a story where that's not the case I think is-. I think it's wrong,” he declared. “But maybe one of the things that just bothers me the most about the whole thing and the reason that I had avoided this for so long … it's because of a thing called retconning. Take someone's character, take someone's story, and you rewrite it either to fill a plot hole or because like you're saying, ‘But what if it's actually this.’ And that's what the author of Wicked did with the Wizard of Oz. You take these characters where the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the wizard himself, isn't a tyrant, he's not a wizard, he's not evil he's just kind of foolish in some ways. He's deceptive, yes, but that deception gets called out, but he's not he's not a dictator. Wicked is, ‘But what if he is?’ And same kind of thing is here's the Wicked Witch of the West, ‘Well, what if they're all cheering that she's dead for the wrong reasons? Here's Glenda the Good Witch. What if she's actually not good?’”
“My problem with this is you can do that if you invented the characters. You can do that if it's your story. But to take someone else's characters to take someone else's story and say, ‘What if I think it's unjust.’ Because now people say, ‘No, no, this is actually Elphaba’s back story.’ No, no, it's not Elphaba’s backstory. Some other person stole someone else's idea and put their own twist on it. That's wrong. That's really annoying.”
He later reiterated, “I don't like erasing good and evil for just misunderstood or popular. I think there's something we lose when we do that.”
What do you make of Father Mike Schmitz’s criticism of the film?
I've never seen the either the musicals or the movie, because I'm attracted to women, but I did read the book when it was a much-hyped "Great American Novel" and found it to be derivative trash overflowing with lame and tendentious political allegories for The Current Year political wibbling.
I agree with everything in principle and absolutely agree with the fact that we should never elevate fanfiction to the level of the original work. Wicked isn't even the worst offender here, I'd give that to Rings of Power. If you have a story with a point to get across, you'll always make that point hit harder with your own originality and creativity to back it up. Robert Jordan wrote the best Conan novels that weren't written by REH, but it was Wheel of Time that made him famous.
On the other hand, I can't help but point out that leftist politicians have spent the last four years literally gaslighting Americans into believing that they were in the breathlessly epic tale of a life or death struggle against a diabolical supervillain whose election would herald the end of civilization. Few of these people ever questioned whether or not it was even remotely true, because they were in the grip of their own Campbellian epic journey courtesy of mass media's lies, manufactured half-truths and slick sound bites. Very few of them asked, what if the story I'm hearing isn't really what happened?
The idea that you should always question the established narrative is still a valuable lesson to learn, especially for our nation's young people.