The musical-turned-movie “Wicked” was incredibly popular — so, of course, the Media Research Center had to spew hate at it. Chief hater Justine Brooke Murray led the hate parade in her Nov. 28 podcast:
The overrated musical Wicked has been propped up by Broadway for years as the greatest work of art ever to exist. If you’re a theatre kid like me, the number of screeching renditions you’ve heard of “Defying Gravity” at every audition is enough to make you want to bang your head against a wall.
At its core Wicked is nothing more than a woke cliche that spins off the classic Wizard of Oz: The Bad Witch is actually good, and merely a victim of the fascist fairyland she terrorizes.
With a new movie remake we didn’t need, Hollywood diddy types have now found a way to make the land over the rainbow even gayer. But this time, it kind of makes sense.
For a while, we’ve allowed circus freaks guilt trip us down the goose poop covered brick road to an Oz-like dystopia. An upside down that rejects reality to cater to society’s most deranged.
But if our 2024 Presidential Election results revealed anything, it’s that the Wicked Woke of the West is finally melting. Just not soon enough to quit calling them out every Tuesday on “Woke of the Weak!”
Murray can’t be much of a “theatre kid” if she’s dissing a powerfully written showstopper like “Defying Gravity.” Sounds like she may be a little bitter that she’s unable to pull off the vocal performance to do the song justice — and a little jealous that others can.
Christian Toto used a Dec. 7 post to complain that the British Board of Film Classification wants to put a trigger warning on “Wicked” over the discrimination shown against the green-hued witch character played by Cynthia Erivo, whining that “there are countless examples of films and TV shows where similar themes exist. Should they have trigger warnings, too?”
Even though Murray is clearly rooting for censorship of “Wicked,” her boss, Tim Graham, spent his Dec. 30 podcast pretending that nobody wants to ban it:
Filmmaker Adam McKay — best known for making films like Anchorman with Will Ferrell — came unglued on Twitter, suggesting the movie musical Wicked is all about radicalization and fascism, so “If America keeps going on the track it is I wouldn’t be surprised to see the movie banned in 3-5 years.”
At #3 on the list of top-grossing 2024 movies — after Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine — Wicked hit theaters in November and grossed over a half-billion dollars, easily surpassing its $145 million budget. It’s the first installment of a two-parter.
“On a pure storytelling level Wicked Part 1 is right up there as one of the most radical big studio Hollywood movies ever made,” McKay posted on X. He added, “I know Part 2 swings back to the center a bit but Part 1 is nakedly about radicalization in the face of careerism, fascism, propaganda.”
[…]Why do people in Hollywood make such silly predictions? What movies have been banned in America under Trump?
Given that the Trump White House has petulantly banned the Associated Press for the crime of wrongspeak by using the centuries-old name for the Gulf of Mexico instead of the one Trump simply made up, there’s no reason why Trump wouldn’t ban movies as well. Graham then lashed out at a movie critic for liking the film:
Kyle Smith at The Wall Street Journal loved it: The lavish fantasy style of The Wizard of Oz accompanies a concern for the mistreatment of minorities and a suspicion of official narratives that are in perfect sync with our cultural moment. What if one of the most hated villains of all time were actually a misunderstood hero who was unfairly smeared by propagandists with ulterior motives?”
Smith explained how the Fascism spin could come in, with the Hogwarts-style instruction for witches at Shiz University: “Talking animals such as a sagacious goat (voiced by Peter Dinklage) are instructors, but they seem to be losing the power of speech and a change in the political atmosphere takes away their right to teach, in scenes that carry metaphorical weight. (The animals have something like the status of Jews in 1930s Germany.)”
But if Trump was really going to try and ban a movie as a personal affront, wouldn’t he start with The Apprentice movie from this year? Critics did NOT like it – because it wasn’t harsh enough on Trump!
It can be argued that “Wicked” arguably does a better job of previewing the fascist future Trump has for us — which Graham, as a loyal member of the Trump Regime Media, will never speak out about. He’s perfectly fine with censoring “The Apprentice” since it exposes how the emperor has no clothes.
Murray returned for a Jan. 6 post to weirdly mock “Wicked” for not winning a Golden Globe award:
It turns out, all that effort to make the Land of Oz “very queer” throughout Wicked’s press tour was for nothing.
[…]Despite being propped up by its A-list cast as gay movie adaption, Wicked still didn’t meet the DEI standards apparently required to win the award for “Best Picture– Musical or Comedy at last night’s annual Golden Globes ceremony.
The Hollywood Diddy types snubbed the cast of Oz for the movie-musical, Emilia Perez, a story about a Mexican cartel leader who wants to “transition” into a woman.
Murray then transitioned into spewing hate at “Emelia Perez” despite offering no evidence she has ever seen it. And her hate-fest came a couple of weeks before “Wicked” was nominated for 10 Academy Awards.