fanmix: “the charmed circle” (Wicked, Act 1/’Gillikin’)

1. pretty down to your bones - the hush sound | 2. orbital - josh ritter | 3. uptown girl - billy joel | 4. so she dances - josh groban | 5. the dress looks nice on you - sufjan stevens | 6. they’re in love, where am I? - the weepies | 7. after all - sondre lerche | 8. of longing and otherness - hannah fury | 9. the bomb - bitter:sweet | 10. helplessness blues - fleet foxes

details + download at my livejournal

(listen here at 8tracks)

So I finished “The Wicked Truth”

It was good! It got a little bit wordy in parts (not like it was complicated, like the author was saying the same thing over and over) but the content was interesting. It was kind of a better-expressed way of things from the show that I understood already, but wouldn’t have thought to think of it like that.

Basically, it says that most people are wrapped up in a mindset of distinct, black-and-white Good and Evil- so Evil can be pinpointed outside of oneself, and using violence to push it out or get rid of it is justified. Also, the same people believe that the ultimate goal of life is to achieve your own desires, and it’s not wrong to use people to get there. (‘The end justifies the means’.) Both of these things cause scapegoating- pinning the bad and the undesirable on one person or group and shunning or even destroying them, ‘for the good of the community’.

(This all originally came from the social scientist Rene Girard. I’m going to be getting some of his work now)

So, Ross posits that Wicked is a story about this cultural myth and how to break out of it/what happens when someone tries, and also how to live in a way that isn’t reliant on hurting others. 

It’s also a good character study- I’m not sure I agree with everything she said about certain points of character development and what they meant, but as it connected to the philosophical points she was making, it worked and gave me something to think about on that front.

All in all, I’d recommend it to Wicked fans who would like a different perspective on the show and are interested enough in the philosophy of the show to read an academic analysis on it.