Thursday evening, I had the absolutely wonderful opportunity to see Wicked at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis. The musical takes place in the mythic land of Oz, where Dorothy finds herself in the popular book "The Wizard of Oz", by L. Frank Baum. The story is about the life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West, and how she came to be so "Wicked".
A few of the lyrics to one song in the second act, "Wonderful", stood out to me, and I thought they related quite a bit to the reading "The Great Textbook Wars."
"A man's called a traitor - or liberator
A rich man's a thief - or philanthropist
Is one a crusader - or ruthless invader?
It's all in which label is able to persist.
There are precious few at ease
With moral ambiguities
So we act as though they don't exist!"
In this song, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz is explaining to Elphaba how history is greatly influenced by those who write it. The Wizard is trying to silence the Animals, animals that can speak and function in society. He tries to make them out as evil and the one enemy the public needs to fear.
If the textbooks had indeed been rewritten by one party to show a much less diverse view of the American culture, many ideas and facts could be skewed just like this.
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