Do we love the 'Wicked' movies because we hate innocence?



As I watched Jon M. Chu's "Wicked: For Good" last week, I kept thinking about another, very different filmmaker: David Lynch.

Specifically, the Lynch that emerges from Alexandre Philippe's excellent 2022 documentary "Lynch/Oz," wherein we discover just how deeply the infamously surreal filmmaker was influenced by one of cinema's sweetest fantasy films: the original "Wizard of Oz."

In the era of #WitchTok ... a story like 'Wicked' has built-in appeal.

Philippe's film includes footage from a 2001 Q and A in which Lynch confirms the extent of his devotion: "There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about 'The Wizard of Oz.'"

The logic of fairyland

And that shouldn't be surprising given how much it shows up in his work. From Glinda the Good Witch making an appearance in "Wild at Heart," to the hazy, dreamlike depiction of suburbia in "Blue Velvet," his films exist in a dual state between the realm of fairyland and the underworld.

Indeed, Lynch doesn't reject either. In proper Buddhist fashion, these two forces exist in balance, equally potent and true. There is both good and evil in his world. Neither negates the other's existence. And when darkness spills over into the light, it may be tragic, but it is also just another part of the world. Like Dorothy, his protagonists find themselves walking deeper into unknown territory. The protagonists of his films truly "aren't in Kansas anymore."

"The Wizard of Oz" is potent because it captures the logic of fairyland better than almost any film ever made. Channeling the fairy stories of J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, and George MacDonald, it transports the mind to a realm that is more real than real, where even the most dire intrusion of evil can be set right according to simple moral rules.

As G.K. Chesterton famously puts it:

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

Wicked good

"Wicked" and its new sequel reject this comforting clarity for something altogether more "adult" and ambiguous. Instead of presenting good and evil as objective realities that can be discerned and defeated, the films show how political authorities manipulate those labels to scapegoat some and exalt others.

They do so by swapping the original's heroes and villains. The Wonderful Wizard is a cruel tyrant. Glinda is foppish and self-obsessed. Dorothy is the unwitting tool of a corrupt regime. And Elphaba — the so-called Wicked Witch — is reimagined as a sympathetic underdog with a tragic backstory, a manufactured villain invented to keep Oz unified in ire and hatred.

Elphaba exudes a whiff of Milton's Lucifer — an eternal rebel in a tragic quest to upend the moral order. But unlike "Paradise Lost," "Wicked" presents rebellion against its all-powerful father figure not as a tragic self-deception, but as a justified response to systemic cruelty.

Witch way?

"Wicked: For Good" takes the ideas of its predecessor even further than mere rebellion. If "Wicked: Part One" is about awakening to the world's realities and becoming radicalized by them, "Wicked: For Good" is about the cost of selling out — the temptation to compromise with a corrupt system and the soul-crushing despair that follows.

This is where the irony of the film's title, "Wicked: For Good" comes in. Once a person sees the world for what it truly is, they can't go back without compromising themselves. They've "changed for good." They've awakened and can't return to sleep.

It's worth considering why the "Wicked" franchise is so wildly popular. Gregory Maguire's original 1995 novel has sold 5 million copies. The 2003 stage show it inspired won three Tony Awards and recently became the fourth longest-running Broadway musical ever. And the first film grossed $759 million last winter, with the sequel poised to make even more money.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that this outsize success comes at a time when Wicca and paganism have grown into mainstream cultural forces. In the era of #WitchTok, in which self-proclaimed witches hex politicians and garner billions of views on social media, a story like "Wicked" has built-in appeal. It offers glamorous spell-casting and a romantic tale of resistance to authority.

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Photo by The Salt Lake Tribune / Contributor via Getty Images

A bittersweet moral

The temptation of witchcraft is one that always hovers over our enlightened and rationalistic society. Particularly for young women, witchcraft offers a specific form of autonomy and power — over body, spirit, and fate — that patriarchal societies often deny. Many view witchcraft as progressive and empowering; "witchy vibes" have become a badge of identity.

Thus the unsettling imagery of Robert Eggers' 2015 film "The Witch" comes into focus: A satanic coven kidnaps and kills a Puritan baby, seduces a teenage girl, and gains the power to unsubtly "defy gravity" through a deal with the devil.

"Wicked" is all about this power to transcend. Even as its protagonist grows despairing in the second film and abandons her political quest for the freedom of the wastelands, the film presupposes that it is better to resist or escape a corrupt system than submit to it.

Ultimately, the two films leave their audience with a bittersweet moral: Society is dependent on scapegoats. The Platonic noble lie upon which all societies rest cannot be escaped — but it can be redirected. A new civic myth can be founded that avoids sacrificing the vulnerable and overthrows the demagogues atop Mount Olympus. And the witches play the central role in overturning the world of Oz. Their rebellion sets it free.

But because the films blur the clear, objective distinction between good and evil — even while acknowledging that real evil exists — the characters in "Wicked" often drift in moral grayness, defining themselves mainly in relation to power. The world becomes overbearing, radicalizing, and morally unstable.

Sad truth

This is far afield from the vision of Oz presented in the 1939 film, the one David Lynch venerated as vital to his understanding of the world. But it reflects how modern storytellers often grapple with Oz. Almost every sequel or spin-off struggles to recapture the sincerity of the original. The 1985 sequel "Return to Oz" reimagined the land with a dark-fantasy twist. 2013's "Oz the Great and Powerful" comes closest to the original tone but centers on fraudulence and trickery.

"Wicked," too, falls in line with the modern tendency to subvert and complicate traditional stories of good versus evil. "Frozen," "The Shape of Water," "Game of Thrones," and "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" all explore morally conflicted worlds where bravery is futile or where Miltonian rebellion is celebrated.

Of course, seeing the stories of our childhood with a jaundiced adult eye can be quite entertaining; it's perfectly understandable why even those not in covens love these films. They are well-made, well-performed, and especially irresistible to former theater kids (I am one).

Their popularity isn't inherently bad either. They are perfectly fine in isolation. It is only when we contrast them with the clarity and beauty of the original — and place them within the context of our society — that a sad truth emerges: Finding fairyland is hard. Most of us prefer to live in the Lynchian underworld.

Alex Jones’ daring infiltration of Bohemian Grove unmasks elitist pagan rituals and occult secrets



Every summer, the shadowy Bohemian Club — a private gentlemen’s society based in San Francisco — hosts a clandestine retreat called “Bohemian Grove” in Monte Rio, California, where highly influential men in politics, business, media, culture, and entertainment gather for two weeks on a secluded 2,700-acre private property deep in the redwood forests.

The event is shrouded in mystery — no paparazzi, no women, no entry without an invitation, and lots of whispers of strange rituals and elite networking.

Twenty-five years ago, Infowars founder Alex Jones snuck in and secretly recorded one of Bohemian Grove’s most cherished rituals: the "Cremation of Care.”

On a podcast with Glenn Beck, Jones shared the wild tale of his Bohemian Grove infiltration.

The Cremation of Care is a theatrical ceremony, where attendees burn an effigy before a large owl statue to symbolically banish worldly concerns for the duration of the retreat. It’s similar to how Burning Man attendees set fire to the “Temple” on the final day of the festival to represent letting go of personal burdens.

“It’s occultic, and there’s vibes of that everywhere,” says Jones of the event. He explains that Mark Twain founded Bohemian Grove in the late 1800s, but it was later taken over by the Republican establishment and Skull and Bones (a secret society at Yale University), which is what gives the gathering its secretive, Germanic, druidic, and Masonic character.

After sneaking in with Jon Ronson, a British journalist and documentary filmmaker, who gained access via an insider, Jones, having narrowly escaped inquisitive Secretive Service guards, hid under the deck of one of the cabins.

“I got into the woods, got to the first camp and nobody was there, and I climbed up underneath the log cabin deck, and there were like literally centipedes and spiders. It was like 'Indiana Jones Temple of Doom,'” he laughs.

At nightfall, he emerged from his hiding place and stealthily joined a large crowd walking toward the lake.

And then he beheld it: the infamous stone owl.

Jones paints a chilling scene straight from a thriller’s darkest frame — “big crowds of men coming in hundreds and hundreds,” descending a shadowy hill, dwarfed by towering redwoods so colossal their trunks could swallow cars whole. “Bats and frogs” stir the murky air with restless flutters and croaks, their eerie chorus blending with a live symphony’s foreboding rendition of “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”

Jones, trying to fly under the radar, then climbed into a redwood tree and recorded the “dramatic footage” of the burning ritual.

“They mixed in Babylonian, druidic, Canaanite, faustian stuff in the hour. They bring out a hearse that's horse drawn with the effigy of a child. They then call on the goddess to come and they call these other gods to come,” Jones recounts. “So it's kind of an amalgamation like the Bible says of all these religions.”

In retrospect, especially after receiving Bohemian Grove annals years later, Jones says he realized that famous people, including American broadcaster Walter Cronkite, played the voice of the owl. These voice actors were stationed inside the statue where they controlled sounds, such as amplified voices or eerie effects, to enhance the theatrical atmosphere.

“I'm not saying they're all devil worshipers ... it's more of a crazy art festival, but there is an occultic thing to it,” he tells Glenn.

The duo speculate that the majority of attendees are there just to have a good time, but the inner ring of people who control the event are indeed hosting legitimate pagan rituals, even if their guests aren’t aware.

Jones says the masterminds orchestrating the retreat use these two weeks to assess who among their guests might be of use to them. Jones recalls how most of the Bohemian Grove crowd was just having fun, but there were some, especially the official Bohemian Club members, who clearly took the ritual seriously. One man — “some billionaire,” he says — practically growled “this is a very important ritual” when Jones suggested it was a “neat” spectacle.

The members “were trying to transmute their problems onto this ritual” in hopes that “Karma” or some other vengeful deity would “pass over them,” he explains, calling the burning “very hardcore.”

“It was very sophisticated, very dark, [and] beyond black magic,” he says, explaining that the burning, like many ancient pagan rituals, aimed at casting one’s sins into an “interdimensional cauldron” before “[sending] it to another plane.” In other words, it’s the satanic version of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice that atoned for the sins of man.

To hear Jones’ full recount, watch the interview above.

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This year’s ‘Burning Man’ was full-on pagan worship



Burning Man is a week-long event that describes itself as being focused on “community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance” that’s held annually out West in the desert.

The event centers around the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy that is referred to as the “Man," and Allie Beth Stuckey is calling it what it is: pagan worship.

“It’s about self-expression, self-reliance, self-discovery, self-fulfillment, self-liberation, and even self-worship,” Stuckey says. “Ultimately, that’s what all paganism is.”

“It’s no surprise that this event has grown in popularity over the years. It really is just a celebration of the carnal celebration of sex, drugs, perversion,” she continues, noting that attendees adopt “new names,” lay their burdens on the wooden effigy, and eliminate monetary transactions on the philosophy of shared resources when they enter the event.

“This is like an upside-down world of Christianity, that when we come into Christianity, we also become new creations, and we take on an easy yoke and a light burden when we follow the way of Christ, and we cast all of our cares upon the Lord because he cares for us,” Stuckey explains.

“This is a cheap and pagan imitation of that because it is pretending to offer its attendees freedom, while really attaching them and bounding them to the heavy burden and slavery of sin,” she adds.

Burning Man holds sessions that you can participate in like a rope-bondage suspension, orgies, marriages, crafting, and getting branded.

“You can get branded, you know, like a cow,” Stuckey says, shocked. “These people so badly want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, they want to be marked for something more, they want something indelible on them and even in their hearts and souls.”

“And they are looking for all of that in the wrong place, of course, which is exactly what Satan does,” she adds.


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Kat Von D on her renunciation of paganism: 'I just want Jesus'



In case you weren’t aware, tattoo artist and TV personality from "LA Ink" Kat Von D has had a spiritual awakening — one that has resulted in her renouncing all paganism and embracing evangelical Christianity.

Recently, she joined Allie Beth Stuckey on "Relatable" to tell the story behind her radical transformation.

While this may surprise many, Von D was “born in a literal third world country” to “missionary Christians,” and yet that time “was one of the most abundant times” in her life, she says.

However, despite being raised “with God in [her] household” and reading "the Bible twice” in her early teens, Von D “ended up straying.”

“I ended up being a pretty wild teenager and leaving home at the age of 14 ... and putting my parents through a literal hell,” she told Allie.

After being sent to what she calls “a lockdown facility” and “boarding school” around age 16, Von D started drinking to cope with the trauma, which she says was “the beginning of [her] addiction.”

By age 21, Von D, who was already starring in "Miami Ink," had become “a full-blown alcoholic” and was “introduced to drugs.”

After years of struggling with addiction, she eventually got clean and started “wanting to fix" herself, which led to the discovery of “New Age stuff.” However, she was “never in a cult,” “never a witch,” and “definitely not a satanist,” despite what the rumors say.

“I was trying to find answers in the wrong places,” she said, and while “transcendental meditation,” seeking an obscure “higher power,” and reciting a “mantra” helped for a while, these practices were “short-lived Band-Aids on a sinking ship.”

Eventually, she threw away all her “self-help” books — everything from witchcraft books to texts on meditation and yoga.

“Breathing techniques,” “spell work,” and “nature worship ... they're just crutches; they're not really my answer,” Von D said. “I just want Jesus.”

To hear how Kat Von D came to renounce paganism in exchange for Jesus, watch the video below.


Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.