Out of all of the retellings of The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz is the best one to me. And yes — while the 1939 movie is a cinematic marvel, I’ll always reach for the 1978 movie starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson first.
That “super soulful” take on the classic story incorporates Black culture into the tale, transforming Dorothy into a timid kindergarten teacher from New York who gets caught in a snowstorm and is transported into a vibrant, genuinely terrifying new world. I watched that movie on repeat as a kid, even though the puppet master (a minion of Evilene, the Wicked Witch of the West) terrified me.
My love for the way The Wiz transforms a story we all know into something new — and equally brilliant — turned me into the kind of person who tries to read or watch every Oz adaptation I can get my hands on. The original book, Wicked (book, movie, play), you name it. A few years ago, I even saw an original production from FAU’s Black Undergraduate Theater Collection that seamlessly intertwined elements from both the 1939 film and The Wiz into something so beautiful that it brought me to tears. And somehow, with all of the Oz I’ve seen, I was never lucky enough to see the stage show that the 1978 movie was based on, so when I heard about the revival last year, I was delighted.
The stage play diverges from the movie in many ways (no puppet master—yay!), but it still had the infectiously joyful soul that made me fall in love with it all those years ago. Being in the audience full of people feeling the same kind of Black joy I was feeling took me to church. People shouted back at lines, clapped and sang along, laughed loudly — fully present, fully in it.
But at times, that laughter felt pointed. Specifically at two characters: the Scarecrow and the Lion.
I’ll admit it: the Cowardly Lion has always been my favorite character in every Oz iteration. I’m a sucker for cowardly characters who overcome their fears. In every iteration, the Lion is a bit effeminate — getting his hair coiffed at the Emerald City spa in the original film, paying attention to his looks in the 1978 movie. The stage version kept that energy, but turned it up to ten.
The Scarecrow, though, was the real outlier. Usually, he’s dimwitted, but wise. Here, he could only be described as a himbo, less “dumb” and more airheaded (think post-lobotomy Cat Valentine from Victorious). It was entertaining, sure. But between the Lion and the Scarecrow, the performances leaned hard into gay-coded stereotypes.
And I couldn’t stop wondering: was the audience laughing because the characters were goofy… or because the characters were gay?
I also couldn’t help but wonder how that same laughing audience would react if my girlfriend and I walked into a real church with them, rather than sitting next to them in a theater.
Being Black and queer often leaves me with a discordant feeling. This isn’t to say that Black people, as a whole, are any more homophobic than any other demographic — but Black homophobia has its own flavor. A lot of Black folks have an almost instinctive respect for people who are true to themselves, so the hatred isn’t always loud or explicit. But there’s often a lack of acceptance for effeminate men and masculine women, and even less understanding for people who stray further from the binary. It leaves gay Black people stuck in this weird Schrödinger’s acceptance: respected for self-acceptance, but still mocked for not performing sex and gender the way the culture expects.
Which is what kept circling in my mind as I watched the show and listened to the laughter.
Who, in that audience, is really a Friend of Dorothy?
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