CW: Spoilers
Wicked seems to be dominating the conversation online. Rightly so, I saw the film yesterday and it’s truly a masterpiece (I don’t say that lightly either).
One conversation I have seen in several places on the internet is if Elphaba is autistic? I had been aware of people asking this question for a long time, as Wicked debuted in the early 2000s and has only grown in popularity since. So the question of if Elphaba is autistic is nothing new. As an autistic Wicked fan, I thought I’d give you my take.
Elphaba isn’t autistic, but her marginalisation parallels many autistic people’s experience.
It’s been a while since I was fortunate enough to see the musical live, and it was a long time before I even knew I was autistic myself. So I went into the film with an open mind about if Elphaba was autistic or not.
As the film progressed, I just didn’t see her as an autistic character. The only moment that came across as autistic to me was her not anticipating that wearing the hat to the Ozdust ballroom was a social faux pas. However, only failing to anticipate one social faux pas doesn’t make someone autistic. Constant struggles of understanding and decoding neurotypical social norms (among many other things) would make a character appear more autistic coded.
Yes Elphaba does not follow social norms, but this does not appear to come from not understanding them instinctively.
Elphaba does allude to doing something similar to masking in the lyrics of the Wizard and I “This weird quirk I’ve tried to suppress or hide” when singing about her sorcery abilities. However, my interpretation is that her sorcery abilities don’t give her joy. I see my interests as a big part of autistic joy. Don’t get me wrong, I have played down my own interests as part of autistic masking. But I was hiding the things that make me happy. And Elphaba sorcery abilities seem to cause her a lot more frustration than joy in the film. Also having an extraordinary ability plays into the ‘autistic people have super powers trope’, which isn’t the reality for most autistic people. So the fact she is extremely talented in this area doesn’t make her any more autistic to me.
Even though I do not consider Elphaba to be an autistic character, I did relate to some of her struggles. In particular to how her peers in childhood and at university treated her for being different. It mirrored my own experiences of bullying. The way people talked about her, excluded her and tried to mislead her (e.g. Glinda giving her the hat that was considered ugly to wear) are all things I experienced growing up. Also even after Glinda and Elphaba became “friends”, Glinda was still trying to make her ‘normal’ in the song popular. Again, I experienced something similar when growing up with people who I thought were my “friends”. Funnily enough, one of these former “friends” has posted ableist content in the name of ‘autism awareness’ since on social media. Very similar state of affairs to Glinda’s saviour complex throughout the film.
Also, when it really came down to it, Glinda didn’t side with Elphaba when being persecuted and fawned. It wasn’t a genuine friendship at all. In my experience, this also reflects my experiences of some friendships as an autistic person. Many people who we think are friends turn out not to be, because they only pretended to be our friends on a superficial level.
So yes I still relate to Elphaba and her experience of discrimination, even if the reason for the discrimination is different. I also suspect that many people who’ve experienced other and multiple forms of discrimination will relate to Elphaba. I don’t think it’s limited to autistic discrimination.
If you’re autistic do you agree? Or do you still think she’s autistic? Let me know in the comments below.
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