Wicked revels in the glory of frenemies

NEW YORK – When Glinda and Elphaba, the leads of the new movie adaptation of Wicked, clap eyes on each other, it is loathe at first sight.

Glinda shrieks, but charmingly. In response, Elphaba smirks and asks if she has something in her teeth.

Glinda, short for Galinda, played by American singer-actress Ariana Grande, is pale and pretty in pink. Elphaba, played by British singer-actress Cynthia Erivo, is glowering in glasses and green skin.

“No, I am not seasick. Yes, I have always been green. And, no, I did not eat grass as a child,” she says.

And right then, you know where you are – Act 1 of a classic frenemy love story.

These two young women, classmates and roommates – one giggly, glamorous and beloved; the other studious, plain and lonely – seem destined to despise each other forever, or at least until graduation.

But if you are a connoisseur of this particular genre, there is no question what happens next. Glinda could be Vivian Kensington clocking Elle Woods on the quad in the movie Legally Blonde (2001) or Cher Horowitz when she first sees Tai Frasier in the film Clueless (1995).

Swop green skin for an off-trend outfit, set your story in the merry old land of Oz instead of Harvard or a Beverly Hills high school, and you have Wicked, a frenemy story nonpareil, offering the promise of a platonic love that will leave you better than you have been, changed inside and out for good.

And who could resist that? In a typical boy-meets-girl story, a woman wishes, hopes and prays that a man will fall for her.

Three hundred pages, 90 minutes or eight streaming episodes later, he informs her that she has bewitched him body and soul or that he loves her just as she is. Regardless of how many wobbles there may be along the way, viewers know where they are going to end up.

Frenemy stories do something more complicated. By their emotional logic, it is not the ending that matters; it is the journey. The main characters draw each other out and learn from each other, not to achieve the cliche of happily ever after, but for the experience of friendship in its own right.

The stories are powered by the shifting dynamics between love and hate, gratitude and resentment, and admiration and contempt, and that is what makes them so resonant.

Which woman has not experienced that careful negotiation, that constant subtle recalibration when she is with a friend: What do I need from her? What does she need from me? Who are we to each other? And in the best of all possible worlds, who can we become?

The female frenemy plot takes those oft-hidden tensions and makes them larger than life for viewers’ enjoyment and catharsis.

Wicked the movie – based on Wicked the musical, adapted from Wicked (1995) the Gregory Maguire novel, a retelling of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz (1900) – wants to be many things.

It is a timely examination of the uses of propaganda and a strongman’s rise. And it is a balm for despondent US Democrats, who will relish a tale of two women – one played by a black actress, the other played by a white one – working to take down a deceitful and unworthy ruler.

But it is the frenemy fantasy – enemies who become friends, who unite to fix a broken world – that makes Wicked work. The film has grossed US$112.5 million (S$151.6 million) at the North American box office.

All the familiar beats are there.

First, there is opposites failing to attract. Elphaba thinks Glinda is shallow, stupid and silly. Glinda thinks Elphaba is glum, unfun and, again, green.

“Every little trait, however small, makes my very flesh begin to crawl,” the two sing.

In full mean-girl mode, Glinda regifts her roommate a frumpy, pointed black hat. When Elphaba wears the hat to a party – the first one she has ever attended – it is just cringe.

It gets worse when Elphaba, refusing to be shamed, performs a mannered interpretive dance solo. To the surprise of everyone, Glinda joins her, mirroring her awkward moves, wiping the tears from her cheek. It is a recognition that Elphaba has what Glinda does not – the courage to be herself.

Inevitably, a makeover scene follows. By the movie’s climactic song, it is Elphaba who extends her hand to Glinda, promising that together, they will be “the greatest team there’s ever been”.

The female enemies-to-friends trope plays out from timeless young-adult classics to of-the-moment novels by Irish author Sally Rooney and Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, offering viewers and readers possibilities a marriage plot never could.

Do the heroines want to befriend each other? Do they want to be each other?

There are Laverne and Shirley, schlemieling and shlemazeling their way through life; Blair and Serena, feuding in designer clothing on TV series Gossip Girl (2007 to 2012); and even singers Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, releasing competing diss tracks before burying the hatchet with a literal mailed olive branch and hamburger-and-fries costumes.

In American author Claire Messud’s novel The Woman Upstairs (2013), a shy teacher named Nora and a glamorous artist named Sirena engage in a long game of obsession and exploitation. In late American author Toni Morrison’s Sula (1973), Nel and Sula’s friendship survives deaths, betrayals and a shared secret.

A frenemy relationship is the driving force behind TV series Orange Is The New Black (2013 to 2019) and Killing Eve (2018 to 2022). Insecure (2016 to 2021) concludes with two happy endings for Issa – she gets the guy, but she also gets her best friend back. And of the two, it is the second that seems the more significant.

Across time, generations and genres, and in fiction and in real life, the pairings recur – now friendly, now feuding, now friends again. And audiences, female audiences especially, get to watch, experiencing the emotions and attachments on the screen or the page, reflecting on their own histories and friendships.

Love in a romcom can feel inevitable. Respect can be harder to come by, especially from someone initially immune to your charms. That kind of reassessment from that kind of friend is not just affirming, but it is also life-changing.

And for audiences, seeing a character they are emotionally invested in as she blossoms into her fullest self makes it possible to believe that viewers, too, are capable of transformation.

And right now, as the days and the timeline get darker, the idea of a hater-turned-celebrator who can see the best in you, even when you cannot see a thing, has never been more welcome. NYTIMES