What Wicked tells us about animal cruelty

The Oscar-winning film is a classic tale about taking pride in the traits that make us unique, rather than trying to hide them in order to fit in. That message is illustrated most clearly in the main character, Elphaba, who is taunted, jeered at, and scorned throughout the movie because of her green skin color and her unwieldy magical powers.

As much as this movie is about self-acceptance, however, it also contains a biting social commentary about how powerful institutions scapegoat minority groups, in order to sow division and uphold their own place of authority. Let’s take a deeper dive into this dark side of Wicked, and talk about how the film’s use of animals as metaphors for human oppression actually draw some rather stark parallels to the exploitation of animals in the real world.

It’s not easy being green, a quick recap

In case you haven’t watched the musical and would be utterly confused by terms like “Elphaba,” “Galinda/Glinda,” and “Shiz,” here’s a brief overview of the movie’s plot and themes.

The film Wicked, based on the Broadway musical—which was based on a book series by Gregory Maguire—serves as an origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West—the character in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) who threatens Dorothy with, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!”

Long before she became known throughout Oz as “the Wicked Witch,” she was born Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo). Her parents are horrified when Elphaba is born, as her skin is “unnaturally green.” Throughout her childhood, Elphaba is ridiculed and ostracized for her skin color, as well as her magical abilities which she lacks control over.

As a rather hardened young adult, Elphaba arrives at a school called Shiz University, where her younger sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) is about to begin her studies. Elphaba has no intention of enrolling herself, but is offered the opportunity to study at Shiz, after the university’s Dean of Sorcery Studies, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), observes the girl’s powerful magical abilities.

Elphaba accepts the invitation, enthralled by the promise that if she learns to hone her powers, she could meet “The Wizard” (Jeff Goldblum)—whom she’ll ask to “de-greenify” her skin. To her dismay, she must room with Galinda “Glinda” Upland (Ariana Grande)—prim, preppy, and popular, but to Elphaba, maddeningly ingratiating and phony.

One of the kindest and wisest people Elphaba meets at Shiz is her professor, Dr. Dillamond (Peter Dinklage), a talking goat. In this universe, animals have the ability to speak, wear clothes, be employed, and essentially behave much like humans. However, there is a disturbing movement in Oz to strip animals of their basic rights. Animals are being removed from their jobs, forbidden to speak, and forced to leave Oz altogether.

One day in class, Dr. Dillamond announces that this will be his final class now that animals are no longer allowed to teach at Shiz. Guards burst into the room and forcibly remove Dr. Dillamond. The replacement teacher, a human, demonstrates how a new invention can keep animals from ever learning to speak in the first place—showing the class a terrified little lion cub in a cage.

Later, Elphaba gets the chance to visit The Emerald City and meet with The Wizard. Instead of her original wish to de-greenify her skin, however, she now requests that the animals of Oz be freed from this persecution. To her horror, Elphaba learns that not only are The Wizard and Madame Morrible behind the subjugation of animals, but also that The Wizard himself possesses no magical abilities, and therefore wants to enlist Elphaba’s powers to help consolidate his authority over the land.

Elphaba refuses to join The Wizard and Morrible, vowing instead to fight against their plans. She is forced to flee westward, as Morrible warns all of Oz that a “wicked witch” is on the loose.

‘To be seen and not heard’

Wicked is chock-full of symbolism and metaphors about the real world. Whether you look at Elphaba getting treated poorly because of the color of her skin, or The Wizard stoking the flames of prejudice against a group of minorities in order to serve his own interests, the parallels from Oz to our own world are myriad.

Personally, the animals’ storyline in Wicked struck me in a rather direct way. I found it a poignant reminder of the some 23 billion animals stuck in crowded, unsuitable housing, and denied a voice.

Real-life animals might not have the ability to communicate through words the way that Oz’s animals can—but they share the common trait of being sentient. They share the common trait of feeling a range of emotions, both good and bad. And they share the trait of being more intelligent than humans usually give them credit for. Despite this, especially in the world of industrialized agriculture, animals are regarded not as sentient, emotional, intelligent beings, but as mere commodities.

Wicked paints a fantastical depiction of animals who speak in proper English, dress rather sharply, and hold down steady jobs. While real animals do not go this far, they are indeed far smarter than humans assume. For many years, scientists have been thwarting our assumptions about animal intelligence. There was a time when we believed that humans’ use of tools put us a step above all other living things. That was disproven after Jane Goodall observed a chimpanzee utilizing a stick as a tool to catch termites. Multiple species—including elephants, crows, octopuses, and sea otters—have since been seen reaching into toolboxes of their own.

Meanwhile, back on the farm

Human tendency to underestimate animal intelligence and sentience has unfortunately paved the way for rampant animal abuse and neglect on farms. Even though animals like cows, pigs, and chickens are commonly looked at as a source of food above anything else, they nevertheless demonstrate striking cognitive abilities.

Chickens get a bad rap as bird-brained, but they’ve been wowing scientists for years now with their sophisticated social structures, ability to do basic arithmetic, and their empathetic responses to other chickens’ stress levels.

Scientists have found that young chicks are able to recognize dozens of other chickens’ faces—and even human faces too. They’ve also demonstrated a sense of self in their ability to resist temptation, and behave accordingly to their place in a given pecking order.

Pigs have long been received recognition as being “smarter than dogs.” In more recent years, pigs continue to surprise humans. In 2021, researchers found that pigs could play an arcade-style video game, using their snouts to manipulate a joystick and change what was happening on the screen before them. Pigs have also joined the list of tool-using species, after a group of warty pigs were observed using a piece of bark as a rudimentary shovel.

One of the most heartwarming things about watching Wicked is seeing the close bonds and friendships the human characters form with the animal characters. Some of the most kind and compassionate characters in the film are animals. In addition to her friend and mentor Dr. Dillamond, there’s Dulcibear, Elphaba’s bear nanny who accepts Elphaba's uniqueness as soon as she is born, and continues to nurture and love Elphaba through an otherwise cold and isolating childhood.

Like how natural social hierarchies and cliques form at school or the workplace, the same happens within cow herds. Different cows with similar dispositions—whether they’re more quiet and reserved, or outgoing and playful—tend to gravitate toward each other and form close bonds. Researchers have measured a cow’s cortisol (stress) levels when in a pen alone, in a pen with a stranger cow, and in a pen with their favorite companion, and found that cows—just like people—are happiest and least stressed when they’re with their friends.

On the flip side, when cows are isolated from their pals, they tend to become despondent and depressed.

Caged and voiceless

In Wicked, Oz’s animals are having their right to a voice stripped from them, and locked inside of cages. Sadly, factory farm animals have it just as bad. In fact, far worse.

In the US, there are laws put in place to protect animals from human cruelty and abuse, like the federal Animal Welfare Act. But in the case of that law and others, animals on farms are specifically excluded from these protections. There are other pieces of legislation and regulations that set minimum standards for how animals should be treated on farms, but they often lack substantial accountability or enforcement. As far as the law is concerned, farmed animals truly have no voice.

Virtually all—around 99%—of animals raised for food come from factory farms. These are huge facilities where maximum output at a minimum cost is the ultimate goal. In order to make things more “efficient,” intelligent, sentient chickens, pigs, and cows are forced into agonizing, inhumane conditions.

Toward the end of Wicked, a monkey living in the city of Oz is forced to undergo a brutal transformation that causes wings to violently erupt through the creature’s back—all part of the Wizard’s plans to use monkeys as sentinels. This rings true in real life, as animals in factory farms are forced to undergo painful medical procedures like tail-docking, beak trimming, and dehorning, all to better serve as commodities for humans. The horrors don’t end there, though—they persist until their death.

In the most extreme, but sadly still common, form of confinement for egg-laying hens, birds are put into structures known as “battery cages.” These cages are about 15 inches in height and fewer than a few feet across. Hens are not even able to spread their wings without bumping into another bird; the US guidelines for how much space each hen must receive ends up being smaller than the size of a sheet of printer paper.

Chickens raised for their meat, also known as broiler chickens, are born to suffer. In order to have chickens produce as much meat as possible—in as short a time as possible—factory farms employ selective breeding. Broiler chickens on factory farms grow so large so fast, it’s comparable to a two-month-old human baby hitting a weight of 660 pounds. This, of course, comes with a host of painful medical problems for chickens, who are often unable to stand up and support their own body weight.

One of the greatest injustices seen on factory farms is the use of gestation crates. When a female pig, or sow, is pregnant, some industrial farms will place her in a seven-foot-by-two-foot pen that’s barely larger than her body. For the four months that the mother pig spends pregnant, she remains trapped inside of this tiny gestation crate, unable to do anything but wait and suffer.

The birth of the piglets takes place in a “farrowing crate,” designed to prevent the mother from moving and crushing her piglets, but another form of extreme confinement with no thought to her physical or psychological needs.

Once she gives birth, the suffering is not over. Instead, her piglets are taken away from her to be raised for slaughter. Then she is once again impregnated, and forced to go through the same painful process again and again, until her body gives out at around two years old. The USDA predicts that by 2026, 10 states will have gestation crate bans in place—protecting a mere 6% of hog herds nationwide.

Cows are subject to similar forms of extreme confinement. Some newborn calves are killed within hours of being born because they’re male, and therefore considered useless to the dairy industry. Others are sent to live a short life in veal crates, which are barely larger than the calves’ bodies. This prevents them from the simple pleasures of walking, running, jumping, or any other basic activity that could make their muscles stronger.

For calves who become dairy cows, their life is one of artificial insemination, giving birth, lactating, and starting the process over again. Just like sows in gestation crates, this life is extremely taxing on mothers’ bodies, and most dairy cows do not live past six years old—a life far briefer than a cow’s natural lifespan of 15-20 years.

In Wicked, viewers get to see that poor little lion cub eventually freed from his cage. Sadly, in the real world, millions and millions of animals never experience that freedom.

Let’s make animal agriculture less wicked

If there’s one key takeaway from Wicked as far as it relates to animal cruelty, it's when Dr. Dillamond was dragged away from his classroom against his will. As her classmates watched, Elphaba stood up, faced them, and asked, “Are we all just going to sit here in silence?”

In the face of factory farming’s cruelty toward animals on a massive scale, we can do more than sit in silence. We can join together, and give a voice to the voiceless.

The Humane League has worked for years to end the most extreme forms of confinement in animal agriculture. Every step of progress made can mean a world of difference to millions of animals. Click here to learn about The Humane League as we put pressure on corporations to take animals out of cages, end animal abuse on factory farms, and move toward a more compassionate and sustainable world.