Conservatives Think Wicked Is a Perversion of L. Frank Baum’s Original Books
Written by admin on November 22, 2025
When the first installment of Jon M. Chu’s Wicked premiered in 2024, online conservatives lambasted it for being too woke. The advocacy group One Million Moms even launched a boycott, arguing that the movie contained “a tremendous amount of witchcraft and sorcery.” Now the second film, Wicked: For Good, is hitting theaters, and conservative influencers are using new videos of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo on the film’s press tour to revive the trend with a brand-new angle: Hollywood has ruined the traditional Wizard of Oz story we know and love.
The recent uproar started when the conservative rage-bait account Libs of TikTok shared a video in which Grande sent love to queer fans. “Oz has always been a queer place, a safe place for queer people, for every different color of the rainbow, for everybody,” the singer said. “Read the L. Frank Baum books. It’s the truth.”
In response, Brittany Hughes, a conservative influencer who makes videos for the Media Research Center, a conservative media nonprofit, said it was a reflection of the “narcissistic quacks” who inhabit Hollywood. “The L. Frank Baum books were written as a fairy tale for children. They were based on his personal life experiences, his childhood dreams, and a few family members,” she said in one such video. “I guarantee you, purple-haired, gender-bending unicorns with made-up pronouns never once crossed his mind. The original novel and the first Wizard of Oz film had nothing at all to do with being queer, and the fact that Hollywood now has to make everything gay doesn’t rewrite history.” (Vanity Fair has reached out to representatives for Universal Pictures for comment.)
Isabel Brown, a YouTuber and friend of Charlie Kirk’s who calls herself “the resident nerd of the movement,” also played the video in an episode called “From Oz to Outrage: How Hollywood Hijacked Wicked (and Womanhood).” She examined Grande and Erivo on their press tours and reminisced about seeing the original Broadway production before Hollywood ruined it.
“I have been a massive, massive, massive fan of the story for basically my entire childhood and growing up into adulthood,” she said, adding that she did still plan to see Wicked: For Good once it hit theaters. “These unbelievably out-of-touch, coastal-elitist, psycho-leftist members of Hollywood, whether they are in front of the camera or behind the camera, are intentionally trying to manipulate some of the greatest stories of all time to specifically push a radical LGBTQ+ agenda, even if it has nothing to do with the story whatsoever.”
“There is something very sinister happening behind the scenes on the set of Wicked, and somebody needs to do a wellness check on both of these young women,” Brown continued. “Apparently, everyone’s gay. The Wizard is gay, the witches are gay, the professors are gay, the animals are gay. Even though literally all of this is fantasy.”
Brown added that she wasn’t reacting this way due to fear. “I don’t think any of us feel threatened by you,” she said. “We’re just annoyed, frankly, that you are trying to canonically change our most beloved stories that tell timeless tales of the battle between good and evil.”
For Brett Cooper, who got her start at Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire and launched her own podcast earlier this year, the affection between Grande and Erivo had a disturbing subtext. “I really think, at the end of the day, it’s like this self-obsession with each other and an elitism,” she said this week. “They think that they and this, like, romance that they have with each other, and their connection with the project, is more important than doing their press.”
It’s cliché to say that every right-wing influencer is a failed actor, but in this case, the notion seems to be guiding their collective response to Wicked. Cooper said that doing community theater in Atlanta taught her that acting alongside others can lead to strong friendships, but she believes Grande and Erivo are taking it too far. “Genuinely, as a theater kid, I could say this is not normal,” Cooper said. “Like, ladies, what is the point of this?”
She then made the implication very clear. “Anyway, all I’m saying is that it is 2025. It is safe to come out. Gay rights have been secured,” she said. “You are welcome to tell us all what is going on behind closed doors. Anyway, that’s just my theory.”
For decades, conservatives have responded to cultural change by starting their own institutions and making their own versions of the Hollywood films they hate, with notably mixed results. Maybe they’ll try the same with The Wizard of Oz and finally create a version completely shorn of any rainbows or whimsy.
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