Wicked and the Association

September 21st, 2007

This Boston Globe editorial on my favorite book, Wicked, by Gregory Maguire, has resonance in the struggle to transform the American Psychological Association. The most disturbing thing has been how generally decent people can close their eyes to the most obvious evil. As APA appoints those implicated in abuse to formulate its anti-abuse policies, as it passes yet another “anti-torture” resolution that has built in loopholes, as it lauds the anti-torture efforts of those who were in charge of fellow psychologists at Guantanamo at the very time that the Red Cross, the FBI, and the Defense Department’s own Inspector General says horrifying abuses were the order of the day, I can only think of the importance of getting along, of being accepted as part of the group, as we watch so many regurgitate the spin and the lies. How this need to be accepted leads to evil and the demonizing of those who resist, is one of the themes of Macguire’s book, as the Globe reminds us:

A recognizably wicked world

September 21, 2007

IN THE OPENING number of “Wicked,” which returned to Boston last week, the citizens of Oz, along with Glinda the Good Witch, are celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. In the play - and in the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel on which it was based - Glinda and the Wicked Witch were once best friends. Glinda’s face registers her discomfort over the celebration, but still plays down her connection to the vanquished witch.

To watch novelist Gregory Maguire and producer David Stone respond to questions from the Globe opinion staff, please visit boston.com/opinion

The play pretends to tell the story behind “The Wizard of Oz.” By taking the Wicked Witch’s point of view, it reminds us that one person’s villain is another’s hero. Yet works of art mean different things at different times. In the present context, the most chilling lesson in this cheerful musical concerns the price of loyalty and the temptations of power.

In this version of Oz, dissent is stifled. This Oz is a dead ringer, to liberal “Wicked” fans, for George W. Bush’s America - though the Wizard acts more like a comic version of Kim Jong Il. His plan to keep Oz happy involves muting all the animals. This radicalizes sardonic, green-skinned Elphaba, whom the Wizard’s propaganda machine demonizes as the Wicked Witch. Glinda lacks her friend’s tolerance for solitude, and becomes a wand-waving functionary of the Wizard regime.

Her choice isn’t surprising. Humans are social animals, and one person can only achieve so much on her own. But “Wicked” reminds us how the need to belong can push an individual, inch by inch, into doing things that might once have seemed repugnant.

In the real world, some people have the spine to resist. Lawyer Jack Goldsmith quit the Bush administration after being pushed to rubber-stamp policies he thought unwise. But compare this with the now-infamous 2004 incident in which then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card rushed to see a hospitalized John Ashcroft, hoping to get his OK for a supposed antiterrorism effort. Going along to get along, Gonzales and Card were prodding a bedridden man to authorize secret surveillance on US soil.

Some scholars see L. Frank Baum’s book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” as a parable about late-19th-century economic policy. In an interview with the Globe, Maguire said it’s not clear Oz’s creator meant to sow messages for adults, but suggested themes of Baum’s time might have bubbled into his story.

Oz as depicted in “Wicked” shares some features with modern American politics - a tendency to brush past moral ambiguities, a sharpening of the political debate into reductive extremes. Poor Glinda needs room to think, and she doesn’t get it. She’s not the only one.

It’s amazing how few APA insiders have the spine to resist. As the editorial points out conservative Lawyer Jack Goldsmith quit rather than rubber-stamp torture and surveillance policies that were wrong. So far, very few in the APA leadership has come forward to denounce the policies of an organization that, over and over, denounces torture and then winks.

Entry Filed under: APA, Bush administration, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Interrogation, Psychology, Torture