(Kristin Chenoweth) and Elphaba - Camera Obscura: Feminism ...

58 • Camera Obscura
my life in so many ways.” 75 Another writes, “When Elphie sung her
last note in DG and the stage & house went completely black, there
was a moment of silence; my heart skipped a beat, my breath was
caught in my chest and my eyes teared up. It was the most incredible
feeling in my life. . . . I knew from that moment on that this
was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” 76 Their longing for
the diva captures both identification and desire; it is an intensely
homoerotic affect that is expressed not as about having them but as
about being them. More precisely, girls fall in love with performers
not because they want to be them in toto but because they want to
be them performing.
While Wicked confirms some girls’ desire to perform, for
others, it actually provides them with the material for their acts. 77
Mary Celeste Kearney, in Girls Make Media, argues that girls have
too long been seen solely as consumers rather than producers of
culture. 78 Girl fans of Wicked may begin as spectators (although, of
course, they are never passive consumers), but they soon become
creators, producers, and artists themselves. One explains, “I enjoy
singing and lip-synching to her [Elphaba’s] music as an expressive
outlet for frustrations of the day and it feels as if it could come from
me as a person.” She then broadens her ideas to musical theater
more generally. She says she can express “things I don’t think I can
express to friends or family, and instead, I can act out on stage for
people to look inside my soul and maybe see me through my character,
as awful as they can be. It’s honesty within a character and
myself.” 79 This girl takes on the song as her own; singing becomes
an empowering emotional outlet, both revealing and concealing
what she sees as her true self.
As much as girl performers use Wicked’s solos to perform
as divas themselves, they also perform the duets, using the music
as a performative and emotional tie to their friends. Wicked offers
them many choices since four of the show’s musical numbers
are female duets — an unusually high number for any romantic
couple in a musical. Performing a duet moves identification into
action, since a girl needs her friend to sing with her in harmony
for the song to work. On one post, a girl explains that she and her
friend are rehearsing to perform “For Good” at a coffeehouse. She