Okay I was in the midst of writing up a very befuddled post detailing my extensive list of questions regarding the weirdly specific use of albino Bats in this scene, but then I got DISTRACTED by this FLOWER and it COMPLETELY DERAILED MY ENTIRE TRAIN OF THOUGHT and now I need to talk about it.
(also Iām sorry if what I'm about to launch into is something thatās already been discussed at length by the fandom and people see this and theyāre like yeah we know, tumblr user uisceb, there's already like 5000 posts about this exact thing floating around, where have you even been, and the answer is I donāt know okay, I never know, but this is my own self discovery on my own blog and Iām very taken with this flower and the crazy levels of heteronormativity itās working with okay like this is new To Me)Ā
(the Bats were also new to me btw but thatās its own likeā¦whatever, itās fine, we're not talking about them rn)
Okay so the flower. They make a very big to-do about putting this flower in Glindaās hair as she gets ready for her wedding to Fiyero, which is of course a direct callback to the moment just before the Ozdust when Fiyero puts an identical flower in her hair.
Now first of all - back to the getting-dressed-for-the-wedding scene - Glinda/Nessa parallels, we love to see them. Weāve just come from the Girl in the Mirror scene where Nessa is longing for the magical night that was the Ozdust, this perfect night where she felt wanted and loved, her whole future was ahead of her and anything was possible. Glindaās doing something very similar pre-wedding, trying to recreate that picture-perfect night, when sheād just met Fiyero, and had just decided she would be marrying him, and everything was playing out in exact accordance to what she'd grown up believing she should want: perfect fairytale prince, perfect fairytale ending.
Very clearly by Act 2, sheās starting to suspect the perfect fairytale ending is not a real thing, for SEVERAL reasons. Sang a whole bridge about it before slapping the smile back on and sliding right back into denial land again. And given their argument during Thank Goodness, I think Glinda is well aware Fiyeroās interest in her is quickly waning. So like Nessa with Boq, sheās trying to dig her nails in and reignite the fantasy of something that never actually existed, with this very specific little symbol, this same rose Fiyero put in her hair the night of the Ozdust when everything was simple and perfect and exactly how she always pictured her life would be.
My dudes! My guys! My people! The SECOND she hears her window break, the SECOND she realizes itās Elphie out there, she dismisses her attendants, and she SNAGS that rose out of her hair and tosses it offscreen. Ā
I think every single (movie) gelphie shipper alive has pointed out how much the balcony/boudoir scene feels like an affair, but for my own personal little self, I think Iāve finally pinpointed the exact second that affair vibe kicks in, and itās the removal of the rose - highkey, itās giving married woman takes off her wedding ring to meet up with ~The Lover~ in secret.Ā But way WAY more than that, there's the heteronormative symbolism of it all.
Now I enjoy the canon of things, so I do very much think Glinda cares for Fiyero, I just happen to be of the opinion thereās nothing romantic about it. Thereās WANNABE romantic about it, I think she'd actually give anything for it to be romantic, he's the ideal man, any woman would kill to be in her place. But canonically speaking, everything Glinda does romance-wise with Fiyero is so cartoonishly performative and always has to take place in front of an audience, it becomes all about appearance and showmanship rather than connection, which makes it kind of impossible for me to read Glindaās feelings for him as genuinely romantic (not to mention her phrasing of "taking things that don't belong to us" and saying "I want him" but never "I love him," he is in so many ways a prop to her). It's like watching someone play-act what they think a relationship is supposed to look like from the outside without ever actually building the relationship itself.
And even right from the beginning, before sheās even met him, she hears that Prince Fiyero will be coming to Shiz, and she immediately glams herself up to an IMPOSSIBLE degree, and when she finds him, itās all surface-level interaction, including from Fiyeroās side of things. Fiyero himself doesnāt actually show any real interest in Glinda until he sees her trick Boq into asking out Nessa, at which point Fiyeroās like oh samesies I also casually use people and then toss them aside, and then they both congratulate each other on being perfect and therefore perfect for each other with never a single moment of real connection or understanding between them, but by the end of the night, Glindaās still telling Elphaba YEP THATāS THE MAN IāM GOING TO MARRY ISNāT THAT ROMANTIC GLIYERO 5EVER <333333
Fiyeroās the glamor, heās the costume, heās the image, heās the key to making Glindaās life look like the pinnacle of perfection, and Glinda has conflated that with romantic love. And Fiyeroās first gesture of playing that role for her was to put this little pink rose in her hair before the Ozdust, so now right before their wedding, Glinda is attempting to manifest that idealized romance into something real with this little visual cue of the moment she committed herself to the most perfectest heterosexual relationship ever in the history of forever at the wise old age of 18.
But then ELPHABA shows up on her balcony and all of a sudden Glinda cannot get rid of Fiyeroās mark on her fast enough.Ā
Her getting rid of the rose isn't for Elphaba btw, and that's actually very important. Elphaba wouldnāt see the rose in her hair and see it as some representation of Fiyero; she wasnāt there for that part of Dancing Through Life, it wouldn't even register as anything with any significance. She already knows Glinda and Fiyero are getting married, plus the wedding dress and the ring are sort of hard to miss, so it's not like Glinda is trying to either hide something from Elphaba, or communicate something to Elphaba. Getting rid of the rose is very private and personal to Glinda herself, no one else.
Like not even joking, in the last twenty minutes of my life, this has kind of become Glindaās gayest moment to me. And there are a LOT of gay moments to choose from. This one isnāt even that overt, it's literally just her and a flower. And yes thereās the clear illicit love affair vibe to the whole scene itself and chemistry on fucking fire when she's actually with Elphaba, but itās this little moment here that's really getting to me, the intentional removal of the rose, the intentional removal of any visual link to Fiyero, especially when the visual of Fiyero is the most important aspect to her. So her absolutely needing to rid herself of that symbol before she runs into the arms of her lover runs to the balcony to find Elphaba, is such a distinctly secretive shirking-the-heteronormative-illusion moment. They made such a show of putting that flower in her hair only for her to take it out to be alone with Elphaba.
I have to go on a little aside here just to address the fact that I know people throw around the phrase "no heterosexual explanation for this" a lot and tbh it's oftentimes just two characters like...looking at each other. But in this case I am genuinely racking every corner of my brain for a heterosexual explanation for this whole flower situation. Like I am actively searching for heterosexuality, which is not a thing I typically do. And I can't find it anywhere. There is literally No Reason for them to have her take the rose out of her hair, except for the symbolism of it all. I'm at the point where I actually want someone to provide me with a heterosexual reason for it, because for the life of me, I cannot come up with one, and this is like proof beyond all proof of comphet Glinda to me. It is an incredibly privately gay moment. I don't really know what to do with myself.
Anyway whatever getting back to it - the removal of the rose also does on a smaller, much less emotional scale, kinda call to mind the Ozdust duet when she sees Elphaba dancing alone and sets the wand Morrible gave her aside, choosing Elphaba over the fantasy she has of herself. She isnāt ready to make that sacrifice on the Greater Good moral scale yet, and by the beginning of Act 2 she's backslid enough without Elphaba that in many ways she's arguably worse than she was at the beginning of Act 1, but something I've always loved about Glinda is that her changes are incremental as opposed to instantaneous, and those little moments of her unthinkingly setting aside a symbol of self-glorification because of Elphaba are what pave the way for her to eventually become the more stripped-down selfless Glinda we start to see emerging by the end of the story.
The rose/balcony/boudoir scene sees us squarely in Selfish Act 2 Glinda territory as opposed to Ozdust Cautiously Starting to be Better territory, but I do really love that even in her most selfish eras, she allows these little bits of her true self to show because of Elphaba, and that the true self in question here is one thatās secretly desperate to shed herself of the heteronormative palatable image sheās trapped herself in so she can be with the woman she loves.
But with all that said I do still have questions about the albino Bats.
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
stormborns
prguitarman
