First comes the awareness. At first awareness, I am usually wary. Showing me as the old man that I am becoming -- though I'd say I've been doing this even since someone like Britney Spears came on the scene -- I immediately write them off as proof of the poor taste of young people. I tend to consider them as staking a claim to some percentage of our collective attention that they do not deserve, through spectacle that covers up poor craft -- even when this does not accurately describe their public persona. I brand these people as flashes in the pan, and think less of anyone who cannot see that.
Then I hear a song that I like a little bit. There's almost always at least one song by every pop artist that I like a little bit, even if I don't love their total output. The ice starts to thaw.
Then they've been on the scene for five years, and I decide they are not flashes in the pan, but potentially artists with genuine staying power. They are also five years older, so they may seem more mature to me, less reliant on showy displays designed to call attention to themselves.
After ten years, they are cultural mainstays who have done at least a couple things to ingratiate me to them, and I accept them.
This has happened with people like Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Harry Styles, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Selena Gomez. (I haven't gotten there yet with Miley Cyrus, perhaps because I've found her to become more ridiculous as she's gotten older.) Usually their appearance in a movie or TV show helps get me over the hump, because now I am allowed to think of them as a "serious person."
Ariana Grande has been around long enough for her to have graduated through those steps, but she has not. My initial distrust of her validity stuck with me. Perhaps part of that problem is that I never found that bit of her music that broke through, possibly because I could not, as I sit here today, tell you a song I know for sure that she sings. Chances are she has made music that I like, but since I don't know that it belongs to her, it has not helped her join the ranks of those I respect. Then there's still the stain of her relationship with Mac Miller, that rapper who died of a drug overdose, since I understand their relationship was tumultuous. I don't know much about that just as I don't know what songs she sings, but it left a negative impression on me.
Enter Wicked.
There are countless breathtaking adjectives I could use to describe Wicked, which I absolutely loved. But rarely does my breath escape me more -- in only 48 hours since I've seen it -- than when talking about how good Ariana Grande is in this movie.
To establish a baseline, I had no previous experience with Wicked as a cultural institution. I knew what it was about and some of the ways it was about it, plus I am familiar with its big number "Defying Gravity." But the rest of the songs, and the individual plot moments on the path to where the story is obviously going, were unknown to me.
So I did not have Kristin Chenowith or Idina Menzel (Adelle Dazeem) to compare Grande or Cynthia Erivo to when I watched Wicked. (Both original Broadway stars make cameos in the movie.) Erivo is also great, but I've chosen to focus on Grande in this post because Erivo was first introduced to me as an actor (in Bad Times at the El Royale), so she never had to go through any part of my personal vetting process for pop stars.
Therefore, Grande's portrayal of Glinda the Good/Galinda was, as far as I was concerned, wholly her creation, and what a creation it is.
There are certainly sympathetic elements of Grande's performance, especially as the movie goes on, but the thing that struck me was how perfectly she walks the line between a self-centered brat who fails to notice how she's projecting to other people -- possibly because they lap it up -- and a person capable of actually being good, rather than just "performing goodness." And for most of the movie, even after she has achieved some sort of redemption, she's still a frivolous rich girl batting her hair and eyelashes.
But this frivolity -- unlike the frivolity I initially loathe in a pop star who's newly introduced to me -- is absolutely chef's kiss.
A friend has told me Grande was a drama kid from way back, but this does not show in how she's spent her career so far. Opting for the undoubtedly greater financial rewards of music, she has become a pop megastar. In fact, if you go through her credits on IMDB, 90% of them are her own music videos. The only time I believe I have seen her on screen was when she played a pop star, if memory serves, in Don't Look Up, which I liked, but still found her contribution at least mildly annoying.
If she has chosen now to unleash herself on the rest of us who aren't teenagers or weren't when she made her debut, then it is to our great benefit.
In my review of Wicked, which you can read here, I likened her to Lucille Ball. Am I getting carried away with myself? Possibly. But I just couldn't think of a better comparison for her combination of physical comedy, excellent line deliveries and just overall ability to make us laugh.
It's there in every look she gives, ever flipping of her hair -- a character trademark -- and every recomputation of her circumstances, which she uses her whole body to produce. She pulls off being absolutely vapid while also not making us hate her. They could have chosen to make her a Regina George, but she isn't that, and the story is all the better for it. She is literally learning empathy as she goes, having never previously in her life been confronted with a situation that actually called for it, and it was one moment where she displays her newfound skill this that actually made me tear up. Even within that context, though, she's still a self-centered brat, and that's a smart choice.
Words are escaping me to properly explain why Grande is so good here. She just executes every moment perfectly, which is a credit also to her director, Jon M. Chu.
And because I'm not doing such a good job saying what I want to say, I invite you instead to just go see Wicked, if you haven't already. Small spoiler alert: We'll have more of her Glinda/Galinda to look forward to with the release of Wicked: Part 2.
And so Ariana Grande has belatedly arrived to my respect, with a bullet. May she continue to flourish, though it's hard to know if she'll have regular opportunities for more roles like this, or if she'll even want/need them.
After all, pop music pays very well.
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