EFFORTPOST /r/ArianaGrandeSnark is full of people being catty about the new Wicked movie

Background:

Ariana Grande is a 31-year-old racially-fluid pop star who got her start on Broadway (13) and Nickelodeon (Victorious). She was probably sexually abused by someone important and as a result of that became extraordinarily popular as a singer who mixes pop, retro-pop and R&B elements in her songs. Her style can best be described as giving precocious coquette pickmeisha vibes.

Examples of hit bops by her include

Honestly her whole discography is great. Most of the time she pisses redditor race realists off because she unabashedly changes what race or other social construct she presents as.

Also she spit on a donut one time:

And she had to pay 1.25 million in alimony when she divorced her husband last year:

https://apnews.com/article/ariana-grande-dalton-gomez-divorce-f4393ab6b6c203f11d3fa4534978d6a8

Cynthia Onyedinmanasu Chinasaokwu Erivo is a 37-year-old African-English Broadway star who broke out in a revival of The Color Purple for which she won a Tony and a Grammy. Additionally she played Harriet Tubman in a movie about Harriet Tubman.

Needless to say, she's no Ari, but she's a decent enough singer and has been riding the DEI train fairly successfully.

Wicked (2003) was a musical based off a book based off a movie based off a musical based off of a popular's children's book published in 1900 called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which was written to surreptitiously indoctrinate children into buying Silver and believe in fairy tales. It was basically the Harry Potter of those aughts.

In the early these aughts, Broadway was having a very difficult time. It had become somewhat of a joke to have come from or to go to Broadway. Stephen Schwartz (famous for writing the music for Disney's Pocohantas and Dreamwork's The Prince of Egypt) decided to change all that by relentlessly targeting white women as a demographic. He used a combination of good music, easy moral lessons and nostalgia bait (for college, for Americana and for a popular children's story) in order to make Wicked. It was an extraordinary success and was basically the MCU of musicals. For years afterwards musicals were a thing again.

Originally, the wicked witch in the musical was played by Idina Menzel, a Jewish-American Broadway star with phenomenal vocals known for playing Maureen in the musical Rent, known for her jaw-dropping performance in Wicked and much later known for the hit Disney single "Let it Go"

Sometime around when people were starting to pretend Hamilton was good and JK Rowling was still getting shit for Goblins being antisemitic caricatures (back before Hamas made antisemitism cool again) Idina Menzel was replaced by some DEI hire and a story that was originally a thinly-veiled allegory for Jewish Americans feeling out of place in WASP society and then being pogromed for being Nietzchean supermen was replaced with the same empowered Black vs oppressor White story we've seen a hundred times now.

Anyways, they made a movie out of it and true to the moment they picked a not well-known black star whose vocals are only going to be up for the task of the musical's most important song if the audio is remixed by ChatGPT. I'm still going to watch it (and so should you!)

There are two main types of anti-Ari Wicked posts:

1. I can't believe Ari is outshining Cynthia 😡

2. I can't believe Ari is skinnier than me 🤬

Here we have a gay man complaining about how Cynthia is being overshadowed by Ari:

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArianaGrandeSnark/comments/1g1wdj8/glad_more_people_are_noticing/

Comments include:

It's the marketing for the movie too. Plenty of trailers begin and end with Ariana's voice over, feature clips and substantial soundbites from Popular, show multiple costumes and moments from AG…. And have scarcely any meaningful Elphie moments. Even the snatches of her they show in the clips are like Yeoh and Bailey saying something to her, it's not even her speaking. I swear there's way more Glinda / pink merch happening, and her merch is more designed.

and

i knew this would happen when ariana was cast

and

It's not the Ariana Grande show, though Ariana and everyone around her are trying to make it that way. Cynthia is the MAIN CHARACTER. PERIOD. Why isn't she the one that's heavily involved? They're banking on Ariana's name to sell tickets and get people into seats. Meanwhile Cynthia is forced to stay on the sidelines. It was an odd move to have Ariana on SNL again and not Cynthia or maybe BOTH of them together. Anyway, I hope they learn from this disaster and keep Ariana on the sidelines and give Cynthia the spotlight during the sequel. Though I doubt they'll sell as many tickets for that than this first movie.

If I see this movie, it'll be to see Cynthia's acting and for the music. I'm still debating because I don't want Ariana's bad acting (the Cat Valentine acting aka the only acting she knows since her Nickelodeon days) to ruin the movie for me.

Here's a post where people look at someone with a normal bf% and think she's dying of cancer:

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArianaGrandeSnark/comments/1g1siyh/trigger_warning_respectfully_eff_fans_who_say_she/

I said I was genuinely concerned in the ariheads sub and quickly realized it wasn't even worth it. Someone replied "who needs haters when you have concerned fans" I didn't even respond. I was like alright, you delusional fricks. Stay enabling. We're not stupid.

and

Her physical health is going downhill :/

Anyways there tons of these things. Have a look yourself

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArianaGrandeSnark/comments/1eqj580/not_another_trailer_wait_is_that_ethan_and_ariana/

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArianaGrandeSnark/comments/1et15pp/people_are_waking_up/

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArianaGrandeSnark/comments/1fs1zyp/ha/

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArianaGrandeSnark/comments/1cmd7xk/gagged_her_a_bit/

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArianaGrandeSnark/comments/1c16urb/_/

BONUS: Here's the youtube version of a tiktok that goes into detail about something: