There’s No Place Like Home

By: Ellie Simmers | Assistant Editor

Protesters across the country marched in No Kings Day rallies to protest the Trump administration. | Paul Franz

As the lights dimmed in the movie theater and the film I had waited nearly two years to see finally began, a nagging thought lodged itself in the back of my mind. How fitting that this adaptation of a beloved musical, one centered around a charismatic, authoritarian charlatan who leads a movement that casts off those who are different, would be released barely a year after a similar authoritarian charlatan was elected as President of the United States. 

Oz may be fictional, but its politics are anything but. 

In “Wicked: For Good,” the Wizard hides his cruelty behind glittery propaganda and the opulence of the shiny Emerald City, not unlike the 300-million-dollar ballroom renovation unfolding in our own nation’s capital. 

It was impossible not to hear Elphaba’s plea in the new song “No Place Like Home” as something far more urgent than character development for a green-skinned protagonist. Her words, wondering why she loves a land that has never fully loved her, echo the feelings of so many Americans, myself included, who are watching their country slip into authoritarianism, yet refuse to surrender to it. 

But that love isn’t blind, and it shouldn’t be. 

This country, like Oz, is not perfect, far from it. It has and continues to cause immeasurable harm worldwide. Loving this country has never meant pretending it is flawless. It is not only valid, but necessary to feel anger, betrayal, disappointment, and even grief over what America was, is, and may become. Those emotions do not negate patriotism; they deepen it. They reflect an unwillingness to accept the lie that this is America at its greatest. 

That refusal isn’t naive optimism; it’s a necessary act of resistance. Authoritarianism thrives when people give up. 

Refusing to surrender is the only choice that makes sense, for both us and Elphaba. 

The song warns that when a system pushes you to feel defeated, discouraged, or ready to walk away, that’s the outcome those in power are banking on us adopting. Giving up is the mechanism that enables them to tighten their grip. 

The reminder that “Oz belongs to you too” seems almost too tailored to the mindset in America, where some are told, sometimes subtly and sometimes explicitly, that they no longer have a place in the country they call home. 

The Wizard and Madam Morrible insist that the Animals must conform and stop speaking. Our own political charlatans use that very same tactic, insisting that if you don’t accept their version of the nation, you don’t deserve to stay. 

But the song reframes resistance as belonging: holding on, speaking up and refusing to be erased from the fabric of this nation. 

And in a time when lies, fear, and authoritarian messaging try to narrow the boundaries of who counts as American, the most radical thing we can do is keep insisting, like a mantra and a promise, that there is and must remain no place like home.