Rationale
Why The Wiz? Why now? Though the Broadway musical was a success, the film version was a flop. It was expensive and was panned by critics. Though it has become a cult classic, it has mostly slipped from the eye of mainstream culture. Or has it?
NBC resurrected The Wiz for a live musical performance in 2015 and planned to then return the show to Broadway. It’s hard to say why The Wiz was chosen (previously NBC did Peter Pan and The Sound of Music) -- I couldn’t find anything definitive -- but it certainly ignited a firestorm. During the broadcast, people took to Twitter to protest the all-black cast, calling it racist (seemingly unaware that The Wiz had always had an all- black cast). Members of Black Twitter -- black Twitter users who tweet about issues related to and important to black Americans -- responded. The Wiz created a controversy in 2015.
One tweeter, a woman who goes by the moniker Feminista Jones, “live tweeted” the TV production in December in response to the “The Wiz is racist” tweets. Her messages didn’t so much attack those people, but instead framed The Wiz as “subversive” and part of the Black Arts Movement. She argued that its themes of liberation and blacks finding strength and belief in themselves made it extremely important for black people then and now, and encouraged people to watch it with the Black Arts Movement in mind.1
My initial interest in The Wiz started with the fact that I had never seen it. My first exposure was during a professional development session in January, during which we watched the scene where Dorothy first meets the Scarecrow and analyzed it through a racial equity lens -- what did the Scarecrow’s experience say about the way black males experienced the education system? I loved it, and wondered why I hadn’t sought it out before. I wanted to share it with my students as a way to consider how telling a beloved American story through the eyes of a different race might have shifted its message. When I encountered the tweets from Feminista Jones, it altered my interpretation of The Wiz entirely. The way that some black Americans valued The Wiz was on an entirely different level than I had originally thought -- maybe this wasn’t just a “film with black actors” -- it told a story that represented a part of the black experience in white mainstream America.
This unit is written for my 9th grade CAS (Center for Advanced Studies) class. The CAS program is intended for students who have a gifted IQ (130) or above on a psychological test or students who demonstrate talent in English through a portfolio application. Despite the fact that my school is fairly diverse -- roughly half of the population is black, and a large portion of students are Jewish – students of color have historically been underrepresented in the CAS program. Additionally, the curriculum in CAS still relies heavily on the canon and represents mostly white, male authors.
When we talk about race in the English classroom, particularly in a room full of mostly white students, the discussion is often superficial, politically correct and removed from students’ specific experiences. I certainly believe that students talk about race in the best way they know how -- they just have not been taught, or asked, to think about it in a more local and real way. The main impetus for this unit is to give students a chance to have deeper, more authentic conversations about race. I’d like them to think about not just the different experiences of minorities in our society, but the way that art and literature made by black people functions in a mainstream society that is decidedly white.
Though this unit is intended for advanced learners, it could easily be adapted for any level classroom in grades 9-12. The activities are based on English Language Arts standards, but the unit could be adapted for use in a social studies classroom to complement historical study of the Black Arts Movement.
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