The Oscar for Best Masking Goes To...
On Wicked, "cringe," and the crime of being earnest
I know there are bigger things happening. The news cycle moves fast. There are storms and wars and systems collapsing. It feels strange to care about a gold statue when reality is this heavy. I care anyway. Art doesn’t replace reality. It gives us a way to process it. And when the culture decides to punish joy, that tells us something about what reality is becoming.
Last week, the Oscar nominations came out. Wicked: For Good got zero nominations.
Zero.
Last year, the first half of this saga got ten nominations. It won for Production Design and Costumes. For the fans, those wins felt like a down payment. Like the Academy was saying, “We see the spectacle. We’ll reward the soul later.”
We told ourselves the second half would get the big recognition. The acting. The directing. The music. The heart.
The movie came out. Same crew. Same vision. Even bigger box office numbers than the first.
And the Academy shut the door.
What changed?
Not the quality. These movies were filmed concurrently. The technical mastery was identical. The emotional depth was even greater. What changed was how people talked about the women who made it.
For months during the promotional tours, we watched Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande do interviews. Something became impossible to ignore: these women had been transformed by this work. They cried talking about each other. They held hands. They dressed in ways that echoed their characters (not costumes, but choices). Ariana in soft pinks and florals. Cynthia in emerald greens and sharp blacks.
That’s not method acting. That’s what happens when something you love changes your brain.
The industry punished them for it.
Anonymous reports surfaced that voters were “creeped out” by their intensity. The narrative shifted from “look at this masterpiece” to “these girls are too much.”
And I know this is the real reason because we’ve seen this pattern before. When women show too much emotion, too much passion, too much anything, they get labeled as unstable. When they let their work visibly change them, it’s treated as unprofessional instead of dedicated. The first movie got nominated when the stars were still professionally polished. The second got shut out after months of watching them be unguarded about how much this meant to them.
The Academy gave sixteen nominations to Sinners instead. Vampires are safe. Dark. Cool. Cynical. They don’t ask you to be vulnerable. The witches ask you to feel everything. And that became their crime.
This is exactly what ADHD looks like when it finds something worth loving.
We don’t do things halfway. We don’t casually enjoy. When something clicks (when it lights up that dopamine-starved part of our brains) we dive in headfirst. We let it consume us. We let it change us.
I’ve seen the first Wicked movie 102 times. The second one, 43 times. I sit in the theater clutching an Elphaba squishmallow that I sprayed with a perfume I bought specifically because it smells like her.
To the Academy, that looks unhinged. To voters, that’s “cringe.”
I’m not unhinged. I’m someone with ADHD who hyperfixates. This is how my brain works. When I find something that matters, I don’t just appreciate it. I let it become part of my identity. I don’t smooth down the sharp edges of joy because someone might judge me for it. I lean in. I let it rewire me.
When I see two women do the same thing (when I watch them let their work transform them so completely that it shows up in how they dress, how they talk, how they are) I recognize it immediately.
That’s not “too much.” That’s what it looks like when you let yourself care without apologizing for it.
The world calls us cringe. It rolls its eyes. It says we’re obsessed, we’re intense, we need to calm down. Our passion is embarrassing. We should hide how much we care.
ADHD doesn’t do detached. We don’t do cool cynicism. When we love something, we love it with our whole chest. We cry in the theater. We wear the colors. We buy the squishmallow and the perfume and we don’t care if it looks ridiculous because it doesn’t feel ridiculous. It feels alive.
The snub wasn’t about quality. It was about rejecting the experience of loving something this much. It was rejecting the idea that two women can be changed by their work and by each other. It was rejecting the fact that they wore green and pink not as costumes but as proof that art can rewrite who you are.
It validated the fear every neurodivergent person carries: you can work hard, you can build something extraordinary, you can even win awards. If you’re too loud about loving it, if you let people see how much it matters, the world will roll its eyes and look away.
That’s the ADHD experience in a nutshell. You spend your whole life being told to tone it down. To care less visibly. To stop being so intense about things.
I know what it’s like to be told I’m “too much” about the things I love. I know what it’s like to walk into a room buzzing with excitement about something I just discovered, only to watch people’s faces go flat. I know what it’s like to realize, mid-sentence, that I’ve lost them. That they’re waiting for me to stop talking so they can move on to something that matters to them.
I know what it’s like to learn to shrink that part of myself. To pre-emptively apologize for caring. To laugh it off before anyone else can.
Wicked is that thing for me. These movies are that thing for Cynthia and Ariana. The Academy’s message was clear: if you let your love show this openly, if you let it transform you this visibly, you will be punished for it.
While the nominations were being read, Cynthia Erivo was already miles away from Hollywood. She’s in London right now, starring in a one woman production of Dracula.
She’s literally playing a vampire. The exact monster the Academy decided was “more worthy” than her witch.
The irony is perfect. The Academy chose the vampires because they’re safe. Cynthia became one because she can be anything. She doesn’t need their validation. She never did.
That’s what refusing to mask looks like. You keep creating. You keep transforming. You keep letting the work change you, even when the world tells you that’s too much. You do it anyway.
So let them keep their trophies for the art that makes them feel cool. I’ll stay with the witches. I’ll keep the pink dresses and the tears and the “too muchness.” I’ll keep showing up to the theater with my squishmallow and my perfume and my whole unmasked heart.
Because if history has taught us anything, it’s that the wizard’s power always fades. The smoke clears. The curtain falls. The illusion crumbles.
But the girl who refuses to mask her power? She becomes a legend.
The friendship that dares to exist despite the naysayers? It conquers all. ♥️
