NBC's latest live stage production, after adaptations of The Sound of Music & Peter Pan, ran up against a social media backlash borne mostly out of, well, lack of understanding.
The Wiz is an all-African-American adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, and the original production of The Wiz, which started on Broadway, then became a feature film with Diana Ross, Nipsey Russell, & Michael Jackson, is nearly 40 years old, by my count. The best known film version of Wizard, made in 1939 with Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, and Margaret Hamilton, among others, turned 75 last year.
So, why are people hating on a 2015 model of The Wiz, whose cast includes rapper Common, rapper-actress-talk show host Queen Latifah, and David Alan Grier? Why are twidiots and other social media morons spitting on the yellow brick road?
Well, you know what they say these days. Haters gotta hate. Not in this case, they don't. To borrow from Weird Al Yankovic, they "Dare To Be Stupid". Apparently, most of the people whining on Twitter don't know the history of The Wiz and its source material, and can't be bothered to use a search engine. They don't know that The Wiz's most popular song, "Ease on Down the Road", like the production itself, is 40 years old. To me, that means that most of these people aren't old enough to have seen the movie that came out in the late 70's, though I think that's available on video, and last night's show almost certainly will be out on DVD in short order.
The bottom line here is that there is dumb, and then, there are this week's Dunce Cap winners, the Twidiots wasting space with their mindless, baseless complaints about reverse racism. Do yourselves a favor, jabronies, get thee to the nearest Walmart, Best Buy, or FYE, and look for the original film version of The Wiz. You'll be glad you did. I hope.
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