Over the weekend I went to the theater to see a touring production of Wicked.  Having read the book before seeing the musical, I came to the performance with a deep view of the themes that are present in the play.  I had already spent hours curled up with Elphalba and Dr. Dillamond spinning through the dark, and highly charged political landscape that Gregory Maguire painted over the Land of Oz before making my way to my seat in the balcony.  I grew up compulsively watching The Wizard of Oz, I was so addicted you might have thought it was a requirement for my lungs to continue functioning, and at the core of the prequel, Wicked, there is light theme of perspective and they way it forms our world view and opinions.

I have heard and read a lot of discussions about reasonable accommodations lately.  Last night, I was driving home listening to a discussion on talk radio (I think it was The Dave Glover Show) about prisoners requesting Kosher meals, and in early December, Stanley Fish blogged about legal precedent and reasonable accommodations.  Reasonable accommodations for voters, employees, and citizens in general are required by law, and reasonability comes down to perspective. 

Fish argues that law trumps religious accommodations. The example he gives is of a person whose religion requires human sacrifice.  They could not possibly be reasonably accommodated from the perspective of most Americans because human sacrifice, for any reason, is considered murder and illegal.  But, in another part of the world, if the majority religion requires such sacrifice, it would not be considered murder, hence not illegal.  Possibly a dramatic example, but it really speaks to the core of the impact of perspective based and world views.  Murderers are evil people in the eyes of many, but the nature of evil is based on your perspective, hence your ability to accommodate others is really based on the way you see the world at that moment in time.  Kind of like when women weren’t allowed to vote, world view shifted - with the help of lots of advocacy work- and then women’s suffrage occurred.

Back to Dorothy.  In Wicked, she was merely a pawn in a political game being played long before she dropped from the sky, but in the movie she is a hero, overcoming evil.  To those who cared about the Wicked Witch of the West, she was a murderer.  Pretty interesting and thought provoking though, especially for a musical.  Perspective is the thing that our political beliefs rely on, the support for decisions about rearing our children, motivation for the food choices we make, it even effects the decisions we make about the clothing we leave the house in.  Perspective, especially current world perspective, is really that grey area that the law and common citizens are currently trying to maneuver under the title of reasonable accommodation.