Kermit the Frog sang "It’s Not Easy Being Green", but it wasn’t, for once, a metaphor for racial inequality, it was about general self-acceptance.
However, when Gregory Maguire in Wicked wanted to make the Wicked Witch Of The West a sympathetic character, presumably out of a Philip Pullman like hate for traditonal morality, he made her a victim of anti-Green prejudice, as Mark Steyn mentioned in a review of the stage play — seeIt’s Not Easy Being Green, Or Wicked Either.
"Unlike the insouciant Dr Seuss, the film feels obliged to give the Grinch a motivation for his meanness. It seems that, as a child in Whoville, he was picked on in school for being green and covered in body hair. As a
result, he fled up the mountain to live a hermetic existence, eating glass, talking to his echo and eschewing all company save for his dog. He’s riddled with self- loathing, as he periodically confesses to us. Fortunately, an adorable little girl, Cindy Lou Who, has decided that the Grinch is just a big old lovable softie underneath … "
Kids! Don’t try this at home.When modern Hollywood tries to make a Christmas movie and it turns out less heartwarming and lovable than the Boris Karloff version, you know they're not doing well:
" … Whoville is a dull, conformist, materialist dump, simultaneously consumerist and Stalinist — like Ceausescu with a Toys 'R' Us franchise. Predictably enough, contemporary Hollywood is far too nervous and/or Godless to go anywhere near the real meaning of Christmas, so even the happy ending seems hollow and joyless. "
