the thing about GITB that ultimately makes the song fall flat imo is that within the song, schwartz keeps getting at the idea of glinda's bubble needing to pop and her needing to put aside that inauthentic self she's grown to rely on so heavily, but he never quite manages to touch on who, exactly, glinda is outside all of the pretense and pretending outside of vague gestures
what's most interesting about glinda, and what makes her compelling to me is the constant struggle between her internal and external self. in almost every scene she's in, we see her putting on this very elaborate performance to maintain her social status and appeal to the masses at the expense of what she knows is right and her internal thoughts/desires. her movements when she's in front of a crowd are always stiff and awkward, like she can't quite manage to fit into the perfect popular society girl she wants to be. compare this to a scene like popular, where she's much sillier and more relaxed because she can truly be herself around elphie. she often makes rash and dumb decisions in order to get people around her to like her. she gives elphaba the hat after being pressured by pfannee and shenshen. she changes her name from galinda -> glinda because she hopes that by trying to engage in the Animals cause, she'll feel less excluded from elphaba and fiyero
it quickly becomes clear that glinda is someone who's extremely insecure in herself, which is why she's constantly chasing the approval of others and is so quick to self-abandon for the sake of public praise. so her character early on leaves us wondering: what is the source of that insecurity and the need to be liked? why does she feel the need to constantly self-abandon and put forth this constructed persona in front of others? who is the girl in the bubble really when that persona is stripped away?
GITB would've been the perfect opportunity to answer these questions directly. TG establishes glinda isn't happy and longs for elphaba. INTG reprise is the first moment where she really has to directly reconcile with the consequences of her choice to stay behind. GITB wants to be a moment of growth; it serves as a moment of reflection, but ultimately one that propels her into goodness. but where the song fails imo is that it never really manages to accomplish the second. at one point, glinda asks herself who she would be if she stepped out of her bubble. in theory, i like this question because it starts to get at glinda's stuggle with internal vs external self. her finally being willing to shed the glinda the good persona and rushing to save elphie is the culmination of her character growth, and makes it all the more tragic that she'll ultimatley have to remain in the facade (at least in part) so she can help oz
but i don't think schwartz was really able to get at who exactly glinda is under glinda the good. GITB never manages to quite pop that bubble. the song lays out that the persona she puts forth is a false one ("beautiful life built on lies") and that now she can't really slip back into that persona ("its hard to unsee what you've seen"). but it doesn't really give any insight into why leaving her bubble of comfort is such a terrifying concept for glinda. solos like this in a musical are supposed to provide us deeper insights into characters, but schwartz seems unwilling or unable to dig deeper into glinda's psychology
so why has glinda been so reluctant to step out of the bubble? i personally subscribe to the closeted lesbian reading, where the bubble is synonymous with the closet. her public persona is a desire to appear as a socially desirable heterosexual woman. she loves elphaba and wants to be with her, but doing so means facing intense social scorn and isolation. the "bubble popping" means that she's finally brave enough to strip back her public persona and go to the woman that she loves. i do think the cast and crew is very aware of this reading; ariana's favorite pass time in 2024 was reposting lesbian glinda memes on her instagram story, and her being locked in a literal closet at the end of FG is just. painfully obvious. that being said, i doubt the studio would've let them explicitly touch on the whole lesbian glinda thing, and it's quite possible stephen and winnie just see her as straight cuz they're gliyero's strongest soldiers for some fucking reason
even ignoring the lesbianism of it all, there's deeper insights we could've gained into glinda's psychology, and showing her shedding those could've made GITB a much better song. take her struggle with magic. while a lot of people seem to take this as a very surface level "oh she's just upset she can't do spells and elphie can boo fucking hoo," i think on a deeper level, her inability to do magic reflects the way people don't believe she can do anything substantive. obviously glinda's very beloved and popular, but no one seems to believe in her in a more substantive way than "wow glinda you're so pretty and great." her desire for magic represents her desire to do something real, but every time she brings this up, she's shut down. morrible straight up says she has no faith in her. her mother is like "why do you need this everyone loves you. you don't need to be anything more." even elphaba in that one deleted scene dismisses glinda's wish for magic as unnecessary
and this leads to an intense feeling of powerlessness. not only does she lack magic, but people seem to agree that she's incapable of learning it. the bubble and her public persona are a way to overcompensate for this lack. if popularity is her only asset, then she has to retain it. without it, she has no power. this ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, though, because as long as she stays in the bubble, she can never truly reach her full potential. breaking out of the bubble is glinda's defying gravity moment, the moment where she decides that she's not going to let other people's expectations of her define her, and--magic or no magic--she's going to try and save elphie
ig my point is that GITB could've been so much more. we could've gotten a much more thorough examination of glinda's psychology, which would've made the payoff of the bubble popping far more rewarding. ariana's acting/singing and the cinematography in that scene are great. unfortunately, i don't think the song itself really does justice to her character or flush out her internal struggle in a particularly interesting and compelling way--which is a shame because she's such a compelling character
