Meta: The Problem With Witches

Yikes, it’s been dead around here, but real life has an annoying way of cutting into one’s blog-time. Have some random musings on witches in pop-culture...

This post doesn’t have any sort of profound conclusions to be drawn from it, rather it’s more of a series of observations that I noticed while knee-deep in my October viewing of witch-related media.

As I said in my review for The Craft, we have an uneasy relationship with the concept of witches because it’s fundamentally about women with power. Hard power. This is not the soft, manipulative, emotional power in which angels-of-the-house gently pull strings in the background, or the carefully monitored and limited power of saintly queens or queenly saints within a firmly maintained patriarchal system.

A witch’s power belongs to her alone, she can wield it in any way she chooses, and it cannot be taken from her. This, kind of understandably, terrifies a lot of people.

Old school witches were considered to be servants of the devil, which was an ingenious way of depicting powerful women as something scary and unnatural, while simultaneously reassuring people that their power originated from a male source. These witches aren’t autonomous; they’re servants of a more powerful man.

Crazy comparison to make here, but the Sanderson sisters of Hocus Pocus and the titular witch of 2015’s The Witch fall into this category. The latter in particular is a film with a weird mixed message in that patriarchy-based religion is horribly misogynistic and makes scapegoats out of young girls, but also that baby-stealing witches are totally real, you’re not being paranoid in fearing them, and that they’re coming to eat your family.

Hi, it's me, a sexy witch come to seduce your twelve-year old...

Not much fun for women (and a few men) back in the ye olden days, though as history passed, so too did the literal belief in actual witches (though it’s taken a surprisingly long time; apparently Elizabeth Johnson Jr, condemned in 1693 in the Salem Witch Trials, has only just been exonerated thanks to a bunch of eighth graders) but the idea of them retained its power and outlived the bad press that religious fanaticism threw on them.

In time, witches shifted away from their association with the devil, and were reconfigured a little into something more fanciful, as suitable for children: Roald Dahl’s The Grand High Witch, L. Frank Baum’s The Wicked Witch of the West, C.S. Lewis’s The White Witch... still evil, but not in thrall to Lucifer (and of course, Oz contained at least two good witches). Clearly based on fairy tale characters that preyed upon the likes of Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel and other winsome heroines and lost children, these witches were bad, but not overwhelmingly scary, and clearly designed to thrill young readers.  

But then with the feminist revolution came a massive sea change in the way society perceived women, in real life and in fiction, and the concept of the witch underwent another significant retool. Reluctant to reject the undeniable appeal of the witch as a narrative conceit, but still vaguely concerned at the implications of a powerful woman with mystical abilities, the female characters in question were portrayed as essentially good people... but with strict limitations.

This is best seen in 1958’s Bell Book and Candle (based on the 1950 stage play) which maintains the sexual allure and magical powers of your standard witch, but ultimately reveals that she cannot keep these things in order to have a normal and happy life. Gillian Holroyd is an African art dealer, Bohemian beatnik, and secret witch, with several of the “old school rules” in place when it comes to her true nature: she cannot cry or blush, she has a cat familiar, and if she was to ever fall in love, she’d lose all her magical power.

There’s something dark and dangerous and unknowable about her, so naturally she must be tamed and domesticated... by James Stewart, no less. By the time the credits roll she’s traded in her African art collection for a sea-shell boutique, her slinky beatnik outfits for a yellow summer dress, and no longer has the cat or the capacity to cast magic spells, planning instead to live happily ever after with a fusty middle-aged publisher.

Love wins and man it’s depressing.

By today’s standards we blanch at everything about this: essentially that the cost of love is a woman’s power, freedom and identity (and fashion sense, apparently). Yet it’s a fascinating film in one regard, in that it very much exists as the transition point between the wicked witch and the modern witch, with an emphasis on the delicate balancing act between the two in regards to how power is wielded.

The film was the inspiration for the TV sitcom Bewitched, which works with a similar but much lighter premise: on her wedding night Samantha reveals to her husband Darrin that she’s a witch, and subsequently promises him that she’ll try to suppress her powers and live a normal life.

Naturally it’s all played for laughs when it becomes clear living a normal life is impossible, as Samantha’s magic obviously informs the very crux of every episode’s plot, but the subtext of Bell Book and Candle is still there: Samantha must at least try to give up her innate magical abilities in order to enjoy domestic, suburban life. And... for a guy like Darrin? For the life of a housewife? As this review for Practical Magic (the one that inspired me to throw together this post in the first place) puts it:

Movies about girl witches, like genteel collections of women's erotica, always seem to promise more than they deliver. The premise hints at adventure, perhaps even danger, but the results are, more often than not, so coy, so bland, so nice. Pop culture broke out in a rash of witches in the '60s, most notably Samantha Stevens of the TV series Bewitched, who, like Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock), the heroine of Griffin Dunne's Practical Magic, just wanted to be "normal." Though she possessed all sorts of supernatural powers, Sam preferred to live in the suburbs with her anal-retentive drip of a husband, ghost-writing his ad slogans for rug cleaner and peanut butter.

It’s a fantastically heightened version of the “career or a man” decision, except in this case, said career is an innate part of who that woman actually is.

This troublesome subtext was clearly not lost on writers, and the natural connotations that witchcraft has with feminism and women’s empowerment clearly weighed heavily on various creative minds as the decades went by, reaching peak anguish by the nineties. How to celebrate powerful women and write witch-related stories without scaring anyone? How do you reconcile the magical, empowerment angle with the horror of a woman wielding hard power?

Based on what I’ve watched over the years, the solution seems to be twofold: firstly, that the female-characters-who-happen-to-be-witches will predominately exist in frothy, lightweight entertainment, and secondly, that their concerns will be largely low-stakes in nature. We will never see a modern witch use her power to pursue a career in politics, or get one over her ruthless business opponents, or travel the world to fight corruption.  There will be the occasional exorcism of an evil spirit, but for the most part magic exists for the sake of silly hijinks and attracting a man.

To quote the review again:

Like the rest of this new breed of witch story, it's about sisterhood instead of the supreme allure of housewifery, but like all too many witch movies (old and new), it's really just a self-congratulatory paean to banality and shrunken horizons... Now, if someone wants to make a movie in which a bunch of female relatives spend a lot of time in the kitchen stirring pots, handing down timeless, earthy wisdom and bonding, I say fine: Call it something like Home Cookin' and I'll gladly stay away. Why, though, if this is your goal, make a witch movie? Why go to all the trouble of giving your heroine mysterious powers if the grandest dream she can come up with is running her own bath shop? Perversely, it seems the whole point of making Sally powerful is to reassure us that she's never going to do anything interesting with her power.

Reflections of a sad witch who can't do anything.

And look – I love most of the witch-related media of the nineties, but this person has a point. Practical Magic’s Sally Owens is repeatedly described as a gifted witch, and yet never does anything particularly interesting or ambitious with her powers – that she leaves to her wild-child sister Gillian, who... doesn’t really do anything with them either.

Three out of the four teen-witches of The Craft ultimately lose their abilities after being judged unworthy of them, in what is ultimately a cautionary tale about not letting power go to your head, (though not before thrilling us with a depiction of what teenage witches would accurately do with magical powers, which is seek vengeance on bullies and get rich by killing abusive stepdads) and though I’m not as familiar with either iteration of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the Melissa Joan Hart version definitely falls under the “teenage sitcom” umbrella, in which the stakes are pretty much non-existent (I picked an episode synopsis at random and got this: “A bored Hilda gives up the violin and impulsively purchases a magic clock shop.”)

And the Charmed sisters operated very much as superheroes: tasked with protecting the innocent and cautioned heavily against ever using their abilities for self-gain. Which naturally sucks all the fun out of having preternatural gifts in the first place. Gotta keep those fetters in place!

Yes, I have outlined all this in the broadest of broad strokes. Rest assured, a blog read by approximately eight people is the only place I would ever post an argument as generalized as this one. And I’ve left some massive holes, from I Married a Witch (1942) to The Good Witch (2015 –) which would certainly add more context to the evolution of fictional witches that I’ve outlined here.

BUT it was still interesting to pick up on this narrative thread woven throughout the range of movies and television I watched in October: a cultural fascination with subject of witches that went hand-in-hand with the careful hedging of women’s powers due to the innate fear of what they might do with them. No matter how often writers trill about how they’ve written strong and empowered female characters, you can bet no small amount of money that they’ll lose their nerve eventually – especially if said female characters are imbued with hard power.

Nancy Downs had to end her story strapped to that hospital bed, the Halliwells got instant karmic retribution if they so much as thought of self-gain (to the point where using their powers to make a man step in dogshit after he repeatedly let his dog defecate on their lawn ended up escalating into a Bad Future where massive witch hunts cost the lives of thousands) and other “good” witches aren’t permitted be interested in anything more important than their love lives.

Back to that review:

"There's a little bit of witch in every woman," reads the pandering tag line for Practical Magic, flattering its female target audience by suggesting that they're invested with a vague glamour sheerly by virtue of being born with double-X chromosomes. If our lives are a little dull and our imaginations stunted, well, that's how we want it. Even if we could command spirits, test the line between good and evil and explore the universe -- even in the fantasy world of the movies -- we'd still choose to potter around the house baking cookies, giggling with our sisters and helping Darrin write ad copy. Maybe, if we were really naughty, we'd have a youthful fling with a swarthy stranger, but mostly we're just content to be the super-special, magical, feminine creatures we are. Maybe there is a little bit of witch in every woman -- but wouldn't it be fun if there were a lot more?

So I guess the point to my ramblings is to ask the question: what more could we have? What would that look like?

How about a witch who uses her magical abilities to advance her career or to start her own business (a big business, not a delivery service, however much I love Kiki)? Maybe a witch who uses her power to karmically punish guilty parties who have managed to evade court justice – corrupt politicians and others in positions of power – in which the impetus of good behaviour is on the assholes instead of the heroes for a change?

A single witch who travels the world without the slightest interest in bagging a man, or a world in which witches don’t have to live in secret but can instead be revered and respected members of open society (think of what Hermione Granger could have done in office!) How about a witch who uses her gifts to get ahead in life and it’s not considering “cheating” any more than a gifted athlete or trust fund baby or mathematical genius using their natural gifts is? A witch who is just unfettered?

Because the crazy thing about the anxiety surrounding the portrayal of women with magical power is that... witches aren’t real! You could put anyone of my ideas up on the screen and it’s not like it would inspire women to harness their own magic and actually do any of this stuff.

Because that seems to be the underlying fear behind our collective dread of witches: what a woman might do with power if she actually had it; a fear so great we apparently can’t even have fictional stories about women enjoying the simple act of having power without it being depicted as harmless, limited or eventually taken away.

Am I right? Wrong? Any thoughts? Seriously, I wrote this in twenty minutes so I’m very open to being challenged, as this theory is still in its half-formed stage.