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- A witch is so many things
and seems to have been with us from almost the beginning
of human history.
They embody every single possible permutation
of what a woman can be and the ways
in which women have been celebrated and worshipped
and valorized, but also demonized and misunderstood.
I think that the witch has absolutely embodied all
of those things.
Hooked-nose shrew, malicious seducer,
devilish beast, potion connoisseur, magical spell slinger,
satanic temptress of unbridled sexuality,
seemingly harmless neighbor, or caring housewife,
Halloween character, alone or gathered in a coven,
the witch is a fascinating character
that movies love to use.
- Hollywood definitely didn't recreate the way of the witch.
The witch, as an iconic figure of transgressive femininity
or transgressive womanhood, if you will,
came way before Hollywood ever invented itself.
It came long before film was invented in the 1800s.
We have examples, easy examples,
such as Shakespeare's "Macbeth".
One of the most iconic set of witches,
even though they weren't always played by women,
they exemplify the crone witch and the wild woman
of the woods, the Baba Yaga.
Then, you have biblical stories.
You have witches.
You have Goya's paintings, which depict,
again, the satanic wild women in the woods dancing naked.
Hollywood took all of that and then capitalized on it.
Something that was so iconographic
in American society already and in European culture as well,
Western society.
A figure of great literary
and iconographic richness,
the witch was inspired by historical reality.
It's official legal birth certificate dates back to 1486
with the "Malleus Maleficarum",
a manual designed to fight the devil,
written to be used by inquisitors and magistrates.
- This was a witch hunting manual,
and it specifically says that,
while both men and women could be witches,
it's usually gonna be a woman because she's usually weak.
She is extremely lustful.
She has ambition,
and she's gullible,
that Satan himself was able to seduce her.
This has really planted that seed
that women and the devil have this intimate relationship
with each other.
Accusations, tortures, trials, and pyres,
we're witnessing a cycle of incredible violence
that will last for more than two centuries
and will cause the death of about 60,000 people
in the Western world alone.
- The witch is a figure drawn equally from fact and fiction
and myth and history.
But most often, she's depicted as a woman,
which is basically because the majority of people executed
for witchcraft, at least in the European witch trials,
were women, 80 to 85%.
So that's one reason, in our minds,
especially in popular culture and cinema,
we see the witch as a woman.
- There's definitely a connection between the way
that witches are depicted on-screen
and how women are valued in society.
And in a way, it almost is like a barometer
of how femininity and feminine power is being
either uplifted or stifled or suffocated
within the patriarchy.
Flying on brooms in a black dress
and pointed hat, cinema leaves its mark on the archetype
of the witch.
In silent films or the first cartoons,
like "Felix the Cat" and "Betty Boop".
We're able to recognize the witch and its core symbols
in the blink of an eye.
But Disney's 1937 "Snow White",
the full-color, animated feature renders
this image more complex.
- Disney's "Snow White and the Seven dwarfs" is significant
because it has two important witch figures,
one that's very recognizable as a witch, which is the crone,
and then it has the very first fantasy vamp witch.
She is a woman who is out for her own power,
who is more interested in her beauty and her sexuality
than in anything else,
and she's seeking to destroy a young girl to achieve that.
So you have here a very powerful, beautiful,
alluring woman as the witch for the first time
in American film.
- What wouldst thou know, my Queen?
- Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?
- The entire production was written, directed, created,
from scratch by men.
The original Grimm story told the animators
that the queen had to be beautiful,
but the animators then needed to make this beauty,
this beautiful woman, fit with the modern concept of beauty
of the 1930s so they drew inspiration
from the women of Hollywood, specifically the femme fatale.
They used Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo,
the women who were similar in narrative nature
to what this queen was going to be:
a beautiful, sexy, alluring woman who used her power,
who owned her power, to bring down,
whether it was men or society.
So allegorically speaking,
it is a look at the woman empowered, the sexualized woman,
the woman in her mid age struggling with her beauty,
she works for herself, who doesn't have a husband
or a father to control her and tell her what to do.
And that's the case for the Wicked Queen.
Her power is all her own, and she's struggling to maintain
that beauty to keep her power
because her power is her beauty and that's how she sees it.
And so she is going forward to kill everything
that is in her way.
- Take her far into the forest.
Find her some secluded glade where she can pick wildflowers.
- Yes, Your Majesty.
- And there, my faithful huntsman, you will kill her!
- That is one of the first times
where the witch is more than just one thing.
She's not just the beautiful, kind of cold, mean queen
or the hag in the woods, she's both.
And she has the ability to sort of shift
between the two things at her own will,
which I think is a new and exciting thing.
- Look! My hands!
My voice! My voice.
- This really shows the dichotomy of the two sides
of being a woman,
and either side you are sometimes punished for.
If you're too beautiful, if you're too alluring,
too seductive, if you make people feel too attracted to you,
well, you're evil.
On the other hand, if you're ugly, if you're old,
if you are outside of the bounds of what we think
of as proper or beautiful, you're also evil.
So it really shows how, as a woman, you're double bound.
You really can't win.
Two years after "Snow White" success,
it's now Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's turn
to bring a witch to life.
This time in the flesh, performed by Margaret Hamilton.
With the famous musical film, "The Wizard of Oz",
Victor Fleming also contributes to the depiction
of witches thanks to the invention of Technicolor.
- When they were doing screen tests of Margaret Hamilton
with her costume on,
which was an all-black dress with a high neck
and a black hat, her skin against the black costume
in this new Technicolor,
that made her head look like it was floating above her gown.
And so you might think it would have been easier
to change the color of the dress,
but they didn't wanna take away that iconic element.
So they changed the color of her skin and made her green.
And ever since then, witches are known to have green skin.
- Something with poison in it.
- Another interesting fact about the "Wizard of Oz" is
that it's the first good witch we have in cinema.
So that really broadens the way people perceived witches
with Glinda the Good Witch
who is actually a help to Dorothy in the beginning.
- Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
- But I've already told you I'm not a witch at all.
Witches are old and ugly.
What was that?
- The Munchkins.
They're loving because I am a witch.
I'm Glinda, the Witch of the North.
- You are?
Oh, I beg your pardon,
but I've never heard of a beautiful witch before.
- Only bad witches are ugly.
- You have an interesting visual juxtaposition
of the two witches,
which really reveals a Christian-Judaic concept
of what's good and bad.
And you have the angel, or the fairy, coming from above
that's good, the good witch,
and then you have the bad witch who is wearing blacks
and has green skin and comes from the ground
with orange smoke.
The Wicked Witch doesn't care about her beauty.
She doesn't care about maintaining her youth.
All she is seeking, for whatever reason,
and we don't know, is more magical power.
- Give me back my slippers!
I am the only one that knows how to use them.
They're of no use to you.
Give them back to me.
Give them back!
- Keep tight inside of them.
Their magic must be very powerful,
or she wouldn't want them so badly.
You stay out of this, Glinda, or I'll fix you as well!
- At the heart of the film is this, sort of a battle,
if you will.
- Very well, I'll bide my time.
And as for you, my fine lady...
- This is all really metaphorical.
It's all about adolescents, right?
So Dorothy,
despite the fact that Judy Garland was a grown woman
when she played this role,
she's portrayed as a teenage girl.
And these ruby red slippers,
this color is symbolic of, call it what you will,
female maturity, menstrual blood, anger, passion,
all these things.
But we see that the color red is really associated
with womanly power,
so the power of these glittering, ruby red slippers,
In a way, it has to do with this kind of womanly power
that Dorothy has not yet come into.
She's doesn't understand it.
She doesn't know why the house landed where it did
and why she gets the slippers,
and the fact that the witch cannot access them.
And so we see again this parallel between the young,
youthful, beautiful Dorothy having this thing
that she didn't really ask for just happens,
and then the elderly, ugly, horrible woman,
and she cannot get those ruby slippers.
- I think something that's quite tragic
about the villainous witch is she's often shown being killed
or being thwarted at the end of the film.
And certainly, for moral reasons, of course,
if she's done awful things, she should be punished.
But I think there's a much more subtle judgment
that's happening here,
that so often when we see women who want things,
who have ambition, who have power,
we're still uncomfortable with that as a society.
And so there's some part of society that still wants
to punish her, that still wants to snuff out her flame,
if you will, and that's really heartbreaking.
As World War II breaks out,
reality catches up with Hollywood.
No more fairytales and imaginary worlds.
Rene Clair's 1942 film, "I Married a Witch",
brings the character of the witch into the real world,
making Veronica Lake the first witch next door.
- Jennifer, the witch, walks around a normal American town,
which is what is portrayed here,
and she interacts with your everyday people.
But she's a witch.
So the film really asks the question,
well, what happens if a witch lives in our society?
That is what lies in store
for the movie's male lead Wallace Wooley,
played by Fredric March.
In the film, Wallace sees his daily life turned upside down
by a witch set on winning his love.
- Susie, where are you?
- Hello, darling.
I thought you'd never get rid of that girl.
- What are you doing here?
- Waiting for you.
- But the hospital, the-
- I didn't like it there.
- How did you get here?
- You wouldn't believe me if I told you.
- In "I Married a Witch", Veronica lake is total glamazon.
She has blonde hair.
She's not dressed like a wicked witch at all.
She's wearing furs and sort of silk gowns,
and she is sort of the height of seduction.
- Come here, Wally.
Am I not an attractive female?
- What's that got to do with your being here?
- Am I?
- Yes, yes.
You're very pretty.
- There's also the implication, perhaps,
with the way her character is portrayed,
that every attractive woman out there could be a witch.
There is some magic in these women you desire,
that they have powers that you might not be aware of
so be a little careful.
There is that sort of warning,
but it's not too much of a danger.
But just be aware that every woman is not what she seems.
The untrustworthiness of the female character is really
at the heart of a lot of these depictions of witches.
- She starts the film wanting to seduce men,
and that's her game.
It's her fun.
She knows her body.
She knows how alluring she is.
And that's what she wants to do.
She has no other designs.
But then, she accidentally takes her own love potion
and falls in love with the hero.
But in doing so,
she realizes that she has to give up her power.
- I'm still a witch.
- No, my dear.
Your heart is so full of human love
that I can no longer trust you.
Until you have resumed a more spirit-like existence,
you shall be a mere mortal.
- I've remembered all the spells you've taught me.
Out fire, by Rhadamanthus!
Out!
- She can't be the person that she was born as.
She can't be who she is and be in love
and have her man and have marriage.
So she has to choose between her own individual nature
and power and conformity to society, to gender roles.
- So in this case,
the happy ending is the witch losing her powers
and settling down and becoming a good, happy housewife.
And so there's this juxtaposition between an empowered woman
with magical powers or a married woman who's now living
under the control of her husband.
- It ends with an adorable little girl child running out
on a broom, and the film gives you the idea
like here we go again.
We're gonna have to train another woman
to be a proper woman.
- Jennifer, I told you never to play with that broom.
- Why?
- I'm afraid we're going to have trouble with her someday.
- Oh, that's impossible, I hope.
At that time, witches had to fall in line,
like all other women.
It's out of the question to encourage a rebellious spirit
when there's a war everyone has to participate in.
Women worked the fields, factories, and assembly lines,
keeping the machine running
while 10 million men are mobilized.
But the men at war have opinions
on what's happening at home.
- If my wife works, people think I can't support her.
- Oh, I don't mind my wife working,
but who's gonna run my home?
- It's okay now, but what about after the war?
The women will have all the jobs.
After the war is over,
the women who've developed a taste for independence
and autonomy must deal with the loss of those freedoms
and can't emancipate themselves so easily.
- There was no room for the fantasy, for the imagination,
for wildness.
So the witch films really portray that
in a way that other films don't because the concept
of the witch, the concept of having magic is,
allegorically speaking, a transgressive, feminine behavior.
The women that display that, that are witches,
or believe they're witches, have to be assimilated.
In "Bell, Book and Candle",
directed by Richard Quine,
Kim Novak portrays a very modern witch.
Short hair with a bohemian attitude,
she serves as a vision of independence but also boredom.
- Same old thing day after day, same old people.
Oh, I know I'm feeling sorry for myself, but it's true.
- Gillian Holroyd, who is the main character,
is a witch who, unlike Jennifer from the earlier movie,
doesn't want to be a witch.
She wants to be normal.
She wants to celebrate Christmas.
She wants to cry.
Gillian is purposely making efforts to find a way
to give up being a witch.
- I wish I could just spend some time
with some everyday people for a change.
- You wouldn't like it, darling.
So ordinary and humdrum.
- Yes, I suppose so.
It might be pleasant to be humdrum once in a while.
- Perhaps you'd like to be humdrum with that Mr. Henderson?
- I wouldn't mind.
- The most iconic relationship in the film is
between Gillian and her cat, Pyewacket.
She does most of her magic with the cat.
And it sort of, perhaps,
shows this link between femininity and animality,
and this sort of untamed nature
that's within her as a witch.
So there are these shots really close up
of both of the their eyes bewitching Jimmy Stewart.
And then, the cats purr gets louder and louder,
and then suddenly he's hooked.
- In this narrative, at this time,
for a woman to have marriage and love and a family,
which is what we're told we're desired and what should be,
you have to give up your transgressive nature.
You have to give up your personal power.
And allegorically speaking, that's witchcraft and magic.
- Tears, real tears.
- It's true that old wives' tale, it's true.
That's why Pyewacket ran away.
- You've lost your powers.
- I've fallen in love.
- At that point in history,
women were being encouraged to leave those jobs
that they had taken over during World War II,
when men were at war, and go back to the domestic sphere.
And so in that film,
she leaves her business and becomes a housewife.
So it's clearly a directive that you will be happier
if you leave those trappings of maternity behind
and go back to the arms of your children.
During the economic boom that followed the end
of World War II,
women were sold a new American dream
that echoed the rise of mass consumerism,
a domestic life of marriage and motherhood.
- What becomes important after war is repopulation.
Women are now suddenly relegated
back to being baby-making machines.
A woman is expected to look gorgeous
and be perfectly quaffed and full makeup
and have a pitcher of martinis ready for the husband
when he comes home from the office
and these perfect little children.
And my gosh, that's no life for anyone.
So women obviously wanted more.
And then, I think we start to see,
in some of the narratives about witches is at the time,
there's this, sort of an ironic,
maybe tongue-in-cheek sort of nod to the drudgery
of domestic life.
With "Bewitched" in 1964,
it's television's turn to portray the witch.
Contrary to what the opening credits might imply,
it's not an animated series,
but a comedy that places the witch in a very domestic world.
In many ways, Samantha represents the perfect housewife,
almost at least.
Here you see the average,
normal, suburban housewife
in one of her daily routine tasks,
preparing breakfast for her husband.
- She is playing the traditional role
of mother and housemaker,
and she tries really hard the entire series to do that
and to do it without her magic.
It never works.
So the show really is discussing
whether a woman can actually give up her power or not.
Even if she wants to, she can't.
Of course,
sometimes there are problems,
especially if your husband expects breakfast ready
before he goes to work.
But that's no problem
for the average, normal, suburban housewife
if she happens to be a witch.
- Hi, honey.
But doesn't that look good?
- So we have a progressive concept
that a woman can actually maintain her power, be who she is,
but also have a love interest, a husband, children.
She can be a wife and a homemaker as well as herself.
And so it is a very interesting show that sits at that point
between the way it was and the way it became after.
- Another way "Bewitched" subverts the 1950's family model
is by portraying Samantha as totally on-the-ball,
in control of everything with her superpowers
and her husband, Darrin, being completely bumbling
and kind of a fool.
She bests him at every turn,
and that's clearly a dig
at the modern patriarchal structure,
but not so much so that it's really overturning
or upsetting anyone.
- Samantha's mother, Endora,
and Endora's, of course, the great heroes
of modern witches with her flaming red hair
and her extremely colorful caftans and outfits,
and she's constantly putting down her son-in-law
and constantly wondering why her daughter has not sort
of done better for herself.
If you're a witch, you could have anything you want.
Why do you choose this?
- I love you the way you are.
I love everything about you.
That's the way I like to hear you talk.
Why don't you come on over here?
Hmm, it's a wonderful perfume you're wearing.
- "Bewitched" premieres a year
after Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" was published.
So "The Feminine Mystique" is really talking
about the so-called problem that has no name,
which was afflicting all kinds
of white, middle-class housewives
who were realizing that their lives were not fulfilled
by cooking and cleaning and having children,
and this really galvanized the women's liberation movement
at the time.
At the end of the 1960s,
the model of the patriarchy shatters.
Women take to the streets to make their voices heard,
campaigning for equality and the freedom
to make their own choices about their bodies.
- Well, the main command of course is equal rights,
equal rights to have a job,
to have respect and not be viewed as a piece of meat.
In New York City,
feminists from the WITCH group, an acronym
for Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell,
reappropriate the image of the witch as a way
to denounce the link between patriarchy and capitalism.
In 1972, the Supreme Court extends the right
to contraception, to unmarried couples,
and a year later, legalizes abortion.
- The idea that the pill allowed women
to control their reproductive freedom
and their reproductive function was terrifying to people.
If a woman can have sex without getting pregnant,
what else might she do with her life?
She might get a job.
She might have a career.
She might become an artist.
We start to see all the exciting possibilities for women
in that women's movement of the 1960s, but we also start
to see a very, very interesting parallel portrayal
of the witch in Hollywood as this unspeakably evil figure
and where we really see this expressed most potently
and most popularly, to the point where...
This was a portrayal
that absolutely shifted the entire cultural viewpoint
of what a witch was.
And that is the 1968 film "Rosemary's Baby".
In Roman Polanski's film, "Rosemary's Baby",
the innocent Rosemary, played by Mia Farrow,
is used by her sorceress neighbors
to carry the devil's child.
On a Sabbath,
the drugged young woman is raped by the demon in a scene
that hovers somewhere between reality and a nightmare.
The film then borrows many iconographic elements associated
with a cultism and depicts witchcraft in close proximity
to Satanism.
- She's awake, she sees.
- She don't see.
As long as she ate the mouse, she can't see nor hear.
She's like dead. Now sing.
- 1968 was the end of the production code in Hollywood.
This moral code,
which was attempting to protect audiences
from overt sexuality and alluring evil,
prevented the witch from being portrayed
within the horror genre.
So essentially, when the code was gone,
the field was wide open for the witch as a scary figure,
which she already was, to enter into the horror film.
With the birth of the porn industry,
low-budget feature films make the witch a character
that is as terrifying as it is erotic.
At the same time,
the American public gets access to films
by the Italian masters of the genre,
such as "Black Sunday" by Mario Bava
or the cult movie, "Suspiria" by Dario Argento.
- We have more nudity and more explicit sexuality
and more blood,
and the site of the female body is often this site of danger
and pollution and trauma and fear,
of course, all from a patriarchal perspective.
The figure of the witch is the monstrous feminine
who represents ideas of castration anxiety
and just fear of reproductive processes,
and you have a lot of that in these films.
In 1976, with "Carrie",
Brian de Palma rides this wave
and creates the most famous teenage witch.
The famous opening scene filmed in the style
of soft porn shows the young Carrie getting her period
for the first time.
- A very popular trope is the teen witch.
The film "Carrie" is a great example of this.
This is a power that emerges
as soon as her first menstruation begins.
Here we have a young woman who suddenly comes
into her powers and often, these powers,
they switch on overnight and they cause absolute mayhem.
And this is an obvious metaphor for puberty,
for female sexuality suddenly turning on,
and for, I think, people's fear of teen sexuality,
especially when it comes to young women.
- This idea that suddenly your body is capable
of creating life,
probably one of the most profound acts of magic
that the human body is capable of.
Let's face it.
And that is exactly why, for millennia,
men have been afraid of women.
If you go back to the 1500s,
Kramer and Sprenger, the "Malleus Maleficarum",
the "Hammer of Witches", the witch hunters guide,
all witchcraft stems from carnal desire,
which is in women insatiable.
So the fact that women like sex is the problem.
The fact that women are sexual beings means we need
to kill them, but first let's torture them.
In 1978, "Hungry Wives",
directed by George Romero, is re-released on screens
under the title "Season of the Witch"
in order to attract a wider audience.
Even though the master of horror films is faithful
to the genre's tropes,
the script shows a new original point of view.
- In the beginning of "Hungry Wives",
you see this housewife having dreams of being led
around in a leash by her husband,
being put in a literal cage,
and it's very obvious symbolism
to show just how trapped she feels by her marriage
and by patriarchy in general.
So it's from that moment that we know she has
to find a way out,
and her way out is learning about witchcraft
and finding a new community of women.
And she does that and completely changes her life.
And it's a very feminist film, I would say,
or it's the absolute horror for men to watch.
So in the end, this housewife,
who's sort of depressed about her life,
her children are grown up
and her husband totally ignores her.
He doesn't treat her very well at all.
She killed her husband,
and she's much happier
and much more alive and vibrant.
In the last scene of the movie,
she's just completely transformed as a person
and so empowered from the first scene
where she's just sort of a shell of a person.
And so, yes, her husband had to die
in service of her growth, but in a way,
it's sort of paralleling death of patriarchy
to liberate all women, in a way.
By basing his film on real magical texts,
George Romero depicts the practice
of witchcraft realistically.
For the first time,
the rituals and invocations shown on-screen
are truer than life.
- Blade of steel,
I conjure thee to cause all things as named by me.
Blade of steel, I conjure thee to prevent such things
as named by me.
- Based in the '70s,
we have an almost voyeuristic look into what the witch is,
what the witch does.
What does the witch do when she meets with her coven?
Do they drink from chalices?
Do they tie their hands together?
What sort of strange rituals are there?
And I think that that creates a sort of mystery
for the viewer, not only because they wanna figure out,
of course, it's fiction, it's on-screen.
It might say that it's inspired by actual rites
that happen,
but it's really just that fascination of being able
to see what someone else can do
and almost asking yourself about what are the boundaries
of what I would want to do?
During the counterculture movement
of the 1970s, witchcraft comes out of the shadows
and establishes itself in the mainstream.
Specialty stores, like Magical Child in New York City,
sell powders, herbs, and other accessories
to practice magic.
Numerous esoteric publications also come
to see the light of day, as well as literary works
that link feminism and nature to witchcraft,
such as the work of StarHawk and Margot Adler.
However, witchcraft has nothing to do with Satanism.
Sybil Leek, a star among the witches
of the '70s clarifies this by appearing
on a paranormal TV show
called "The Amazing World of Kreskin".
- Witchcraft, do I gather,
and because it's been distorted is not dealing
with Satanism?
- No.
- Because we're told this, or implied this,
by certain so-called leaders.
- Yes, there's been bad publicity in the Middle Ages.
And of course, a terrible concept that has come through
because witchcraft was taken underground.
And when anything becomes secret and goes underground,
a mystique is built up about it and legend is added to it
and added to it.
And the things that we don't understand
or don't even take the trouble
to understand are the things we're afraid of.
- That's very true.
We usually add on a certain mysticism and an occult,
which is hidden too.
When we come back-
- So people were definitely aware
that there was a real type of witchcraft that was happening.
The unfortunate thing is that,
after the huge occult boom of the '60s and '70s
and lots of horror films and lots of stories about witches
and all of that, Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.
And at that time, we also see the rise of something
in the United States called the moral majority.
There started to be this belief
that America had lost its way.
And the way that this was sort of manifesting was
that women were no longer at home raising children anymore,
this kind of thing.
That was one of these permutations of the evil
that had overtaken America.
This, in part, did lead to the Satanic Panic,
this sort of demonization of anyone doing anything
to do with the occult.
From trendy subject worthy of the cover
of "Time" magazine, a occultism is eventually relegated
to wild rumors and trivia.
What started out as paranoia
from fundamentalist Christian circles will result
in mass hysteria covered across all media.
In the late '80s,
the fear of satanic witchcraft is so widespread
that Hollywood decides to join in.
Using John Updike's popular novel as its basis,
"The Witches of Eastwick" is released in 1987
as a first blockbuster of its kind.
With George Miller behind the camera
and Susan Sarandon, Cher, and Michelle Pfeiffer as leads,
the witch takes the stage once more as a respectable figure.
- They aren't witches to begin with.
They are just regular, typical women
who are unhappy with their lives,
and their solution is to have girls nights and wish for men.
And that is how they wind up conjuring the devil,
'cause the man they conjure is Satan.
He seduces them.
And when they give way to his seduction,
they become empowered with magic,
which is a traditional motif found in witch stories,
which is make a pact with the devil.
They have sex with the devil, and through that,
that's how they earn their power
and they become more beautiful and more sexy.
And that is a very typical story.
- So "The Witches of Eastwick"
is a fantastically sex-positive movie, in my opinion,
because it sort of deconstructs monogamy,
and it shows the power of female friendship
at the same time,
and it's sort of destroys the idea that women have to be
in conflict for male resources, for male partners.
- And so it seems, at the end,
they actually use their power that was given to them
to destroy the devil, and we all cheer.
Okay, they finally got their autonomy back,
and they each have a child.
They have new lives.
They retain the big mansion that they were living in,
and everybody's cheering.
But the very last scene,
the babies go and crawl over to the TV screens,
and there's the devil.
They didn't get rid of him.
He's still watching.
So did they really get rid of their autonomy?
Have they really won?
The movie has progressive elements,
but it really doesn't tell the story of the witch
as a powerful, autonomous woman
that we might suspect it would.
In 1996, "The Craft",
directed by Andrew Fleming, makes the teen witch trendy.
By practicing witchcraft,
Sarah, Nancy, Bonnie, and Rochelle go from mocked
and insecure teenagers to sexy and confident young women.
- I think "The Craft" is one of the most essential sort
of shifting points when it comes
to the depiction of the witch on-screen.
One of the reasons is
because it's also a coming-of-age story.
It's about friendship, sisterhood, the coven community.
It's sort of more a spectrum of motivations
of why these young women turn to witchcraft
and how they wield their power.
- "The Craft" sits at the boundary
because it portrays witchcraft as both evil
and also beautiful and natural.
And one of the most beautiful scenes we see is them sitting
around outside, there's four of them,
and they perform a ritual where they are,
essentially, empowering themselves,
making wishes and bonding.
And in that scene, the camera circles around them.
And as the spell is enacted,
the trees blow and butterflies fly,
and it's a very peaceful scene, very New Age.
And the girls are happy.
And this creates the allure of witchcraft
as something that is beautiful,
something that comes from the spirit,
something that we all would wanna take a part in
- So for the first time you have a portrayal
of teenage girls finding witchcraft on their own,
finding it to be empowering and fun
and, oh, this is how we can get back at those bullies
and this is how we can feel beautiful
when people have always told us we're ugly,
and this is how I can deal with my grief,
and this is how I can deal with my self-loathing,
and all these very positive messages.
We see girls who see this movie and start to relate
to all the things that these teenagers are going through.
Wow, if you're a young African-American girl, wow,
I've been bullied and called names by these racist bitches
in my school too.
- Oh, God, look, there is a pubic hair in my brush.
Oh, no, wait, wait.
That's just one of Rochelle's little nappy hairs.
- I think that it's one of the first times
where a black witch was using her power
for something that is just as opposed to it being something
that was in service to a white witch
or some other individual in her community
who had more agency than her.
By targeting her bully with a vengeful spell
on her hair, Rochelle punishes her for her sin.
- Oh, my god.
- In truth, witchcraft becomes more about true empowerment
than an act of vengeance.
- She is fighting racism in the film,
and we have not ever discussed issues of race and class
and culture within witchcraft.
It's usually a sort of one Anglo-European angle
that witches are giving us
throughout most of the 20th century.
So in that sense,
"The Craft" is very radical and really changes the idea
of who can be a witch and who is a witch,
because historically, there are witch figures
in every single culture around the world.
- The use of the black witch's power was always
in service to whiteness.
It was always in service to either an ailment, a mystery,
or helping give the white person more agency
or help them figure out something that they needed to do.
So it was always a way of uplifting or supporting
rather than in service to itself.
And you never really got to see what those practitioners did
on their own or how they came to their magic.
Rochelle opened up a whole new possibility
of what the black witch could be in the mainstream.
So "The Craft" was something that kind of opened things up,
not only for adolescent female agency,
but also for more intersectional perspective
of what witchcraft can be.
With the success of "The Craft",
television wastes no time applying this formula
in other ways.
"Sabrina the Teenage Witch", "Charmed",
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" with Willow,
the first queer witch on-screen.
One season follows the next,
and these series accompany teenagers through the mid 2000s.
That's when cinema picks up the ball once more
by adapting "Harry Potter",
the literary phenomenon by author J.K. Rowling.
- In the "Harry Potter" series,
Hermione Granger is the most iconic young witch.
And I think what's most interesting
about her is how studious she is.
And she always has her head in a book,
looking up new spells
and sort of saving the boys around her.
And so Hermione makes witchcraft into really a craft,
a practice, that you have to really dedicate yourself to.
She's not a vamp, she's not a crone, she's not a temptress.
She's sort of this other kind of nerd witch, in a way,
this sort of fantastic new character.
- She's a really great example
of what I hope young women are getting to turn into,
which is people who are valued for their intelligence
and their capability and compassion.
- Stop, stop, stop, stop.
You're going to take someone's eye out.
Besides, you're saying it wrong.
It's Levi-osa, not Levio-sar.
- You do it then if you're so clever.
Go on, go on!
- Wingardium Leviosa.
- Oh, well done!
See here, everyone.
Ms. Granger's done it!
In 2014, another story by a woman emerges.
This time, it's "Maleficent",
scripted by Linda Woolverton.
She will revolutionize the portrayal of the witch
by making Maleficent, the evil witch from "Sleeping Beauty",
the main character of her own tale.
- Disney Radically revitalized the witch archetype
with 2014's "Maleficent".
Maleficent, unlike the original "Sleeping Beauty" Maleficent
made decades before,
is no longer purely vindictive for vindictiveness' sake.
She is not jealous of a young baby
so enacts a revenge because of that.
She has been traumatized and abused
and is overcoming her past.
- She begins as a good character,
a good fairy, wearing browns.
She has giant beautiful wings.
She even flies up to the sky in the sun
and you see her almost like an angel.
But then, during the iconic scene,
where the wings are cut off of her, almost in a rape,
she is left there without her wings
and she becomes, allegorically speaking, a fallen angel.
And at that point is when Maleficent turns
from being this goodly creature into this dark witch figure.
And she becomes this after being violated,
which is one of the many stories of the witch,
is the witch is sometimes portrayed,
especially during this later period,
as being a woman who has been scorned,
a woman that has been oppressed and is reacting back.
So she becomes this transgressive woman
and fights against the patriarchy society, et cetera.
This is the new story of the witch.
- The most powerful part about "Maleficent"
in this film is that true love is between two women
and true love's kiss to break the spell,
a platonic kiss between two women,
totally subverting the original "Sleeping Beauty" story.
So these are women saving women,
and it's a really powerful tale of redemption in that sense
and overcoming trauma and really rewriting the story
of the witch and who the witch can be.
- Hello, godmother.
- Hello, Beastie.
- For Disney to shift the focus to Maleficent,
I think is definitely in the spirit of the witch sort
of bubbling back to the surface in pop culture.
Because I think that's also on the heels of "Wicked"
and thinking about the stories that haven't been told.
And instead of seeing the witch as the villainous
or the monster or the thing to be feared,
of looking for the witch's humanity
and bringing that to the forefront.
Since "Maleficent",
the witch has continued to invade screens everywhere.
Independent films, like "The Witch"
and "The Love Witch" continue to contribute
to this new modern representation.
In television shows,
she finally breaks out of the box via the character
of Queenie in "American Horror Story: Coven".
- You didn't wanna join us at first.
- I grew up on white girl shit like "Charmed"
and Sabrina, the teenage cracker.
I didn't know that there even were black witches.
As it turns out, I'm an heir to Tituba.
She was a house slave in Salem.
She was the first to be accused of witchcraft.
So technically, I'm part of your tribe.
From the chilling adventures of "Sabrina"
and its diverse cast to the reboot of "Charmed"
with the Latina Halliwell sisters,
witches on-screen continue to evolve.
- The witch is a sort of every woman, every person sort
of figure, the ultimate radical, the ultimate revolutionary.
She rebels against all oppressive systems of power
in her own way.
- We're going through this time
of incredible upheaval when it comes to gender dynamics,
when it comes to the messages that we're getting
from the people in charge right now,
and there's a wonderful, I think, backlash
to these oppressive forces.
We're seeing the women's march.
We're seeing the Me Too movement and Time's Up.
- We will not be silenced!
- This is what democracy looks like.
- Show me how America looks like!
- This is how America looks like!
- And the witch is a perfect icon who goes hand in hand
with these movements,
because the witch doesn't take any crap
and she doesn't apologize for her power.
She also is a figure who is subversive
of those patriarchal forces
and she doesn't apologize for it.
And so we've taken this figure that was linked
with female shame,
and we've turned her into a figure of shamelessness,
and we need that right now.