What is a witch?
The answer seems obvious enough—the pointy hat, the magic wand, the cackle and the cauldron, with a black cat and hairy wart thrown in for good measure. The stock character of the hideous hag and/or sinister seductress who slings spells for a living is as well known in the popular imagination as her fellow fiends the bloodsucking vampire and the howling werewolf.
Yet despite these common denominators, the witch has clearly undergone a number of notable reinventions over the years. From the pagan priestesses of the ancient world to the frightful figure of medieval folklore; victim of Enlightenment-era mass hysteria turned campy Halloween costume.
But it’s the latest permutation of the witch that is the most drastic makeover of all–the transmogrification from hated and feared creature of the night to (of all things) an aspirational figure of female empowerment! To the Modern Woman–that is, one who has imbibed the present day presuppositions of moral relativism, radical feminism, and secular materialism (turned neo-paganism)–the witch’s once transgressive traits are no longer vices to be scorned but virtues to be celebrated.
And so, with yet another piece of pro-witch propaganda set to hit theaters this week (and its target audience still reeling from yet another rejection of a potential Madame President) the time is ripe to put on our inquisitor hats and interrogate the paradox of the witch and its recent mainstream makeover in depth.
A great starting point to help understand the modern mind’s strange sympathy for the witch can be found in the opening narration of Eli Roth’s History of Horror (Season 2, Episode 4):
The witch is a towering figure in the history of horror. The archetypical evil witch is everything mainstream religion tells us a woman should not be: a Satan-worshiping, baby-killing predator who fears neither God nor man. Like all good monsters, a bad witch does whatever she likes whenever she likes. That unapologetic, very female power frightens men and fascinates women. In real life, witches were nonconformist women persecuted by religious fanatics. They suffered horrible deaths for their imagined crimes. Perhaps society's collective guilt fuels the stories we tell about witches who come back for revenge.
Whew! Despite how silly such a hot take may read, especially when separated from the flashing screenshots and spooky soundtrack of the typical horror genre documentary, this stance is textbook witch apologia.
The materialist, atheistic side of the coin takes for granted that the witch’s “imagined crimes” are purely the product of the fevered fantasies of misogynistic religious zealots, while the neo-pagan side positively celebrates the witch for doing those very same things!
The Orwellian gaslighting of “that’s not actually happening and it’s a good thing that it is!” is a well-worn tactic of the leftwing in whom the witch and her sympathizers find political solidarity. They want to live in their cake house and eat it too by being both taboo and tolerated.
And while one could argue that the prevailing theory of the witch as icon for women’s liberation against a cruel patriarchal society was always baked into said cake, it’s something only the modern mind, seeking evermore novel forms of moral rebellion and decades removed from any sort of real belief in spiritual realities, could possibly have the nerve to pick up and run with.
But how did the witch go from loathed to loved? Surely the ancient idea of an evil crone who kills crops with curses and bakes babies into meat pies didn’t become society’s quintessential superheroine overnight. A lineup of potential culprits for this pop culture coverup can be found in some well-known media milestones that helped, each in their own way, to rehabilitate the witch’s image.
A funny, good-natured persona was adopted by the witch in the eyes of Baby Boomers and Millennials by way of studio audience laugh track with sitcoms Bewitched (1964) and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996) respectively. Gen X’s craving for edgy wish fulfillment was satiated with more down-to-earth dramas like The Craft (1996) and Charmed (1998). And while the late 1960s/early 1970s seemed to have a somewhat healthy (if voyeuristic) fear and loathing of all things occult—see psychological horror films Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Wicker Man (1973)—this dread was always tinged with the memory of more positive, “white magic” exemplars like Glinda the Good Witch and her various Fairy Godmother counterparts.
More recent examples of fictional PR stunts include a trend of fairy tail reimaginings like Wicked (2003), Maleficent (2014), and Circe (2018), in which the tables are turned and the literary liliths we all grew up knowing and loathing are revealed to have been antiheroic girlbosses all along, justifying their ostensible villainy and subverting the audience’s expectations of just what exactly constitutes good versus evil.
The Blair Witch Project (1999) did an admirable job of restoring some of the witch’s horror icon street cred but, for the most part, even the most unflinching of witch-themed horror movies coming out of modern day witch-friendly Hollywood contain at least an implicit seal of approval for the witch and her antics.
Take for example 2015’s arthouse hit The Witch, in which a Puritan family is terrorized in classic fashion by an old school, bloodthirsty-for-babies, hag-in-a-hut VVITCH with two capital V’s. The audience, presented with a cinematic masterclass of meticulous folk horror, is reminded in frame after uncompromising frame just what the witch, primal and untethered by cultural constraint, is capable of.
And yet, by the end of the film (spoiler alert), the final girl, Thomasin, having survived the various magical machinations of the titular terror, decides to strip herself (figuratively and literally) of her puritan past and embrace the witchy ways of the very same coven that conspired to kill her family! In a sequence that was no doubt intended to send one final chill down the audience’s spine, Thomasin sells her soul in a literal deal with the devil and concludes the movie by levitating during a circle dance of occult ecstasy. Despite how unnerving this spectacle is, one can’t help hearing the “you go girl!” and “yas queen slay!” shouted from the girl power crowd as it all unfolds. After all, to “live deliciously1,” as the satanic figure of Black Phillip puts it, is one of foundational principles of the postmodern decadent West.
With even traditionally witch-neutral properties like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe catching witch fever, it seems this flying broomstick will continue to sweep across pop culture2 for the foreseeable future, at least according to my crystal ball…
NEXT WEEK: Witch Hunting 101
An amusing and somewhat disturbing observation is how much the actress who played Thomasin, Anya Taylor-Joy, in her various bejeweled and bedazzled red carpet appearances, looks exactly like how you’d expect the character to be after ditching the Puritan dress code and embracing worldly promises of Black Phillip.