THESE WITCHES ARE WOKE
Two new television series haven’t quite worked out their definitions of ‘witch,’ but their protagonists are resisting the patriarchy
The Dark Lord is not good for women. That’s what Sabrina Spellman, the 16-year-old lead character of the new Netflix series Chilling
Adventures of Sabrina, is learning fast.
Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka, who played Don’s daughter on Mad
Men) is an orphan who’s halfwitch, half-mortal. She likes her mortal life, especially her boyfriend, Harvey (Ross Lynch). But her witch aunts, Hilda (Lucy Davis) and Zelda (Miranda Otto), want her to go full witch.
That means surrendering to Satan. And that leads Sabrina — the character was born in a spinoff to the Archie comics and has been updated for this TV series by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who also created Riverdale — to ask all sorts of timely questions: “Why does the Dark Lord get to decide what I do with my body?” and “Why can’t I have both freedom and power?” (Zelda’s answer: “The thought of us having both terrifies the Dark Lord. He’s a man, isn’t he?”)
In other words, the devil is the patriarchy.
There’s nothing I love more than a young feminist. I mean this sincerely — they’re so passionate, so newly stung by injustice, so irked by older broads like me who failed to deliver equity. (“Us girls didn’t have options back then,” Hilda says, feebly explaining why she submitted to Satan. “It was just what was done.”)
In the three episodes I’ve seen, this series both serves as a rallying cry — women unite to fight! — and holds a mirror to the current culture.
Harvey is the ideal model of a respectful boyfriend. Sabrina’s fight with Satan is rife with #MeToo overtones: “A lot of people are facing their fears right now, fighting battles they know they’re not going to win,” she says. And when she says, “The Dark Lord’s behaviour is outrageous,” we know exactly to whom she’s referring. Lit by hellfire, he’s even orange.
The same consciousness-raising is happening on Charmed (Sundays at 9 p.m. on W), a reboot of the 1998 series.
The old version was Aaron Spelling-style sass; this new iteration, brought to us by the producers of Jane the Virgin and The Carrie Diaries, establishes its #MeToo cred with its first sentences: “This is not a witch hunt,” says the mother of the three lead characters, about a creepy professor at the university where she works. “It’s a reckoning. I want him out!”
She loses, he wins and her three daughters get woke to their powers: Mel (Melonie Diaz) can stop time; Maggie (Sarah Jeffery) can read minds; and newly discovered sister Macy (Madeleine Mantock) has telekinesis.
They, too, say things like, “Being a witch is a pro-choice enterprise,” “We have to unite to change the power dynamics” and “Let’s engage these young men in a discussion of rape culture.”
Like Sabrina, this series also refers to Trump as the bringer of evil. The apocalypse will come, a trainer tells the novice witches, “when the weakest of men reaches ill-gotten glory.” In case you miss that, he adds, “It’s your president.” Only by banding together can they stop it/him.
So far, neither series has quite worked out its definition of “witch.” Sometimes it’s a powerful young woman, but sometimes it reverts to an old, culturally embedded definition, in which a “b” could be substituted for the “w.”
Each keeps the old trope of becoming a witch = coming into one’s sexual powers. But they expand that to include societal and even civic power. And the earnestness and desire for change in each show are both touching and hopeful. More powers to them.