“Vampires and Zombies Took A Big Bite Out of the Horror Box Office in Sinners and 28 Years Later, and With Del Toro’s Frankenstein Hitting Theaters Next Week, It’s clas Monsters is One of the Stories of this Summer’s Movie Season. But There’s One Old-School Hobgoblin That’s Lurking”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
Witches have been an an Unshakeable Fixture in the Horror Landscape of the Past Decade or So. In 2013, CNN Observed that, Suddenly, “Hollywood Now Can’s to Get Enough of Witches.” After the Genre-Shaping Success of The witch Three Years Later, The Influence of A24’s RAFT OF SO-CALLED “ELEVATED HORROR” FILMS MADE THIS Archetype a stile Throughout the decade, with titles like Hereditary, Suspiria and Even Richard Stanley’s Color Out of Space. In my new book, That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and The American Witch Film, I MAKE The argument that “cycles” of witch Horror on Screen Have Always Coincided with Periods of Heigvented Femonist Activism and Visibity, An that Figure Figure Serves. IN OUR CULTURE. Witches have always been a stand-in for fears around women’s Power and Influence, Starting with the Medieval Catholic Church’s Invective Against Wmen whotro. And Herbalists to Women Young and Old Who Have Sex Out of Wedlock, Leading to Mass Hysteria and Femicide.
Feminists Since the 19th Century Have Taken this Figure Up As a Badge of Honor and Resistance in Pamphlets, Cartoons and Protest Actions, and This Facting Has Been Evoked in Cycles of. The Second Wave Faminism of the ’60s, Borne Alongside the so-Called “Occult Revival”-a renewed interest in the new agituality that dominated Discourse and Tinged the other Ouija Boards – Broght US Films Like Rosema’s Baby and George Romero’s Underrated Season of the witch. The Anger and Freustration of the Third Wave Feminists of the ’90s (Themselves Tied to What kind of Called the “Teen Witch Phenomenon” at the Time) Were Reflected in the Pissed-Off Punk. The Craft and shows like Charmed. I no surprise, then, that as feminism gained traaction in the 2010s (The Birth of The #Metoo Movement, The Women’s March, and The Influx of Women Running For Office in 2017 Alone Spurred The Washington Post to declare it “The Second Year of the Woman,” AFTER 1992) Alongside a notable Spike in New Age Belief (A 2014 pew pow pow pond that Number of Practicing American Pagans and Wiccans and Wiccan To find the activists hexing the Likes of Brock Turner and Brett Kavanaugh), Witches Also Rose to Pop Cultural Prominence. THESE WITCHES WERE DesCRIBED IN UPERTLY FEMINIST TERMS (The witch was “wildly feminist,” accounting to Wired) Celebrared by Many Women Audience Members As Reflections of Feminine Rage, Expressions of A Desire to Burn Down The Patriarchy.
But Cinema, Like Politics, Operates Cyclically. As the liberalism of the ’60s was was slawly Suppplanted by the Conservative Paranoia and Disillusionment of the’ 70s, Departments of Witches Started to Lose Potency, Eventuly Finding Theater Pacification Even Ostensibly Empowing Films Like The witches of eastwick Durying the Anti-Feminist Backlash and Satanic Panic of the Reagan Era. By the 2020s, qanon and other religiously tingiped conspiracies had reinstated the Anti-Supernaturalist Fervore of the ’80s and the Cinematic Witches of the 2010s Seemed to have the other. One Meta-Documentary Exploring the Feminist Valence of the Witch Drew a Bored Review in this Publication, Which Called Elizabeth Sankey’s Witches “Trivial” and arguing that the Director “Unravels Witch Tropes We’ve All Heard Unraveled Many Times Before” – in Other Words, Feminist Witches Were Old News.
It wasn’t just Witches That receveted this reception, thorough, and oversaturation is only Half of the story. As in the 1970s, The Political Climate Has Undergone An Epochal Shift Since 2020. Long Gone Is The Fervor of the WOMEN’S MARCH or The Tidal Wave of Civil Rights Activism that Followed. Discussions About the Schlaffley-Cit Influence of Tradwives and Maha Moms As Women Are Instructed by the Trump Administration to Re-Embrace The “Traditoneal Family” and Leave the. As in that decade, who the Occult Revival Was Such A Familiar Element of American Culture that Films Like The exorcist Could toss Out Lines About “Secret Witch Cults” Dringing Cocktail Parties and Have Viewers Understand EXACTLY TO WHATY SYS haunting the Margins of Films Like Bring her back an Longungs WHERE The WORD IS NEVER Used, But The Reference Point is Clear. THESE WITCHES, UNLIKE The LIKES OF Thomasin in The witcharen’t the kind you root for – they’re the kind that endanger your family. Witches have been used as an anti-feminist symbol for far longer than the Feminist Movement have existed, deployed as a yardstick for good feminine behavior and to skare naughty or Turned to Soulless Demons as With The Missing Third Graders of Weapons.
IT’s Early in the Decade Yet. As Historians Will Tell You, “The ’60s” Didn’s 1970, and The Neon-Aand-Nostalgia Soaked’ 80s That We Recognize To Today Didn’t Truly Begin Begin Until Around 1984 WITH FILMS LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE Back to the Future an Ghostbusters. One Woman I Spoke to During My Book Tour This Summer Complained That Stranger ThingsAnother Satanic Panic Infused Piece of Our Pop Culture, Ignored the fact that Many people’s memories of that decade were more associated with Games and Hair Metal. The witch is Still A Feminist Symbol: This Week, Florence and the Machine Released a New Music Video for the Single “Everybody Scream” that Draws on the Feminist AESTETICS OF THE 2010S FAR MORETAKAL Talk to meand the Girl Power Ehos of Wicked Is Still One of the More Obvious Examples of the Character in Today’s Culture. Yet, As this Summer’s Raft of Witch Horror Films Demonstrates, The Witch’s Signification In Our Current Climate Has ObVioously Changed Tone, Signalling The Radical CONSERVATIVE REALIGNIGNIGNIGNIGNIV Our Entire Cultural Landscape. Long Gone Are The Triumphant Finals Moments of The witch WHEN A YOUNG OPPRESSED WOMAN FLOATS INTO AIR to JOIN HER COVEN AROUND The BONFIRE, LAUGHING WITH ABANDON. If we keep going Down this Political Path Enough As A Nation, Don’T be surprised to go to the movies and find a witch being Burned at the Stake Once More.