From the examples I have seen in the present, the figure of
the witch is used to show good and bad morals of a person through magic. The
witch today I think is seen as more of a “character” or a symbol not so much as
a sexual or deviant person that lives the everyday person. The witch is a very
typical Halloween costume of little girls, I was a witch for multiple years as
a good and bad witch and never knew or thought of the witch to be a
transgressive human. The witch to me was always just a scary figure, someone
who had magical powers that a normal human could not possess. I also knew the
witch to be a character who could use their magic for good, like Melinda the
good witch in The Wizard of Oz. In
today’s world, books and movies portray witches with more of a magically power
rather than with powers given by Satan.
A good example of the witch is
portrayed in the show American Horror
Story: Coven. In this series there are good and bad witches, but the bad
ones, to me, seem more prevalent in the TV show. I think that this show is a
good example of trying to show what witches were like historically in Europe.
According to Palmer’s chapter about witches, these women were “sexual
nonconformists, prostitutes, practitioners of herbal medicine…” the show of
Coven allows us to see the highly sexual nature of these women. Additionally we
can see that there is one witch who practices herbal medicine as she practices
it two bring people back to life or heal dramatic injuries.
I like how you mention the depiction of good and bad morals of people. To me, it seems that bad morals are usually only considered as such if a majority the suscribe to the good moral path. It seems that during the age of evil witches, the uninformed masses just went off of what ever information they were given about witches. Because religious and political leaders had a lot more push and propaganda to justify their actions or press their beliefs, the majority of people tended to side with what they were saying. This isnt so different in the present. Politics is a great example of a means to give a general label to a belief and make you easily accept it (democrat vs republican). I do not (most do not) do loads of research on presidential candidates, and so I believe most of what ever the majority says about them. In doing this, a Witch can cease to be an ugly source of evil as soon as people change their priorities.
ReplyDelete