Maleficent

   Witches today are no longer the representation of horrible scary character, but turning out to be more like normal people, even nicer than normal people because they have “superpower” to help people out sometimes. When talking about this phenomenon, it is obviously if focus on books and movies that the topic of witch are more and more popular. Not only are there many new novel and movies that focus on telling stories in which witches are helping people and shaping the figure of outright modern women, but there are many reproduced movie that the witch is no longer so evil as the one in its previous version. Just as Palmer mentioned in his article, witches have a “dark history”, but there is a trend from early times that the art piece like novel and painting are focusing more and more on positive side of witches, seen them as normal people with emotions.

    Maleficent is the one that impressed me most. Just like the blogpost intro said, witches today are related to friendship and love and etc. Maleficent is a great example to illustrate this. In its previous version “Sleeping Beauty”, the witch placed a curse to newly born princess Aurora, which is the main line through the whole movie. At the end of the 1956 version of movie, the prince broke the curse and save the princess, they lived a happy life together.

    However, in the new version of the movie “ Maleficent”, the same character is set as a kind fairy that protects the forest. After being attacked by humans, she cursed little princess Aurora for revenge. But as the movie process, she realized princess Aurora brings her a lot of happiness that everyone else has never given before.  Moreover, Maleficent believes that the princess could bring peace to their world and human’s world. Thus, it is obviously that maleficent represents kind witch characters. The kind witches always involved in friendship and family as the value of people.  For class race and gender, contemporary witches seems always cross the border of race, gender and class.