Must Be The Season of The Teen Witch
Scorpio Season starts October 23–24…
which means Halloween is around the corner!
Our love of October is punctuated by films that have emphasized the very culture in which Halloween thrives: monsters, mystery and, above all, magic. Witches, of course, take the cake for our favorite Season-adjacent archetype. Ranging from horror to comedy (or a combo of both), screen representations as both heroine and hellfire reveal varied societal perspectives on the witch… or even just about women in general.
In horrid cliches, a 1956 TIME article claimed “witch types or ‘loathsome women’ can be found just about anywhere in modern life”, implying the term “witch” itself was interchangeable with an “evil” or “difficult” woman. Women who simply stood up for themselves were witches. The piece goes on to say that witches hate men and hate having sex with them, so sapphic sarcastics were definitely seen as witches. Any woman who simply did not have an insane zest for feminine social expectations or took the trash out of her life, through necessity or desire, could be slapped with the label. Her actual connection to magic and healing mattered not. However, one aspect of the article’s sexist “witch” cliches of rang true:
“In the eyes of Jungian psychologists, to many of whom the whole world of demons…