I have a love-hate relationship with this movie, I really do. For those of you who have seen it, you can probably guess why. The movie attempts to educate the public (through children...bwa ha ha, corruption of a minor!) about wicca. Unfortunately it does this by making 'Wiccans'--which are apparently some humanoid race with supernatural powers like the Numenor--the good guys, and evil stereotypical hollywood witches the bad guys.
'Oh no, they're not witches, they're wiccans. They're good people who are in tune with nature and us their special powers to heal, not like those evil witches.'
There's a character Thorn, the band leader of The Hex Girls, who is "1/16th Wiccan on my mom's side." Yeah...'cause wiccans are a mythical breed of human with superpowers that are slowly dying out. Thorn's really just like Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, except she's female.
All that being said...when I was alone and starting out on my path, locked securely inside my broom closet, this movie gave me a ray of hope. Not only did it give me a couple pagan-y songs (which for me didn't exist before this movie) it gave me hope that maybe one day I could be who I was and not be judged for it. That maybe people wouldn't hear 'witch' and think of a green-faced warty old hag.
Despite all the unhelpful things about this movie, I still have a soft spot in my heart for it. You can tell the writers were trying to be helpful...they just went about it the wrong way, and may have done more harm than good. But this movie gave me strength, it gave me some great catchy sing-along witchy tunes, and most importantly it gave me reassurance and hope. For that I am most grateful.
I feel the same. The main reason I watched it in the first place was because Tim Curry provided a voice.
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen it, but usually if witches show up in any kind of media (books sometimes being the exception), I end up being annoyed. Or amused. And it doesn't matter if they are the good or the bad guys. It simply seems too tempting to show them as "Ueberhumans".
ReplyDelete(I mean, OF COURSE we are better than the rest and have our superpowers, but we wouldn't want to tell the other poor humans. *rofl* By the way, my super power is to confuse everybody with the things I say. Including myself.)