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"CHARMED"
Editorial by Azzrielle
I just watched the premiere, on the WB, of the new Spelling series, "Charmed." The premiere episode, for those of you who don't actually read the TV Guide, was titled "Something Wicca This Way Comes."
I guess this isn't really a review. I guess I don't think a review is really necessary. I mean, we're talking Shannon Doherty here. We're talking Alyssa Milano. We're talking Aaron Spelling, for God/dess sake. If you didn't already know that we're also talking mass-market, teen-appeal, lowest-common- denominator entertainment here, you need to do more than read a few paragraphs from me.
So why bother? Why spend the bandwidth? Well, for one thing, because I know a lot of my pagan/wiccan confreres will. Spend the emotional bandwidth, anyway. We tend to get all het up about simplistic, sensationalized synopses of our spiritual orientation. And why not? Simplification, sensationalization - these things are demeaning. They're all about belittlement - about collapsing layers of meaning, nuances, differences, subtleties, in short all the things that make a belief system beautiful, and valuable, into a homogenous, easily digestible lump. The TV Dinner of the Spirit.
So, be upset. I'm upset. A little. It's upsetting. But let's also be fair. And, most importantly, let's be practical. Fair, in that it's important to realize that we're not the only ones who get demeaned in this way. Anything that really matters to one person is another person's comedic monologue fodder. We see slurs on paganism, and wicca, because that's what we're looking for. That's the place where our Persecution Button lies. As a woman, I notice all the ways in which Womanhood is demeaned by the popular media. As an Artist, I see the ways in which The Arts are attacked as the province of elitist intellectuals, and thus made dismissable. As a person who is childless by choice, I tend to key in to the underlying contempt some people have for those of us who are "too selfish" or "too cowardly" to breed.
And those are just my own personal perspectives. The flip side of all of the above is also true.
So, be fair. Realize we don't have a monopoly on being ridiculed. On being misunderstood. We don't get to control the way other people choose to see us. We can control the way we see ourselves, and the way our actions reflect our self-perceptions. A flood of Wiccan protest every time someone uses the word in a less-than-perfectly-PC way doesn't speak well of us. Makes us seem a little too humorless, perhaps. A little too eager to see persecution behind every bush. Might make someone wonder what we get, what we gain, by feeling so attacked. Some perverse sort of glamour? Is it a way to add a little extra meaning to our lives - a crusade, if you will?
I would wonder that, if I were on the outside looking in. I've wondered that about friends who say all the same things, see slights, innuendo, and undermining blasphemy everywhere they turn, and who are Christian. It makes me wonder what about their faith isn't sustaining them. What about their faith is letting them down.
The answer isn't to scream "foul" everytime someone presents our kind in a less-than-flattering light. And here is where the "let's be practical" part comes in. The answer (at least in part) is to present a counter-argument. To create art, and, yes, even entertainment, infused with and informed by the pagan perspective. Put some positive models out there to counteract the negative ones. And yes, I know the positive models are out there. So make more. As we enrich our communities, our schools, our neighborhoods, as we fill gallery walls and bookstore shelves and wooden stages with images of Life as seen through pagan filters, we build the only defense against the Spelling-ization of paganism. It's not enough to say "this is crap." We have to show people why.
It's not enough to say "that isn't true." We have to show people what is.
Oh yeah. The show. The neatest way to end this would be to say "it's crap." That's what they call, in the comedy business, a "call-back." But the truth is, it isn't. I didn't even find it offensive. Just trite.
Three San Fran hotties, lots of bare midriffs, an old Victorian house with secrets in the attic. Thunder and lightning. All the clichés are there. Not to mention the music that plays over the titles - from the soundtrack of the movie "The Craft." The dramatic tension, apparently, is to be maintained by a sort of "superhero" premise: Bred through generations, as the result of the dying prophesy of their witch ancestress as she burned at the stake, these three sisters (Piper, Pru and Phoebe, how cute is that?) are "The Charmed Ones", "the most powerful witches the world has ever seen", and must fulfill their roles as the "protectors of the innocent". It seem that there are good witches and evil witches. (Witchcraft, by the way, is not a religion. More like a genetic mutation.) The evil witches are "warlocks" and they hunt down witches and kill them to steal their power.
So what we've got here is a sort of supernatural Charlie's Angels with a little of The Highlander thrown in. Trite. Trendy. Pablum. Find that offensive, if you will. But it's hard to be offended on behalf of Wicca. This show has very little to do with that.
