“i’m a witch, i know things.”
alright i’m going to start by trying to talk about the elephant that was conjured in the middle of the room with some degree of nuance so we can move on to talking about the really terrific movie i just saw that i’m pretty fucking excited about. but yeah i expect i’m not going to be the one breaking this particular news to you, and if i am i’m sorry, but yes bette midler tweeted something kinda terfy and when our community understandably expressed hurt & frustration she issued a non-apology apology. my take on the whole thing is that we’re not so much dealing with a venomous politically savvy terf like j.k. rowling but more just like a clueless, somewhat out of touch old lady who’s doing her best, so i’m somewhat willing to give her a “forgive her, mother, for she knows not what she does” on this one. ymmv, there may be stuff i’m missing, etc etc.
regardless, i mean, i love a movie franchise that stars fucking tom crusie. i can’t give that a pass and then refuse to enjoy this because its star gave me reason for pause. i mean. i can, i can do whatever the fuck i want and so can you, but it just wouldn’t sit well with me. it’s fundamentally different than me deciding “fuck off” to the star wars franchise when they cast two high profile terfs (who were terfs in newsworthy ways long before they were cast) basically within a few months of each other when my star wars fandom was already on a downswing. also, like, fuck, man. this stuff is hella subjective. i can’t really predict or set general rules for what will be enough to stop me from enjoying something. i just kind of know it when i see it, you know?i would say that i wish my witchy media could stop having even comparatively milder brushes with the poison that terfs peddle, but the fact is there’s an unsettling amount of terf ideology pervading actual communities of witches, so it’s no real surprise that some of it leaks out into associated media franchises. it’s pretty damn ironic given that neopaganism is so interested in challenging assumptions and accepting the truths that an infinite universe confronts us with, but in terms of cognitive dissonance about a religion’s core values let’s just say i don’t think neopaganism is exactly riding the largest market share. or the second largest. or the third largest. or (yeah i’d have to keep going for a while).
like, okay, i’m not going to say actual trends in neopaganism are by any means the biggest contributing factor to some of my problems with this movie, they probably have a lot more to do with this being an intellectual property owned by the single largest entertainment monopoly in the history of the world, but there is still quite a bit of synchronicity.
i just. i think it’s really fucking cool that we got a good coven of forgiving, compassionate witches as a counterpoint to winnie’s coven. but the way this is done is… confusing, at best? like, yeah it fucking rules that becca is a witch, but… why is she… surprised by that? she literally had a coven with her two best friends? they literally do spellwork? and like… something about the way it’s presented really makes it sound like “being a witch” is something, idk, exclusionary & inherent rather than something worked at & learned? and although there isn’t any overt examples of that, let’s just say that seeing any kind of metaphorical essentialism in a movie about witchcraft whose top billed star may or may not be a terf is just… well, it’s damn uncomfortable, i’m sorry.
and on top of that there’s the gay tokenizing. i mean, yeah, this isn’t exactly new ground with disney, but i’m still going to keep bringing it up every time. you guys. the audience for this kind of movie is so gay. halloween is our fucking holiday. and having been to salem specifically, so many people i saw there were visibly queer. which, y’know, there are plenty of background characters in this that for sure matched that vibe. but just…
there should be way more queer representation in this than a gay couple watching something on tv that can easily be edited out. there just should. i know representation is more of a macro problem than a micro problem, i know that it’s the larger trend that matters… but this movie’s audience is so gay, so even if this wasn’t something i consistently call out (which, you know, it is), it would warrant calling out.
on the other hand, representation isn’t limited to a single continuum, and it really fucking matters that this movie isn’t as aggressively white as its predecessor. heck, its protagonist is a black girl! and she kicks all the ass! so it’s not all bad news here. i don’t want to lose sight of that.
anyway i’m about to pivot to my argument that this is actually even better than the first movie, so i should probably talk about the things the first movie did better in the interest of fairness. the most obvious thing that jumps out to me is that the original movie felt a bit more halloweeny. yeah, there are plenty of decorations, and i thought that halloween festival was hella cool & all, but max being dragged out trick or treating with his little sister and seeing all the other kids running around in costumes was a big part of why the original felt so halloweeny. i’m not saying hocus pocus 2 failed completely on this score, but it does feel like a bit less effort was put into this aspect and that does matter to me because i’m a weirdo.
the other huge thing missing here is, obviously, KITTY!!! thackery the talking cat was such a huge part of the original movie’s appeal, and i know you can’t just totally retread that exact same ground but idk man! you have witches doing magic that’s much more visible & dramatic than magic is in real life, i feel like you could’ve easily figured something out here. have a talking cat as someone’s familiar or something! or if you’re worried a talking cat would be too shoehorned in, at least just have… MORE KITTIES! or have the one kitty you did have be more prominent. maybe have the protagonist have a cat she cuddles with a bunch before the action of the movie really gets started. idk, man! figure it out!
anyway, this movie does a lot right.
it’s kind of ironic that significant portions of the first movie were actually filmed in salem, while the second film was filmed mostly in rhode island, but the second film actually feels way more like it took place in salem? maybe it’s because a lot of the first movie was filmed on sound stages in california and the sequel was filmed entirely in new england, even if it was a different part of new england. i’m not sure. but yeah, anyway, the sequel felt a lot more authentically salemy than the original.
this is gonna sound like it belongs in the previous category, but it actually belongs in this one, so… another thing that i noticed the absence of because i’m a huge weirdo and whatever is the bullies. and like, yeah the bullies in the first movie are pretty dumb & very much not my taste, but when i was a little kid i think they worked a bit better for me idk, and regardless i was looking forward to seeing an updated version of them here! but also like, this is very much not a core part of the first movie’s appeal, and also it would’ve felt weird & not great given that the protagonists this time are women, so idk it’s probably best we didn’t have this? just, y’know, it would probably be weird if i didn’t mention this at all given my whole, uh, everything.
what moves this squarely into the “things the movie did right” column is that this movie does deal with bullying, but it isn’t with super obvious stock character bullies being very obvious. instead, cassie’s adorable pet himbo had no idea that he was making fun of becca & izzy and he gets this horrified look on his face & says, “i have so many people to apologize to” and just, omfg, he is such a cinnamon roll i love him so much.
finally, i especially appreciate that winnie’s coven is sympathized with without being excused or “yas girlboss”ed. they’re people. they’re hurt people who have hurt other people. and the reality of both the hurt they’ve suffered & the hurt they’ve inflicted are both honored.
i had quite a lot of trepidation when the intro was sympathetic towards them because i knew they were gonna have to be the bad guys, like the movie was going to be pretty awful if it tried to clumsily pivot away from their, y’know, literal child murders. meanwhile my boyfriend mentioned he was worried about a completely different, separate trap he thought the movie was about to fall into. during the flashback scenes, he was worried that the movie was going to try to sympathize with the fucking puritans, which like yeah that’s for sure one of the quickest ways the movie could’ve lost me if it had gone that direction. so i’m left feeling like the movie is kind of like a rogue in d&d, just deftly dodging all these traps.
i’ve been thinking about it a lot, and i do think i probably like the second one slightly better than the first one, though i’m not entirely sure about that and it will probably take a few rewatches to confirm that. i do want to avoid falling into recency bias, and i do think in some ways the first movie was tighter. and yeah i know being a well-oiled machine wasn’t a huge part of the original’s appeal, but it still matters?
it’s like… i think the iconic “i put a spell on you” song/dance number in the first movie is a drastically better scene, but i think “one way or another” is a drastically better song. though that’s not a perfect analogy, because i do like the “i put a spell on you” scene better. i just think when you’re looking at the whole movie, it oftentimes matters more what song it’s singing than how well it’s singing it. a-rank
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