This was ORIGINALLY posted 8/7/10 on the Parawomen blogs by wednesday friday. wednesday is an amazing writer and ARTISAN (soaps and such). you should be sure to check her work out Wednesday Lee Friday!! I've included the comments on the ORIGINAL post at the end!
SATURDAY, AUGUST 7, 2010
Ladies of Villainy: Wicked Witches
Hello and welcome once again to the Ladies of Villainy series. **As usual, expect spoilers** This time around we’ll be discussing one of my favorite evil archetypes of womanhood: The Wicked Witch. Powerful women are often reviled and oppressed by the societies that fear them. I’m not necessarily talking about empowered, robe-donning women who dance in circles on the solstice and create a lot of beautiful jewelry and homemade soaps. No...Today I’m talking about sinister (meaning bad, not meaning left-handed) women who use their magical powers to promote ill will. Wicked Witches can be greedy, vain, treacherous, or they might simply enjoy messing with people and avoiding the wrath of the Malleus Maleficarum. Wicked Witches are proof that a woman can be searingly evil and still get plenty of fun out of life.
Even though I don’t necessarily believe that there was a guy named William Shakespeare who wrote a bunch of plays, sonnets, and miscellany, I must admit that some of the plays credited to him are pretty good. The unluckiest of these, Macbeth, features women of unsurpassed malevolence. I promise, we’ll talk at length about Lady Macbeth later. For now I want to mention the most famous bit of witch dialogue ever:
In the poisons entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Sweated venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first in the charmed pot.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
These last two lines instantly conjure images of witches. Macbeth’s witches, the Wyrd Sisters, are fortunetellers—divination being one of the many powers fictional witches routinely possess. The crones predict his rule as king, while conveniently forgetting to mention that it’s going to suck. When this play was first performed, witches were sensationalized and controversial characters that really brought an audience in. And remember, in “Shakespeare” times, actresses kept their clothes on!
Similarly, the Stygian Witches found in the awesome 80’s epic Clash of the Titans have knowledge of things present and future that elude mere mortals. When Perseus steals the single eye the three witches share, they are forced to tell Perseus one of their closely guarded secrets, thus setting in motion poor Medusa’s untimely demise. Nefarious? Perhaps. Powerful? For sure.
One could argue that the quintessential “Wicked Witch” is the green-skinned, water-hating lass known simply as The Wicked Witch of the West. When I was a kid, the night they showed The Wizard of Oz on TV each year was like a holiday. EVERYBODY stayed home to watch. Even before the work of Gregory MacGuire, I felt quite a bit of empathy for the woman eventually called Elphaba. I’m confident that I would lose some of my trademark dignity and grace if some bimbo carelessly dropped a frakking house on my sister. To add insult to injury, the sister-squashing menace steals her best shoes?!? I daresay many of us would not take that lying down-- particularly if we already happened to have a highly trained army of flying monkey minions at our disposal. Is it really so bad that The Wicked Witch of the West wanted her dead sister’s shoes back? Is “Surrender Dorothy” really as odious a threat as it seems? I don’t think so. At the same time, Ms. Of the West threatened the dog. Sorry, but cruelty to animals is never okay. Ultimately, she meets an ironic punishment--considering that according to Wicca, West represents water. “Can we have this broom?” “Yes, and take it with you.” Sometimes, even badly edited dialogue still manages to endure.
Loosely modeled after the WWotW, Looney Toons Witch Hazel is an all-time classic. She rides a broom, loves being ugly, boils up fabulous potions in her cauldron, roasts children and rabbits, and even occasionally resides in a deceptive candy house. Is there anything more tempting to a delicious youngster (or to carpenter ants) than a life-size candy house? Her trademark laugh has inspired generations of aspiring witches.
Even though I have serious issues with all things Disney, (not really a fan of how many female characters’ stories end with a wedding, while most of the boys grow up to be King. Not to mention that Walt Disney would be right at home in the Mel Gibson school of Judaic Studies. And um…Song of the South) one cannot deny that the Disney company has given us some spectacular witches to enjoy. The Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is a terrifying witch to say the least. Hell bent on being the Fairest of them all, she orders Snow White murdered. When she learns how unreliable her servants are, she magic’s herself an impressive disguise and sets out to poison Ms White with a potion-infused apple. Even with all that dirty fighting, the Evil Queen does not get her wish.
One might suggest that Maleficent, the terrifying Sorceress from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, is a tad sensitive. For the slight of not being invited to a Christening, she curses a baby to death at age 16. Maleficent is majestically voiced by veteran actress Eleanor Audley, as a stylish woman who delights in supreme suffering. When it all comes to a head, she metamorphosizes into the most impressive dragon thus far in cartoon history. Too bad for her, slaying dragons is something those annoying, princely hero types specialize in.
Madame Mim from the Disney version of The Sword in the Stone is Merlin’s delightfully depraved nemesis. When they engage in a Wizard’s Duel for the life of young Arthur, she refuses to follow even the rules that she herself put forth. A pepperpot version of the sleek and stylish Maleficent, Mim’s dragon transformation is a bit less impressive, but the duel scene itself is scary good fun.
Disney villainesses seldom get their very own song. But Ursula from Disney’s The Little Mermaid (do read the original story sometime) maximizes the malevolence when she sings her song lamenting Poor Unfortunate Souls. When she’s not singing, she’s preying on unsuspecting merpeople with low self esteem, tricking them with devilish deals that leave them trapped on her hideous and terrifying wall of welchers. Ursula delights in making people miserable, and I don’t think I’m out of line in suggesting that she might benefit from some undersea counseling to work some of those issues out.
Thanks for reading, everyone. See you all next time!
2 COMMENTS:
Nice!
I need to sit down and read the Oz books. A lot of interesting complexity there. Anytime you make a movie from a book, about 80% of the story has to go.
Anyway, the story on the flying monkeys (who could talk) is that they played a prank, and one of the "good" witches created a golden cap that would control them (it appears in the movie). They were ordered not to play pranks. Of course the cap falls into the "wrong" hands. A fairly subtle example of the law of unintended consequences.
And the whole Glinda thing? "Oh, you could have gone home at any time, but I needed to use you as a pawn in my scheme for total Oz domination! Bwaaa ha ha ha ha!"
"Why, you glittery B-" *Dorothy awakes to find herself back in Kansas*
I’m not necessarily talking about empowered, robe-donning women who dance in circles on the solstice and create a lot of beautiful jewelry and homemade soaps.
gave me a good laugh this morning...