Witches

So here's a random thought, have witches lost their power as villains and monsters in fiction? And by fiction I really am talking fiction as in the stereotypical pointed hat wearing, warty minions of Satan with their familiars, and I'm not about to get murky by bringing realism into it.

Initially witches were up there with werewolves and vampires as things to be feared, they could cast spells, make poisons, summon spirits and they worked for the devil or Hecate or some other deity, and had familiars that could be spying on you. Sometimes they were necromancers and could summon the dead. They were villains, they poisoned people , murdered animals, killed children, fed on children, etc, etc.


Obviously as there were wicked witches, wizards and warlocks in fiction so too were there good ones but this post is focusing on the transformation of the villain witches. For example, the Wicked Witch of the West, as most popularly seen in the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie and the book and musical Wicked, became a stereotype- green faced, pointy nose, ugly, pointed hat. In the book she had three pigtails and one eye and was in alliance with two other wicked witches in an attempt to take over Oz. Her weakness was water and she had flying monkeys for minions. In the book she uses a Golden Cap to control the monkeys, she uses them to enslave the Winkies and drive the Wizard out of Winkie country. She sends wolves, crows, bees and Winkie slaves to attack Dorothy and her friends, she even enslaves Dorothy when she cannot kill her (due to Glinda's powers) and tries to starve the lion.
In the film she is the sister of the deceased Wicked Witch of the East given her a motive for revenge, she threatens to set fire to the scarecrow, has Dorothy and Toto captured by her monkeys and threatens to drown Toto, and tries to put them to sleep in a field of poppies.

For a kids' villain she is bad and scary, although she is not all that powerful, she never completely defeats the Wizard and her powers are evidently weaker than Glinda's, and she meets her demise rather easily. Still the character is iconic and created an image of wicked witches that would last through the ages.


Next the Sanderson Sisters from 1993's Hocus Pocus. They are Winnie (Bette Midler), Mary (Kathy Najimy) and Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker). Three sisters of Salem, in 1693 they lured away Emily Binx, a young girl, and murdered her, using her soul to restore their youth. They then turned her brother Thackery into an immortal cat when he tried to save his sister. For the murder of Emily and the presumed murder of Thackery they were hung for their crimes by the local villagers. Three hundred years later they are restored when virgin Max unwittingly brings them back by lighting the Black Flame candle on Halloween. Unless the witches can get their spellbook back from Max and his friends and create their potion to steal children's souls and successfully do so then come sunrise they will go back to Hell.

This movie is full of familiar myth and lore and does an excellent job of showing a good lot of it onscreen. The witches are servants of the devil, they feed on children's souls to keep their youth, two of them are ugly (and sensitive about it) whilst one is a seductive siren who uses her voice to lure children to them. Winifred is their leader, she is clever and can conjure electricity, Mary can smell children and Sarah the ditzy one can lure them. They have a spellbook, one made with skin that can see, they ride broomsticks, they can raise the dead (in the form of zombie Billy), they can turn people into animals (Thackery) and they are destroyed by sunlight.

The Worst Witch and Harry Potter gave us witches who attended school hidden from mortals' eyes. In The Worst Witch the villainous witches were Miss Cackle's evil twin sister Agatha and Ethel Hallow the heroine's intelligent but snobby, bullying rival who was unpopular with pupils but loved by teachers, particularly Miss Hardbroom. The witches wore typical witches' outfits with pointed hats, had cats and broomsticks and could cast spells and make potions.


In Harry Potter there were numerous male and female villains. Amongst the females Bellatrix Lestrange stands out best. A Death Eater, she is attractive and mad, she enjoys torture and took part in torturing Frank and Alice Longbottom, which led to her imprisonment in Azkaban. She also murders Sirius Black, tried to murder Tonks, tortured Hermione, murders Dobby, kills Tonks in battle, almost kills Ginny and meets her demise at the hands of Mrs. Weasley.
Bellatrix emulates the witches of the older films, the villain, she's wicked, murderous, insane and obssessed with torture.

Moving on to witches who seem caught between good and bad, Practical Magic and The Craft are the best examples I can think of.


Pratical Magic is a 1998 movie based on a book by Alice Hoffman and starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as witch sisters Gillian and Sally. Sally tries to hide from the fact that she is a witch despite her and her children being painted as cursed and witches by the town. She does not use her powers and believes the family curse led to the death of her husband. Gillian is the wild rebel of the family, she left the town out of boredom and became involved in an abusive relationship.
Also featured are their aunts Frances and Bridget who try to guide the sisters but abandon them to deal with their biggest mess when it is kept from them.
The plot features Sally falling in a love with a man she dreamed up as a child and Sally accidentally kills him with belladonna in his tequila. They resurrect him with a forbidden spell from a spell book and kill him again when he attacks Gillian. He's not gone though and he haunts the house and possesses Gillian.
The aunts return, Sally accepts what she is and asks the townspeople to help her form a coven to save Gillian, which they succeed in doing.
There's not a lot of witchcraft in this movie, the aunts are the most traditional about it whilst Sally's is rarely seen due to her avoidance of it and Gillian's is reserved to mischief and gimicks. The biggest display of it is the resurrection of Jimmy.
Gillian comes across as wavering between being a good witch and a bad witch, she's not evil but she is reckless, careless and selfish and involves her sister in dark magic despite knowing the risks.


The Craft is a 1996 teen flick about teenaged witches starring Robin Tunney, Rachel True, Fairuza Balk and Neve Campbell. Sarah is a suicidal teen who moves house with her dad and stepmother and joins a new school where she is befriended by Bonnie, Nancy and Rochelle when Bonnie realises that Sarah is a witch like them and they need a fourth member to complete their group and strengthen their power.
Things go from bad to worse when the girls bring about the death of a man hassling Sarah by willing his death, and when Sarah's attempts to make student Chris fancy her turn into in a creepy stalker, Rochelle causes a racist to go bald and Nancy brings about the death of her wicked stepfather, and later kills Chris after he tries to rape Sarah.
The girls turn on Sarah when she believes they have gone to far, taunting her with illusions and dreams, trying to make her believe her father has died and then trying to convince her to kill herself before Nancy slices her wrists for her. Sarah eventually defeats them and heals herself. As a result Nancy goes mad and is committed.
The film decently deals with magic in different forms as it is the main plot of the movie and brings in the brief character of Lirio, an owner of an occult shop they try to steal of who is a good witch who tries to guide Sarah.
All of the witches waver between good and bad, intentionally willing about people's deaths and becoming obssessed with their powers to the point of turning on their own friend and trying to kill her.
Nancy is the worst as she is the most obssessed with power and brings about three deaths intentionally. Eventually this power drives her to madness.
The girls are a decent portrayal of a modern coven that is a stereotypical gothic teen vehicle.

Reading, reading

Finally finished the complete collection of The Brothers Grimm, 845 pages it includes 200 stories, and 10 short 'Legends', which have religious tones to them, with some illustrations by Arthur Rackham. It was indeed a lengthy but fascinating read, I certainly didn't love all the fairy tales but most of them and it was interesting seeing some of the more obscure ones though tiresome when tales tended to repeat themselves with very similar elements such a woman whose fiance has forgotten her and wears three dresses when she tries to win him back of the sun, moon and stars, numerous glass mountains, men murdered trying to impress princesses and so forth, but then it is no surprise that fairytales do share common elements with one another as they were retold by numerous people and throughout the globe.

Also, reading up on Norse myths, having just finished covering Greek, Roman and Gaelic briefly, and I'm also reading some short Steampunk stories and the long but epic A Dance With Dragons by George R.R Martin.

So much to read so little time! Still keeping up with manga via Sailor Moon, Pokemon Adventures and Darren Shan, have to finish off Death Note at some point and get some more Nana, of course who has the money lol?

Still watching Xena, I love that show, always have and always will it has the right mix of humour, action, adventure and tragedy. I have to admit though I do prefer the more humerous episodes and the more characters involved the better, plus (on Season 3) it's a little strange how Gabrielle's birth of Hope and traumatic rape by some strange demonic god is pretty much forgotten in the following episodes, and yes I know the series comes back to it, ending on a tragic note but still, they are quick to move focus off the serious tone but then again, I suppose after say 2 or 3 notes of a serious, traumatic overtone some comedy is very much needed.

Loved The King of Assassins (Joxer and Autolycus in an episode!) Especially since it also had Jett, and Cleopatra, portrayed beautifully by Gina Torres. I think for me she is the best Cleopatra, she's beautiful and yet her appeal definitely comes more from her confidence, self-assurance and charm, she seemed witty, seductive and amusing, how I picture Cleopatra. Although just standing there when there was an assassin in the room ready to kill her was a little risky and foolish. Still, a pity she wasn't in it more as Cleopatra.

Then The Quill is Mightier has always been one of my favourite episodes and one of the most memorable for me, it was just an interesting and amusing concept, if everything you wrote came true and again great to see so many loveable characters- Joxer, Aphrodite and Ares. This show really did have the best sense of humour.

Another show I've been watching is The 10th Kingdom, I can't believe it's taken me this long to actually sit down and watch it, it first came out in 2000 as a five episode miniseries, each episode lasting two hours (it's about 7 hours without adverts). I have to say I've loved every minute of it so far and I'm so sad there are so few episodes and there are no sequels, I think this would have made a brilliant t.v series but I understand it was probably expensive to film, combine that with poor ratings and alas the miniseries is all there is.

It's so funny and clever, with so many memorable one-liners, based around familiar fairy tales, the nine kingdoms are nine different lands with distinctive fairy tale characters and scenery, once they had a golden age when the five women who changed history were in power- Snow White, Gretel the Good, Cinderella, Rapunzel and Queen Riding Hood. Now though, these women are gone (though there are rumours that Cinderella is still alive) and their descendants rule on but the kingdoms have lost their golden age. The series follows Prince Wendell, grandson of Snow White, who is cursed by his stepmother, an evil queen, to swap forms with a Golden Retriever, he escapes her through a magic mirror, left forgotten in the dungeons of the queen's prison, and winds up in New York, Central Park, where he is hit by Virgina Lewis' bike. He is followed by the Queen's minions, three troll siblings (Blabberwort, Burly and Blue Bell) and Wolf (a werewolf she freed from jail), the trolls go to Virgina's home after finding her address on a card with the broken bike, whilst Wolf tracks her to her restaurant.

After several mishaps all of them wind up in the Ninth Kingdom, with the Wolf now on their side as he tries to reform himself, having fallen for the beautiful Virgina. The group includes Virgina's down on his luck, foolish father Tony who, after a wish, is the only one who can communicate with Wendell, who is nicknamed Prince. Together they try to track down the mirror they came through, believing it to be their only way home whilst trying to avoid the trolls and later, the queen's servant the Huntsman.

The 10th Kingdom is a rare gem, not for the younger generation despite the fantasy fairytale plot it has lots of innuendo, a little horror and gore and adult jokes that you might not wants the younger kids to see. It is constantly good fun and very addictive, I have never grown tired of it and always want more. The cast is pretty good, Scott Cohen as the Wolf being the most standout as he steals every scene he is in, with Dianne Wiest on form as the Queen and Rutger Hauer doing an excellent turn as the heartless Huntsman (certainly a contrast to Snow White's Huntsman).

I feel this show definitely deserves a better following, the jokes never get old, the tidbits of fairytales thrown in are a welcome treat and it's definitely an intriguing concept to see what happened after the princesses got their Happy Ever Afters, and of course it's nice to see the fairytale characters all living in one world. I think Fables and Once Upon A Time probably owe something to this show and whilst its good to see how they have prospered it's a shame to see how something so similar has largely fallen under the radar.

I was always aware of it, I vaguely remember seeing clips on Sky One many moons ago when I was around 12, but whilst I always wanted to see it out of curiosity more than anything I had no idea just how good it was.

This show is a typical girl from our world goes to a fantasy world, becomes the heroine and eventually falls in love. It adds so much more to the story though with the addition of Tony and Prince, and the fact that Wolf is not so much the knight in shining armour or handsome prince as a dashing, hilarious rogue who wavers between being romantic and perverted. It has the presence of the expected evil queen but that stereotype is nicely balanced with the queen's surprising past and the addition of the fantastic troll siblings, who definitely brought the humour to the show, especially when discussing Saturday Night Fever. In ways it reminds of Labyrinth and Alice in Wonderland, and it just shows the fairytales don't need to be reimagined as completely dark and gritty to be entertaining. Yes there are moments of horror and tragedy but overall it's a lighthearted show.

Cinderella- The Ideal Princess?

So my sister and I were watching The Slipper and the Rose and we got to talking, and I said that Cinderella is the only fairytale princess you would want to be because she gets to escape her dreary life, is given a dress, shoes and a coach, attends a ball and wins the prince. Snow White by comparison has to die from a poisoned apple and lie in a glass coffin before getting the prince (who is somewhat creepy in that he falls in love with a corpse), Sleeping Beauty in a similar vein has to be put to sleep for a hundred years before her prince comes to awaken her (raping her in one version), and as my sister pointed out you don't dream of living under the sea like The Little Mermaid (well some people certainly might but we never did) and you don't really fantasise about becoming the prisoner of a beast, given that for all you know he might be carnivorous.

Of course it was a lighthearted conversation with loose reasoning but I think it explains why Cinderella is somewhat the better known princess and viewed as the lead princess in Disney despite Snow White having come first. She has a Fairy Godmother, she gets everything a little girl dreams of- a new dress, new shoes, the chance to attend a royal ball and a prince, ensuring that her life will be happy for then on- heck it's what most of us grown women still dream about. Prince Charming is an allegory after all, that prince we all dream of. We all think of a better life for ourselves, though reality has taught us that it is unlikely any Fairy Godmother or prince will come to make it happen, a good thing of course as it teaches us independence.


Cinderella was after all a lucky woman, one who had help every step of the way and whilst it is certainly good to have and accept help too, it hardly makes her come across as a heroine to look up to. She is just a heroine you secretly want to be, if we could all take the easy road we probably would even though it might lessen our characters and keep from us good values to learn and use in life. At least if you go through challenges you know the reward has been earned and is deserved, it's easy enough to have the prize just handed to you but far harder and better to work for it.

Yet it is not as if Cinderella did not deserve her good fortune, she had lost her father, been turned from noblewoman into servant, and been treated ill by people meant to be her family. Although she was really just living the life of a servant, things could have been much worse, Snow White after all escaped attempted murder thrice before the Queen finally tricked her with the apple, and she was forced away from her home and to live in the woods as an orphan. Of course both are noblewomen to start with, Cinderella is obviously the daughter of a nobleman and Snow White a princess, and so it seems that the idea that if they can get the prince we can is a false one, for we are not nobles and nobles, even in fairytales, always seem to stay with nobles.

Of course the prince did not know that Cinderella was a noblewoman but certainly it would have been assumed, she was at a ball for royals and nobles after all and he knows so little about her that he mistakes both her stepsisters for her. Is that really the kind of prince you want? Perhaps if like Cinderella you were so desperately unhappy, bullied by your family and forced to live in poverty, then you would take what prince you could get for a prince is a prince and it would certainly mean an end to your impoverished life.

If I had to pick any Disney princess to be it would be Jasmine- she's tough, clever, witty and funny, never mind the stereotypical attributes of being beautiful and wealthy. Jasmine is not afraid to stand up for herself, she will not be forced into a marriage, she will not be conned by someone meant to be a friend and she will not play the damsel while her kingdom falls to ruin (admittedly she ended up the damsel, getting trapped in an hourglass but that was hardly her fault). She is quick to figure Aladdin out but she shows herself to be forgiving and understanding of the situation, and even when his ultimate betrayal comes out she still understands and love triumphs.

Jasmine's literary counterpart Princess Badroulbadour is nowhere near as interesting, she is a basic love interest, who is naive, falling for the tricks of the sorcerer and later his brother.

Belle would be second, mainly because she loves books and so do I but there is a certain charm about Belle. She is brave, unflinchingly standing up to the Beast on numerous ocassions, sacrificing her freedom to save her father, and risking her life to save the Beast. She is friendly, optimistic and kind, bringing hope and joy to the enchanted castle. And Beast or no who wouldn't want to live in that fabulous castle with enchanted servants and that huge library?

Belle's literary counterpart Beauty is caring and kind, she goes to the castle willingly to spare her father, the Beast is her willing servant and implores her to marry him but she only loves him as a friend, she is so caring towards her sisters that she is tricked into forsaking the Beast for them but upon learning that he is dying she returns to him, realising she loves him and the curse is broken. In one version, Beaumont's, she is the daughter of a wealthy merchant fallen on hard times but in another, Villeneuve's, she is the daughter of a king and his fairy wife but was placed in a merchant's family to save her from the evil fairy who cursed the Beast. Equally in Beaumont's version the Beast was cursed for refusing to grant a fairy shelter from the rain but in Villeneuve's it is simply that he was cursed by the fairy because he refused her seductions. I prefer Beaumont's version, though it came later, as it had more morals and depth to the story, Beauty is easier to relate to as she is a commoner like us and the Beast has wrought his own fate but finds an end to his curse through the love of someone who can see the depth behind the monster.


So, which princess would you like to be and who do you think is the dream princess? Who deserves to be the quintessential princess to the quintessential Prince Charming? Snow? Cinders? Perhaps even one of the lesser known ones, the Princess and the Pea or The Frog Princess? Maybe none of the really possess the traits or qualities one should find in a princess and yet they obviously have something to have endured the years.

Dr. No

Dr. No was the sixth Bond novel, the first to have a large amount of negative criticism and the first to be adapted into a movie, apparently because it seemed the easiest to make and there were legal problems with Thunderball. Dr. No is OTT and as usual Bond is presented as a womanizer who survives on luck more than wit, the woman, Honeychile Rider, is a lot like the movie version of Tiffany Case in that she wavers between brilliance and idiocy, switching between being helpful and hindering.

I don't know why it had such large scale criticism compared to its predecessors when it simply follows the basic formula the previous five novels established, following a cold, confident, womanizer secret agent as he struggles against larger than life villains and woos women who are usually presented as virtuous, virgin like and naive with grains of brassiness mixed in with their vulnerability and a streak of bravery and boldness. Honeychile Rider is naive and almost innocent to the world like Solitare but she has also been hardened to it thanks to a rape like Tiffany Case, though unlike Tiffany, this has not turned her cold to men. As with Tatiana Romanova she does try to aid Bond but is largely still a damsel in distress, and there is always the overarching feeling that Bond knows this girl is just a dalliance and will never be anything more.


Dr. No is a Fu Manchu inspired villain, creepy, insane and rich with metal pincers for hands, he caused himself misfortune by betraying members of a Chinese Tong gang he was in and survived only because his heart is on the right side and not the left, though he lost his hands for being a thief but kept the million he stole. He runs a secretive base on the island Crab Key with Chinese/Negro minions who have their own settlement here, and seem to have forgotten the outside world in a way. Dr. No is a typical madman villain, his goals are lofty and destructive and rather than kill Bond and Honey outright he instead sets Bond through a rigorous course to see how much the human body can withstand and leaves Honey to be feasted upon by crabs. I don't think he was any more ridiculous than Sir Hugo Drax or Mr. Big, Drax wanted to destroy London with a rocket, Dr. No sabotages American missiles and threatens to turn them on the world, and naturally both are working for the Soviets.

The movie followed it closely although they of course changed some things, leaving out some of the more fantastical elements and adding more womanizing to establish Bond as a ladies' man who is a flirt and will have sex even with the enemy (in the book Miss Taro is a very minor character and has no interaction with Bond, whilst in the movie she is the first Bond girl effectively as Bond does not sleep with Sylvia).

One reviewer called the book 'Sex, Snobbery and Sadism', which sounds more like Fleming as far as one newspaper article would have you believe, making Fleming out to be a misogynist who liked it rough basically, if true it would certainly explain some of his writing. In saying that, there's really not that much sex and despite the numerous descriptions of Honey, her continuous flirting, the temptation she presents with her naivety and the fact that she arrives on scene in the nude like 'Botticelli's Venus from behind', she and Bond do not get together until the end of the novel. As for the snobbery, Bond is a classy gentleman with a palette for food and wine and he always has been, this is nothing new to the series, it's just a part of Bond's character and whether a likeable trait or not it adds a dimension to his character. Sadism, well Dr. No is a sadistic character but he is the villain of the story so why not? He comes across as a twisted maniac prompting Bond to wonder if he is bad or just mad. It makes a memorable villain even if he is not that believable.

Honeychile Rider wavered between likeable and annoying, at times she comes across as clever and experienced, knowing everything about the nature of the land and mentioning that she has read the encyclopedias. She is brave although at times it is implied this is purely because she does not grasp the gravity of the situation she is in. Having spent her life being rared by her nanny in a basement and then alone, she knows about Jamaica but she knows little of the world and would obviously been out of place in a town or city, or anywhere other than this island on which she hunts for shells. She was not as annoying as Vesper and her movie persona is pretty close to her fictional counterpart, which was a plus, but sometimes her naivety and her obssession with bedding Bond began to grate. She is a character good for the novel she is in but she will not be missed.

I will say though that I prefer the movie, perhaps because Bond is more confident and humorous, granted in the novel he is bleak because he feels he is being punished for letting his guard down against Rosa Klebb, you see more characters, and Dr. No is slightly more believable in an excellent portrayal by the late Joseph Wiseman.