Tim Burton’s gonna have a field day with this trendSeason of the Witch: Exploring the Witchcraft Craze of the 1990s
For The Atlantic, October 2013 Edition by Iwaia Duckworth and Tern Ewan Tuatode
She’s the symbol of evil and demonic power, or a misunderstood hero. She can be seductively beautiful or hideously ugly. She can be threatening or charming, effeminate or masculine. But she is never, ever weak or helpless.
The Witch has long been the archetype of a certain breed of forbidden female power. From her roots as a simple pre-Christian folk healer, diviner, and occasional poisoner, through her image as one beholden to Satanic pacts and the subject of witch hunts, to her modern empowerment, the Witch in fiction tells us far more about the society that portrays her than she does about the woman herself.
And in the 1990s the Witch became the focus for a score of films and TV series, comic books, songs, and other forms of media, a “Season of the Witch” where the archetype saw its most widespread popular following. But what was it about that particular decade that led an archetype as old as Western Civilization to suddenly become all the rage?
To answer this, we need to first look at the myth of the Witch, where it came from, and how it was shaped by human culture.
Witches through the Ages
The English word “witch” itself is of contested etymology, evolving from the earlier “wicca/wicce” (from which the modern Wicca gets its name), which itself may be derived from any number of old Germanic words meaning “sacred”, “bend” or “move” (like in ceremonial dance or gesture), “divination”, or “rouse” (as in waking the dead). It was associated with the word “hag” (cognate with the German “hexe” from which we get “hex”), which seems derived from fury and damage to fields.
But despite well-intended attempts by modern Wicca practitioners to reclaim and reframe the word to connotations of wisdom, it’s clear that the Olde English did not intend for it to be complimentary.
(Image source Public Domain Review)
Indeed, throughout history and across cultures, the concept of a dangerous person meddling in powers beyond their control has been a common archetype, from Prometheus to Dr. Frankenstein to Tim Harmon in Jurassic Park. And while the historical trope wasn’t completely defined by the feminine (the early wicca/wicce was gendered male/female accordingly) and while the historic practice of “witch hunting” did not focus exclusively on the female (six men were convicted of witchcraft in Salem alongside 14 women, though the large gender disparity is telling) over time the “hag” and “witch” became overwhelmingly more associated with the female than the male.
In fact, it’s fairly easy to see how the traits associated with the witch – power, sexuality, ambition, aggression, unchecked emotion, and a lack of a man in her life – were also traits deemed inappropriate to women, particularly in Western civilization. An unmarried woman who seemed too smart, too confident, and too sexually mature was immediately suspect to witchcraft. Her broom, a decidedly phallic object, became her way of flying unnaturally through the air (recall your Freudian dream symbology). Even her innocent housecat became a demonic familiar.
(Image source Posterazzi)
As such, the witch became the archetype for the dangerous forbidden feminine, a normally powerless and submissive female now unnaturally empowered and emboldened through satanic communion. And the threat of an accusation of witchcraft became the hammer by which uppity, nonconforming women could be slammed back into their place, a Malleus maleficarum if you will.
And the witch in myth and legend reflected this view: a wicked old crone, malicious and evil, usually tricking and harming the innocent. The witches of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales stand out in this regard, such as the old hag luring children to their intended cannibalistic conclusion via a candy cottage in Hansel & Gretel. Baba Yaga likewise becomes a diabolic old woman with the consumption of children on her mind – or the occasional treacherous helper and punisher of the guilty. This archetype came to define the witch for centuries: the old, malicious, manipulative hag who lived alone in isolation, plotting, cursing, and spreading plagues. We see this all the way into the early modern era by way of Shakespeare, whose witches three from The Scottish Play are manipulative Crones who set in motion (or possibly just predict) the self-fulfilling prophesy of the rise and fall of the title character. And this archetype holds true in many ways even to this day.
(Image source South End Echo)
But as the Age of Enlightenment moved away from the “old superstitions” of the medieval and early modern, the witch-as-archetype became progressively an entertaining fiction rather than an existential threat. A story for kids to titillate and shock, but hardly something to gather a mob over (that witch-burning firewood could be much better used running a steam engine, after all). Hans Christian Anderson had many a witch (or witch-like character) in his modern fairy tales, two of whom saw appearances in Disney creations, but these were intended as entertaining fiction stories and morality plays for children, not dire warnings. The Witch returned somewhat with the Romantics, along with other tales of the supernatural, but the actual practice of magic and mysticism became something less infernal and more of an occupation as even educated gentry would hire mediums and clairvoyants to get a chance to speak with their beloved dead. And for most people, these mediums were either helpful confidants or at worst dishonest hucksters, either way nothing to overtly fear as an instrument of Satan.
And this brings us to the appearance of the modern Witch that would define the trope going forward. The Witch by this point had diverged into “good” and “bad” witch archetypes, the friendly helper in the vein of the Fairy Godmother and the malicious menace to be defeated and overcome. And, needless to say, these divergent archetypes took on the positive and negative traits that society at the time associated with womanhood. The “good witch” was a virginal or matronly/grandmotherly figure, often pleasantly plump or traditionally beautiful, but inevitably adorned in bright, pastel colors and an aura of light. Demure, friendly, and helpful to a singular degree, she assisted the troubled protagonist to find their dreams and asked for nothing in return but the chance to do good by someone. This was a character that also had roots in the Brothers Grimm and served in some respects as a foil to the evil witch, but the dichotomy became enshrined in the public imagination thanks to what may be the defining witches of the modern era: Glinda the Good Witch of the North and the Wicked Witch of the West.
(Image source Ranker)
L. Frank Baum’s classic fantasy series defined these two poles of modern witchcraft, and with it the gender stereotypes of the age. Poor virginal Dorothy was given two stark “options” for her future womanhood in the form of the beautiful, demure, caring, and literally-bubbly Glinda the “Good Witch” and the old, skinny, malicious, emotional, and ambitious “Wicked Witch”, who had no name[1], only a sinister title. Their appearances became enshrined in the landmark 1939 MGM film, which took advantage of the new technology of Technicolor to make the Wicked Witch a sickly green, adding subtle non-white racial coding onto the package of undesirable and improper traits.
This dichotomy lived on in other works of the time. Walt Disney displayed both faces of witchcraft in his animated stories, from the dark magic and witchlike attributes (particularly when disguised as the apple seller) of the Evil Queen in Snow White on one end to the helpful Fairy Godmother of Cinderella on the other. And nowhere was this more on display than in 1959’s Sleeping Beauty, where the evil witchlike Maleficent (a name openly meaning malice of intent) is contrasted to the three “good” fairies of Flora, Fauna and Merryweather. These Disney Villains had an additional layer added to them as well, one reflecting of their times: they were Queer Coded. The Wicked Queen and Maleficent both demonstrated traditionally masculine traits and mannerisms and had a more masculine appearance. This was not a uniquely Disney trait, but part of a larger Hays Code era trend of Queer Coding villains, a double-edged practice that on one hand added discomfort to the audience by adding a non-heteronormative overlay, and on the other hand slipped in some subtle representation for disenfranchised groups that have always been a part of entertainment and were as common in Hays-era Hollywood as now.
(Image sources Fanpop and wikimedia)
And Maleficent holds an interesting place in the pantheon of fictional witches, as she would be one of the last major Wicked Witches from Disney for a while. 1964 would instead see Mary Poppins float in to offer good magic to help a struggling Victorian family. Though not a witch by title, she shows many of the traits of the good witch or fairy godmother in practice. And 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks would bring Angela Lansbury’s Miss Eglantine Price, a witch by title who not only used her magic to help out the children of the story, but used it to protect England from a Nazi invasion.
But outside of Disney’s adherence to their established tropes, the Witch in general was becoming a more benign figure in the post-war years, particularly as the midcentury settled in to the “father knows best” suburban utopianism of the 1950s. Witches and most things supernatural were, in effect, being reduced to harmless Bowdlerized fairy tales and trick-or-treat costumes. One particularly striking example of this defusing of the threat was Harvey Comics’ Wendy the Good Little Witch, a child-witch introduced in Casper the Friendly Ghost who, along with Casper and the precocious but non-malicious Hot Stuff the Little Devil (rendering even Satan harmless!), would be a child-friendly fantasy for little girls. Magic was now not a dangerous tool of evil and corruption, but an innocent power fantasy for kids.
Witch stories for adults were similarly demystified and becoming the staple of comedy and romance, not horror. 1950 would see the stage debut of the romantic comedy Bell, Book, and Candle, the story of a witch who falls for a mortal man and uses her magic to claim him. A film starring James Stewart and Kim Novak followed in 1958. Here we see the Witch as essentially another American woman, one particularly willey and empowered, but still pursuing that most proper of feminine goals: finding the Right Man. Bell, Book, and Candle itself follows on from earlier work, in particular 1942’s I Married a Witch where a woman (Veronica Lake) who was executed at a witch trial centuries ago returns in the present day to curse the descendant of her executioners, only to (naturally) fall in love with him. Even Frank Sinatra got in on the gig, with 1957’s “Witchcraft”, which equated the temptation of an alluring woman to witchy enchantment.
(Image source Nerdist)
The 1960s would soon see a dynamic change in the portrayal of the Witch thanks to the rise of Second Wave Feminism. Inspired, perhaps, by Bell, Book, and Candle, 1964’s Bewitched would bring witchcraft into suburbia in a series that saw witches not as evil cronelike malefactors or bubbly helpers, but as a powerful but misunderstood minority. Elizabeth Montgomery’s Samantha demonstrated the twin poles of femininity in the era. On one hand, Samantha was powerful, confident, and usually saving her perpetually-overwhelmed “mortal” husband Darrin using her fantastic powers, brought to life through camera tricks. On the other hand, she lived an appropriately domestic life, semi-subservient to the wishes of her husband. Where Mary Tyler Moore would be playing a hip single working woman in the Big City just a few years later, Samantha, despite her magical powers, was content to remain a suburban housewife and pursue not witchy intrigues, but cultivate Better Homes and Gardens style domestic perfection. And though she was beautiful and graceful, she was also mostly desexualized. As was the norm at the time, she and Darrin slept in separate beds lest audience believe, despite their having children together, that two might have at some point had sex.
This contrasted with Morticia of The Addams Family, who, though not a Witch (Grandmama Addams may be a different story), nonetheless embodied many of the dark, black-clad, macabre, and overtly sexual tropes of one. Morticia was unapologetically non-conformist, delighting in the dark and the macabre. She and her husband Gomez may have also slept in separate beds (of nails), but there was no denying that these two had sex, often, and without shame.
But with The Pill and the Sexual Revolution that followed, the old conflation of Witch and Female Sexuality became increasingly overt. Increasing numbers of popular songs (1966’s “Season of the Witch” by Donovan, “Witchy Woman” by The Eagles) followed in Sinatra’s footsteps and referenced the Witch as Temptress. The sex was always there, of course, sometimes symbolic (the broomstick), sometimes overt (seduction and corruption), sometimes bizarre (witches stealing men’s penises). But the late 1960s and 1970s saw the sexuality of the witch reappear, and often get weaponized. This was particularly true in the 1970s in the era of the Exploitation film. Satan returned to the story big time, with his evil seductresses now overt satanic sexpots. These films weren’t subtle (1973’s Blood Orgy of the She Devils comes to mind). Beautiful young women made pacts with Satan and then devolved into machines of sex and evil. Sometimes a man could save them, sometimes at the cost of being cursed himself.
In fact, the ironic inspiration for this article’s title alongside the 1996 song by Donovan is George Romero’s Season of the Witch from the same year. Though marketed by Romero as “feminist”, it was so full of gratuitous sex that the distributers briefly renamed it Hungry Wives and marketed it as soft-core porn!
Witches were everywhere in the 1970s, and with the exception of the very much “old fashioned” Bedknobs and Broomsticks (whose title would ironically fit well among the various “Witchspoitation” titles of the time), they were scary and sexy. It was a strange mix of the “modern” for the era and the very old fashioned. Witches were again dangerous symbols of destructive female power and sexuality, and can easily be seen as a reaction to the confluence of the Sexual Revolution and Second Wave Feminism, or “Women’s Lib” as it was known at the time. And in the case of Witchspoitation and other exploitation films of the era, “Lib” could be said to stand for “libido”.
And yet the Sexy Witch was a double-edged sword itself, for while the confluence of Female Sexuality and Female Empowerment can be problematic for many, the Witchspoitation films did cement the trope of Witchcraft = Female Empowerment that led directly to the “Season of the Witch” that was the 1990s.
In the 1980s, witches and women of magic in general largely disappeared, save for seeing the established good/bad witch tropes appear in fantasy films. For example, 1988’s Willow saw a Good Witch in Fin Raziel and a Bad Witch in Queen Bavmorda, though the following three films would be more nuanced. 1988's Hocus Pocus also introduced a trio of Wicked Witches tied to Satan, though in the form of a PG-rated comedy. Instead, the one Witch Film that would leave a cultural mark, and one that represents an interesting transition piece between the 1970s Witchspoitation and the 1990s Witch Boom, would be 1987’s The Witches of Eastwick. The behind-the-scenes drama as producer John Peters clashed with director Penny Marshall reflect in the final product of a film that is on one hand a fallback to witch-as-sexy-devil and on the other hand an overt female empowerment narrative. An entire article could be written on the gender attitudes and gender politics of the era represented in this film alone and the ironic juxtaposition between the two poles. But for the sake of this article, you have in this film effectively a handing of the baton from the 1970s to the 1990s, which shows elements from both eras.
But before we dive fully into the 1990s, let’s talk about a trope that largely came to define it: the Teen Witch, where witchy power stood in as a metaphor for puberty. The first major appearance of a teenage witch was, of course, the Archie animated series and comic Sabrina the Teenage Witch from 1970/71. It was, well, Archie with Magic, to be blunt. Sabrina first appeared in a 1962 issue of Archie’s Madhouse and largely reflects the strangely-stuck-in-the-‘50s aesthetics and values of Archie. She’s a “half-witch” born of witch and mortal, making her practically a stealth sequel, “Bewitched: The Next Generation”. But in the vein of Wendy the Good Little Witch, Sabrina at this stage was really a coming-of-age story that happened to have magic, more as metaphor and plot device than anything else. And like with Bewitched, she must hide her powers from the rest of her classmates at Riverdale High, making it a bit of an unintended Closet Story. Devoid of sex beyond the most chaste of the “hearts, hugs, and kisses” romance endemic to Archie, this original Sabrina is in many ways a bit of an odd supernatural non-sequitur in the otherwise mundane world of Archie, something on par with Mork in the Happy Days universe and The Great Gazoo in The Flintstones.
A child-then-teen-witch would appear in young adult fiction in 1974’s The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy and its subsequent sequels. The novels follow the struggling Mildred Hubble as she attends Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, and the pitfalls and hijinks she encounters there. It is largely based on Murphy’s own experiences (reportedly starting the stories when she was 15) while attending Ursuline Convent school in Wimbledon, England, and is in many respects a school days tale that adds in the fun and chaos of magic. It would have a low budget made-for-TV film in 1986[2], but would be largely forgotten until Ms. Rowling released her similar story series a decade later.
A teenage witch would even appear in 1989’s aptly (if unoriginally) named Teen Witch, which was intended to follow on from 1985’s Teen Wolf, but bombed spectacularly following poor reviews and audience reactions. The film would live on as a cult classic and is occasionally listed as “ahead of its time”, though it has never really captured the attention of the larger public.
1989 also saw the debut of Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, based on a 1985 novel, which is a “teen witch” narrative, though Kiki is really exploring areas of creativity and burnout, with her mystical flying power being “lost” when the passion becomes a job. It also has the amusing and strangely refreshing aspect of seeing magic used not for power or sex or revenge, but for the mundane purpose of food delivery. Though officially debuting in the 1980s, it can in hindsight be seen as the first film in the 1990s Witch Boom films.
Which, of course, brings us finally to the Season of the Witch. Witchcraft in the 1990s was suddenly all the rage. In part riding on the coattails of the Goth movement and in part dovetailing into third wave feminism, it was practically to be expected that witchcraft would make a return, not as cautionary tales, exploitation, or normative comedy, but as overtly empowering stories for young women.
The Season of the Witch
In many ways the 1990s were primed for a Witchy renaissance. On one hand you had the 20- and 30-year anniversaries of the Friendly Neighborhood Witch and Witchspoitation phases, each bringing a certain level of nostalgia as the prior generations explored and shared their favorites with their children. On top of that, “Goth” culture and Neo-Romanticism were all the rage, with renewed interest in Victorian supernatural fantasy perhaps most famously represented by the Universal Classic Monster renaissance of the era, which began with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. With vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural things capturing the public imagination, it was practically a given that magic, be that wizardry or witchcraft, would find a niche.
With a growing backlash by many in Gen-X against Evangelical Christianity leading to a rise in interest for Paganism in general and Wicca in particular, Witchcraft was gaining a new, rebellious Street Cred alongside computer hacking, skateboarding, hip-hop, and street art. And ongoing Evangelical attacks against Wicca and Witchcraft, including, infamously, the Reverend Jerry Falwell’s Crusade against Disney Chairman Jim Henson, whom he inaccurately characterized as a Wiccan, merely added fuel to this fire. If the wholesome man behind Kermit the Frog was a Witch, and the vengeful firebrands and “con men” behind televangelism and the Prosperity Gospel were against witchcraft, then was not the Witch the plucky underdog battling against the corrupt “Man”?
But perhaps more importantly, you had the rise of “Girl/Grrl Power” and third-wave feminism. Joss Whedon would introduce the watershed Final Girl TV Series, following on from a deconstructive cult movie favorite from 1989. Fox would release the shocking and headline-stealing Tank Girl. On top of that, the exploitation and empowerment of women was on a lot of minds following the 1990 Clarence Thomas hearings and subsequent reckoning on sexual harassment and assault, which itself was feeding the flames of third-wave feminism.
Like an autocatalytic reaction, these elements combined to make the decade the perfect nurturing space for the reappearance of the Witch in fiction. And even assuming that the Witch didn’t specifically make a comeback in this fertile zeitgeist, something else that met the same societal need would have.
The Bad Witch as villain would return to Disney Animation in 1992’s The Little Mermaid, with Ursula the Sea Witch – the most seriously queer-coded Disney Villain yet – sashaying onto the big screen. And yet this would be a move based on nostalgia for Disney Fairy Tale Adaptions of Old and would not mark the return of a trend towards Bad Witches. Instead, the majority of antagonists in Disney of the era would be male, and often toxically so (such as Medusa’s Poseidon). Feminine magic plays a central supporting role in 1997’s Kindred Spirits by way of the Vodou Priestess Maman Lebeaux, who shows a fun mix of Good and Bad Witch tropes. And while one can arguably also see Medusa’s Athena as embodying Good Witch tropes, and arguably Anansi in The Lion King as well (though this is a stretch), instead, the end of the decade would see the release of a tale that could be seen as a deliberate deconstruction and redemption of the Disney Evil Queen archetype, with lyrics by Sondheim.
Disney (via MGM) and Lucasfilm would continue the Willow Quadrilogy, following a now-grown Elora Danan as she attempts to use “good” magic to battle the mysterious Deceiver, who has all the hallmarks of a Bad Witch, only to realize that the Deceiver is, in reality, herself, making for an odd sort of synthesis between the “Good” and “Bad” Witch archetypes that in some ways presages the 1990s conventions to come.
Instead, the first of the archetypical 1990s “witch tales”, assuming one doesn’t count Kiki, is of course Russel T. Davies’ 1993 BBC series Hecate, starring Deborah Kerr, Judy Dench, and Kate Winslet. It was a tale of three Scottish witches and played with the more-modern-than-you-think trope of the “Maiden, Mother, and Crone”. While triple-goddesses were a major part of classic mythology, including the Hecate, the “three faces of womanhood” was an idea born of the modern era and cemented into discourse by Carl Jung in the 1940s. Still, the idea feels so central and primeval that it is generally assumed to be an “ancient trope”. It appears in Gaiman’s Sandman and, in a satirical way, Pratchett’s Discworld. But for many modern audiences, particularly in the UK and Commonwealth, the trope first came to their attention in Hecate the TV Series. And in many ways the series sets the stage for what comes later, with the plot following the witches three as they deal with modern life while also protecting the world from ancient horrors.
Indeed, this trope of “Witch as Protector” would become enshrined in the decade, and is often credited to Davies, though he defers to Pratchett.
And yes, Pratchett would be the first to claim the big screen for witchcraft in Fox’s 1994 film Equal Rites starring Kate Maberly and Maggie Smith. The story was an overtly feminist narrative rather than the questionable “feminism” of the exploitative Season of the Witch and its contemporaries. Pratchett and Kathryn Bigelow were overtly satirizing and calling out the “systemic sorcerous sexism” as Pratchett dubbed it by openly deconstructing the traditional portrayals of the male Wizard and the female Witch that had emerged in fantasy fiction over the years. It also tackled head-on some issues of exclusionary schools and organizations, societal gender assumptions, and the sexist tropes in fiction that were taken for granted and generally unquestioned by audiences.
Granny and Nanny on the case (Image source news.com.au)
And indeed, Pratchett’s Witches would appear several times throughout the decade and into the new millennium in partnership with Fox. 1997 would see the debut of two films, the Equal Rites parallel-sequels Spell Binding and Wyrd Sisters. The former film sees Maberly’s Esk studying at the Unseen University for Wizards and finding mentorship (amid the continued sexism) from the University Librarian, who has been transformed into an orangutan in what one might assume is a sly wink at the concept of evolution equaling advancement, since the Librarian is subjectively more “evolved” in a social sense than his fellow still-human Wizards. The latter film follows Smith’s Granny Weatherwax in an overt riff on Shakespeare’s Scottish Play. Granny is joined by the supposedly-matronly (but vulgar and hedonistic) Nanny Ogg (Miriam Margolyes[3]) and the virginal (but New Age and hardly innocent) Magrat (Martine McCutcheon). This trio also overtly satirizes the Three Faces archetype (“The Maiden, the Mother, and…the Other One.”).
And this latter film (per the novel) also specifically addresses the “story” of Witches as a means of disempowerment. The Macbethian usurper Duke Felmet even uses fiction in the form of a play-within-the-play as a propagandistic means to demonize the Witches who stand against him. They, of course, flip the script.
Fox, under Chair and President Lisa Henson, continued with Witches in 1996 in the surprise hit supernatural action-drama The Coven, which took the Teen Witch trend to the logical next step. Four teen girls (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Fairuza Balk, Rose MacGowan, and Rachel True) discover witchcraft, and through it find self-empowerment. But they must also learn that, as an unrelated franchise taught us, with great power comes great responsibility. It would be followed by an Aaron Spelling TV series on PFN starring Rachel True along with Tori Spelling, Shannen Doherty, and Alyssa Milano, which would be paired with the popular and empowering Final Girl. This would, in turn, spawn a failed attempt to remake Hecate for US audiences by largely copying the formula of The Coven and controversially dropping the “Maiden, Mother, and Crone” aspect in favor of three beautiful young women.
Other Witch films, usually involving a Teen Witch or Young Witch in the City or Witch in College, would appear as well, riding on the emerging formula. This would include a much more successful remake of 1989’s Teen Witch in 1999. Archie Comics would partner with CBS to produce a Sabrina the Teenage Witch series starring Danielle Fishel, which would be an overt comedy and coming-of-age story to help it stand out from The Coven and its more overt imitators. This was part of a two-series deal that also led to the creation of the deconstructive 1950s period teen dramedy Archie, though Sabrina would be set in the present day and inhabited a different universe.
And even Disney would get into the game, with a comics relaunch and an animated TV series for Wendy the Good Little Witch launching together in 1997, spinning off from the Casper animated series that in turn spun off from the 1995 Amblin production.
Not exactly this and sooner
But the stories went beyond the Teen Witch craze. Columbia, who still held the rights to the original film, remade Bell, Book, and Candle in 1998, starring Elizabeth Hurley and Brendon Frasier. 1999 would see a film remake of Bewitched starring Nichole Kidman and Jim Carrey released by Universal. There was even a failed attempt to either remake or make a sequel to The Witches of Eastwick, though this quickly fell apart as Jack Nicholson and Cher both publicly lambasted the idea, poisoning the well.
Even in fairy tales witches were getting a sympathetic new look. The Disney/Amblin coproduction of 1996’s Hansel & Gretel, written by Carrie Fisher and adapted from an abandoned 1960s Walt Disney production, would see the witch, named Agnes, made a more sympathetic character. She’s the victim of a sexist society and desperate to find a way back into the power and influence of her youth. And the bratty Hansel & Gretel are the foils who stand in her way.
The rise of the Otherworldly Horror genre soon pulled in witches, sometimes as heroic defenders against the Otherworldly, such as with 1995’s On Spectral Evidence and 1998’s By the Candle, By the Sword, and sometimes, in a reconstruction of the Witchsploitation of the 1970s, as the bringers of the Otherworldly, such as in 1997’s Hexxed. Their historical association to the dark powers of another world beyond our own made such a convergence unavoidable, and by 2000 it seemed like every Otherworldly Horror would have a Witch, or witch-like character, in there somewhere.
Witchcraft’s Afro-Caribbean cousin Vodou (a.k.a. “Voodoo”) would make appearances as well, from 1997’s Kindred Spirits to 1998’s remake of 1932’s White Zombie, the former a sympathetic take, the later an exploitative one by heavy metal musician and schlock producer Rob Zombie. The Discworld’s equivalent to Vodou arrives in 1999’s Witches Abroad by way of Erzulie Gogol (Queen Latifah), who allies with the Lancre witches to help prevent the peasant girl Emberella from marrying the prince. 1999’s The Bokor would jump into the Otherworldly realm, naturally enough, and show the heroic Maman Jessa (Hallie Berry, whose sketchy accent steals some of the magic away) go up against a vindictive “Bokor” sorcerer Dr. Perdition (Sonny Lister) who wanted to bring the most destructive of magics to bear. The Bokor stands out not just for its representation and relatively non-exploitive portrayal of Vodou, but for flipping the script and making the Otherworldly the heroic as Maman Jessa enlists the lwa spirits to overcome the foul sorcery of Dr. Perdition. All said, though, the underrepresentation of non-white voices in the 1990s Witch Craze beyond tokenism remains an unfortunate missed opportunity in an otherwise empowering cinematic moment.
Of course, with a returned focus on witchcraft came a returned focus to the witch hunt, and the Salem Witch Trials in particular. There was a 1997 remake of The Crucible from Columbia and a remake of the 1937 period melodrama Maid of Salem.
But arguably the most famous of these explorations of The Witch as the Exploration of the Female could be seen in As You Wish Entertainment’s seminal On Spectral Evidence, written by Alan Sorkin and directed by Rob Reiner. This film, the first overt Political Fantasy, used the Salem Witch Trials as a setting for an Otherworldly Horror crossed with a Political Crime Thriller. You had the Trials as the backdrop for a story of Witches as Repressed and Closeted Minority (ala Bewitched and The Witches of Eastwick) being persecuted by powerful and corrupt men (ala the reckoning on sexual harassment) for being evil, sexualized demonic minions (ala Witchspoitation) even as they secretly protected the citizens of Salem from the demonic horrors from beyond (Otherworldly Horror). It could be said that On Spectral Evidence represents the ultimate 1990s Witch Movie in that regard, and the culmination of the Witch archetype up until that point.
Going Forward, Looking Back
The 1990s Season of the Witch would, in reality, extend a few years into the new millennium. Marvel Productions would introduce Wanda Maximoff, The Scarlet Witch, in 2000’s X-Men 3, and give Wanda her own film in 2002. Fox would continue the Pratchett Witches on Home Video and Syndication in the early 2000s after releasing 1999’s Hyper Text to finish out the Esk Trilogy. Pratchett’s witches would continue on themselves in novel format right up to the present day, with discussions underway for adapting his current works, but nothing is currently in active production. As such, 2004’s Sabrina movie is generally considered the “last” of the Witch Craze films, and performed to disappointing numbers at the box office.
Other, smaller films would be made, but largely overlooked.
The late 2000s and even up to the present day have largely ignored the Witch, save for the occasional appearance of The Scarlet Witch in movies. It’s typically only in fantasy works where they show up, and usually with far more nuance than they once had. Ms. Rowling’s Witches, which are simply the feminine counterpart to the male Wizards and for all intents and purposes the exact same thing, run the gamut from heroic defenders like Hippolyta to self-serving social climbers like Skorpia to vindictive murderers like Bellatrix. But the witchcraft itself is simply a neutral tool, one that can be used to heal or to harm and whose use reflects the user. Even Familiars are really just glorified pets, with the only thing special about a certain rat being that he was never actually a rat, at least in the literal sense. Witchcraft thus becomes a skill and an occupation rather than an infernal pact.
And for the generation who grew up with a certain Boy Wizard, the older Witchy stories of the prior decade started to take on a new interest as they entered their teen years. Many of the films we discussed here have seen renewed interest in recent years as they find a new audience who grew up with child witches and thus have found commonality with the teenaged ones of the past, and presumably found something to share with their parents.
And as we enter into a new era of home entertainment there is some sign of a renaissance for the Witch in fiction. Proposed new versions of Hecate, The Coven, Sabrina, Bewitched, and even Wendy are reportedly in production or under consideration for production for Direct View. New films based on witches are in the works as well, though it remains to be seen whether we are seeing another Season of the Witch brewing or just a brief, passing nostalgic fad.
Whatever the case, the Season of the Witch that spanned the rough decade of 1994-2004 marked a unique place in time, a reflection of a third-wave feminist “Girl Power” era that, one could say, reclaimed the ancient power of the Village Wise Woman after centuries of patriarchal repression and demonization. From a maligned Bride of Satan to a Modern Housewife to a demonic sexpot to an empowered Feminist icon, the Witch is in the end a reflection of us, of our society, and of how we view the inherent power and dignity of 51% of our human population.
[1] Gregory Maguire devised the name “Elphaba” based on L. Frank Baum’s initials for his novel Wicked, which was adapted into the iconic play.
[2] Alas will not have Tim Curry gleefully devouring scenery on Green Screen, since he was much busier at the time in this timeline.
[3] Pointy black hat tip to @DaibhidC.
When you Wish Upon a Frog (Book II of the Jim Henson at Disney saga)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
- Start date
- Status
I hate to break it to you, but it seem Transphobia is baked very much into British society, so if you wanna change Rowling you should change Britain first.
A very interesting overview of one of the original genre breakouts of this TL @Geekhis Khan! It's fascinating to see how the different political climate has ballooned out and influenced pop culture TTL. I especially love On Spectral Evidence, it sounds so fascinating every time you bring it up - definitely would be a must watch for me!
Milking the Cash Cow
Where Fan Empowerment Meets Fiscal Enrichment: The Strangely Ironic Story of Disney’s Princess Squad and Hero Squad
From the ToyRanosaurus Rex Netsite by Rex Rogers, July 6th, 2019
The Merch Prince on his Plushy Throne (Image source D23)
In the early 1990s Barton “Bo” Boyd, the President for Consumer Products of Walt Disney Entertainment, had an epiphany: girls love Princesses. Yea, hardly a revolutionary insight, but the realization that came with it, that girls loved Disney Princesses in particular, set in-motion an ongoing merch juggernaut that continues on to this day.
And boy, did Disney have some Princesses: beautiful Princesses, ugly Princesses, brave Princesses, demure Princesses, friendly Princesses, icy Princesses, and even spoiled-rotten Princesses! Princesses from every continent. Even fishy, snake-y, ogre-y, bamboo-y, and dragon-y Princesses! Whatever your preferences as a little girl (or even little boy) there was a Princess for you.
May or May Not feature the above, or ones like them (Image source Disneyprincesses.fandom.com)
Perhaps you liked brave Princess Eilonwy, curious Princess Ariel, or patient Princess Cinderella. Maybe you were just delighted to see a Princess that looked like you for once, like Princess Kaiguya, Abbi, Jasmine, Minnehaha, Sélena, Nicté Há, or Longzhu. Heck, maybe you were “that kid” who liked Princess Argyle or Medusa! Whatever the case, there was a Disney Princess for you.
And this translated into merch. Tons of it. Merch out the dainty, silk-clad royal ass. Shelves of dolls and playsets. Long hair you could comb or braid. Matching jewelry for doll and girl. And each (or most) came with a matching Prince, be they Charming or otherwise. But that’s not all: there were carriages, and horses, and Cute Sidekick Animals. Costumes, posters, pillows, bedsheets, even videogames. Your parents could spend their whole paycheck every month for a year and still not claim everything associated with even a single Princess in the line, none the less the Whole Lineup.
(Image source Free Stuff Finder; I for one found this free image for my Timeline!)
And if the girls could have Princesses, why not, Bo thought, have something for the boys? Sure, there was Marvel, but that wasn’t really anything in the spirit of Walt Disney. But what about Heroes?
If Prince Phillip in Sleeping Beauty can slay a Maleficent Dragon, Peter Pan can cross swords with Captain Hook, Hiawatha can battle giant multi-headed serpents, and Perseus can kick ass like a blind warrior-monk, then what boy wouldn’t want to kick some ass with them? Shrek punching a dragon in the “soft spot”. Prince Erik taking down a giant Sea Witch with her own cursed dagger. Taran fighting off the undead armies of Arawn Death Lord. King Arthur and Robin Hood fighting for England in their own ways. Even the nerdy, awkward Meng from The Poet and the Dragon fought the legions of the Underworld armed only with the memory of a scroll for the one that he loved. Surely with the right marketing – the type of marketing that saw boys play with dolls in the form of GI Joe – you could make a parallel line? Perhaps even get boys and girls to play together?
(Image by Marypuff on Deviant Art)
Of course, selling the boys on this might be harder than selling the girls on Princesses. After all, the audience for the Disney Canon tended to lean female. But taking a cue from Sunbow in the 1980s, Boyd had an idea. Enlisting married duo Brenda Chapman and Kevin Lima, and selling the idea to Chairman and Creative Chief Jim Henson as an inclusionary thing, a block of new animated series was created: Princess Squad and Hero Squad. The animated series would aim to take over the ground abandoned by He Man and She-Ra, and concurrently ride the coattails of Lysia of Amazonia, by bringing all of the Princesses and Heroes of the many franchises together as two teams, who often collaborated in crossover events. Ass-kicking Princesses like Eilonwy and Argyle and Longzhu could actively participate on both squads! Gentle Meng could find joy writing poetry with the Princesses too.
Princess Squad also helped end a long-running debate in Disney Corporate about the Princesses: did they know each other? The running opinion was “no”. Early merch with multiple Princesses can be identified by the one weird quirk that reflects this debate: the Princesses, even when standing together, are never looking at one another.
Why? Because they don’t know each other. They inhabit different worlds![1]
Pretty stupid, right? What kid doesn’t want to have all of his favorite toys play together, even if that means Batman and Spider-Man teaming with Sleeping Beauty, Bugs Bunny, and SpongeBoy to defeat Skeletor and Darth Vader?
Well, Brenda and Kevin certainly thought so. Thus, Princess Squad and then Hero Squad, developed to answer Bo’s call for a new show to push merch, went into production. And all of the various Fairy Godmothers and Fairies and other mystical helpers, including Genie, joined forces in the Mystical Realm to enlist the universe’s greatest heroes, male and female, to save them all from the evil Murq, Bringer of Darkness and Despair, who had assembled a Villain Squad of his own, of course!
(Image source Walmart, your favorite Bringer of Darkness and Despair)
Brenda and Kevin, of course, dove in head-first, with Brenda in particular loving the empowering potential for the Princess line. She’d been hoping for just such an opportunity as this. And regardless of the ultimately merch-driven impetus if the shows, she was going to take the assignment seriously.
“People complained that the show was only there to sell toys,” she told Animation Nation. “Well, duh, I know, but just because Bo came up with the idea to push product doesn’t mean that we had to half-ass it. I wanted every little girl to look at those Disney Princesses with new eyes, not as damsels to rescue or toys to collect to impress your friends, but as tough chicks who can take care of themselves when they need to, and not necessarily by fighting.”
(Image by @ExowareMasses)
Brenda and Kevin assembled a serious team of animators and writers, including a young Lauren Faust before Whoopass Studios stole her away. They took full advantage of the DATA technology to create a series of reusable character poses and actions that could defray long-term costs and keep things affordable for TV while simultaneously maintaining that “Disney Difference” in animation quality. And, most critically, they could keep the “souls” of the characters.
“If Cinderella didn’t look and act like Cinderella,” Kevin told Animation Nation in the same interview, “then no matter how good the story and animation, or how empowering the narrative, we’d failed. So we spent hours just on ‘quality control’ ensuring that, even with different voice actors and different circumstances and even different societal values, the characters remained true.”
Each episode of the two parallel shows would generally focus on two or more of the ever-growing Princess, Hero, and Villain lines teaming up to do battle, with the fate of the universe in the balance! Argyle and Longzhu could fight toe to toe. Cinderella and Snow White could enlist the animals of the forest to follow the villains and gather intelligence without violence. Prince Phillip, Taran, Peter Pan, and Argyle could cross swords with Arwan and Captain Hook. And playsets and games could be developed and sold to match.
Jim Henson was reportedly rather “upset” to discover that merch sales were the driving force, given that the practice of selling merchandise to children was always a tender spot with him. Brenda reported having to “talk him off the ledge” when he found out, showing him the animatics for a sequence where Cinderella teaches the scared population of a besieged village the virtue of patience, relating her long journey from abused shut-in to generous princess, and relaying the importance of paying forward the gifts that she received (“I believe in you, even if it’s hard to believe in yourselves right now. Remember, someone is always watching out for you, even if you can’t always see them”). Jim reportedly had tears in his eyes when he smiled and nodded his approval.
Princess Squad and Hero Squad both debuted in the fall of 1996 on Disney Toon Town, and caused an immediate stir. Some celebrated, happy to finally see their favorite Princesses again, and together, battling evil. Others cried foul, even sacrilege (Roy Disney was reportedly “torn”). But the game was afoot, the shelves of toy stores were filling fast and emptying even faster, and Bo Boyd was in heaven.
Allo-Ironically a lot like this scene from Shrek the Third (Image source eBay)
Needless to say, Princess Squad did far better than Hero Squad, which lasted only two seasons and whose toy line largely fizzled out, the characters soon absorbed into the Princess line, which was the real Cash Cow. Princess Squad lasted for a spectacular nine. The Disney Heroes line never quite captured enough of the 4-12 male market share that Boyd hoped, though it retains a nostalgic cult following from those who grew up with it. Princess Squad merch also gained a huge following in LGBTQ circles as time went by, particularly the decidedly not officially sanctioned “Princesses Kick Ass” shirt and signs that sold widely across the internet. And even older male and female viewers were tuning in as its brilliant writing and surprisingly sophisticated content make it TV Worth Watching regardless of your age or gender.
Nostalgic older Millennials, of course, are likely the impetus for the announced reboot of Princess Squad on Direct View, this time with the Heroes already a built-in part of it.
So, whether you love it as a nostalgic reminder of your childhood, or just like the shows and games, the Princess Squad and Hero Squad series and toy lines are something that has definitely earned its place in the history of toys, and in the history of animation.
Not bad for a shameless cash-grab!
[1] This is the case in our timeline. Notice how you never see any two Princesses appearing to look at each other. Ralph Breaks the Internet is the major exception, obviously.
From the ToyRanosaurus Rex Netsite by Rex Rogers, July 6th, 2019
The Merch Prince on his Plushy Throne (Image source D23)
In the early 1990s Barton “Bo” Boyd, the President for Consumer Products of Walt Disney Entertainment, had an epiphany: girls love Princesses. Yea, hardly a revolutionary insight, but the realization that came with it, that girls loved Disney Princesses in particular, set in-motion an ongoing merch juggernaut that continues on to this day.
And boy, did Disney have some Princesses: beautiful Princesses, ugly Princesses, brave Princesses, demure Princesses, friendly Princesses, icy Princesses, and even spoiled-rotten Princesses! Princesses from every continent. Even fishy, snake-y, ogre-y, bamboo-y, and dragon-y Princesses! Whatever your preferences as a little girl (or even little boy) there was a Princess for you.
May or May Not feature the above, or ones like them (Image source Disneyprincesses.fandom.com)
Perhaps you liked brave Princess Eilonwy, curious Princess Ariel, or patient Princess Cinderella. Maybe you were just delighted to see a Princess that looked like you for once, like Princess Kaiguya, Abbi, Jasmine, Minnehaha, Sélena, Nicté Há, or Longzhu. Heck, maybe you were “that kid” who liked Princess Argyle or Medusa! Whatever the case, there was a Disney Princess for you.
And this translated into merch. Tons of it. Merch out the dainty, silk-clad royal ass. Shelves of dolls and playsets. Long hair you could comb or braid. Matching jewelry for doll and girl. And each (or most) came with a matching Prince, be they Charming or otherwise. But that’s not all: there were carriages, and horses, and Cute Sidekick Animals. Costumes, posters, pillows, bedsheets, even videogames. Your parents could spend their whole paycheck every month for a year and still not claim everything associated with even a single Princess in the line, none the less the Whole Lineup.
(Image source Free Stuff Finder; I for one found this free image for my Timeline!)
And if the girls could have Princesses, why not, Bo thought, have something for the boys? Sure, there was Marvel, but that wasn’t really anything in the spirit of Walt Disney. But what about Heroes?
If Prince Phillip in Sleeping Beauty can slay a Maleficent Dragon, Peter Pan can cross swords with Captain Hook, Hiawatha can battle giant multi-headed serpents, and Perseus can kick ass like a blind warrior-monk, then what boy wouldn’t want to kick some ass with them? Shrek punching a dragon in the “soft spot”. Prince Erik taking down a giant Sea Witch with her own cursed dagger. Taran fighting off the undead armies of Arawn Death Lord. King Arthur and Robin Hood fighting for England in their own ways. Even the nerdy, awkward Meng from The Poet and the Dragon fought the legions of the Underworld armed only with the memory of a scroll for the one that he loved. Surely with the right marketing – the type of marketing that saw boys play with dolls in the form of GI Joe – you could make a parallel line? Perhaps even get boys and girls to play together?
(Image by Marypuff on Deviant Art)
Of course, selling the boys on this might be harder than selling the girls on Princesses. After all, the audience for the Disney Canon tended to lean female. But taking a cue from Sunbow in the 1980s, Boyd had an idea. Enlisting married duo Brenda Chapman and Kevin Lima, and selling the idea to Chairman and Creative Chief Jim Henson as an inclusionary thing, a block of new animated series was created: Princess Squad and Hero Squad. The animated series would aim to take over the ground abandoned by He Man and She-Ra, and concurrently ride the coattails of Lysia of Amazonia, by bringing all of the Princesses and Heroes of the many franchises together as two teams, who often collaborated in crossover events. Ass-kicking Princesses like Eilonwy and Argyle and Longzhu could actively participate on both squads! Gentle Meng could find joy writing poetry with the Princesses too.
Princess Squad also helped end a long-running debate in Disney Corporate about the Princesses: did they know each other? The running opinion was “no”. Early merch with multiple Princesses can be identified by the one weird quirk that reflects this debate: the Princesses, even when standing together, are never looking at one another.
Why? Because they don’t know each other. They inhabit different worlds![1]
Pretty stupid, right? What kid doesn’t want to have all of his favorite toys play together, even if that means Batman and Spider-Man teaming with Sleeping Beauty, Bugs Bunny, and SpongeBoy to defeat Skeletor and Darth Vader?
Well, Brenda and Kevin certainly thought so. Thus, Princess Squad and then Hero Squad, developed to answer Bo’s call for a new show to push merch, went into production. And all of the various Fairy Godmothers and Fairies and other mystical helpers, including Genie, joined forces in the Mystical Realm to enlist the universe’s greatest heroes, male and female, to save them all from the evil Murq, Bringer of Darkness and Despair, who had assembled a Villain Squad of his own, of course!
(Image source Walmart, your favorite Bringer of Darkness and Despair)
Brenda and Kevin, of course, dove in head-first, with Brenda in particular loving the empowering potential for the Princess line. She’d been hoping for just such an opportunity as this. And regardless of the ultimately merch-driven impetus if the shows, she was going to take the assignment seriously.
“People complained that the show was only there to sell toys,” she told Animation Nation. “Well, duh, I know, but just because Bo came up with the idea to push product doesn’t mean that we had to half-ass it. I wanted every little girl to look at those Disney Princesses with new eyes, not as damsels to rescue or toys to collect to impress your friends, but as tough chicks who can take care of themselves when they need to, and not necessarily by fighting.”
(Image by @ExowareMasses)
Brenda and Kevin assembled a serious team of animators and writers, including a young Lauren Faust before Whoopass Studios stole her away. They took full advantage of the DATA technology to create a series of reusable character poses and actions that could defray long-term costs and keep things affordable for TV while simultaneously maintaining that “Disney Difference” in animation quality. And, most critically, they could keep the “souls” of the characters.
“If Cinderella didn’t look and act like Cinderella,” Kevin told Animation Nation in the same interview, “then no matter how good the story and animation, or how empowering the narrative, we’d failed. So we spent hours just on ‘quality control’ ensuring that, even with different voice actors and different circumstances and even different societal values, the characters remained true.”
Each episode of the two parallel shows would generally focus on two or more of the ever-growing Princess, Hero, and Villain lines teaming up to do battle, with the fate of the universe in the balance! Argyle and Longzhu could fight toe to toe. Cinderella and Snow White could enlist the animals of the forest to follow the villains and gather intelligence without violence. Prince Phillip, Taran, Peter Pan, and Argyle could cross swords with Arwan and Captain Hook. And playsets and games could be developed and sold to match.
Jim Henson was reportedly rather “upset” to discover that merch sales were the driving force, given that the practice of selling merchandise to children was always a tender spot with him. Brenda reported having to “talk him off the ledge” when he found out, showing him the animatics for a sequence where Cinderella teaches the scared population of a besieged village the virtue of patience, relating her long journey from abused shut-in to generous princess, and relaying the importance of paying forward the gifts that she received (“I believe in you, even if it’s hard to believe in yourselves right now. Remember, someone is always watching out for you, even if you can’t always see them”). Jim reportedly had tears in his eyes when he smiled and nodded his approval.
Princess Squad and Hero Squad both debuted in the fall of 1996 on Disney Toon Town, and caused an immediate stir. Some celebrated, happy to finally see their favorite Princesses again, and together, battling evil. Others cried foul, even sacrilege (Roy Disney was reportedly “torn”). But the game was afoot, the shelves of toy stores were filling fast and emptying even faster, and Bo Boyd was in heaven.
Allo-Ironically a lot like this scene from Shrek the Third (Image source eBay)
Needless to say, Princess Squad did far better than Hero Squad, which lasted only two seasons and whose toy line largely fizzled out, the characters soon absorbed into the Princess line, which was the real Cash Cow. Princess Squad lasted for a spectacular nine. The Disney Heroes line never quite captured enough of the 4-12 male market share that Boyd hoped, though it retains a nostalgic cult following from those who grew up with it. Princess Squad merch also gained a huge following in LGBTQ circles as time went by, particularly the decidedly not officially sanctioned “Princesses Kick Ass” shirt and signs that sold widely across the internet. And even older male and female viewers were tuning in as its brilliant writing and surprisingly sophisticated content make it TV Worth Watching regardless of your age or gender.
Nostalgic older Millennials, of course, are likely the impetus for the announced reboot of Princess Squad on Direct View, this time with the Heroes already a built-in part of it.
So, whether you love it as a nostalgic reminder of your childhood, or just like the shows and games, the Princess Squad and Hero Squad series and toy lines are something that has definitely earned its place in the history of toys, and in the history of animation.
Not bad for a shameless cash-grab!
[1] This is the case in our timeline. Notice how you never see any two Princesses appearing to look at each other. Ralph Breaks the Internet is the major exception, obviously.
'Well duh, just because it's "for children" doesn't mean that we had to half-ass it.'
Ah, the mantra of quality family entertainment throughout time and across media.
Considering how good some of OTL's Disney tie-in shows were (thinking of Aladdin specifically since I actually watched that one regularly), giving the Princesses something to do besides look pretty is a huge boost to, you know, actually giving them personalities. Clearly it worked with a whopping nine seasons compared to the Heroes' two (even if the guys just jumped shows and joined the ladies). And with a series format you can have actually-interesting Princesses without the corresponding decay in villain awesomeness that OTL's films suffered from.
No doubt someone's going to program a very non-licenced Street Fighter clone with Disney characters (Sleeping Beauty has a mean wake-up super) that'll spark an official game perhaps made with Nintendo and - oh, did I just back-door Smash Bros. as Disney Princess merch?
And I thought that Princess Squad was already a good show, with nine seasons and revolutionizing the Disney Princess brand. But to get a Disney Smash Bros. out of it down the road? That would be even better!
Cool. TTL me is 20 at this point and his teenaged embarassment about still watching kiddie shows is going to kick into high gear before it mostly disappears. I suspect he watches these, but keeps quiet about it.
Interesting, I'd never noticed this before, and always vaguely assumed there was one big Disney Fairy Tale World, with Arendelle in the north, Agrabah in the south, and so forth. I guess Ralph Breaks the Internet shows them "behind the scenes", as it were, so is no more canonical than their appearances in House of Mouse.
I guess the Gendered Toy Ghetto is harder to break out of than they expected. At least they tried.
Yeah, especially as better stuff will usually tend to do better there and yeah, this may actually kind point out some pretty interesting phenonmenon there with storytelling and the like.
I love this chapter, because wisely you addressed the two big perspectives regarding this kind of work. On the one hand, as a kid I'd have loved seeing all these characters together and interacting, this would have been right up my street. And as someone who really enjoyed all kinds of Disney takes, the multitude of styles and genres coming together would have been fascinating to see come out. And NINE seasons!? Definitely a big deal, definitely something I would have gotten a little over passionate with in my youth.
But as an adult you do recognize that a lot of this is merch driven and is intended to get kids to buy, buy, buy! And so there is that tendency to write off this kind of stuff as pure commercialism and desperately made to sell toys and to make a Brand out of them. Which, you know....yes, absolutely it is. But at the same time, when it comes to a TV production, commercials need some level of investment on the part of those making it to make it a true success. There's a reason that the first Care Bears movie beat the Black Cauldron at the box office, and it was not just as a result of Disney being in something of a slump. Having re-watched the Care Bears recently, it's roots as a commercial for the toys are present but they are always kept within the frame of a competent plot with a talented director, a good voice cast and animation/backgrounds that ranges from 'okay' to 'oh shit that's actually pretty damn good'. Those behind it wanted a commercial, but the best commercial is a good movie first and foremost.
Same goes with the original MLP special, or the Transformers (There is a reason that everyone remembers Optimus Prime and the outcry of his death, because Peter Cullen one hundred percent commits to this idea of the gentle giant and that hit with a lot of people, and it's still hitting to the day) or the Real American Hero comic. Going above and beyond the base line is picked up by the public. Commercials, for all their faults and flaws and for however much it might reflect our societal issues, are not just some low effort thing that automatically succeeds because we're gullible fools. They need to actually work and be functional and, yes, to engage our minds. And also, it would help if we were gullible fools but I digress. In this case, as much as 'brand' has come to take a very negative term in this day and age, an ability to reflect upon what these imperfect movies meant and to translate that for a new audience and to help them experience it too is a good and healthy thing to do. Henson is very understandable here, and I love that it's when he could see real passion and thought was being put into it that he relented.
Also, it's interesting to see that Roy seems to be growing further and further apart from Jim. It's natural of course, Henson may be doing less to encourage the press than Eisner and is in fact deliberately trying to avoid comparisons to the figurehead, but Roy seems naturally insecure about that kind of thing. Part of me does wish that Henson had at least one backer in the boardroom given the sparring between Roy and Diane, I do wonder if something is about to come to a head at some point.
But as an adult you do recognize that a lot of this is merch driven and is intended to get kids to buy, buy, buy! And so there is that tendency to write off this kind of stuff as pure commercialism and desperately made to sell toys and to make a Brand out of them. Which, you know....yes, absolutely it is. But at the same time, when it comes to a TV production, commercials need some level of investment on the part of those making it to make it a true success. There's a reason that the first Care Bears movie beat the Black Cauldron at the box office, and it was not just as a result of Disney being in something of a slump. Having re-watched the Care Bears recently, it's roots as a commercial for the toys are present but they are always kept within the frame of a competent plot with a talented director, a good voice cast and animation/backgrounds that ranges from 'okay' to 'oh shit that's actually pretty damn good'. Those behind it wanted a commercial, but the best commercial is a good movie first and foremost.
Same goes with the original MLP special, or the Transformers (There is a reason that everyone remembers Optimus Prime and the outcry of his death, because Peter Cullen one hundred percent commits to this idea of the gentle giant and that hit with a lot of people, and it's still hitting to the day) or the Real American Hero comic. Going above and beyond the base line is picked up by the public. Commercials, for all their faults and flaws and for however much it might reflect our societal issues, are not just some low effort thing that automatically succeeds because we're gullible fools. They need to actually work and be functional and, yes, to engage our minds. And also, it would help if we were gullible fools but I digress. In this case, as much as 'brand' has come to take a very negative term in this day and age, an ability to reflect upon what these imperfect movies meant and to translate that for a new audience and to help them experience it too is a good and healthy thing to do. Henson is very understandable here, and I love that it's when he could see real passion and thought was being put into it that he relented.
Also, it's interesting to see that Roy seems to be growing further and further apart from Jim. It's natural of course, Henson may be doing less to encourage the press than Eisner and is in fact deliberately trying to avoid comparisons to the figurehead, but Roy seems naturally insecure about that kind of thing. Part of me does wish that Henson had at least one backer in the boardroom given the sparring between Roy and Diane, I do wonder if something is about to come to a head at some point.
Thanks for using my DATA logo, Geekhis. This "Princess/Hero/Villian Squad" idea is very coolbeanz.
(Image by @ExowareMasses)
Brenda and Kevin assembled a serious team of animators and writers, including a young Lauren Faust before Whoopass Studios stole her away. They took full advantage of the DATA technology to create a series of reusable character poses and actions that could defray long-term costs and keep things affordable for TV while simultaneously maintaining that “Disney Difference” in animation quality. And, most critically, they could keep the “souls” of the characters.
“If Cinderella didn’t look and act like Cinderella,” Kevin told Animation Nation in the same interview, “then no matter how good the story and animation, or how empowering the narrative, we’d failed. So we spent hours just on ‘quality control’ ensuring that, even with different voice actors and different circumstances and even different societal values, the characters remained true.”
House of Mouse + Mirrorverse + Smash Bros... moderately upset that nobody in OTL has ever tried working this angle.
Behind again...
"By the final Series with the 9th Doctor, the four-part “Divide by Zero”, - you can bet ITTL me would be watching this one.
"causing him to regenerate, in a painful (and gratuitously shirtless) scene" - one that I am sure will get replayed again and again, plud rack up huge numbers of hits on the AltYouTube...
"and the latest Master, the latter played by actor David Tennant" - oh nice casting there.
"The 10th Doctor was played by none other than Sean Pertwee himself!" - Nice Legacy nod there. I can see this as a bit of a series 'reset' for new audiences.
"Tennant’s Master thus became less overtly villainous and more of an anti-villain," - very in tune with the 90's there.
"We envisioned a pre-contact Māori warrior, very Klingon-like, pure brutal masculinity, face covered with tattoos." - well that's going to pull in a certain audience....
"an out of work friend of his named Lawrence Makoare.” - awesome screen test there. Arataki sounds like another fan favourite Companion.
"physically strong, even managing at one point to destroy a dalek with his bare hands by throwing it against a stone wall." - Exterminated indeed!
"But he still never broke the warrior vibe and even covered with fluorescent blue goo he was utterly intimidating.” - going to help sell the character and get him more work! Hope he turns up again in the Timeline.
"England can keep the bloody constant drizzle, though.” - tell me about it!
"Any plot obstacle that the sonic screwdriver couldn’t overcome, the spear could…at least when the writers needed it to." - going to make for fun cosplay...
"“And we did so again with the 10th and Arataki. I liked to think of the 10th Doctor as a closeted gay man with an unrequited crush on Arataki," - he probably would not be the only one. Wonder if the extended universe hinted at more if such media is made in more liberal times?
"In the second series I started calling The Doctor ‘Takatāpui’. " - very clever Lawrence.
"Makoare stayed on as companion for Pertwee’s entire seven-year run, the longest run by a single Doctor since Tom Baker’s 4th." - wow that is a really good run. Nice the 'stay three series' thing is broken.
"Arataki, who’d sworn an “oath unto death” to The Doctor, decided that “his” Doctor was “dead” and that his oath was therefore fulfilled." - now I want to know what Arataki did next!
"If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at Grade. I’m about 90% sure that he would have killed [Dr. Who] entirely if she hadn’t been there." - bet Grade still did not get his knighthood ITTL...
"would anyone but a handful of dedicated Whovians passing around a handful of old VHS tapes be watching Dr. Who in 2010 if there hadn’t been an 8th Doctor," - indeed not, can you imagine such a British institution getting rebooted? Nah.
“always the plan” to have a sort of controversial Dark Age to ride through the “hiatus years” of our timeline." - well I thank you for NPH and what you have done with Who, it's certainly more interesting than what happened OTL.
"I will not post about the 11th Doctor, though I’ll open things up to Fan Posts." - start the debates!
"Either way, as the 2000s continue on up to the present-day, Dr. Who will remain a viable franchise," - and we can only Thank You again for that.
Great post @Geekhis Khan
"By the final Series with the 9th Doctor, the four-part “Divide by Zero”, - you can bet ITTL me would be watching this one.
"causing him to regenerate, in a painful (and gratuitously shirtless) scene" - one that I am sure will get replayed again and again, plud rack up huge numbers of hits on the AltYouTube...
"and the latest Master, the latter played by actor David Tennant" - oh nice casting there.
"The 10th Doctor was played by none other than Sean Pertwee himself!" - Nice Legacy nod there. I can see this as a bit of a series 'reset' for new audiences.
"Tennant’s Master thus became less overtly villainous and more of an anti-villain," - very in tune with the 90's there.
"We envisioned a pre-contact Māori warrior, very Klingon-like, pure brutal masculinity, face covered with tattoos." - well that's going to pull in a certain audience....
"an out of work friend of his named Lawrence Makoare.” - awesome screen test there. Arataki sounds like another fan favourite Companion.
"physically strong, even managing at one point to destroy a dalek with his bare hands by throwing it against a stone wall." - Exterminated indeed!
"But he still never broke the warrior vibe and even covered with fluorescent blue goo he was utterly intimidating.” - going to help sell the character and get him more work! Hope he turns up again in the Timeline.
"England can keep the bloody constant drizzle, though.” - tell me about it!
"Any plot obstacle that the sonic screwdriver couldn’t overcome, the spear could…at least when the writers needed it to." - going to make for fun cosplay...
"“And we did so again with the 10th and Arataki. I liked to think of the 10th Doctor as a closeted gay man with an unrequited crush on Arataki," - he probably would not be the only one. Wonder if the extended universe hinted at more if such media is made in more liberal times?
"In the second series I started calling The Doctor ‘Takatāpui’. " - very clever Lawrence.
"Makoare stayed on as companion for Pertwee’s entire seven-year run, the longest run by a single Doctor since Tom Baker’s 4th." - wow that is a really good run. Nice the 'stay three series' thing is broken.
"Arataki, who’d sworn an “oath unto death” to The Doctor, decided that “his” Doctor was “dead” and that his oath was therefore fulfilled." - now I want to know what Arataki did next!
"If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at Grade. I’m about 90% sure that he would have killed [Dr. Who] entirely if she hadn’t been there." - bet Grade still did not get his knighthood ITTL...
"would anyone but a handful of dedicated Whovians passing around a handful of old VHS tapes be watching Dr. Who in 2010 if there hadn’t been an 8th Doctor," - indeed not, can you imagine such a British institution getting rebooted? Nah.
“always the plan” to have a sort of controversial Dark Age to ride through the “hiatus years” of our timeline." - well I thank you for NPH and what you have done with Who, it's certainly more interesting than what happened OTL.
"I will not post about the 11th Doctor, though I’ll open things up to Fan Posts." - start the debates!
"Either way, as the 2000s continue on up to the present-day, Dr. Who will remain a viable franchise," - and we can only Thank You again for that.
Great post @Geekhis Khan
"An American Airlines 747 was shot down at 7:04 AM Mumbai time by two shoulder-fired rockets while taking off from the Sahar International Airport in Mumbai, India,"
"Fourteen minutes later, a United Airlines 747 was badly damaged by a missile strike while taking off from Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manilla"
"Three minutes after that a Qantas Airbus A340 was struck in the main body when taking off from Port Moresby International Airport in New Guinea,"
Damm that is going to have a serious effect on air travel - people will be terrified to fly, and airports closed down.
"The Indian police have tracked down and killed the assailants in the Mumbai attack," - shame they could not take them alive for questioning.
“negligence of the Gore administration” and recent reductions to the defense budget for the attacks." - nope nothing Gore or Gingrich could have done to stop these, and folk should call Gingrich out on his BS.
"Three US ship-launched cruise missiles hit targets in southern Afghanistan this morning," - one hopes those missiles aren't the only thing as it will take more to reduce that threat.
"to develop and deploy jamming systems for civilian airliners to protect them from man-portable air defense weapons" - let's hope this tech works, so it bolsters people's faith in air travel again.
Well I guess Osama Bin Laden and his organisation has finally arrived. Let's hope they check out again fairly quickly heh?
Thoughtful chapter @Geekhis Khan
"Fourteen minutes later, a United Airlines 747 was badly damaged by a missile strike while taking off from Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manilla"
"Three minutes after that a Qantas Airbus A340 was struck in the main body when taking off from Port Moresby International Airport in New Guinea,"
Damm that is going to have a serious effect on air travel - people will be terrified to fly, and airports closed down.
"The Indian police have tracked down and killed the assailants in the Mumbai attack," - shame they could not take them alive for questioning.
“negligence of the Gore administration” and recent reductions to the defense budget for the attacks." - nope nothing Gore or Gingrich could have done to stop these, and folk should call Gingrich out on his BS.
"Three US ship-launched cruise missiles hit targets in southern Afghanistan this morning," - one hopes those missiles aren't the only thing as it will take more to reduce that threat.
"to develop and deploy jamming systems for civilian airliners to protect them from man-portable air defense weapons" - let's hope this tech works, so it bolsters people's faith in air travel again.
Well I guess Osama Bin Laden and his organisation has finally arrived. Let's hope they check out again fairly quickly heh?
Thoughtful chapter @Geekhis Khan
"When a Mouse Meets a Peacock" - hooray more Bernie!
"I had a word with him. Three, in fact: “Stop it. Now.” - good intervention Bernie. Bet he does not listen though.
"And the motherfucker was an outspoken proponent of women’s rights the whole time, the hypocritical asshole." - wonder how much dirt Bernie was able to release on him? Not enough to stop WB hiring him again it seems.
"Enby the “Mucking Fuppet” ala John Belushi. The name stuck." - I feel sorry for the performers.
“Must See TV” had become “Must We See This Shit?” - Ouch.
"Many found the ads cute, but a lot of people, particularly hard-core fans for both Muppets and sports teams" - ah *Fans* again.
"We spun up a Daredevil series starring Matthew Fox to match the DC-based shows on The WB." - that sounds like a good way to tie the movies into a bigger universe. Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin is a little OTL, but who could it be in 1997?
"But we weren’t going down without a fight." - would expect nothing less from Bernie.
1998 sounds like its going to be a messy year...
Good stuff @Geekhis Khan
"I had a word with him. Three, in fact: “Stop it. Now.” - good intervention Bernie. Bet he does not listen though.
"And the motherfucker was an outspoken proponent of women’s rights the whole time, the hypocritical asshole." - wonder how much dirt Bernie was able to release on him? Not enough to stop WB hiring him again it seems.
"Enby the “Mucking Fuppet” ala John Belushi. The name stuck." - I feel sorry for the performers.
“Must See TV” had become “Must We See This Shit?” - Ouch.
"Many found the ads cute, but a lot of people, particularly hard-core fans for both Muppets and sports teams" - ah *Fans* again.
"We spun up a Daredevil series starring Matthew Fox to match the DC-based shows on The WB." - that sounds like a good way to tie the movies into a bigger universe. Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin is a little OTL, but who could it be in 1997?
"But we weren’t going down without a fight." - would expect nothing less from Bernie.
1998 sounds like its going to be a messy year...
Good stuff @Geekhis Khan
"when my cell phone, one of those new Star Wars inspired [SIC] kind that flips out, rang." - really Bernie? Mixing Trek and Wars?
"Ghostbusters: West Coast Ghosts." - well its an idea I guess. Better than a full reboot heh?
"One more film for old time’s sake. It was going to be Diana’s last production before she retired as well. How could I say “no”?" - indeed not!
"And as for Harold, well, I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: writer and director." - nice that will play well with the original fans for the continuity of ideas.
Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Chris Farley, and Benecio del Toro? Sounds like a great team. Some ego's to manage I'd imagine though.
"This let us hit all of the famous landmarks and even swing by some of the famous neighborhoods," - got to get the tourist traps in.
Nice set of cameos too!
"Will even did a hip hop update to Ray Parker jr.’s original theme song" - of course he did. Bet it rocked too.
"Deep and meaningful? No. Derivative of the original? Yeah, definitely. But this was meant as popcorn fare. Sometimes it’s important to just have fun."- yup. Bet ITTL me would guilt enjoy it.
"making a good $164 million against a $68 million budget." - not the worst return though. Could have flopped!
Fun sequel there @Geekhis Khan
"Ghostbusters: West Coast Ghosts." - well its an idea I guess. Better than a full reboot heh?
"One more film for old time’s sake. It was going to be Diana’s last production before she retired as well. How could I say “no”?" - indeed not!
"And as for Harold, well, I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: writer and director." - nice that will play well with the original fans for the continuity of ideas.
Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Chris Farley, and Benecio del Toro? Sounds like a great team. Some ego's to manage I'd imagine though.
"This let us hit all of the famous landmarks and even swing by some of the famous neighborhoods," - got to get the tourist traps in.
Nice set of cameos too!
"Will even did a hip hop update to Ray Parker jr.’s original theme song" - of course he did. Bet it rocked too.
"Deep and meaningful? No. Derivative of the original? Yeah, definitely. But this was meant as popcorn fare. Sometimes it’s important to just have fun."- yup. Bet ITTL me would guilt enjoy it.
"making a good $164 million against a $68 million budget." - not the worst return though. Could have flopped!
Fun sequel there @Geekhis Khan
"Season of the Witch: Exploring the Witchcraft Craze of the 1990s" - Nice change of pace.
"the Witch in fiction tells us far more about the society that portrays her than she does about the woman herself." - so true.
"it’s clear that the Olde English did not intend for it to be complimentary." - language heh?
"And the threat of an accusation of witchcraft became the hammer by which uppity, nonconforming women could be slammed back into their place" - yup. Well reasoned.
"The Witch by this point had diverged into “good” and “bad” witch archetypes, the friendly helper in the vein of the Fairy Godmother and the malicious menace to be defeated and overcome." - wonder how much cinema's need for easily identified 'black' and 'white' hats had something to do with this?
"Magic was now not a dangerous tool of evil and corruption, but an innocent power fantasy for kids." - one way to change the image I guess.
"but the late 1960s and 1970s saw the sexuality of the witch reappear, and often get weaponized. This was particularly true in the 1970s in the era of the Exploitation film." - ah, the 70's... the decade of tasteful exploration of the Human condition...
"the Teen Witch, where witchy power stood in as a metaphor for puberty." - I wonder if there is a male version with Werewolves?
"would be largely forgotten until Ms. Rowling released her similar story series a decade later." - guess we are still getting Potter then.
"It also has the amusing and strangely refreshing aspect of seeing magic used not for power or sex or revenge, but for the mundane purpose of food delivery." - nowt wrong with using the magic for the mundane tasks as well!
"Russel T. Davies’ 1993 BBC series Hecate, starring Deborah Kerr, Judy Dench, and Kate Winslet." - such a good cast.
"They, of course, flip the script." - and it would be awesome to see if we had that pesky D-Hopper!
"they must also learn that, as an unrelated franchise taught us, with great power comes great responsibility." - that's cos it's such a true lesson!
"animated TV series for Wendy the Good Little Witch launching together in 1997, spinning off from the Casper animated series that in turn spun off from the 1995 Amblin production." - spin-off Inception there!
"1999 would see a film remake of Bewitched starring Nichole Kidman and Jim Carrey released by Universal." - not sure that works. Cannot peg Carrey as Darrenn myself.
"Witchcraft’s Afro-Caribbean cousin Vodou (a.k.a. “Voodoo”) would make appearances as well" - almost invertible really.
"1999’s The Bokor" - sounds interesting. Hopefully we find out more later.
"the underrepresentation of non-white voices in the 1990s Witch Craze beyond tokenism remains an unfortunate missed opportunity in an otherwise empowering cinematic moment." - hardly a surprise though unfortunately.
On Spectral Evidence- now this sounds like a great movie!
"run the gamut from heroic defenders like Hippolyta to self-serving social climbers like Skorpia to vindictive murderers like Bellatrix." - def looking forward to more details about this!
"Proposed new versions of Hecate, The Coven, Sabrina, Bewitched, and even Wendy are reportedly in production" - nothing new in Hollywood heh?
"a reflection of a third-wave feminist “Girl Power” era that, one could say, reclaimed the ancient power of the Village Wise Woman after centuries of patriarchal repression and demonization." - will be cool to see how this plays out cross the timeline as we go forward!
Great chapter @Geekhis Khan - really well written indeed.
"the Witch in fiction tells us far more about the society that portrays her than she does about the woman herself." - so true.
"it’s clear that the Olde English did not intend for it to be complimentary." - language heh?
"And the threat of an accusation of witchcraft became the hammer by which uppity, nonconforming women could be slammed back into their place" - yup. Well reasoned.
"The Witch by this point had diverged into “good” and “bad” witch archetypes, the friendly helper in the vein of the Fairy Godmother and the malicious menace to be defeated and overcome." - wonder how much cinema's need for easily identified 'black' and 'white' hats had something to do with this?
"Magic was now not a dangerous tool of evil and corruption, but an innocent power fantasy for kids." - one way to change the image I guess.
"but the late 1960s and 1970s saw the sexuality of the witch reappear, and often get weaponized. This was particularly true in the 1970s in the era of the Exploitation film." - ah, the 70's... the decade of tasteful exploration of the Human condition...
"the Teen Witch, where witchy power stood in as a metaphor for puberty." - I wonder if there is a male version with Werewolves?
"would be largely forgotten until Ms. Rowling released her similar story series a decade later." - guess we are still getting Potter then.
"It also has the amusing and strangely refreshing aspect of seeing magic used not for power or sex or revenge, but for the mundane purpose of food delivery." - nowt wrong with using the magic for the mundane tasks as well!
"Russel T. Davies’ 1993 BBC series Hecate, starring Deborah Kerr, Judy Dench, and Kate Winslet." - such a good cast.
"They, of course, flip the script." - and it would be awesome to see if we had that pesky D-Hopper!
"they must also learn that, as an unrelated franchise taught us, with great power comes great responsibility." - that's cos it's such a true lesson!
"animated TV series for Wendy the Good Little Witch launching together in 1997, spinning off from the Casper animated series that in turn spun off from the 1995 Amblin production." - spin-off Inception there!
"1999 would see a film remake of Bewitched starring Nichole Kidman and Jim Carrey released by Universal." - not sure that works. Cannot peg Carrey as Darrenn myself.
"Witchcraft’s Afro-Caribbean cousin Vodou (a.k.a. “Voodoo”) would make appearances as well" - almost invertible really.
"1999’s The Bokor" - sounds interesting. Hopefully we find out more later.
"the underrepresentation of non-white voices in the 1990s Witch Craze beyond tokenism remains an unfortunate missed opportunity in an otherwise empowering cinematic moment." - hardly a surprise though unfortunately.
On Spectral Evidence- now this sounds like a great movie!
"run the gamut from heroic defenders like Hippolyta to self-serving social climbers like Skorpia to vindictive murderers like Bellatrix." - def looking forward to more details about this!
"Proposed new versions of Hecate, The Coven, Sabrina, Bewitched, and even Wendy are reportedly in production" - nothing new in Hollywood heh?
"a reflection of a third-wave feminist “Girl Power” era that, one could say, reclaimed the ancient power of the Village Wise Woman after centuries of patriarchal repression and demonization." - will be cool to see how this plays out cross the timeline as we go forward!
Great chapter @Geekhis Khan - really well written indeed.
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