Charmed – Bitch Flicks

Demon/Spirit Possession: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for our Demon/Spirit Possession Theme Week here.

The Conjuring: When Motherhood Meets Demonic Possession by Caroline Madden

Punishment is the main objective of the demon Bathsheba in The Conjuring, and specifically she seeks to punish the mother figure of a family. The hauntings and road to possession begin when in 1971, Roger and Carolyn Perron move into an old farmhouse in Rhode Island with their five daughters. Slowly, they begin to experience paranormal disturbances.

Because Being Female is Frightening Enough: #YesAllWomen and The Exorcism of Emily Rose by Rebecca Willoughby

In the film a young girl, Emily Rose, perishes following a protracted period of “attack” by demons while under the protective care of Father Moore, a Catholic priest. Female attorney Erin Bruner is chosen to defend Moore against charges of negligent homicide in Emily’s death. Through the two’s connection to the girl throughout the film, each undergoes what I’ve called here a “conversion experience,” as they learn more about the possibility that demons really do exist—demons that can be read to correspond to the challenges that women face in culture every day. Even before the advent of #YesAllWomen, a film like The Exorcism of Emily Rose shows us how to overcome skepticism and create a connected community of individuals committed to sharing troublesome experiences in the service of awareness and activism.

Demons: Finding New Language for an Old Cult Classic by Lisa Bolekaja

I am a horror fan and most times I root for the monster. There, I said it. I root for what should be the feared. The dreaded Other. With all the loaded symbolism that the horror genre represents (fear of sex, fear of the unknown, fear of death and decay, xenophobia etc), I find it cathartic and often liberating to root for the disruption of life as we know it. I love watching humans deal with chaotic change.

Twin Peaks Mysticism Won’t Save You From the Patriarchy by Rhianna Shaheen

I do believe that Lynch and Frost meant to use BOB as “the evil that men do” and as a means to understand family violence and abuse, but they jump around the issue so much that it only reflects uncertainty. The show’s inability to hold evil men responsible for their actions is too reminiscent of our own society. As soon as we answer “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” the show does its best to rebury the ugly truth that we so struggled to uncover. After that it fully commits to understanding the mythos behind it. This is troubling to me.

The Strangeness of (Surrogate) Motherhood in The Innocents by Ren Jender

Part of what makes the excellent 1961 film The Innocents different is the main character, the governess, Miss Giddens (played by Deborah Kerr), is thrust into a parental role suddenly. We see her at the beginning in an interview with the children’s uncle, a handsome playboy (played by Michael Redgrave, Vanessa’s father) who tells her he spends much of his time traveling and the rest in his home in London. When he offers her the job at his country estate, he takes her hand (a bold move for the Victorian era, when the film takes place) and asks if she is ready to take full responsibility for the children, because he doesn’t want to be disturbed during his adventures in London and abroad.

Direct from Hell: Paranormal Activity and the Demonic Gaze by Alexandra West

Micah’s patriarchal control through the first half of the film is omnipresent as he mocks, coerces and films his girlfriend’s descent into possession. The second half of the film deals with the demon taking control of the film. Micah and Katie are too weak to properly deal with the situation and they lose sight of their safety. The audience see what the demon wants them to see; it is in control of not only Katie’s mind and body, but also what the audience is exposed to, creating an unstable and terrifying experience.

She’s Possessed, Baby, Possessed! by Scarlett Harris

When Phoebe is taken over by the deadly sin lust in “Sin Francisco,” she sexually assaults her professor and has sex with a policeman on the job, while Piper dances on her bar during her high school reunion when she’s possessed by an evil spirit. And almost all the evil women in the show are sexualized: the succubus, shapeshifter Kaia, the Stillman sisters in “The Power of Three Blondes,” the seer Kyra, etc.

Does Jennifer’s Body Turn The Possession Genre On Its Head? by Gaayathri Nair

Jennifer’s Body is not a traditional female possession film. The genre is generally typified by mild mannered asexual women who begin to act in overt and sometimes pathologized sexual ways once they become possessed. Jennifer’s sexuality, on the other hand is firmly established at the beginning of the film, from her clothing, the way she interacts with both her best friend Needy and the males in her school, to where she casually mentions that she is “not even a back door virgin anymore.”

The Shining: Demon Selection by Wolf

Jack is both a victim and perpetrator of domestic violence. Jack’s father was an abusive alcoholic who beat and berated him. When Jack drank he used to parrot his father’s words (“take your medicine” “you damn pup”). He is primarily verbally abusive. The last incident of drinking that pushed him to sober up was accidentally breaking Danny’s arm. Wendy, perhaps like Jack’s mother, lied for him but swore she would leave if he didn’t sober up.

The Notion of “Forever and Ever and Ever” in The Amityville Horror and The Shining by Rachel Wortherley

The nightmare that Jack and George share signifies their innate fear—the possibility of destroying the family they, as men, have built.

Rosemary’s Baby: Who Possesses the Pregnant Woman’s Body? by Sarah Smyth

To what extent does a woman, pregnant or otherwise, “own” her body? To what extent can or should a woman’s (pregnant) body be subject to social concerns? Physically and socially, where is the divide between the mother’s body and the baby’s body? By raising these questions, Rosemary’s Baby is not only concerned with the spiritual but, also, the social possession of the female body.

Jennifer’s Body: The Sexuality of Female Possession and How the Devil Didn’t Need to Make Her Do It by Shay Revolver

And now Anita is “needy” no more because she has tasted the power, lived to tell the tale and will use her new demon passenger to right the wrongs that she sees fit. Even though she’s possessed, you can sense that she will guide herself and the demon within and take control of it. Freedom is a beautiful thing, even if you have to be possessed to make it happen.

The Invocation of Inner Demons in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession by Giselle Defares

Mark’s doppelgänger reflects Anna’s fascination with Heinrich’s persona: narcissism, religion, imagination, and his sexual freedom. Anna’s doppelgänger, Helen, is a pure, calm, and collected woman. That’s precisely what Mark wants–the opposite of Anna.

She’s Possessed, Baby, Possessed!

This guest post by Scarlett Harris appears as part of our theme week on Demon and Spirit Possession.

It seemed like one Halliwell sister or another was possessed by demonic forces every week on Charmed.

There was Phoebe and the Woogeyman, the Banshee and the ghosts of Lulu and Grams, as well as Cole’s demonic spawn; Piper was possessed by the evil spirit of Terra in “Coyote Piper,” as well as the Valkyries and Hindu goddess Shakti (who ever said possession had to be evil?); Paige was overcome by her boyfriend Richard’s dead fiancée Olivia’s ghost (phew!), the Evil Enchantress from her childhood fairytale fantasies, and by a witch doctor’s voodoo magic; while Prue gets turned into a fairy, an empath and embodies the deadly sin, pride. Not to mention all manner of innocents who get taken over—mostly—by evil.

It also seemed like whenever a possession occurred, the sisters’ clothing went the way of Prue in season 3’s “Look Who’s Barking”: to the dogs. While the Charmed Ones’ sartorial choices were minimal at the best of times (perhaps a side effect of living in one of the most sexually progressive cities in the world, San Francisco) this is not necessarily done with the male gaze in mind.

Being a show that focused on women’s lives, Charmed was screened on the WB network to a primarily young female audience, many of them raised by second-wave mothers. Stereotypes tell us that these young women were probably brought up to believe in free love and the burning of the bra, both of which the Halliwell sisters certainly subscribed to. And in the ’90s, “girl power” and “having it all” were the terms du jour which Charmed played in to. If you believe it shouldn’t matter what you look like to be able to do your job, Charmed offered that up in spades: the Charmed Ones could kick (mostly male) bad guys’ butts and look like they were heading to the club doing it. (Oftentimes they were, as Piper owned the club, P3.)

The episode “Blinded by the Whitelighter” explicitly addresses this lack of practicality in the Halliwell Manor’s presumably shared wardrobe: Natalie, Leo’s whitelighter colleague, puts the sisters through boot camp, which includes a demon-fighting makeunder with appropriate support for both their ankles and their breasts.

But back to possession. Charmed is not the first piece of pop culture to sexualize possession. Jennifer’s Body, Ghostbusters, and the modern remake of The Exorcist come to mind, whilst io9 rounds up another seven films that do much the same. This is probably because sexuality, specifically a woman in charge of her sexuality, is deemed evil or, at the very least, uncouth. We see it when it comes to famous women, such as Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, and even Beyoncé’s recent self-titled musical ode to married sex, and Charmed is no exception. When Phoebe is taken over by the deadly sin lust in “Sin Francisco,” she sexually assaults her professor and has sex with a policeman on the job, while Piper dances on her bar during her high school reunion when she’s possessed by an evil spirit. And almost all the evil women in the show are sexualized: the succubus, shapeshifter Kaia, the Stillman sisters in “The Power of Three Blondes,” the seer Kyra, etc. We seldom see the same—both in Charmed and pop culture at large—when men are on the receiving end of possession. It’s more likely to be framed in humorous or serious ways, such as when Leo succumbs to the sin of sloth or Cole’s numerous evil turns. Even when the spirits that possess the sisters aren’t evil per se, the Halliwells are still scantily clad; take, for example, Phoebe as a mermaid, genie, fairytale character, Lady Godiva, Mata Hari… so pretty much Phoebe in general! The show does take pains, though, to show the Charmed Ones being sexy and sexual in their normal lives, not just as the means to an end of an evil plan (in “The Devil’s Music,” for example) or becoming part of that evil plan themselves. It seldom shames them for their desires, either.

While Charmed doesn’t always get it right when it comes to sex, gender politics and morality, it makes an effort to show the sisters four in all elements of their lives, including sex. Maybe the myriad “sexy possessions” the Charmed Ones succumb to are part of a wider “protest statement” of the objectification of women? We can dream.

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues, and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter.

Five Films (and TV shows) Where Women All Want To Be Witches

Since paganism revolves around the ideas of female and male deities, with special emphasis placed upon the role of women’s bodies and their natural connection to the earth, its accessible and inspiring.

In the end, most of these films and shows end up being a tangled dichotomy of supernatural darkness and violence, contrasted with very standard aspects of career and love; also, usually a lot of “girl talk” about boys and shoes.

Therefore, it begs the question, do women ask for these shows? Or are they merely consuming what media executives think they want?

Written by Rachel Redfern

A poor example of witches from Famke Janssen in Hansel and gretel — A poor example of witches from Famke Janssen in *Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters*

With the recent season finale of The Witches of East End, the start-up of The Vampire Diaries, and then a whole slew of 90s rerun watching, the realization came: the occult is overwhelming the province of women. TV shows and films about the supernatural are always marketed to women—it’s one genre in fact where female characters have the lead and outnumber their male counterparts.

For some reason women seem indelibly drawn to representations of the cult, but within the context of wicca and paganism. Either that or they have been marketed as the exclusive province of women. Why is that?

Therefore, it begs the question, do women ask for these shows? Or are they merely consuming what media executives think they want?

Probably both. And that’s not to put down such shows because in reality there’s been some beautiful acting and surprising plotlines and characters: the harried, independent woman, saving the world from evil while also trying to pay her bills and get a decent haircut is apparently an image that resonates deeply for female viewers.

But more than that, these shows of the supernatural aren’t action dramas of heroism, but rather, a discovery and exploration of female growth and power outside of physical strength.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgncLPRLd2E”]

Bewitched (1964-72)

Beautiful Elizabeth Montgomery was a trickster domestic goddess. She was elegant and all-knowing while always in some crazy family shenanigans, but not the ditzy shenanigans of I Dream of Jeannie (which no one is knocking). Bewitched occupied the number two spot in American television and ran for a total of eight season, but its popularity never really died and its been a staple of middle-American reruns ever since. And its longevity is deserved, within Bewitched we find a mysterious and powerful woman, otherworldly even, accessing a magic her adorable, albeit frazzled husband can’t even begin to understand. Within all of that, Montgomery struggled to mold into her suburban housewife role, making her infinitely relatable as well as fascinating.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnA77dF47TI”]

The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

In The Witches of Eastwick, John Updike’s novel of the same name isn’t perhaps done justice with the offbeat, camp of the 80s in this film, despite the efforts of Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

These witches are not sisters, but what they do have is a far more naughty, realistic sort of paganism than the other (slightly goody-goody) witches used. Here, the witches are powerful, but also bitter, petty, lonely, silly, smart, independent, sexy, and seduce-able. Unfortunately, in the film version, the delightfully real woman aren’t aware of their supernatural powers until they basically start sleeping with the devil and have a sexual awakening and a threesome (Hollywood really decided to play around with the original plot).

Either way though, there’s fierceness and female connection, again the standard themes for female self-discovery (albeit couched within desire and lust).

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ihb6FLSh64″]

Practical Magic (1998)

The Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman remake of the classic Alice Hoffman novel, Practical Magic, repeated again the overwhelming wiccan theme of sisters, although this time there are three sets of sisters, rather than just two: the wise and ancient aunts, the bickering, bitter adults, and the bickering, hopeful youth. These women are grounded in their very normal, strained, familial relationships and in trying to repair it, but in this version they are also outcasts seeking acceptance from the town’s women.

There’s also a strain of dark violence running through the film, and it is this, a sort of communal fear, and a desire for safety and control, even for power, that brings all of the town’s women together as a supernatural shelter for a battered woman.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_zd2cAcOJg”]

Charmed (1998 – 2006)

Charmed followed the “everyday woman with extraordinary life” formula with great success for an entire eight-season run: three sisters battled the forces evil and transitioned from young 20-somethings to successful 30-somethings. Each sister had her bout with her own dark side and an obligatory date with a demon, but hidden within a pretty fun, entertaining, often silly show, was the story of three women growing up and transitioning into confident, generous women who actually did have it all: career, family, money, good sex and great hair, and magical powers.

Perhaps most notable, aside from the early seasons special effects, was that Charmed really did manage to portray the growing pains of adulthood for women in the 21^st century, dealing with job-hunting, career changes, dating, infertility, divorce, marriage, death, all bound together through the ties of family: grandmother, daughter, sisters, motherhood.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjsWC61GnMM”]

Witches of East End (2013 -)

Witches of East End is less of an East Coast Charmed (Charmed took place in San Francisco and had a distinct West-coast vibe) and seems more like a Practical Magic TV show. It features two sets of sisters, the older played by the incomparable Julia Ormond and Madchen Amick, and the younger by Jenna Dewan Tatum and Rachel Boston. The sisters are forever cursed to die young and be constantly reborn to their powerful mother (Ormond) and witness the antics of fun-loving wild, cat transforming aunt (Amick). The show’s plot settles on the witchy powers of the women and the events of their past lives and the men who wander in and out of them; but Witches of East End finds its center in the up-and down relationships of the two sisters, especially Joanna (Ormond) and Wendy (Amick), whose interactions are fantastic.

Because these women live hundreds of year together, their lives completely entwined, Witches of East End highlights the bonds of sisterhood beyond just blood relation.

There are other examples of the female witch story, a substantial portion of which are geared for younger audiences: Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Craft, The Vampire Diaries, The Secret Circle, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Beautiful Creatures, Wizards of Waverly Place and a whole slew of Disney films (Hocus Pocus must be mentioned here). Overwhelming, the characters are female as are the audiences who watch them; many of these stories were first bestselling novels and series with incredibly active fan bases.

Through so many variations of the powerful female witch arising to power and self-realization, these shows are also showing generally relatable women struggling to balance intense power with their personal lives of love, family and career. It’s a theme that seems to echo the ongoing debate surrounding women; “Can we have it all?”

In these shows, she can, and more.

__________________________________________

Rachel is a traveler and teacher who spent the last few years living in Asia. Now back in her native California, she focuses on writing about media, culture, and feminism. While a big fan of campy 80s movies and eccentric sci-fi, she’s become a cable acolyte, spending most of her time watching HBO, AMC, and Showtime. For good stories about lions and bungee jumping, as well as rants about sexism and slow drivers, follow her on Twitter at @RachelRedfern2

Women and Work/Labor Issues: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for Women and Work/Labor Issues Theme Week here.

A Plea For More Roseannes and Norma Raes: Addressing The Lack of Working-Class Female Characters on American Screens by Rachael Johnson

Working-class female protagonists remain rare, however. More often than not, working-class women play supporting roles as mothers, wives or lovers. Their characters are invariably underwritten or stereotypical.

The Power of Work/Life Balance in Charmed by Scarlett Harris

Insubordination and Feminism in Norma Rae by Amber Leab

A primary question about social fiction is whether the story remains relevant, or if the sociopolitical situation remains mired in the past. Norma Rae does retain relevance, though she’d likely be working in Walmart today instead of a textile mill (as I watched, I wondered how many textile mills still operate in the U.S.). While the movie seems to be a window on a past time in working America, it’s still relevant—and progressive—on many levels.

Moms Mabley and The Hard Work of Show Business by Ren Jender

People who don’t work in the arts don’t realize how much work goes into it. Writers write hundreds of pages before any reader (who isn’t a blood relative) loves their work. Musicians practice for countless hours and write a lot of shitty songs before they compose a tune that makes someone want to sing along. Moms Mabley, the Black, queer woman comedian born in 1894 in the Jim Crow south, ran away at age 14 to become a performer and spent much of the next 66 years onstage, performing and polishing her own comedy routines. Her long experience may be why her work, nearly 40 years after her death, still elicits laughs.

The Corporate Catfight in Working Girl by Chantelle Monique

Because Katharine steals Tess’s idea, we automatically pull for Tess, the lower-class underdog; consequently, we are forced to view Katharine, the upper-class princess, as the demonized, selfish boss, determined to achieve success no matter what. Hurt, yet motivated to take control of her career, Tess is now forced to lie in order to have her voice heard. This causes her to be pitted against a boss who has clearly abused her power. Even though Working Girl seems like a harmless, romantic drama, its female representation is firmly rooted in classism and sexism.

9 to 5: Still a Fantasy by Leigh Kolb

“Hey we’ve come this far, haven’t we? This is just the beginning.”

The beginning was in 1980, when this feminist comedy classic was released. Dolly Parton belted out the title song, which features a “boss man” who is “out to get her”–it’s an uplifting song, though, that echoes the closing celebratory sentiment: this is just the beginning. Things are going to change.

Well how have we done in 34 years?

The Devil in The Devil Wears Prada by Amanda Civitello

Our contempt for Miranda Priestly is due, in large part, to the way the film contextualizes her decisions, not just her personality. In making her into a shrill caricature of a woman executive whose single-minded focus on her career ruins her personal life, the film, like so many others, shortchanges the potential of a character like Miranda.

Women, Professional Ambition, and Grey’s Anatomy by Erin K. O’Neill

It is the overwhelming drive for excellence that makes the women on the show so real. It sometimes feels that this kind of ambition is not allowed to exist on TV. Sure, women can have high-powered careers and be very successful. But this is different. This is a show that not just portrays ambitious women, but is actively about professionally ambitious women and how they relate to each other and society.

Working Women in Film by Amber Leab

Women of color who are workers don’t weigh heavily in the American cultural imagination. When women of color appear in films, they tend to be secondary characters in low-paying jobs. Rarely do we see movies about working women who happen to be women of color.

Suits: Secretly Subversive When It Comes to Talking About Women in the Workforce by Deborah Pless

Jessica, Rachel, and Donna are all women working in a male-dominated industry. Jessica has overcome the sexism in the workforce by out-thinking it and by dominating the competition. Rachel has chosen to forego any help from her father, in favor of trying (and failing) on her own. And Donna has seen the patriarchal systems of power, and used them to her own advantage.

Working Class Family With a Touch of Absurdity: Raising Hope by Elizabeth Kiy

TV families are generally presented as aspirational. They usually live an upper middle class livestyle and frequently live comfortably on a single salary, have college degrees and wealthy backgrounds.
Usually when characters work menial labor or minimum wage jobs, they are presented as being in a transitory period. This is the stage before the character gets their life together, when the artist waits for a big break or where a youth supplements their allowance with their earnings. It’s rare that this work is presented as the character’s real life, how it will likely always be.

The Power of Work/Life Balance in ‘Charmed’

Phoebe and Paige’s evolution through their working lives is particularly poignant to the millennial ‘Charmed’ audience; many people I know grew up watching the three (or is it four?) sisters flitting from job to job in their quest to find purpose and fulfillment. And we don’t even have daily demon attacks to contend with!

This guest post by Scarlett Harris appears as part of our theme week on Women and Work/Labor Issues.

Despite all the midriff tops and high heels worn while fighting supernatural beings, and despite the damaged household items, buildings and cars which seem to miraculously be fixed by the next episode, if not before, Charmed is a lesson in work/life balance.

Throughout the eight seasons, which culminated in 2006, the Halliwell sisters struggle to balance demon fighting with romance, employment, study, and family.

Oldest sister Prue (Shannen Doherty) was killed off at the end of season three but not before she ditched her demon-dwelling auction house job at Buckland’s for freelance photography and bowed out of the dating game to focus on magic. As the head of a household whose mother died young, Prue was a maternal figure to her sisters, always concerned with putting family first, at the detriment to her love life and, ultimately, her actual life.

In “Which Prue Is It, Anyway?” from season one, Prue casts a spell to produce two carbon copies of herself, which carry out tasks such as dealing with her ex-boyfriend and cop on her case, Andy, while another one works on a spell with Piper and Phoebe, and yet another goes to Buckland’s to finish up some work. Talk about being a Superwoman!

Prue, Prue, Prue — Prue, Prue, and more Prue

Piper (played by Holly Marie Combs), who turns out to be the most level-headed and conventionally “normal” of the three sisters, gets fed up with being walked over in her season one job as manager of Quake restaurant and quits to open her own club, P3. She then gets seriously involved with whitelighter Leo, whom she marries in season three, and has two children with him, Wyatt and Chris. They then separate, Piper dates other people, they get back together again… Apart from the anguish of knowing their firstborn, Wyatt, grows up to be evil, Piper’s depiction as a frazzled “working mum” with a supernatural side really is the most realistic of the four Halliwell/Matthews sisters.

Which brings us to Phoebe (Alyssa Milano), the youngest of the original Charmed Ones until Paige comes along in season four. She enters the show as a free-spirit with a flawed perception of the future, or so we are led to believe by Prue, who’s had her issues with Phoebe in the past. In the first season alone she works as a hotel psychic, Prue’s assistant at Buckland’s and a real estate agent. After she casts a smart spell in “The Painted World” early on in season two, Phoebe decides to expand her knowledge for good and goes back to college. After graduating in season three (I wish I graduated college that quickly!), she goes on to write a successful advice column for The Bay Mirror newspaper, which fellow independent woman Elise edits.

We can’t forget Phoebe’s tumultuous personal life–her intense connection with Cole/Balthazar turn her into the queen of the underworld and the prospective mother of his demon spawn, she moves to China with millionaire boss Jason, becoming an aunty to Wyatt and Chris and, later, a mother to her own kids and taking a sabbatical from the newspaper because she’s feeling disconnected from her work. After Prue’s death, Phoebe takes on her longing for a less magical life which becomes somewhat of a reality for her in passing on the Charmed Ones’ knowledge to rookie witch Billie (a post-8 Simple Rules but pre-Big Bang Theory Kaley Cuoco) and the next generation of Halliwell witches.

Phoebe's column becomes famous — Phoebe’s column becomes famous

Half-sister Paige Matthews, played by Rose McGowan, enters Piper and Phoebe’s life as a social worker at the beginning of season four. She is unreceptive to being magical at first, and spends most of the first season trying to maintain a “normal life,” with a job, a boyfriend, and a new family who happens to be supernatural. (She, like Prue, later leaves the paid workforce to focus on witch duties full-time.) Throughout her televised tenure as a Charmed One, Paige dabbles in temp work with a magical twist, becomes a whitelighter and the principal of magic school, then marries and has kids.

Phoebe and Paige’s evolution through their working lives is particularly poignant to the millennial Charmed audience; many people I know grew up watching the three (or is it four?) sisters flitting from job to job in their quest to find purpose and fulfillment. And we don’t even have daily demon attacks to contend with! The support of their family is key in allowing the Halliwell’s to shun traditional careers in favor of part-time- and self-employment and working from home, much like Gen Y is able to save for house deposits and overseas gap years while living with their long-suffering parents.

After all, that is what Charmed is all about: family—sisters who just happen to be witches, and everything that goes along with both of those roles. While the manifestation of three fully groomed and immaculately dressed sister witches each morning in the Halliwell manor, who spend their days flitting about town vanquishing demons, protecting the innocent, working their day jobs, caring for their family, going on dates, maintaining a home, studying, managing their own businesses, etc., is extremely unrealistic, the sheer magnitude of what the Charmed Ones have to go through each day is somewhat of a metaphor for what working women—especially those with an extended family who all happen to live under the one roof—go through on a day-to-day basis. And sometimes, they manage to take it in stride, just as the Charmed Ones do.

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Early Bird Catches the Worm (soon to be undergoing a revamp; stay tuned!).

Motherhood in Film & Television: Absent Mothers in Urban Fantasy

Urban Fantasy is here to stay

This is a guest post from Paul and Renee.

Urban Fantasy — the bringing of the fantastic (vampires, werewolves, magic, fae and so much more) to a modern, real world setting — has become ever more popular as a mainstream genre. From Twilight to True Blood to The Vampire Diaries, it is now firmly entrenched on our televisions. The books regularly reach the best seller lists – this isn’t a fringe genre. It’s here, it’s huge and it’s here to stay.

This means the portrayals represented matter. Any popular media has the power to shape culture and society; any stories that are consumed by a large number of people are going to draw upon our societal prejudices and, in turn, feed and encourage those prejudices and portrayals.

Urban Fantasy is a genre that seldom gets critical examination. At first blush, the opposite would appear to be true when one considers the social conversation around Twilight or True Blood, but these are only two examples within an extremely large genre. It is interesting to note that much of Urban Fantasy contains female protagonists and is largely produced and consumed by women. Considering the ongoing gender divide, it is hardly surprising that this immensely popular genre is being ignored by critics.

Just because Urban Fantasy is largely produced by women and consumed by women does not mean that it is free of sexism and misogyny. When it comes to motherhood, a role that most women will one day assume, it is hardly surprising that within the genre most examples are highly problematic — when they appear at all.

The lack of representation of motherhood is so extreme that the viewer is forced to ask is, “where are the mothers?”. It seems like such an odd question, because you’d expect most characters, like most people, to have a mother lurking around somewhere; especially since most of the heroines in these stories are young women or even teenagers. Search as we might, the mothers are conspicuous by their absence.

The most common cause of the missing mother seems to be death — indeed, it is almost mandatory for an Urban Fantasy heroine to have a tragically dead mother. In The Vampire Diaries Elena’s mother is dead. True Blood has the orphaned Sookie; Charmed killed the sisters’ mother off before the series even started; Cassie, Diana, Melissa, Jake and Adam all have dead mothers in The Secret Circle. Buffy’s mother died part way through the series. In The Dresden Files, Harry’s mother died before the series began. In Grimm, Nick is yet another protagonist with a dead mother. The whole beginning motivation of Supernatural revolves around their dead mother. In Blood and Chocolate, both mother and father are brutally murdered. In The Craft Sarah Bailey’s mother is dead. In Underworld, Selene’s mother is murdered by Viktor.

This list is extremely — even excessively — long but it’s shocking that we looked through all the shows and movies that we’ve watched and actually found it hard to find a series where the mother was alive and present.

Even in stories where the mother is lucky enough to have dodged the bullet and is actually alive, she is still often absent. In Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, Renee, Bella’s mother, is absent, living in a completely different state. In The Vampire Diaries, Bonnie’s mother, Abby, is absent through much of her childhood and, when they are finally reunited, Abby not only presents Bonnie with a child that she raised as a replacement, but quickly disappears after becoming a vampire. Abby is well aware of the pain that her absence has caused Bonnie and yet she steadfastly finds a reason not to engage with her daughter. Once Upon a Time sets records for absent mothers — Augustus never had one, Snow White and Ruby’s mothers are dead, and Emma grew up in the foster system without her mother.

I suppose we should be grateful these mothers ducked the Urban Fantasy plague that has put so many parents in their graves, but they still have little to no actual influence and presence in their children’s — the protagonists’ — lives.

With such a massive pattern, we have to ask why. Why is it almost a requirement in Urban Fantasy for the young, female protagonist to be lacking a mother (and often a father too for that matter)?

One reason seems to be to make the characters sad, relatable and, frankly, angst ridden. It’s quick, cheap and easy characterisation to establish a sad, tortured or otherwise issue-laden character with “depth” to kill off a parent and have them be sad about it. These dead mothers are sacrificed for quick and easy back story for the protagonist. Take a heroine, load her up with a shiny ability, a bit of snark, a love interest — now kill her mother so she has “depth.” The back story is established: we have a “3-dimensional character” who has suffered (which seems to be shorthand for an established character in far too much fiction).

The mother is thrown away, killed — often violently — for the sake of the heroine’s story. These absences (often deaths and often graphic, violent deaths) are thrown in almost casually. These mothers are disposable, convenient story points, not characters in their own right. In fact, “disposable characters” may be giving them too much credit, since they don’t even have chance to become characters before they’re cast aside to haunt their children.

We live in a world in which violence against women, while often decried publicly, is still very much acceptable socially. These deaths, even when in faultless instances like traffic accidents, amount to violence against women because of the frequency in which they occur. We can see this especially emphasised in Rise of the Lycans, when Viktor murdered Sonja when he discovered she was pregnant with a lycan’s child. Violence rates against pregnant women are even higher than against other women and this also reflects not just the disposability of mothers but also the control of men over their fertility. Men decide whether she is “allowed” to carry that child, which is often seen as a threat to the man — in this case to Victor’s power base but often in real life to a man’s freedom or lifestyle. To be clear, there are instances in which both mother and father dies; however, the near universality of the death of the mother definitely makes it a female-driven trope. When death comes through an act of violence it serves to reify the violence that women are forced to live with.

As it stands, it seems almost as though women are being punished for being mothers. Motherhood has often served as the impetus for women to engage in civil disobedience but, in Urban Fantasy, motherhood — more often than not — results in death. Women are given very little opportunity for agency. These deaths deny motherhood as a site of power for women and instead turn women into eternal victims who are then responsible for the misery of their children.

This also serves to emphasise how little we regard mothers as characters or people in their own right. A mother is seen as an extension of her child rather than a person — and since a mother is all about her child, why shouldn’t she be sacrificed to further her child’s back story? She isn’t important as a person, and if she contributes best by being dead or absent, so be it, she doesn’t matter.

Related to this lack of independent existence is the eternal trope of the Bad Mother. It is a societal constant that mother is always to blame for whatever problems a child faces or suffers. While “blame the parents” is commonplace, this by far and away falls more on the mother than the father. The mother is a constant scapegoat for any and every issue in their child’s life.

Lettie Mae in True Blood

Do we really care about the issues of Lettie Mae, Tara’s mother from True Blood? Or is her alcoholism there to reflect on how hard a life Tara has to lead? Do we analyse Bonnie’s mother, Abby, on The Vampire Diaries to consider what drove her to pursue a life outside of Mystic Falls? Or does she only appear as and when she helps her daughter’s friends? It is not accidental that Lettie Mae and Abby are women of colour. Historically, women of colour have been seen as unfit mothers, unless we are nurturing and raising White children. Lettie Mae is not only absent but she is an alcoholic and she engaged in emotionally abusive behaviour throughout Tara’s childhood. For respite, Tara was forced to flee to the Stackhouse residence. What does it tell us when a Black girl can only find safety in the care of a White family, and abuse and neglect in her own mother’s home? Ruby Jean Reynolds is Lafayette’s mother on True Blood and we are first introduced to her in a mental institution. She is neurologically atypical and we learn that Lafayette has been doing sex work and selling drugs in order to pay for her care. She is extremely homophobic and uses anti-gay slurs to refer to both Lafayette and his now deceased boyfriend on the show, Jesus. The depiction of African-American mothers who are both physically and emotionally unavailable, and neglectful and abusive, is just another negative manifestation of how the media has chosen to construct the motherhood of African-American women.

It’s also worth noting how many of these “failure” mothers are marginalised. Lettie Mae is both black and poor. Abby is black. Darla from The Crow is a poor drug user. Even Sally’s mother on Being Human (US) is only around for 2 episodes of character growth for Sally — and in that time we learn she had an affair while with Sally’s father and wasn’t there for Sally as she wanted and needed. All the mothers we’ve mentioned are disposable characterisation tools — but the wealthy or middle class white mothers in The Secret Circle, Charmed, The Vampire Diaries, The Dresden Files, Once Upon a Time, Underworld and True Blood are killed off or absent through forces outside their control. They are absent because they are victims — and certainly beyond reproach. While poor women or mothers of colour are not innocently absent, they are to blame for their failure.

Finally, we have to take it to the full extreme – the villainous mother. Again, this is, in many ways, an easy characterisation. You have instant angst and pain and emotional conflict just because of the relationship between the antagonist and the hero/heroine.

It also feeds further into the prevalent theme of mother blame we see repeated so often and it is, again, used as an excuse to blame any of the problems the protagonist has. In Lost Girl, Bo’s problems of being a succubus without any guidance is down to her villainous, succubus mother’s abandonment. In Being Human (US), Mother’s smothering control over Suren is to blame for her childishness and self indulgence. In Once Upon a Time all of Regina’s evil plans ultimately stem from her mother’s ruthless ambition and destroying her dreams. They are the ultimate problem mother, to blame for everything in the child’s life – both their own personal issues and their ongoing conflict — it’s all completely Mother’s Fault.

It is disturbing that this prevailing idea of the dead, absent or outright villainous mother is so common within the genre. It devalues motherhood, sets mother up as disposable and ultimately to blame for the wrongs in their children’s lives, and this heavy burden of blame falls all the more heavily on marginalised mothers. In the aftermath of these absent mothers we have a mob of young female protagonists who have no mothers, frequently no parents at all. They’re alone, usually much younger, less experienced, more naive than the male love interest. They are exposed to the often predatory advances of these men — which is another topic entirely, but the seeds of it are planted by the absent mother leading towards her vulnerable, lonely daughter.

Paul and Renee blog and review at Fangs for the Fantasy. We’re great lovers of the genre and consume it in all its forms – but as marginalised people we also analyse critically through a social justice lens.