Witchcraft versus the Movies: Get Over It

A Beliefnet article by Gus diZerega was promoted on CNN today. Entitled "10 Bad Portrayals of Witches and Pagans in Movies and TV," is is the result of a poll conducted by diZerega about movies "that most drove [Pagans] up a wall, limiting my request to those depicting witchcraft and NeoPagans."

The resulting list is largely comprised of movies about witches, which the article complains repeatedly depict witches as evil, murdering, and selfish.

Just how long are we going to continue perpetuating this nonsensical equation of modern witchcraft and historical folk belief?  For many hundreds of years, "witch" denoted precisely what these movies depict: a person, generally a woman, working highly malevolent magic against the community either for her own ends or else simply to make everyone else's life terrible.  These movies have nothing to do with the neopagan movement, and continuing to take folklore depictions and then claim they falsely depict modern witches is just disingenuous.

Of his entire list, I find only a few should even have gotten consideration:

• The Wicker Man (original, apparently the new version is too absurd to invoke outrage) - This film plays to a lot of stereotypes that were circulating in Britain in the 1970s when the film was made.  Ironically, I don't find most neopagans object to this movie.
• The Dark Secret of Harvest Home - I've never seen this one, so I'm going to just have to trust diZerega's comparison between it and The Wicker Man.
• The Craft - This film follows four high school girls who start following a witch religion.  Some of them become selfish with their power, while others struggle to discover the responsible path.  While this film never mentions Wicca, many elements are clearly derived from Wiccan ritual.  On top of which, this movie has long been credited by many pagans for glamorizing witchcraft/Wicca and attracting the Wicklets to us in droves.  I therefore understand why this film annoys neopagans, even though I don't really blame the film itself.
• Scooby Doo and the Witch's Ghost - This is the only film I personally find offensive.  Again, I haven't seen it, but apparently Wicca is not only mentioned, by a character flagrantly misuses it, claiming to be 1/16 Wiccan.  Bad research annoys me.

The mention of TV show Supernatural on this list I think deserves special mention. Again, it's here primarily because it depicts witches as bad, and again I have to remind folks that this is the historical use of the word.  Here I find the complaint doubly annoying because for five seasons this show has made it clear that in their world, practically everything supernatural is malevolent: demons, witches, ghosts, gods, shapechangers and even most psychics.  Heck, even angels are jerks.  While not specifically malevolent, most of them really don't care what happens to humanity and tend to trample them to achieve their own goals: which is, incidentally, the Apocalypse.  The world of Supernatural is dark for those in the know, full of terrors with very few bright spots.

The only valid complaint I see against Supernatural is the episode in which witches summon the god "Sam Hain."  Again, bad research annoys me, especially when the only place I head about the god Sam Hain is anti-pagan conservative Christian rhetoric.  So I've had a problem with one episode.  Again, it didn't personally offend me, but I don't like the repeating of blatantly bad information.