(this piece
was first published as 'Samantha, Every Witch Way But Lose'
in the Age, 25th June 2005)
With Nicole Kidman's
character about to step into Elizabeth Montgomery's boots as the nose-twitching
witch from 1164 Morning Glory Circle, it seems a good time to have a
look back at the original television sit-com which cast its magic from
the 1960s through to the early 70s.
Back then, instead
of the news theme, in our house it was the Bewitched theme
music that signalled six o’clock -- the witching half-hour --
as the animated-Samantha flew in on her broomstick (demurely side-saddle),
burnt the dinner, turned into a cat, and jumped seductively into Darrin’s
arms.
On the surface,
Bewitched was a tale of romantic love – a woman choosing
to give up her independence and career for the fulfilment of being a
wife and homemaker. They had a beautiful house, all the latest mod cons,
a respectable neighbourhood, and the cold war McCarthy years were behind
them. It was John Howard’s suburban dream of yester-year -- all
that was missing was the white picket fence.
But the way in
which the series was both to play into and subvert a rich lode of cultural
stereotypes and allusions was set from the very first episode. Darrin,
having just discovered Sam’s secret, moans drunkenly to the bartender,
‘What do you do when you find out your wife is a witch?’
And the bartender replies, ‘Well, you just have to learn to live
with it. We all do.’
‘No, no,’ says Darrin, ‘My wife really is a witch.’
‘Ha.’ Says the bartender. ‘You should see my wife’
Casting a witch
as a beautiful, clever, desirable young woman (well, only 3000 years
old) opened a cascading set of boxes filled with some of our deepest
wishes and fears, at the same time as it created the perfect brew for
a successful sit-com.
On the one hand,
it’s the ultimate male fantasy of a woman who is enchanting, strong
and powerful, but would give it all up for love. And on the other, it’s
the suburban nightmare -- the hapless man surrounded by mysterious,
unpredictable creatures who have abilities beyond his imagination (even
the mortal ones can birth babies and feed them milk out of their breasts!).
As Darrin struggles to be king of his castle, his in-laws can’t
even be bothered to get his name right -- Endora calls him Durwood;
Maurice thinks his name is Duncan; and Serena just refers to him as
‘What’s-his-name’.
Like any dream-nightmare
it’s full of jokes and puns and word play. The unconscious drawing
on everything at hand – vaudeville, myth, history, literature,
as well as the many social issues of the day. So Endora arrives as fifty
years of mother-in-law jokes come home to roost on the kitchen countertop;
while poor Aunt Clara ends up with a Roman emperor in the kitchen when
she tries to assemble a salad; and Serena wears a peace-symbol in amongst
her jewellry.
Launched in 1964,
a year after the assassination of JFK, the historic Civil Rights march
on Washington, and the publication of Betty Friedan’s The
Feminine Mystique, the series gave a new spin to the idea of a
mixed marriage and well-and-truly reclaimed witch power from the old
hag image.
For if there was
a hag in the show it was Gladys Kravitz, the busy-body neighbour over
the road – bored, fatuous, sexless, and dull – the product
of years of good wife-ism; a constant reminder to Darrin to be careful
what he wished for.
Lying stretched
out in front of the television as a ten year old, on our green wall
to wall carpet, with the fler lounge and the glass sliding doors into
the kitchen where my mother would repeatedly call to us girls (but not
the boys) to come and set the table, it was obvious that this was light
years away from the pipe-smoking all-knowing patriarchy of My Three
Sons and Father Knows Best.
Father knows best?
Now there’s a fantasy.
In fact you could
say that Bewitched portrayed a world of competing fantasies:
as an advertising executive, Darrin too was in the business of casting
spells. And although it was always abundantly clear who was the real
creative genius here, it was imperative that Sam be persuaded to hang
up her broomstick in favour of a vacuum cleaner (latest model, of course),
and trade in her wizardry for a kitchen whiz.
For while it was
never explained whether the materialised goodies were transported from
elsewhere or created with a kind of witch-nanotechnology, as long as
Sam continued to twitch her nose and conjure up whatever she needed
by herself she was a threat to the entire capitalist-consumerist world
that Darrin represented and from which he made the living which earned
him the role of household head.
In this world of
middle-class mortals, Sam was always suffering mysterious ailments.
Like the episode where each time she sneezes a bicycle, or tricycle,
even a penny-farthing, appears out of nowhere. ‘Totally logical,’
announces Dr Bombay (the family witch-doctor) once he’s summoned,
‘In fact it’s cycle-logical.’ Or the time everything
she touches turns to gold: ‘a guilt complex’. And the morning
she wakes up to find the doors and windows sealed against her -- spelling
out what it is to be a housewife trapped in a house. The diagnosis (Dr
Bombay twirls his moustache): the house has developed a vapour-lock
because she’s been suppressing her natural powers. The solution:
start using them.
It was definitely
a fable for our time: a weird handbook showing all the contortions and
tricks required to keep that happy home thing functioning, and to keep
the man feeling head of the house. (I could almost hear my mother’s
voice in my ear: see, you can’t have love and a career.)
But while it might
have been hard sometimes to choose to be Samantha if that meant never
being Serena, choosing between ending up as Phyllis Stephens (or Gladys
Kravitch) and ending up as Endora was a lot easier.
And I certainly
didn’t want to end up as Sam (elected to the post of Queen of
the Witches in 1968!) flinching from Darrin’s anger whenever things
went wrong. ‘ We-ll’ she’d coax, cringing away from
the ever-present threat of violence just below the surface of his love
(while the laugh track carried on). But what do you expect if you agree
to give up all your powers?
To Endora and the
other witches, Sam was a tragically fallen woman – a drudge to
a man. Borrowing from the perennial struggle between the good girls
and their dark undersides that runs deep throughout American literary
history, this Fair Maiden had, of course, to have her Dark Lady: who
arrived in the form of her gerrrooovay micro-mini-skirted identical-cousin
Serena. Listed in the credits as Pandora Spocks (Elizabeth Montgomery’s
idea), she was indeed trouble.
Witches have traditionally
been regarded as sexually subversive and dangerous, and Serena was the
swinging sixties playgirl to the hilt. A good-time girl to Samantha’s
good girl. So when Sam was mysteriously pestered by an old bedwarmer
that kept floating off the wall of an historic house she was visiting
in Salem, it didn’t take her long to twig that this might have
something to do with Serena. Summoned from a party somewhere in the
Galaxy, Serena identifies it as an old lover. Serena is always very
literal: when she grew tired of him, well she just changed him into
exactly what he was to her. (Likewise in another episode, a guy croons
into her ear on the dance floor, ‘Fly me to the moon’ –
and the next moment, there he is, looking into a crater.)
Watching it I never
identified with the mortals (who could?). That was part of its magic,
for half an hour once a week you got to identify with a long buried
wiccan heritage: an other way of being, which men could be a part of
too, but in which the feminine was supreme. The feminine, the queer,
the magical – the irruption of the repressed right into our lounge-room
every week (rated G).
Bewitched was inspired
in part by two earlier movies – the 1942 I Married a Witch;
and Bell, Book and Candle from 1958, starring Kim Novak, James
Stewart and Jack Lemmon. But it worked beautifully as a sit-com -- no
happy-ever-afters, just yet another temporary truce between turbulent
episodes.
Which is why I
have my doubts that the concept can survive being snipped to fit the
current romantic comedy genre -- that brand of woo that they brew in
Hollywood these days.
I shudder to think what kind of final scene they’ll conjure where
all the mortals and all the witches and warlocks come together and cheer
and clap – a happy homogenisation.
‘We are quicksilver,’
said Endora to Samantha, ‘a fleeting shadow, a distant sound.
Our home has no boundaries beyond which we cannot pass. We live in music,
in a flash of color. We live on the wind, and in the sparkle of a star.’
And you can bet
your sweet broomstick on that.
*
Bewitched
the movie starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell opens in Australia
on July 7th. The original sit-com is currently screening in Australia
on TV1 and is now available on DVD.
You can check out
Beth Spencer's webpage at www.bethspencer.com.
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