You see, her particular witch power is, as far as we know now, that her vagina kills any boy or man who dares enter it. She didn't hit him with her car or anything they were having sex for the first time and suddenly he began convulsing and blood started pouring out of his face and he was dead. Our ostensible lead here is Taissa Farmiga's character, a sullen but sweet teenage girl who is still shell-shocked after accidentally killing her boyfriend. But he then fleshes out the story, grafts tissue onto the bones of this premise, with tools that are far too blunt. So this is well-trod, perhaps even slightly overused, allegorical territory for Murphy to explore. ("Doing spells" sometimes became the jokey euphemism for lesbian sex.) And of course we've myriad texts and, y'know, actual history to tell us that witch hysteria often had more to do with womanhood than it did black magic.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer used witchcraft as a way to explore one character's self-actualization, both social and sexual.
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The Craft was a dark look at high school cliques and peer pressure that turned the mad power of youth into magic. The Witches of Eastwick featured modern '80s women who used their mystical wiles to overcome a bad man (the baddest, even). We've seen witchcraft as female empowerment in plenty of diverse fare over the years. And that persecution of witches is simply specified misogyny. But judging from last night's premiere episode, I'm worried that we might be in for something less-than, something decidedly Murphy-ian in its deceptive shallowness.Ĭoven's thematic premise seems to be that witchcraft, possessed innately by these women (the show so far focuses on a school for "gifted" girls and the older women in its orbit), is representative of some broader, more general female power. That's quite a lineup! And promises a fascinatingly gynocentric season, one presumably about intra-gender social dynamics and politics and all that interesting stuff. There is of course AHS staple Jessica Lange, joined in various capacities by Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Sarah Paulson, Lily Rabe, Taissa Farmiga, Gabourey Sidibe, Patti LuPone, Christine Ebersole, and Robin Bartlett, among others. And for good reason! Not only is the cast predominantly women (the season is about witches in New Orleans), but it's a who's who of wonderful, interesting actresses. Much hay has been made about the new season of Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story, called Coven, for having a largely female cast.
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