“Looking at where the word ‘coven’ comes from, we start with ‘convenire,’ a verb meaning to come together,” writes Meg Elison in this searing reappraisal of the 1968 classic. “When a woman comes together with the devil, we get ‘Rosemary’s Baby.'”
Arts & Culture
Review: Gladiator II and the chaos at the heart of empire
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“Nearly everyone in this film is obsessed with the Rome that was, where the emperor was a scholar instead of a syphilitic club kid in a toga,” writes Meg Elison in her review of Ridley Scott’s new film. “It is much easier to complain about a bad government than to build one that works. See Virgil for more on this. See Hannah Arendt. See Marija Gimbutas. See all of human history. See the news.”
Arts & Culture
Witches on TV: Pop Culture and Power
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TV witches have always captivated me. As a child, I would sit cross-legged in front of the screen, completely spellbound by reruns of Samantha Stephens from Bewitched on Nick-at-Nite. I remember watching her effortlessly clean the house with a twitch of her nose, never realizing that there was something deeper going on in these portrayals of witches.
Arts & Culture
Classics of Pagan Cinema: Hocus Pocus
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“As a nation, we love to cast our projections on the witches of Salem,” writes Meg Elison as she examines America’s favorite film about witches. “What we want from the real people who died by state violence, the places where they hanged, the hysteria that killed them, is fun. We want Salem to be a theme park, to amuse us and titillate us.”
Arts & Culture
Life Itself: George A. Romero’s Theology of the Living Dead
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The more of Romero’s films that I watched – and especially the more of his novel that I read – the more I also found a theology bubbling up through the blood that aligns with my own theology of Ásatrú, a modern religion that revives, reconstructs, and reimagines the ancient polytheism of Northern Europe.
Culture
Review: “Agatha” shows it’s been a Gay Craft all along
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Storm Faerywolf reviews Marvel’s new series Agatha All Along. “When we get to see fictional Witchy characters living their best lives, it gives us a renewed sense of hope that we might be able to do the same, even if they are not exactly the heroes of the story. And when Witches and queer folk collide? That’s where the rainbow magic really happens.”