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silveradeptSo, I ended up watching the pilot of the rebooted Charmed, after having initially given it a pass because the original was not a show I enjoyed that much. What drew me in was a Twitter thread by Lord Stabbington of subtitled screenshots (although the captions themselves were not reproduced in the text of the tweet) that suggested the reboot was ready to engage the 2018 audience and their concerns about women, empowerment, and feminism.
The original, in my somewhat scattered watching, seemed to fall fairly swiftly into being a story ostensibly about witches and vanquishing but that spent quite the amount of screen time focused on the romantic entanglements of the main cast, which wasn't the show I was looking for and doesn't ping my feminism radar, but it's also true that a lot of what I watched of it was in syndication, and therefore I might have missed the actual parts that were.
I'm not sure I can even give cautious optimism about feminism to the show based on the single episode, but not because it isn't trying. It's that what I saw seemed to be caricature drawn from the headlines of 2018.
Here be spoilers, if you also want to watch it without my opinions interfering. I'll even pad your decision time by mentioning that the effect for the disappearance and reappearance of the known supernatural character is going to be very familiar to fans of the Harry Potter movies, as it is essentially the Apparition twist. (The CW, the network producing and airing the new Charmed, is owned, at least in part, by Warner Brothers, so I imagine clearances for that effect were a lot easier to obtain than they might have been.)
Also, the reboot has been situated in a fictitious Michigan location, Hilltowne, with a college that has enough student population to support a Greek system, and that means I will be extra on my guard about location references and what the weather is supposed to be like if people make date references. (I suspect Hilltowne is supposed to be an Ann Arbor expy, making the fictitious unnamed college a University of Michigan expy, so if I continue watching, I might be extra-shirty about getting the university wrong, if this hunch turns out to be supported.)
Let's start with the characterization and how it relates to the plot of the episode. The arc words for the plot that isn't "the Charmed Ones get together and decide to accept their legacy" is "witch-hunt," which the viewing audience would recognize as the refrain of the current president with regard to the multiple investigations into his character, business dealings, possible collusion with foreign governments, and so forth. (Said president's ascension is referenced as the first sign of apocalypse by a character that is supposed to be a trustworthy ally. We'll get to him later.) M very sure this episode was written and shot well before the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, where that same phrase reappeared in relation to the multiple accusations of sexual misconduct levied against the judge, and it's this thread in going to pick up on, in that every time someone in the episode uses "witch-hunt" to describe the allegations of sexual misconduct against a professor, it's someone coded male and when someone says it's not, it's someone coded female. The allegations themselves were levied by a student, who fell into a coma of unspecified origin, and supported by the Charmed Ones' mother, who is killed shortly into the first episode. With no other person to support or confirm the allegation, the suspension that the accused professor was placed under either by the mother (who was the chair of the women's studies department of Hilltowne U before her death) or due to the mother's advocacy is lifted and he is free to return to work, because at that point it becomes "he said, she said," and she's comatose. The idea of "he said, she said" receives a turnabout when there is a single witness to the supernatural goings-on, and rather than wipe his mind, the sisters say to let him go. Anyone he talks to won't believe him, and if anyone asks them about it, they'll deny it. Since there are more she than he in this case, the witness will presumably get a good lesson on what it's like to be a trauma victim and have nobody believe you. I'm pretty sure this has been said in many other places, but keeping the power dynamics and just exchanging the men and women does not feminism make.
The reinstatement of the professor has to happen for plot reasons, so that he can subtly harass the new scientist in his lab (sister number three, Macy, unknown to and hidden from the other two by their mother) by complimenting her blouse, right after proclaiming how glad he is to have the suspension behind him, in case we didn't pick up that we're supposed to believe the terrible things said about him.
I can't really see a university that has gone all the way to putting a professor on leave deciding that they're going to bring him back after suspicious circumstances happen to both his main accuser and the faculty member most responsible for the suspension. Even if nothing gets proven out, the faculty member has already become a major liability to the university's name and character, and I can see that suspension very quickly becoming a demand to either quietly resign or be very publically fired.
Also, the professor turns out to be a demon that the sisters have to defeat, although not the one that killed their mother. He's specifically described as a demon that feeds on strong women and steals their life force. Subtle.
Equally subtle is how we are introduced to Mel, the middle sister, and Maggie, the youngest sister. Mel is the ur-cardboard feminist lesbian nightmare of the conservative movement, posting up #TimesUP posters all around the campus that are presumably about a protest to be held about the reinstatement of the suspended professor. (Which does happen later on in the episode.) When approached by the new women's studies chair to talk about her latest article, he comments "Reading it made me feel as if my penis had been torn from my body." Mel's response? "You read it correctly, then." Mel also is adamant that a "cis male should never be the chair of the women's studies department," a point I can get behind, and I think it actually a deft bit of writing to have him respond "Well, this cis male has been published in twelve prominent feminist journals and been retweeted by Roxanne Gay." That sort of defensive pointing of "I have minority friends and they say I'm okay," is the way most people respond when called or for being in a place that they are fundamentally mismatched for. He's out of his lane, his predecessor was a woman, and there's a really good reason to believe that he took the position from a much more qualified woman. (He's also supposed to be the trusted ally to the witches, their white-lighter, but we don't know this at the time.)
With the way she's been depicted, at this point I'm worried Mel will turn out to be a TERF if she keeps this characterization. Another equally concerning prospect is that the narrative is going to make it the work of their seasons to soften her into something decidedly less feminist, based on the seemingly throwaway line that Mel's time-freezing ability only works "when [she's] not angry." I suspect that's a deliberate choice of words. "Angry feminist" has specific connotations that Mel definitely fits the stereotype of. If using her abilities means becoming less angry, then Mel will be expected to become less of herself for the good of others. That doesn't sound like a very feminist message to me.
Maggie, on the other hand, is the party girl who wants to Rush a sorority and be the social girl. Mel thwarts her on occasion by loudly declaring at a co-ed party that she'll just stay and have discussions about rape culture with the men, and tells one of the girls making out at the party that consent can be withdrawn at any time. Which would, in any other context, be necessary and useful conversations, but are here being deployed to get Maggie to leave the party and come home (because Mom texted them to come home immediately before getting murdered) rather than being used in a correct context, because obviously the sisters and pledges are too air-headed to have considered these concepts. Because stereotypes of sororities and the shallow women who join them, as exemplified by the thoughts of the other sisters and pledges overheard by the audience once Maggie gains the power to hear the thoughts of the people she is touching, but also because the leader of the house provided a stellar example of White Feminism by calling her house "woke" for doing things like standing at the bedside of the comatose accuser. Said head is also White and blonde-haired. Subtlety is not necessarily in the oeuvre, it seems.
Maggie is looking for space from Mel and trying to define herself in ways that are different from her sister, and Mel is squeezing that away from her because she disapproves of Maggie's choices.
Choice ends up being an issue, as well. While the white-lighter says that witchcraft is very "pro-choice" these days, the actual time to choose (and invoke the Power of Three) happens during a time freeze in a battle with a demon. Macy and Mel get to state their reasons why and affirm that they choose to do this. Maggie hesitates, and then, when pressured by her sisters and the situation at hand, also says she chooses. And it apparently counts, since there's vanquishing that happens afterward. But I certainly wouldn't call it choice or consent, given that Maggie didn't really choose freely, of her own will, and for her own reasons. With the way that everyone foregrounded choice and consent throughout the episode, that a crucial decision is made without it jars terribly.
All is not lost on the feminism front, however, as there is one bright spot that I see. Maggie has a man in her life that she's currently asked for space from. From what we see of him, he fits a few of the Nice Guy characteristics, where he offers her a ride so that she doesn't have to go through the woods, and texts her about not going through the woods and staying safe, and otherwise pushing on the boundaries she has set. Generally, Maggie keeps her boundaries with him, except for one kiss at the end that she dismisses as "adrenaline" when the others want to make it about romance. During the course of the episode, that guy turns out to be possessed by a demon when he becomes much more aggressive and tries to hurt or kill Maggie before having his possession dispersed by the application of baking soda. At which point he resumes being a Nice Guy.
There's a germ of an idea here, and I would be pleased to see if the writers' room conceived of it this way, that the demonic force is toxic masculinity. If possession turns a Nice Guy into a redpiller, and the clearly greater demon has basically been harassing all of his female students and colleagues the whole time, it might be a useful shortcut for the sisters to figure out who might be demons by finding the most toxic men in a group of toxic men.
Maggie keeping her boundaries, for the most part, is the part of the show that feels the most feminist to me, given that Mel is constantly narratively set up as someone whose feminism is all about outward show and participation, without giving us opportunities to see her convictions or her feminism when it's not conforming to the stereotype of "angry man-hating lesbian" and suggesting that the opposite of Mel's performative feminism is what she will need to use her witch powers.
It's a hot take, on a pilot, but since the CW has been aggressively marketing the reboot for its feminist content, I'm not convinced yet that the showrunners and writers understand what they're talking about. Their feminist take seems very much from the school of Joss Whedon, rather than striking out in a different direction. But there's still time to find a groove, and perhaps the writers will settle in to something better, now that they've had to get their bombastic pilot out of the way to draw the viewership.
If you brave the wilds of social media, many of the takes you'll see complaints about the presence of recognizably feminist content at all, and a smaller set of complaints that the feminism is very White and not particularly well-done or intersectional, despite the casting of a lot of people of color for the roles. It's this second voice that I hope can get through and that better choices get made on a show that wants to sell itself as feminist.
The original, in my somewhat scattered watching, seemed to fall fairly swiftly into being a story ostensibly about witches and vanquishing but that spent quite the amount of screen time focused on the romantic entanglements of the main cast, which wasn't the show I was looking for and doesn't ping my feminism radar, but it's also true that a lot of what I watched of it was in syndication, and therefore I might have missed the actual parts that were.
I'm not sure I can even give cautious optimism about feminism to the show based on the single episode, but not because it isn't trying. It's that what I saw seemed to be caricature drawn from the headlines of 2018.
Here be spoilers, if you also want to watch it without my opinions interfering. I'll even pad your decision time by mentioning that the effect for the disappearance and reappearance of the known supernatural character is going to be very familiar to fans of the Harry Potter movies, as it is essentially the Apparition twist. (The CW, the network producing and airing the new Charmed, is owned, at least in part, by Warner Brothers, so I imagine clearances for that effect were a lot easier to obtain than they might have been.)
Also, the reboot has been situated in a fictitious Michigan location, Hilltowne, with a college that has enough student population to support a Greek system, and that means I will be extra on my guard about location references and what the weather is supposed to be like if people make date references. (I suspect Hilltowne is supposed to be an Ann Arbor expy, making the fictitious unnamed college a University of Michigan expy, so if I continue watching, I might be extra-shirty about getting the university wrong, if this hunch turns out to be supported.)
Let's start with the characterization and how it relates to the plot of the episode. The arc words for the plot that isn't "the Charmed Ones get together and decide to accept their legacy" is "witch-hunt," which the viewing audience would recognize as the refrain of the current president with regard to the multiple investigations into his character, business dealings, possible collusion with foreign governments, and so forth. (Said president's ascension is referenced as the first sign of apocalypse by a character that is supposed to be a trustworthy ally. We'll get to him later.) M very sure this episode was written and shot well before the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, where that same phrase reappeared in relation to the multiple accusations of sexual misconduct levied against the judge, and it's this thread in going to pick up on, in that every time someone in the episode uses "witch-hunt" to describe the allegations of sexual misconduct against a professor, it's someone coded male and when someone says it's not, it's someone coded female. The allegations themselves were levied by a student, who fell into a coma of unspecified origin, and supported by the Charmed Ones' mother, who is killed shortly into the first episode. With no other person to support or confirm the allegation, the suspension that the accused professor was placed under either by the mother (who was the chair of the women's studies department of Hilltowne U before her death) or due to the mother's advocacy is lifted and he is free to return to work, because at that point it becomes "he said, she said," and she's comatose. The idea of "he said, she said" receives a turnabout when there is a single witness to the supernatural goings-on, and rather than wipe his mind, the sisters say to let him go. Anyone he talks to won't believe him, and if anyone asks them about it, they'll deny it. Since there are more she than he in this case, the witness will presumably get a good lesson on what it's like to be a trauma victim and have nobody believe you. I'm pretty sure this has been said in many other places, but keeping the power dynamics and just exchanging the men and women does not feminism make.
The reinstatement of the professor has to happen for plot reasons, so that he can subtly harass the new scientist in his lab (sister number three, Macy, unknown to and hidden from the other two by their mother) by complimenting her blouse, right after proclaiming how glad he is to have the suspension behind him, in case we didn't pick up that we're supposed to believe the terrible things said about him.
I can't really see a university that has gone all the way to putting a professor on leave deciding that they're going to bring him back after suspicious circumstances happen to both his main accuser and the faculty member most responsible for the suspension. Even if nothing gets proven out, the faculty member has already become a major liability to the university's name and character, and I can see that suspension very quickly becoming a demand to either quietly resign or be very publically fired.
Also, the professor turns out to be a demon that the sisters have to defeat, although not the one that killed their mother. He's specifically described as a demon that feeds on strong women and steals their life force. Subtle.
Equally subtle is how we are introduced to Mel, the middle sister, and Maggie, the youngest sister. Mel is the ur-cardboard feminist lesbian nightmare of the conservative movement, posting up #TimesUP posters all around the campus that are presumably about a protest to be held about the reinstatement of the suspended professor. (Which does happen later on in the episode.) When approached by the new women's studies chair to talk about her latest article, he comments "Reading it made me feel as if my penis had been torn from my body." Mel's response? "You read it correctly, then." Mel also is adamant that a "cis male should never be the chair of the women's studies department," a point I can get behind, and I think it actually a deft bit of writing to have him respond "Well, this cis male has been published in twelve prominent feminist journals and been retweeted by Roxanne Gay." That sort of defensive pointing of "I have minority friends and they say I'm okay," is the way most people respond when called or for being in a place that they are fundamentally mismatched for. He's out of his lane, his predecessor was a woman, and there's a really good reason to believe that he took the position from a much more qualified woman. (He's also supposed to be the trusted ally to the witches, their white-lighter, but we don't know this at the time.)
With the way she's been depicted, at this point I'm worried Mel will turn out to be a TERF if she keeps this characterization. Another equally concerning prospect is that the narrative is going to make it the work of their seasons to soften her into something decidedly less feminist, based on the seemingly throwaway line that Mel's time-freezing ability only works "when [she's] not angry." I suspect that's a deliberate choice of words. "Angry feminist" has specific connotations that Mel definitely fits the stereotype of. If using her abilities means becoming less angry, then Mel will be expected to become less of herself for the good of others. That doesn't sound like a very feminist message to me.
Maggie, on the other hand, is the party girl who wants to Rush a sorority and be the social girl. Mel thwarts her on occasion by loudly declaring at a co-ed party that she'll just stay and have discussions about rape culture with the men, and tells one of the girls making out at the party that consent can be withdrawn at any time. Which would, in any other context, be necessary and useful conversations, but are here being deployed to get Maggie to leave the party and come home (because Mom texted them to come home immediately before getting murdered) rather than being used in a correct context, because obviously the sisters and pledges are too air-headed to have considered these concepts. Because stereotypes of sororities and the shallow women who join them, as exemplified by the thoughts of the other sisters and pledges overheard by the audience once Maggie gains the power to hear the thoughts of the people she is touching, but also because the leader of the house provided a stellar example of White Feminism by calling her house "woke" for doing things like standing at the bedside of the comatose accuser. Said head is also White and blonde-haired. Subtlety is not necessarily in the oeuvre, it seems.
Maggie is looking for space from Mel and trying to define herself in ways that are different from her sister, and Mel is squeezing that away from her because she disapproves of Maggie's choices.
Choice ends up being an issue, as well. While the white-lighter says that witchcraft is very "pro-choice" these days, the actual time to choose (and invoke the Power of Three) happens during a time freeze in a battle with a demon. Macy and Mel get to state their reasons why and affirm that they choose to do this. Maggie hesitates, and then, when pressured by her sisters and the situation at hand, also says she chooses. And it apparently counts, since there's vanquishing that happens afterward. But I certainly wouldn't call it choice or consent, given that Maggie didn't really choose freely, of her own will, and for her own reasons. With the way that everyone foregrounded choice and consent throughout the episode, that a crucial decision is made without it jars terribly.
All is not lost on the feminism front, however, as there is one bright spot that I see. Maggie has a man in her life that she's currently asked for space from. From what we see of him, he fits a few of the Nice Guy characteristics, where he offers her a ride so that she doesn't have to go through the woods, and texts her about not going through the woods and staying safe, and otherwise pushing on the boundaries she has set. Generally, Maggie keeps her boundaries with him, except for one kiss at the end that she dismisses as "adrenaline" when the others want to make it about romance. During the course of the episode, that guy turns out to be possessed by a demon when he becomes much more aggressive and tries to hurt or kill Maggie before having his possession dispersed by the application of baking soda. At which point he resumes being a Nice Guy.
There's a germ of an idea here, and I would be pleased to see if the writers' room conceived of it this way, that the demonic force is toxic masculinity. If possession turns a Nice Guy into a redpiller, and the clearly greater demon has basically been harassing all of his female students and colleagues the whole time, it might be a useful shortcut for the sisters to figure out who might be demons by finding the most toxic men in a group of toxic men.
Maggie keeping her boundaries, for the most part, is the part of the show that feels the most feminist to me, given that Mel is constantly narratively set up as someone whose feminism is all about outward show and participation, without giving us opportunities to see her convictions or her feminism when it's not conforming to the stereotype of "angry man-hating lesbian" and suggesting that the opposite of Mel's performative feminism is what she will need to use her witch powers.
It's a hot take, on a pilot, but since the CW has been aggressively marketing the reboot for its feminist content, I'm not convinced yet that the showrunners and writers understand what they're talking about. Their feminist take seems very much from the school of Joss Whedon, rather than striking out in a different direction. But there's still time to find a groove, and perhaps the writers will settle in to something better, now that they've had to get their bombastic pilot out of the way to draw the viewership.
If you brave the wilds of social media, many of the takes you'll see complaints about the presence of recognizably feminist content at all, and a smaller set of complaints that the feminism is very White and not particularly well-done or intersectional, despite the casting of a lot of people of color for the roles. It's this second voice that I hope can get through and that better choices get made on a show that wants to sell itself as feminist.
