Shannon Scott, a faculty member in the English Department at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, recently joined MPR News host Jacob Aloi to discuss why witches remain so popular and why pop culture can’t seem to get enough of them.
From the conversation:
Aloi: I really love talking about witches from folklore. And I do enjoy the kinds of witches that we hear about, but I’m curious about the kinds of witches that we see. And Jay in Morehead is on the line. Jay, you called in this morning – tell us a little bit about your thoughts on witches, how they’re portrayed and how they often pop up.
Jay: What I find interesting is you tend to see two different versions of witches – either very old, hideous, mean women, or very young, attractive, nice girls or women. I’m wondering where those two iconographies of witches come from?
Aloi: Oh yeah, that’s great. I’m curious, Professor Scott, in your conversations in the classroom, has this come up? We often have this haggish kind of look, and then sometimes we have these really beautiful, alluring, dramatically drawn figures who bring people in. Have these come up in your classes as part of discussion?
Scott: Yeah, I would say they have. The young and pretty witches are easy for audiences to enjoy, of course. But the second kind — the old crone or hag — falls into something we call more and more hagsploitation films. That’s where you get the image of the old crone who eats children and practices dark magic, coming from fairy tales and early modern European demonologists. She is very frightening. What’s challenging is that so many of these films are fabulous. They’re very good, but the image of the old evil woman can be difficult to handle and difficult to explain. …