If you haven't heard about it by now, there's a movie about four young
women who become witches called 'The Craft'. Now from what I've seen and 
heard about the movie so far (including an interview with one of the actresses
who said that there was a 'real' witch on set) it seems to me that this movie
has a lot of lies, distortions, and half-truths. I urge you to write the head
of Columbia Pictures and Sony Entertainment (the corporate owner) to 
protest this Distorted view of Wicca.
   <Please note: If I'm wrong, I will of course apologize most profusely.>

91 responses total.

I hate to say it, but there really was a real Witch on the set.
COG had an advisor on the set.  The advisor's comment afterr the
film was finished was, "Well, if I hadn't been there, it would
have been worse."

I look forward to two weeks from now, when nobody even remembers
this movie.  <fingers crossed>

Well, I think the biggest lie in the movie is the idea that
"The Craft" actually enables its practitioners to fly through
the air, perform telekinetic feats, etc.  That is, the wiccans
portrayed in this movie are about as realistic as the Jews
portrayed in "The Ten Commandments."  "The Witches of Eastwick"
and that awful movie with Bette Midler were the same way.  The
trouble is that a movie that accurately portrayed wiccans would
be pretty boring unless you introduced some other plot twists,
just as a realistic portrayal of, say, Lutherans, would be
interesting only to other Lutherans, if that.  What makes this
movie different, I think (not having seen it yet), is that
the title appropriates a term which I imagine must be sacred
to wiccans, or next to it.

You've got that on the first try, md.  I wouldn't be half as annoyed
with this movie if it were titled "The Witches" or even "The Coven",
but "the Craft" is a term very specific to Wicca, not Satanism.
So the "they're not Wiccans, they're Satanists" explanation isn't
gonna fly.  (So to speak.)

Reall, I don't worry about the public reaction to the movie - those
who hate us will continue hating us, those who know us will not
think any differently of us because of a dumb Hollywood movie,
and those who think we're all loonies will continue to do so.

My main concern is that we'll get a huge influx of teens and young
adults who actually think we can do all that crap, and want us
to teach them how.  *SIGH*

That's already happening <sigh>.  :-(

I'm writing a novel that is about witches...
and I'm making the point several times throughout it that we can't do
any of that crap...
not that I don't wish we could...  flying through the air
would be fun!  =}
The plot has nothing to do with the supernatural,
but the fact that the main characters are witches is crucial...
it took me a loooooong time to work out a viable pllot that would be
markettable to mundanes and still be an accurate portrayal.

Hey, I know a basic flying spell.  The main ingredient is
an airplane ticket.  The more advanced flying spell requires
an airplane and a pilot's license.  >8)

i know that spell... i nstead of baby fat, it requires
liquified dinosaur remains...

<bjorn runs and hides in the inside of the Mausoleum of Chronepsis>

There was talk all over the net about that movie from its inception; folks
had got hold of the script, or something.  Letters of objection, etc. It's
important to let those with money/power know that we exist, are a buying and
voting block and don't want to be misrepresented, but it's also important
not to come off as nuts or go off half-cocked or whatever, which happens
all too often.
As to the sensationalism of psychic abilities, it's less of a problem in
print, I think, since you don't *see* people getting up and flying around
with no strings attached <g>.  The thing that's almost impossible to pull
off effectively in video is that flying really does work- on a psychic or
astral or psychological level.  None of those "feats" are very impressive
in person, and subtlety doesn't carry well in movies.  I wish the industry
were ready to have characters who were interesting in themselves, and also
happened to be Wiccan.  Few and far between, same as with gays...Sigh. When
it's done well, we *need* to vote with our dollars, to support good efforts.
"It would have been worse" doesn't cut it for me, and I think that 
"consultant" sold out.  Just my opinion.  Can't have been an easy choice.
And yeah, "the Craft" is a wiccan-specific in-group term, used by some other
wicca-based or related neo-pagans, *not* reconstructionists and generally
not ceremonial magicians, I believe.  I don't know that it's a *sacred*
term, although it conveys a significant degree of reverence, but it *is* a
private, in-group term; it assumes you know *which* (er, witch? <g>) "craft"
is meant.  Make sense?

Considering what most Wiccans write when they write, I hardly think
we should blame the industry for "not being ready".
the industry can't be ready to produce materials that aren't available
for production.
If we'd stop it with the Sword and Sorcery crap already (I'm talking
about the shrines that most Pagans I knowhave to DeLint, or
Lackey, or Bradley, or whatever), and produce interesting characters
ourselves, we *would* get published.  All the good books with Jewish
protagonists are by Jews (most of them, at least)...
Hollywood proper is out to make money.  that didn't stop them from
making The Wedding Banquet, Jeffrey, Threesome, Three of Hearts,
and so on, all of which *promiently* featured gays.  What it took was for
those gays who were creative enough and competent enough to get on the stick
and do something to do it... 
(and yes, I'm storming at myself here too)

Brighn, while the preponderance of fantasy based literature is part of the
problem; part of why so many people want to see us walk through wallsor
whatever, it can also be important.  Many of us have perceptions and 
experiences which are only corroborated in fantasy, and need that room to
expand and stretch into ourselves.  Hmmmm,  I wonder if the same need couldb
be met by memoirs and such, which are candid about those experiences and
skills?  I know I enjoy them, find them useful, but don't get quite as
immersed in them.
Certainly, I agree that we need to do the portraying, if we don't like how
we're portrayed by others.  And there are plenty of talented pagan writers.
We can certainly take lessons from the gay community, since we're traveling
a damn similar road, just a half-step behind.

I have a review now of the Craft, from Jenna, who saw it on her mother's
press pass tix.  It takes Wiccan philosophy (including threefold return
and "perfect love and perfect trust"), combines it with some mythology
about a God named Mana who is the lifeforce (a perversion, I think, of
Magic: The Gathering), and has some pretty nasty bloodbonding.  The plot
is basically four teenagers who mess with magic and witchcraft, get
drunk on power, and get screwed by Mana (in a bad way).  Unfortunately,
a fairly realistic plot.  (In fact, it hit a wee bit too close to home.)
The writing is allegedly abyssmal, and there is plenty of silliness
like levitation and such.  Jenna, in brief, panned it.  It did, however,
encourage her to talk first with her mother and then with me about
the themes in the film, and it led to some of her own enlightenment,
through her disgust at some of the distortions.  It has a happy ending.
There is a positive, older witch role model that is ignored throuhout.

And Kami, fantasy is fantasy.  If something can only be corroborated
through fantasy, then that's exactly what it is.  there is nothing
that has happened to me that, with the right touch and the right 
tone, couldn't be depicted in a contemporary life novel without 
the mundanes thinking I'm whacked.
If the authors out there writing are too incompetent to manage that,
it's their fault, not the industry's.

(I want to read your book if it gets published, Brighn.  It sounds very
interesting).

<Digression>  I'd just like to wish eveyone a Happy Beltane!

LLewellyn oublications puts out some excellent <and accurate> pagan/New Age
fiction.

Yeah, it's the non-fiction they put out that gives us a bad name.  >8)

Yes -- Happy Beltane everyone!!!
(This is seriously belated, but I forgot to post it yesterday...)
<sheepish grin>

<More Digression> My ritual blade arrived today, and I intend to cleanse it
under the Full Moon tomorrow.

This is a great time to do it being a sabbat and
a full moon both.  Have fun doing it!

<robh has a thing about ritual knives>

Gee, my favorite tool-consecration ritual requires two people...;)

Re#20: will do.
<ahem>

Re 21 - Never done one of those, kami, being the solitary sort
for the most part.  What exactly would that entail?  >8)

(back to the craft) I wouldn't say it had a happy ending. it
had a depressing ending, really. the "good" teenager ws
showing off to the formerly "bad: teenagers that she still
has all her powers,, but dropping a tree almost on them
and terrifying them.
nope. the best character in the movie was the nice witch who ran
the occult shop.

Re #9, yes it makes sense.  If I were the pagan in practice that I am 
at heart, I'd take minor offense (the kind that makes you smile and 
shrug) at the movie's title.  I picture a clueless filmmaker in Hong 
Kong making a movie called "The Holy Meal" in which Christians gain 
supernatural powers after taking communion.  

I have the same trouble brighn says he had in trying to imagine a non-
boring plot line featuring the religious beliefs and practices of 
modern-day characters, realistically and non-sensationalistically 
portrayed.  The closest I can come in the case of Wicca would be 1) a 
"Romeo and Juliet" approach in which the daughter of Wiccans and the 
son of fundamentalist Christians fall in love, and 2) a parodistic 
approach in which Wicca appears incidentally, as a trendier-than-thou 
lifestyle choice alongside the Range Rover, the $300 moccasin loafers, 
and the weekly aromatherapy enemas.  (I could have fun with that one.  
I bet there are quite a few such people, too, although probably not 
around here.  I think of it as a California phenomenon.)  I'd love to 
read brighn's book some day and see what he came up with.

Rob- nothing that isn't G rated, or at most PG...<g>--It's a variant on
the 
"Chalice and blade" wine blessing- placing the tool to be charged and
concecrated between the bodies of working partners and "sealing it with
a kiss".  The words we used were a variant on the wine blessing, like I said.

24>  I was thinking about the claim that the Industry (Great Conspiratorial
Estate that it is, the Fifth Column, the Cabal) isn't ready to depict
Pagans *and* their religious beliefs/mythology.  I thought about a movie
in which the fundamentalist Christian mythology were treated as occurring
to 1990s characters... that is, for instance, Mary the Good Assembly of
God Christian is out of work, she prays every night, an angel appears to
her i  the night holding the want ads, turned to page 5H, column 3, a 
huge black circle markered around a particular ad, so Mary applies and
gets that job.  The vision would either be embedded as a dream, or the
movie would be a farce.  There were the Oh God! movies (Eep! God is
dead now!), and Heaven Can Wait... comedic treatments.  There were
Carrie and Children of the Corn... oooo, what *healthy* treatments
of Christians in those two (nevermind that by Childrenof the Corn III,
the demon that had started out as a perversion of the Christian God --
*not* Satan, but a reinterpretation of *God* -- had become a very Pagan
devil, avenging antienvironmentalism).  We are living in a rationalist
society, and movies intended to depict real-life situations that have
mythological undercurrents are poorly received, *regardless* of the 
mythology in which they are steeped.  The few exceptions (Dead Again,
Truly, Madly, Deeply, and Ghost, for instance -- all ghost stories --
pop to mind) are stripped of religion-specific supernaturalism.

I like the mixed-faith idea.  Maybe that will be next.
The current one is a thriller.  I won't give the plot away in public,
the Net *is* insecure and I rather like my plot.

bah humbug... you won't tell your plot to anyone, period.

*kisses jenna*  maybe i'll tell you

        Watching horror films for an accurate portrayal of Wicca is about as
productive as watching Stallone action films for an acurate portayal of Islam,
I figure, or artistic-intellectual films for an accurate portrayal of
Christianity.  It'd be kinda hard to make a horror film about Ann Arbor hot
tub Pagans or real Irish-Celtic Wittans (though my friend Jason can get pretty
intense sometimes), just as it'd be kinda hard to make a hostage action film
with real, non-fanatic, Muslims.

You're welcome to the mixed-faith idea, brighn (as if I owned the 
copyright on it).  You can have the parody idea, too, although I'd 
really love to see what Anne Beattie can do with that one.  Anyone 
here know Anne Beattie?  

This item has given me an idea for an episode in something *I've* been 
writing.  To do it right, I needed to research what Wiccans do in 
everyday life, so I picked up a book called _The Family Wicca Book_, 
by a witch named Ashleen O'Gaea.  Has anyone seen this?  I find it 
enlightening -- so many of her concerns are practically identical to 
those of any other parent, including violent videogames, how much TV 
to let the kids watch, and how to answer kids' tough questions about 
the family's faith.  

Wicca, according to this book, anyway, is something that is still 
evolving, and that allows for all kinds of personal variations.  
"Write your own book" is one of the author's messages.  The "holy 
scripture," she says, is Nature, and "reading the scriptures" can be 
as simple as watching squirrels burying acorns.  I like it.  

(I don't especially like the name she and her husband gave their son: 
"the Explorer."  The trouble with "interesting" names like that is 
that you never know when some car company is going to come out with a 
new model with the same name.  At the very least, they can't buy or 
even rent an Explorer now without risking all kinds of confusion.  
"I'm gonna go tank up the Explorer."  "Is he hungry again already?") 

Anyway, knowing that so much Wiccan prayer and ritual is still being 
made up by Wiccans gives me the freedom to wing it, within broad 
limits.  If I'm misreading O'Gaea on this, someone please correct me.

Well, I saw "The Craft" last weekend.  It was true to form on some issues,
while the flying and stereotypical "witchery" left me groaning.  It would've
actually been a decent movie if they had left the flying and glamour spells
out.  It didn't make Wiccans look like freaks or weirdos, and I was happy that
in one part, the girls explained their beliefs.  Mortals may still believe
that witches can fly, but at least they know now (maybe) that Wiccans aren't
devil-worshippers.  I have mixed feelings about the movie, actually.  I still
haven't decided if it was worth seeing.  <shrug>

You might have an eclectic Wiccan priest(ess) read whatever you
come up with before you do whatever it is you're going to do with
it, Michael.  Yep, there are broad variations, so you've read that mostly
right.  But there are  some important universals.  If you want a consultant,
I'll be glad to scan over whatever you come up with.  More than likely,
yo'll be within the bounds of acceptable.  =}  Those are pretty wide
bounds.

I'd write something about witches but that would require research and
the teenagers wouldn't buy it ahyyway

Actually, you might be surprised Jenna... I've been shopping around
the young adults sections of bookstores- just too see what's out there
(I plan to write, and am writing, young adult type books).  There are
a lot of 'horror' books out there, several with witches.  L.J. Smith
wrote _The Secret Circle_ trilogy about a coven of heriditary witches-
and they don't fly or anything like that, most of the stuff is pure
fiction, but not all of it looks quite so fake.  I think if someone
wrote a **good** book about teen witchs (which I'm trying to do) teens
would buy it.  <shrug>  

The idea is to get compelling characters that make up for the lack of
show and flash and glam.  those are cheats used by unimaginiative
and incompetent authors, IMHO.

mine, too, brighn, and a good story without the stupid stuff

MD, I really like O-Gaea's book.  And you've read it just right; our concerns
as parents are *first* the same as anyone else's.  some of our "bag of 
parenting tricks" might be different, some of our view also, but basically,
we've got to raise kids in the same society and to live similar lives to
anyone else.  And I, too, would be glad to talk with you about your writing.

Many thanks.  I have a ways to go before I get to that part,
but you might get mail from me one of these days.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss