The Craft (1996): Teen Girl Justice, Sisterhood, and Witchcraft
The Craft is an unapologetically dark film where four teen girls live out a powerful fantasy of retribution and justice. Gabe fans over the power of witchcraft, found families, and outlets for societal rage. We call for justice for Nancy and try to tap into the four corners of the world. Kat gives a history lesson on women, witchcraft, and midwifery. Who gets to decide who the weirdos are?
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The Craft (1996)
A newcomer to a Catholic prep high school falls in with a trio of outcast teenage girls who practice witchcraft, and they all soon conjure up various spells and curses against those who anger them.
Directed by: Andrew Fleming
The Craft: Embracing the Weirdos & the Power of Witch Sisterhood
by gabe castro
RED: Quotes, someone else's words.
Synopsis - Ours is the magic, ours is the power
The Craft is an unapologetically dark film where four teen girls live out a powerful fantasy of retribution and justice. They fight against a slurry of teen issues from bullying, racism, poverty, body image, abuse, suicide, sexual assault, and otherness using witchcraft. These girls who were once the most powerless are now empowered by supernatural forces allowing them to fight back. These are real challenges that high schoolers face, and the Craft treats them with the seriousness they deserve.
New girl, Sarah arrives at school and is intent on coasting through, head down and surviving after her own close call with death (by her own hand). She is instantly clocked as a potential fourth witch for a small coven of outcast girls at the school. After being hurt by a love interest, Sarah joins the group and with their fourth corner activated, they are able to tap into their supernatural potential. They each use this power to reclaim their lives and exact justice on the harmful forces in their lives.
Sarah exacts revenge on a boy who spread malicious rumors about her by casting a spell that turns him into a groveling, obsessive fool. Where Veronica and JD in Heathers responded to sexual rumors with death and identity sabotage, Sarah asked for true love and care. Bonnie heals her painful physical scars and unlocks her potential for vanity and popularity. Rochelle takes retribution against a racist bully. Nancy transforms her family's financial misfortunes and strips herself of the “white trash” label that’s haunted her. Nancy, corrupted by the power and feeling her position threatened by the naturally talented witch, Sarah, quickly turns on her. She rallies the other witches against her, using their powers to now torment Sarah until she has no choice but to fight back.
The Craft delves into the innate Patriarchal fear of female power and explores what transpires when women are together, forging intense bonds that often form during adolescence. These relationships are profoundly powerful but when wielded by young minds can quickly turn viscous. With so many emotions in flux during a pivotal time in mental growth, it’s easy to see how things can get out of hand. The Craft is both a cautionary tale against ultimate power and it’s corruption and it’s also a tale of empowerment. In those short glimpses of sisterhood and joy, of becoming their own heroes, even if only for a moment, we see the height of teenage girlhood joy and acceptance.
Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board
Women often feel powerless to change overwhelming circumstances, and The Craft offers us a compelling fantasy where wrongs can be magically righted. Something we feel a strong desire for in today's climate. In comparison to other “edgy” teen dark comedies like Heathers or Jawbreaker, while addressing serious issues like bullying, racism, and abuse against the backdrop of silly CG horror effects and high school drama, the film still offers a severe and honest approach to these horrors.
In The Craft, witchcraft goes beyond mere teenage rebellion for the young girls, becoming a way to achieve what seems unattainable: power, control, and autonomy over their lives. For many girls, witches represent their first encounter with feminism and the sacrifices women make to gain control. They embody the darker, unspoken desires and the frustration of being underestimated. Unlike young men, who can cause harm in their learning and still escape repercussions, girls don’t get a "boys will be boys,” scapegoat. The film portrays how Nancy and her friends embrace the darkness as their first taste of freedom, driven by a desire for liberation rather than safety or kindness. Nancy’s ultimate mistake is not the darkness she succumbs to, but her refusal to conform to societal expectations.
Which brings me to a strong takeaway I had for the film. For all the progress it made in showing us the strength of feminine friendship, companionship, and innate power - it also undermined much of that in it’s final act. By warring these girls against each other and turning Nancy into an unsympathetic creature corrupted by power, we remove her humanity and need for care and understanding.
We Are the Weirdos, Mister
Nancy represents a blend of sexiness and danger, embodying 90s fears about sexuality, alternative lifestyles, and rebellious "bad girls" who threaten to corrupt their peers. In contrast to Sarah, who enjoys a stable and supportive home despite her mother's death, Nancy's home life is marked by abuse and the unsettling presence of her mother's leering boyfriend. Nancy is further marginalized at her upper-middle-class school, where she is derided as "white trash," even by her own friends. Isolated and abused, Nancy seeks belonging in a close-knit friendship with Sarah, only to be ultimately rejected.
For Sarah, witchcraft comes to her naturally, it is a privilege she takes for granted and even in the end weaponizes it against the other girls who are now seen as villains despite having suffered they way they had in the film. Each of the girls were, to some degree (murder notwithstanding), warranted in their actions. Sarah even scolds the other girls, Rochelle and Bonnie for no longer being nice (or subservient), now that they have power. Who is Sarah to tell Rochelle how to exact justice from a racist bully? Or to ridicule Bonnie for her newfound confidence, treating boys and people they way they treated her - like something disposable? Sarah sympathizes with Chris even after he lies about having sex with her, choosing a fabricated acceptance by a boy over the real sisterly acceptance of the girls, instead villainizing Nancy’s anger towards him. Dismissing the fact that he did worse to Nancy, taking advantage of her open sexuality and giving her an STD. Still, she wishes to meet Chris with kindness and care, but meets Nancy with bitterness and ultimately, her punishment.
If we give Nancy any consideration we would desire a different fate for her. Nancy is the victim of assault, dismissed by her peers, and uncomfortable in her own home. Witchcraft and her coven were her only source of solace, only to be taken away easily by Sarah. Nancy's quest for power through witchcraft is understandable. In an article on Collider titled, 'The Craft's Nancy Downs: Villain or Victim of Circumstance?, writer Megan Kenny emphasizes the flaws in villainizing Nancy in the end without any path to redemption or care. “But if we view Nancy as a sympathetic character, one that uses hard work and determination to create the power she was denied due to factors beyond her control, then the ending reads very differently. Her status at the end of the film, psychologically broken and held against her will, reminds us that the ultimate moral of The Craft is that conformity saves, and rule breaking harms.”
Yes, femmes grab your power and exact retribution on your foes - only not like that. Just like Heathers, the film ultimately spins a story lacking remorse or empathy for the young protagonists. They are just as unredeemable, their method for retribution branding them villains simply for wanting justice, to even the playing field.
Despite this disappointing ending, I have always loved the camaraderie the girls share, the empowerment of these teens, and the tantalizing taste of witchcraft. I appreciate the subversion of horror tropes, that the real threat was a fellow teenage girl and not the ails they suffer in the beginning. The strength in the retort, “We are the weirdos, mister.” Because in a world that constantly preys on and manipulates women, we can feel empowered by a story like The Craft.
Witchcraft: a Response to Oppression
by Kat Kushin
RED: Quotes, someone else's words.
The Power of Rage and Teen Angst.
If teen angst and rage gave us super powers, “witchcraft” if it were, the world would be a different place. The Craft acted in response to the powerlessness felt by many teens during the 80s and 90s and especially femme presenting teens as they dealt with the injustices of society. Whether it was rage at the system, their peers, their parents who were failing to protect them, or against themselves, rage was felt heavy. Witchcraft acted as a pathway to confidence, autonomy, love and power. When approaching Manon, many of them had good intentions, they had wrongs that needed righting, injustices that needed justice served.
Witchcraft, a Response to Oppression
In this film, the pursuit of witchcraft is in direct response to unfair ways in which society/their peers treat them. Witchcraft offered each of these girls a solution to their problems, an answer to a systemic oppression that plagued each of them, a solution that otherwise seemed too abstract and out of reach. In media, and within society, witchcraft has often been demonized not because of actually being witchcraft, but because witchcraft provided a space for community, collectivism, and because of this, power. Thinking back to the destruction of midwifery, and intentional removal of community surrounding reproductive rights and freedoms. The scapegoat for this was that for women to join together, they HAD to be witches. As Gabe discusses in their section, much of the struggle of these characters are undermined in the final act. We see the destruction of their solidarity and community, through infighting and weaponization of privilege. But, what about witches. In an article titled: LABELING AND OPPRESSION: WITCHCRAFT IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE by Mary Ann Campbell from Washington University. They say: “Using Becker's (1973:8) definition of deviance as "the infraction of some agreed upon rule,". we can describe witches as rule breakers, as deviants.” Very similar to Nancy’s declaration that they are the weirdos. They continue: “But we cannot understand this deviance except against the background of the social fabric of the period. Throughout much of the historical material on witchcraft, especially Church proclamations and convicting testimonies, there run three strands of indictment against witches: 1) they did not worship the Christian God; 2) they used magical powers to help or harm people; and 3) they threatened or harmed men sexually (Sprenger and Kramer, 1928:xliii-xlv; Summers, 1956:13-32). In other words, the label of witch seems to have been applied to those who allegedly violated norms of institutionalized religion and medicine, and of the role of women in patriarchal society. A historical picture of the emergence of the institutions of professional medicine and the Christian Church as they developed within the context of patriarchal feudalism might contribute to an explanation of the labelers and the deviants.” So witchcraft is so much more than just witchcraft. The use of the term and demonization of witchcraft in the eyes of the church and patriarchy have so little to do with actual witches, with religion or even “the devil”. It’s all about power at the end of the day, and who has it. And when I say power I don’t mean like oppressive all encompassing power, I mean just like basic human rights and autonomy over self actualization. During this period, which we've discussed on the Ghouls before, midwifery was deconstructed under the guise of witchcraft, and also under the guise of being “unprofessional” or “uneducated”, says the men who are the only one’s legally allowed to receive education.
The gender norms of these time periods extend into modern society. As we discussed last week, Western society has hated women for a long time. And much like the other films we’ve unpacked, modern generations for the most part of pushing the boundaries of how a human being should be treated. How gender identity and sexuality should be pieces of a persons identity that are accepted and loved as they are not something society should be able to decide for another person. And in being othered by society, and within the intersectionalities of that, witchcraft and the demonization of that has historically just been anything that was not deemed “normal” or within the “rules of society”.
In another article titled: Reimagining Witchcraft as a Refuge for Marginalized Groups | written by Pallavi Prasad from the Swaddle.com they unpack the root of the word Witch, stating: “In fact, the word “witch” comes from the Old English word Wicca, an ancient pagan tradition that reverses the masculine, feminine and earthly aspects of the Christian God in a not-so-authoritarian and hierarchical manner. While Christianity shames “deviant” sexuality, reserves religious leadership positions for men and gives them permission to “subdue” the Earth and “have dominion” over “every living thing” (Genesis 1:28), witchcraft believes all sexualities are natural and to be celebrated, that women are especially capable of being spiritual matriarchs and that nature is all-encompassing and sacred.” The obsession with hierarchical societies is something Octavia Butler discusses in her book Dawn, claiming that this is the cause of the downfall of humanity. The desire for hierarchical structures of power destroy our ability to live peacefully and thoughtfully towards each other. If witchcraft is a destruction of hierarchical power structures, and the embracing of identity and inclusion, it sounds like something the powers that be would reasonably hate and demonize. Because that idea is something they’ve been trying to squash out of humanity for centuries. Prasad continues saying: “Since ancient times, the clergy was in charge of healing the sick; one could even say, with seeming magic: through the transubstantiation of the Mass, magical cures from holy water and the power of relics of saints. Women, however, could not be priests simply because of their sex. But, the truth is, wise-women, or healers, and to a lesser extent, midwives predated the clergy. They have always existed with an inherent connection to herbology and medicine. In the pre-industrial era, “in rural areas of Europe, witches cured all descriptions of illnesses with herbs, poultices, prayers, and ointments.” The clergy saw them as a threat to their monopolistic power. Thus, it was during the Renaissance, and the consequent Inquisition, that the first coordinated efforts were made to remove the medicine from the realm of popular culture and establish it as the preserve of a restricted profession only to be practiced by men, specifically, priests.” This destruction has hurt us in a multitude of ways, making childbirth in the western world, and medicine in the western world largely unsafe. Medicine not made with women in mind at all. Most of our Mental Health criteria was designed around institutionalizing and locking up deviants in the eyes of the systems of power.
So it is interesting that the persecution is so engrained and perpetuated by society that the church and patriarchal institutions don’t even have to do the work of dismantling femme communities. They have created different things to divide people, and created different hierarchies to divide women and pit them against each other. This is where the latter half the of film comes in. With Sarah weaponizing her privilege, both in her whiteness and wealth. Her “winning” and moral high horse is the arm of the oppressor. Used against her “friends”, her community.
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