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Conjuring the Anarcho-Witch
🕑 Added 2019-05-04 02:00:24 +0000 UTCThe Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
S1 Ep1 “October Country”
Conjuring the Season
I wanted to start this essay series with a few broad notes about the show as a body of texts.
Aesthetically, I love TCAoS. This show is everything I want. Witches, Satan, everything is haunted and spooky, you get your grocery at the Morbid Mart and visit the Diabolical Dentist when you have a toothache—Greendale is my dream town. This first essay is going to write in broad strokes about TCAoS, a show that both fills me with a haunting joy and leaves me frustrated and unsatisfied.
Sabrina, as a character-as a text, is basically me. The opening of the first episode with Sabrina being pedantic about zombie’s is literally me walking out of every theater, annoying whoever was cursed enough to go with me. Sabrina being clueless enough to invite a teacher to a post-movie hangout at a local coffee shop is something that is suspiciously close to my own social awkwardness. Much like the aesthetic sensibilities of this show, at some point in my youth, my brain was locked in a Halloween store and it never was able to find a way out.
However, it’s not all spiders and Satanism. The aesthetics of the show reveal some shortcomings after about the third “delicious” in the first episode. I love the broader spooky community’s embrace of “delicious,” but Netflix is a major corporation and it feels like a bit of a cash in. Like, “Hey fellows Goths! I hear you like to live deliciously!” The fine line between fandom and pandering is difficult to walk and it’s sad that the show collapse in the wrong direction every now and then. That tension between the urgings of a wider audience, the demands of capital, and an active attempt to be “woke” will play out throughout the first season of Sabrina.
Hot take (witching) hours: I love how TCAoS interprets and approaches intersectionality—especially in light of its timeless aesthetic. One of the few pieces of modern technology scene in the entirety fo the first season is Ambrose’s beat-up, witchy sticker covered laptop. Everything else could be from any era of modern America. Placing LGBT and racially diverse characters into a timeless aesthetic while freezing villains into classic moulds (the jock as bully, the patriarchal headmaster, the abusive principle) allows this diverse cast to reclaim a past of which they are locked out. Importantly, this is a past of which they have always been a part.
Yes, there are shortcoming to this approach. Namely that today’s fascist threat no-longer resembles the buffoonery of yesteryear’s Revenge of the Nerds style jocks. Not to mention that TCAoS continues the troubling whitewashing of the history of witchcraft and ignoring the prominent role of PoC, the lower classes, and colonization in shaping our modern understanding of the concept. However, re-historicizing these marginalized groups, which are so often removed from any conceptualization of the past, is a powerful imaginative practice. The past is queer, the past is racially diverse, and TCAoS, despite its limitations, reminds us of this.
Sabrina, the Anarcho-Witch
Sabrina’s struggle is against the bounds of hierarchy. The principle of her school, the religious order all witches obey, society as a whole—“Puritanical Masculinity” as Ms. Wardwell says—even our Dark Lord Satan has his wicked will contested by Sabrina. Whether it’s her Aunts cajoling her into falling inline with the strictures of witch-life or the more constitutive aspects of hierarchy in regard to her objection to “saving herself for the Dark Lord,” Sabrina resists and tests the bounds of hierarchy.
Noam Chomsky, who like any figure on the Left should not be idealized, but rather learned from and critiqued¹, summarized the Anarchist position towards hierarchy:
“I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.”
Sabrina might not know the lingo and be able to identify herself as an Anarchist, but she is living the life. “October Country” has Sabrina identifying and challenging all of the manifestations of authority around her. Everyone from her cousin, Ambrose, to Faustus Blackwood who is, effectively, the Satanic Pope. No hierarchy is sacrosanct for Sabrina. Even our Dark Lord Satan must first prove his legitimate claim to authority before Sabrina will submit. We’ll see this point become stronger as the series goes on and the “scope of [Sabrina’s] human freedom” grows.
In her essay Anarchism, What it Really Stands for, Emma Goldman had this to say: “Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fullfilled only through man's subordination.” Sabrina rejects the validity of the Council of Night until she feels that she has gained sufficient knowledge to make an “informed decision” on the matter of her Dark Baptism. She uses black magic as Direct Action to violently dethrone her school’s oppressive, anti-Queer principle in order to bring about an intersection feminist insurrection. She even rejects the convention of conscripting a familiar and instead asks one to willingly join with her. A partnership of equality and not servitude.
The hierarchies of TCAoS are “null and void” and Sabrina, recognizing that fact, topples those that must be and challenges those she is yet unsure about. It’s also worth highlighting that she’s no base Egoist. While the narrative structure of the show necessitates a focus on Sabrina, her actions are aimed towards a greater liberation. Especially in her mortal high school, her efforts are all dedicated to the growth of solidarity between a handful of the institution's oppressed students. To ice the creepy cake, and bridge a gap between legitimate occult black magic and a mortal equivalent, the school’s intersectional feminist club is called W.I.C.C.A. (Women’s Intersectional Creative and Cultural Association). Notably, Rosalind Walker is the one who names the club, subtly challenging the cultural hegemonic’s absorption of popular Witchcraft from within the text. (Though sadly not strongly enough).
The eerie, occult, and Anarchistic nature of Sabrina draw me in. Call to the haunted depths of me as if a spellwork in it’s own right. As the episodes roll on, there are some moments of biting critique, but I’m enamored with the aesthetic and thematics. See you all at The Dark Baptism.
-Ash
¹Seriously, how did Chomsky get it so wrong about de-platforming and Antifa?
Comments
Leaving in the typos for... historical significance? Let's go with that.
