Also why is the Wizarding World's American Central Government in New York? Our Capital is Washington D.C.! If you don't want to put it there at least have the Capital in Arlington, Alexandria (which makes the most sense), or at the very least Baltimore. She could have even picked a city that has a lot of ties to Native American history (like saying screw it, Mexican Wizards and American Wizards get along and their capitol is Mexico City). New York just feels super cliche.
I could go on forever about why I have so many feelings regarding J K Rowling's decisions on Wizards in America, but that's not what this post is about.
It's about my introduction to the ideas and power of witches.
Harry Potter was a major influence on my early childhood. I remember my mother reading me the first three books, going to a midnight party for the fourth book's release at Borders Books, and reading the final book in under 72 hours. I dreamed about being able to go to Hogwarts and which house I'd end up in (Hufflepuff). I loved these books (and still do).
Harry Potter wasn't my first introduction to the magic users known as witches and wizards. I had several picture and short chapter books that I had been introduced to before and during the Harry Potter craze.
To be perfectly clear, most of the media I was consuming was definitely based on European ideas of witches and witchcraft. Hardly any of it extended beyond the tropes found in European fairy tales and folklore. So, much like J K Rowling, my understanding of magic and "witches" of other cultures is severely lacking or warped by Hollywood's misappropriation.
Still, it didn't stop me from becoming curious about the witches I was introduced to.
One of the first picture books I remember my mother reading to me about witches was Strega Nona (translated as Grandma Witch or Granny Witch). Strega Nona had a magical cooking pot that could produce as much pasta as she needed, so long as she preformed the spell correctly. One night a young man called Big Anthony tries out Strega Nona's cooking pot, while she's conveniently away, and ends up creating so much pasta that it covers the entire village. When Strega Nona returns, she makes Big Anthony eat all of the pasta he created.
It was a fun and silly picture book.
Other books weren't nearly as silly or light hearted. The Witches by Roald Dahl absolutely terrified me as a child. At that time, I couldn't imagine anyone being that horrible in real life, especially to children . Bony Legs was another book about a scary witch, who had a more than passing resemblance to the Russian folk witch Baba Yaga, who wanted to eat a little girl who had wandered into her house. My grandmother had given me that book and I loved how resourceful and kind the main character Sasha was. It was a good balance of scary and adventure for young me.
Finally there were the Bailey School Kids books which featured stories about magical and mythical beings who shouldn't be real, but quite possibly were. One was Witches Don't Do Back-flips which told the story about a gym teacher who might have also been a witch.
Those are just the books I read. There were also plenty of movies and TV shows such as Charmed, Practical Magic, Kiki's Delivery Service, The Craft, the Halloween Town movies, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Scooby Doo and the Witches Ghost, and the classic The Wizard of Oz. Each had varying degrees of good witches (who always won in the end) and bad witches.
What did I take away from this? Well as Dumbledore said "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." Witches aren't good or evil by virtue of them being witches. They just have really cool abilities that they can choose to use for good or evil purposes.
This gave me hundreds of hours of possible imaginative scenarios to play out. I loved the idea of being a good witch who could help others solve their problems or getting back at bullies. There were a lot of imaginative quests where I, the good witch, would defeat the evil witch (they usually involved lots of sparklers on the 4th of July).
I never thought of witches as evil by virtue of them being witches.
However, historically, this wasn't the case. Witches were often feared, hated, hunted, and always thought of as evil.
If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.
Until next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment