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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

HBO portrays Wicca: Should we Rejoice or Recoil?

I am a True Blood fan.  Hugely so.  I enjoyed the Southern Vampire collection [by Charlaine Harris] that inspired the popular HBO series and have found myself equally joyful over director Alan Ball's very naked portrayal of the story's deliciously supernatural characters. 

Season 4 has offered viewers access to the inner circle of a powerful Wiccan coven.  Communing with the spirit world, levitation.  Necromancy even!  So now the entertainment world wants to know what is the opinion of a real witch on the religious accuracy [or lack of] by the show.

Well, real witches, how do you feel? 

Personally I think it's ridiculous to even ponder over expectations of religious accuracy given this is a series entertaining the existence of vampires, werewolves, fairies and shape-shifters-- none of which hold any factual form of presece in the average mainstream mind.  The show is pure entertainment, and not even by any realistic means.  Giving one's opinion on the verifiable accuracy of a show that is undiluted fantasy is as pointless as a condom in the Vatican [vulgar?  Possibly.  But it makes my point].

Writer Laura LaVoie of The Juggler had this to say: “people with fantasy-novel sounding magical names with inexplicable extra vowels respond with great dismay to the way a fictional series portrays Wicca...  I think as soon as you add vampires and werewolves to a story, all bets are off. Sure, Wicca is real but it now exists in this fictional world created by Charlaine Harris and the writers and producers of the television series."

I'm in complete agreement.  We simply cannot consume ourselves with concern over the way witchcraft is portrayed in a series created without regard for reality.  Consider how the show has depicted Roman Catholicism and its men of the cloth -- as sexually ravenous monsters preying on innocence.  Oh wait!  No, kidding... sort of.  * She winks *

Putting things into proper perspective, what are your thoughts on the HBO series and how entertainment as a whole has painted the Pagan faith?  Should we worry over bad publicity even if it's fictional?

2 comments:

  1. I put this right next with movies about Catholic priest performing an exoticism were the demon pukes on everybody's face--it is fiction, and we should leave it at that. Beside, can you imagine the difficulty of trying to show Wicca or any other Witchcraft tradition accurately? I mean, who are they going to ask? How many different people will they be willing to add to a coven? What will they do about solitaries...

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  2. To me, I believe that it can give those who don't know a false sense of foreboding. I mean face it, if people really believe that we are all like that from a show about werewolves, vampires, and faeries, then these people should need help anyway.

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