{"id":8553,"date":"2017-05-12T21:54:20","date_gmt":"2017-05-13T03:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8553"},"modified":"2017-05-13T09:40:15","modified_gmt":"2017-05-13T15:40:15","slug":"twin-peaks-meets-bell-book-and-candle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8553","title":{"rendered":"“The Love Witch” \u2014\u00a0“Twin Peaks” Meets “Bell, Book and Candle”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Photo: Anna Biller Productions.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last November, Peg Aloi of The Media Witches<\/em> reviewed The Love Witch <\/em><\/a>under the deadline, “Why Real Witches Are Going to Love (or Maybe Hate) the Love Witc<\/a>h.”<\/p>\n

A pagan friend I watched the film with was shocked and called it \u201cirresponsible and potentially damaging.\u201d His concern is not unreasonable; the film\u2019s portrayal of witches could easily be misinterpreted by viewers whose understanding of modern witchcraft is grounded in horror film imagery.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Its almost satirical air and its wooden dialog give it a period feel, the period being the mid-1960s to 1970s, the era of Rosemary’s Baby<\/em> or The Trip<\/em> \u2014 an earlier highpoint of Occult Revival. (Is it the classic Ford Mustang in the opening scene?)<\/p>\n

But to me, it felt like Bell, Book and Candle <\/em>(<\/a>1958, female witch obsessed with love) meets Twin Peaks<\/em><\/a> (1990\u20131991, detective in over his head, mysterious goings-on, red draperies) with additional dialog by Gerald Gardner.<\/p>\n

Put The Love Witch<\/em><\/a> on the list for when you and your fellow cultists get together for Semi-serious Occult Move Night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last November, Peg Aloi of The Media Witches reviewed The Love Witch under the deadline, “Why Real Witches Are Going to Love (or Maybe Hate) the Love Witch.” A pagan friend I watched the film with was shocked and called it \u201cirresponsible and potentially damaging.\u201d His concern is not unreasonable; the film\u2019s portrayal of witches […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,296,29],"class_list":["post-8553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-movies","tag-pagan-ish","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2dX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8434,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8434","url_meta":{"origin":8553,"position":0},"title":"CFP: 2017 AAR Contemporary Pagan Studies Group","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"All the calls for the 2017 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion are now online. The meeting itself will be held 18\u201321 November in Boston. The Pagan studies theme is \"Witch Hunts: Rhetorical, Historical and Contemporary.\" The term \u201cwitch hunt\u201d is used as a rhetorical strategy in contemporary\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1200,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1200","url_meta":{"origin":8553,"position":1},"title":"Sex and Witchcraft","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The popular image of the sexually alluring witch goes back to Circe at least, was notable in the early modern period in the work of artists such as Hans Baldung, and got a big boost from Jules Michelet.It keeps popping up today. Sometimes it is lightly disguised, as in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"sexuality\"","block_context":{"text":"sexuality","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=sexuality"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14146,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14146","url_meta":{"origin":8553,"position":2},"title":"All Those Witches: Caroline Tully Sorts Them Out","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 4, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\/ Caroline Tully, Pomegranate associate editor and long-time denizen of the Australian Pagan scene, gots onto an Australian podcast,The Briefing, as Witch-with-a-PhD to sort of in a very short time the difference between Wiccan witches, Etsy witches, and the rest of the social media witch-fauna. Released on Halloween 2025, of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11709,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11709","url_meta":{"origin":8553,"position":3},"title":"Witchcraft: You’re Not Making It Strange Enough","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The final article in the \"Paganism, art, and fashion\" issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies argues that books and television series based on historical witchcraft make it too safe and fail to portray \"the genuine strangeness of witches and magic users in all periods and cultures.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"history\"","block_context":{"text":"history","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/discovery2-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11816,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11816","url_meta":{"origin":8553,"position":4},"title":"Call for Papers: Pagans and Museums","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"NOTE UPDATED DEADLINES AT BOTTOM Museums and contemporary Paganism are inextricably linked. Gerald Gardner, founder of modern pagan witchcraft, first publicized Wicca in 1951 at Cecil Williamson\u2019s Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft at Castletown (later The Museum of Magic and Witchcraft) on the Isle of Man. Some of his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"museums\"","block_context":{"text":"museums","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=museums"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2190,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2190","url_meta":{"origin":8553,"position":5},"title":"Can You Prove that Witches Exist in Canada?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Somehow I missed this, but last September an organization of self-proclaimed Canadian skeptics challenged the world to prove that witches exist\u2014along with Bigfoot, voodoo, and the Easter Bunny. OK, all this fun hinges on the difference between \"anthropological witchcraft\" and capital-P Pagan religious capital-W Witchcraft. But still. Of course, if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Canada\"","block_context":{"text":"Canada","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=canada"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8553"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8562,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553\/revisions\/8562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}