#salem witch panic

[marzipanandminutiae]

psa for non-Americans and non-New England Americans

you know the Salem witch trials? that thing where nobody got burned and nobody was an actual witch but it was still a big deal because 19 innocent people were executed?

well the place we call Salem now was not where that happened. that place used to be called Salem Town. the trials happened in what was then called Salem Village (also sometimes “the farms”). it was an agrarian community with stronger Puritan values that sometimes clashed with the more worldly trading center Salem Town

after the trials Salem Village was so ashamed that it changed its name to Danvers and went on to experience a bunch more dark and tragic stuff. Salem Town said “sweet, tourism!” and jumped on the witch bandwagon and is now a center of pretty nice magic shops, pretty tacky tourist attractions, and pretty pretty historical dance events

Danvers has a laser tag place and they used to have a Denny’s but it closed

the end

[marzipanandminutiae]

wait i thought it was salem, oregon

Not sure if this is a joke but on the off-chance it’s not:

nope, the Salem Witch Trials were in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Or what I imagine the indigeous people of inland Oregon called, “Another Glorious Year Without Europeans.”

[marzipanandminutiae]

help I am having Salem-related emotions

[marzipanandminutiae]

so I’m watching the show Salem and it’s actually terrible

it seems to be trying to do things that other media has already done better. The Witch did a better job of portraying a world in which Puritan fears about witchcraft were true. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane did a better job of showing what might have happened if there was a real witch- in the sense of “a practitioner of contemporary English folk magic,” not the sexualized harridans of the Malleus Maleficarum -in Salem at the time.

(seriously read The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. it was written by a PhD student in early American history and it’s some of the best historical fantasy I’ve ever encountered)

other stuff is hilariously bad, like the costumes and the sexiness of every important character and the fact that the identities of said important characters are totally mixed up. but what really bugs me is the way certain thorny issues are handled

Tituba, for example, is portrayed as an ~*exotic*~ temptress, luring innocent white women into witchcraft. kind of how she was portrayed at the time and for centuries thereafter. I’ve seen this criticism of the show decried as political correctness or an attempt to impose modern mores on history. but it’s not the portrayal of Tituba’s popular perception that I object to- it’s the vindication. the show presents that image of her as true and 100% accurate, in a way that seems pretty damn racist

and I’m not sure I like the show saying or even implying any of the accused in Salem were guilty. the sexualization of the magic and the prominence of a woman (Mary Sibley, who was actually a pretty minor player in the Salem story) as the driving force of the hysteria feels like pulling out the Malleus and touting it as fact. punching down and not up; further oppressing the historically oppressed. evil women have taken power and noble men must restore order, just the same narrative that fueled the panic back in the 17th century

Salem is trying to do a lot of things, but like the Salem hysteria itself, it hides pettiness and bigotry at its root and succeeds in doing nothing but villifying the innocent

all over again

[marzipanandminutiae]

self-care is fighting Cotton Mather at 2 AM behind the Danvers Denny’s

[marzipanandminutiae]

casting call: "...saving the world from an evil force that hasn't been heard from since The Salem Witch Trials ended."

me: what, socioeconomic pressures, no separation of church and state, shifting religious priorities creating a climate of uncertainty and instability, and teenage girls clinging to the only power they can find in a society that renders them almost totally powerless?