Witches ‘defying gravity’ in popular culture: Guelph professor

With movies like Wicked coming out this week and shows like Agatha All Along streaming now, what is the reason for the fascination with witches and witchcraft?

Dr. Catheryn Spence, an associate professor of history at the University of Guelph, said the interest in witches goes all the way back to medieval times. It is linked to the anxiety of society of women who did not take on traditional roles, she noted.

“What draws people to the stories of witches is how they subverted the social expectations of their time and paid for the suspicion they aroused with their lives,” said Spence in a press release. “Approximately 60,000 people — 85 per cent of whom were women — were executed for witchcraft during the early modern witch hunts.”

While witch hunts are assumed to have happened during those times, they gained momentum in the 1500s and lasted well into the 1600s. The greatest concentration of witch hunting took place between 1550 and 1650. The most accused of being witches were middle-aged women in the middle class.

In relation to media today, Spence said there is once again anxiety around the roles that men and women play today, where some people will choose to blame certain groups for tensions that happen in society similar to what happened during the witch hunts.

“I think there is a lot of debate on what those roles should take,” said Spence. “That idea of ‘is feminism good/bad’, ‘is it good/bad for society’, I think that is sort of the question that the witch hunts brought to the floor.”

Spence is the instructor in an upcoming course called Witch Hunts and Popular Culture that looks at the beliefs that started the period of witch hunting.