Amy Coney Barrett is our Grand High Witch. Can we turn her into a mouse?
With her squeaky voice, blandly pretty face and stringy blond hair, she could be in The Witches. Where is Formula 86 when you need it?
This is the midweek what-to-watch edition of Snarky Senior — the newsletter from Erica Manfred, which you can read about here. If you like it and don’t want to miss an issue, you can get it in your inbox by subscribing.
In the latest version of The Witches on HBO Max, Octavia Spencer is the earthy good witch who combats the demonically evil Grand High Witch, played by Anne Hathaway.
The plot is simple. A young orphaned black boy (Jahzir Bruno) goes to live with his grandmother (Spencer) but when a local witch takes an interest in him they escape to a luxury hotel unaware that the witches’ annual conference is being held there. Horror ensues. The boy spies on the conference and overhears the dastardly plan of the Grand High Witch—a command to her minions to murder children by turning them into mice. A drop or two of her magic potion—Formula 86--in a candy bar will do the trick.
Of course she catches the boy spying and turns him and his friends into mice. He seeks revenge with the help of grandma who has a few potions and tricks up her own sleeve. The mouse-children sneak into the kitchen and lace the witches’ pea soup with Formula 86, turning them all into mice. Hilarity ensues as the hotel staff tries to smash them with brooms.
The movie is grand fun. Hathaway is wickedly over-the-top in a bizarre accent and malevolent grin as she chews up the CGI scenery. Spencer (one of my favorite actresses) is delightful as a comforting, cushiony antidote to the skinny, malevolent Hathaway.
When I finished watching I checked the news only to find that my witch nightmare was now a reality--Amy Coney Barrett had been confirmed to the Supreme Court, appearing in the dark of night with arch-villain Trump to take her oath.
I flashed back to the movie. With that high, squeaky voice, blandly pretty face and blond stringy hair, Barrett would have fit right in at the witch’s dinner. Her controversial scarlet dress would have been perfect dinner-party-with-the-witches attire. She certainly possesses the main hallmark of an evil witch in abundance—hypocrisy.
I comforted myself with the many deliciously ironic reversals in both the movie and the Supreme Court nomination.
In the film the good witch does not resemble the traditional version--Glinda from the Wizard of Oz, the beautiful young white lady with a magic wand—but rather is a middle-aged black woman with only a few herbal remedies but a lot of love to give. The bad witch pretends to be a beautiful white woman but she’s actually not a woman at all, she’s a demon who is consumed with hate.
The traditional witch iconography of a shriveled old crone with a hooked nose who kidnaps children is an anti-Semitic trope that’s been around for centuries. In our Supreme Court nomination version of The Witches, the tiny old Jewish crone is actually the most powerful of good witches. She dies at the worst possible moment, and her power is usurped by an unscrupulous cabal of bad witches called Republicans. They install one of their own as the Grand High Witch--a pretty, young, white Christian woman who pretends to care about ordinary people but really wants to take away their right to choose, their civil rights and health insurance and make it easier to kill them with guns.
In another ironic twist, this particular Grand High Witch has a passel of her own children and has actually adopted two black children. Is she planning to turn them into mice perchance?
She really should because she’s certainly not going to protect them from getting shot any other way. She’s not only against gun control, she’s against reigning in the police. She sided with the police on 86% of cases that came before her court.
This witch claims that the George Floyd killing was “emotional” for her family. Her black children are going to be a hell of a lot more “emotional” when a police killing case reaches the Supreme Court and she exonerates the police.
So what is going to be our Formula 86 for our Grand High Witch? How do we turn her into a mouse? A few more justices perhaps?
Or is there another way to shrivel her and her minions? I’d bet there are a few real-life witches out there casting spells as I write. I certainly hope so.
The rest of us have to settle for voting. It’s high time our fortunes changed.
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Snarky Senior" is for those of us who qualify for a senior discount, but aren’t content with the crap we can buy with it. Subscribe for an irreverent take on life, culture, media, aging, health, politics and everything else about aging as a rebel—with or without a cause. You can subscribe (and link to it) here. You can follow me on Twitter here (Don’t expect much. I hate Twitter), and on Facebook here (I love Facebook. It’s where we older folks hang out). Email me anytime at Askerica@gmail.com. Suggestions and feedback welcome.