From “Born This Witch” to “Bad Bitch Witch”: A History of Witch Representation in Western Pop Culture Available to Purchase

Historically a ghoulish figure that encapsulates all the patriarchy's fears of independent women, the witch has been reclaimed in recently by feminists who reimagine her as either a symbol of women's empowerment or an allegory for their persecution. This chapter provides a nuanced overview of shifts in “witch representation” in Western film and television, exploring the sociopolitical forces driving these changes and evaluating their potential for feminist resistance. It begins by complicating classic negative representations of the witch, exploring how the rising popularity of feminism in the 1970s and the girl power movement of the early 2000s led to an increase in sympathetic witch representations, culminating in a new essentialist “born this witch” archetype. The chapter closes by evaluating the revolutionary potential of an emergent ‘bad bitch witch’ archetype that more directly challenges patriarchy by embracing women's agency and allowing them to be likable in the presence of moral ambiguity.