From Witchcraft Activism to Witch Hunt Sentiments:

The Changing Political Landscape in

Johanna Braun*

In: Aaron K. Ho (Ed). Witches on Twenty-First Century

Television. McFarland, 2019.

This paper is currently undergoing a peer-review.

The Witch is back. Anyone who has been following public discourse in the past couple of years––especially in the

United States––can witness an increased interest in all kinds of witchcraft and magic, notably the “trending” of one buzzword, “witch” and, to a greater extent, the term “witch hunt” on social media. As a result of or in correlation with this trend, the figure of the witch is celebrating a colorful revival in a wide range of cultural productions.

Pop-stars perform as witches, or make explicit references to witchcraft, as did Katy Perry at the 2014 Grammy awards,

Azealia Banks on social media (Quinn 2016), or Beyoncé in her visual album “Lemonade” (2016). Artistic practices have not been left untouched by this phenomenon either, as witchcraft and magic have been increasingly mobilized in contemporary

(performance) art and activism(Scott 2016, Yates Garcia 2016).

Several books were recently published that focus on this intersection of so-called Magical Resistance, or Witchcraft

Activism in the United States (Hughes 2018, Salisbury 2019,

1 2018). The liberal feminist website “Broadly” regularly publishes articles such as “How the Socialist #Feminists of

WITCH Use Magic to Fight Capitalism” and, even Vogue celebrated “Witchy Week” to mark the summer solstice (Vogue

2017).

This increased public interest in witchcraft also led to a colorful comeback of the figure of the witch on the big screen, with highly popular movies such as Maleficent (2014),

Into the Woods (2014), The Witch (2016), The Love Witch

(2016), or the recent re-telling of Blair Witch (2016) and

Suspiria (2018), to name only a few, and is also manifested on stage with the Broadway musical Wicked (2003–).

This recent revival and celebration of the witch can be seen as a continuation of “witchcraft activism” groups, such as W.I.T.C.H, a feminist protest group that was founded on

Halloween in 1968 by members from the New York Radical Women group (and which was resurrected by the protest group Chicago

Coven in 2015), and the discussions surrounding the witch as feminist icon from the 1970s in the United States that was already covered by Silvia Bovenschen in her text “The

Contemporary Witch, the Historical Witch and the Witch Myth:

The Witch, Subject of Appropriation of Nature and Object of the Domination of Nature” (1978). Bovenschen explored the growing interest in the witch as a figure of protest within and in the reception of feminist movements in the 1970s.

2 Most of the before mentioned recent productions represent the witch in the vain of Bovenschen and W.I.T.C.H as an empowered and empowering figure that questions, challenges and threatens power structures and re-inscribe the witch into a history of repression as well as empowerment. Nevertheless, within the frameworks those representations get produced and distributed in the witch is still highly entangled in capitalist mechanism that continue to promote a “whitewashed” history and representation of the figure. Therefore, this

“comeback of the witch” is in obvious ways influenced by philosopher Silvia Federici’s seminal work Caliban and the

Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (2004) that links the emergence of capitalism in the early modern era with the persecution of witches and that has been receiving an ever growing critical attention in the past 15 years. Building on this interest Federici just published Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women (2018), which revisits some of the main themes of

Caliban and the Witch, while looking at how the recent surge of interpersonal and institutional violence against women has occurred alongside an expansion of capitalist social relations and is tight to different concepts of reproduction (rights).

The exclusion of the history of people of color in the histories of American witchcraft and magic (McMillan 1994,

Games 2010) was also vividly discussed on social media, and was also already debated in the 1970s by W.I.T.C.H and Miriam

Simons, who wrote bestselling books, such as Dreaming The

3 Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics (1982/Anniversary Ed. 1997), under the pen name Starhawk, and who advocated for a more intersectional feminist witchcraft practice that includes

African americans/black americans, indigenous peoples, and the

LGBTQ+ community.

Furthermore, Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women advocates for the witch as a figure of (feminist) resistance and empowerment and offers a powerful reminder that reconstructing the memory of the past is crucial for the struggles of the present. As a result of the work of Federici’s and her peers, the witch has become an important motif for feminist, environmentalist, and post-colonial reinterpretations, with

Federici remaining the touchstone thinker for the current revival of the witch.

This recent “magical” phenomenon, the topic of this volume, is equally amply echoed in contemporary TV productions, as we can witness in productions solely centered on the witch as main character: Salem (2014–2017), The

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Netflix, 2018–), Light as a

Feather (Hulu, 2018–), the revival of (The CW, 2018–), or, as is the focus of this essay: witches in the highly popular and critically-acclaimed anthology series American

Horror Story (FX, 2011–).

American Horror Story references, in obvious ways, many of these discussions in its portrayal of witches. In this

4 investigation, I will take a closer look at season three,

American Horror Story: Coven (2013–2014, from here on referred to as Coven) and season eight, American Horror Story:

Apocalypse (2018, from here on referred to as Apocalypse), where witches are the main focus of the narratives, to trace how the discussions and the themes of the series have significantly shifted from Coven––which was produced and distributed at the beginning of this new witch craze generally and of the new interest in witchcraft and magic as a practice of empowerment specifically––to Apocalypse which was produced and aired after the inauguration of Trump, and can be situated firmly in a post-#MeToo context, where men in powerful positions suddenly reclaim the figure of the witch to frame themselves as wrongful victims of a so-called “witch-hunt” by countless accusers of sexual abuse. Therefore, American Horror

Story can be seen as an interesting illustration of how the debates surrounding the figure of the witch have changed in recent years.

A Short Introduction to the American Horror Story Universe

To give a brief insight into the multilayered and highly interesting universe of American Horror Story: this is an

American anthology horror television series, created by Ryan

Murphy and , and each season is conceived as a self-contained miniseries. The title immediately reveals the primary focus of this series, as it features countless

5 cultural and historical references that are especially significant to the United States, and each season focuses on a different iconic trope of American (horror) history: the haunted house story is the focus in season one, Murder House

(2011); the Briarcliff mental institution, a 1964-era New

England Catholic-run sanitarium in season two, Asylum (2012–

2013); Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies, a boarding school for young witches in New Orleans in season three, Coven (2013–2014); a Freak Show carnival in Florida in season four, Freaks (2014–2015); and the haunted Hotel Cortez, which is based on the notorious Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, in season five, Hotel (2015). Season six, Roanoke (2016), returns to the haunted house narrative, this time in a remote farmhouse in North Carolina, while season seven, Cult (2017), is focused on how the aftermath of the 2016 election plays out in a suburban basement. Most recently, season eight,

Apocalypse (2018), is set in a bunker in a remote location in a post-apocalyptic landscape in the United States. Recently it is revealed that season nine, entitled 1984 (2019), will be set in a cabin in the woods and will be a homage to the

Slasher genre.

All of these iconic locations are then used as backdrops for having historical figures collide with pointed references to current public political discussions. American Horror Story introduces iconic historical characters (inspired by

6 historical and fictional sources) to an American audience, such as the boy-next-door killer in reference to the murderer from the Columbine shootings (Murder House); Nellie Bly; Ed

Gein; Lizzie Borden(Asylum); the so-called Salem Witch Trials;

Madame Delphine LaLaurie; Marie Laveau; “The Axeman of New

Orleans”(Coven); a vampire “Countess” (played by Lady Gaga); and a dinner party for the most notorious serial killers in

American history, featuring H.H. Holmes, Aileen Wuornos, John

Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, the “Zodiac Killer,” and the

“Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez (Hotel). Further, there is the

Roanoke Colony, also known as the Lost Colony, from the late sixteenth century; the cannibalistic hillbilly family next door (Roanoke); Valerie Solanas (played by Lena Dunham); or the Illuminati (Apocalypse), to name only a few.

Those characters are introduced to a storyline that is dealing with time-specific issues, such as the public discussions about a long overdue mental health reform

(Asylum), Reality TV and fake news (Roanoke), the prevalence of racism in general and systematic segregation in New Orleans

(Coven), the growing influence of corporate America on political and cultural developments, online trolling, election sabotage or the rise of alt-right anti-feminist movements

(Coven, Cult, Apocalypse).

As we can see in this brief summary, which includes only some of the many references to current and historical instances, the creators and writers of American Horror Story

7 are very much aware of the prevailing currency of historical material for a contemporary audience and the historical threads that can be traced from current instances that are part of public discussions throughout American history. In doing this, American Horror Story follows the premise of

Silvia Federici’s argument that current debates don’t arise out of an a-historical vacuum but that they are firmly embedded in their historical framework. Therefore, this investigation is informed by scholarship that connects television to its cultural and historical context.

In order to thoroughly examine the current phenomenon, I follow the witches’ flight as an object of inquiry and take an approach of cultural sciences and media studies that investigates images and representations of gender and horror in general (Clover 1992, Creed 1993, Benshoff/Griffin 2004,

Grant 2015, Jackson 2016, Gerrard/Holland/Shail 2019) and the figure of the witch and witchcraft in particular, on film

(Krzywinska 2000, Higley/Weinstock 2004, Doty/Ingham 2014,

Baxstrom/Meyers 2016;), and on television (Beeler 2008,

O’Reilly 2013, Greene 2018). Julie D. O’Reilly (2013) traces in Bewitched Again: Supernaturally Powerful Women on

Television, 1996–2011 the television witch from Bewitched

(ABC, 1964–1972) to several productions of the early 2000s.

Her book also departs from the figure of the witch to women with supernatural abilities, such as in Medium (NBC/CBS, 2005–

8 2011), Ghost Whisperer (CBS, 2005–2010), True Blood (HBO 2008–

2014), Vampire Diaries (The CW, 2009–2017, and how the woman with supernatural abilities becomes a more resilient character than before, informed by feminist (academic and cultural) discourses of her time. Unfortunately, the book was written before Coven aired and therefore just missed an important development in the emergence of the feminist witch on television. Nevertheless, I argue that these transforming representations of the witch, as already outlined by O’Reilly, are to be viewed as products of their cultural context (in the sense of Bourdieu and Schechner) and, as a result, are themselves generators of culture (in the sense of Butler and

Derrida).

Furthermore, this essay continues the unfortunately rather slim scholarly interest in American Horror Story. Recently two volumes were published that are dedicated to the series:

Rebecca Janicker’s edited volume Reading American Horror

Story: Essays on the Television Franchise (2017), which includes two chapters on Coven, and Richard Greene and Rachel

Robison-Greene’s edited American Horror Story and Philosophy:

Life Is but a Nightmare (2018). Conny Lippert’s contribution

“Nightmares Made in America: Coven and the Real American

Horror Story” in Reading American Horror Story, for example, asks what being American is in Coven and how the show negotiates questions of race and oppression, while firmly embedding Coven in the American gothic genre, or more

9 specifically as American gothic television. In “The Season of the Witch: Gender Trouble in American Horror Story: Coven”

(2017), Elisabete Lopes draws a link between Coven and a female gothic tradition. In doing this, both authors firmly set American Horror Story in a gothic television tradition, with which I concur (for more on a gothic television tradition, please confer to Braun 2017). With this in mind I want to take a closer look into Coven and Apocalypse and how they use the figure of the witch, drawing on historical sources (and blurring fictional and historical accounts) to comment on present political and social discussions in the

United States surrounding the emergence of the #MeToo- movement.

Coven is set in Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Exceptional

Young Ladies, a boarding school for young witches-in-training, in present day New Orleans––which, at the time of airing, was

2014––and also incorporates several flashbacks, especially to the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and the horrendous murders by serial killer Delphine LaLaurie in the 1830s.

Apocalypse is set in the underground base, Outpost 3, somewhere in the States after a nuclear holocaust and the narrative follows the events leading up to the end of the world––from the present, which at the time of airing was 2018, to 2020––and tells how characters from Coven return (from the dead) to fight against the Antichrist, who is born at the conclusion of season one, Murder House. Roanoke, also features

10 a witch, Scáthach, who we later find out is the Original

Supreme, and tells the story of how the exiled former leader of the Roanoke colony, Thomasin White, is saved by the witch and, in turn, persuades the colonists to become the witch’s followers. White later sacrifices the entire colony to the witch to forestall their conversion to Christianity. But as the witch, and her murderous ghost-entourage, is only a supporting character in that instance, here I’m focusing on

Coven and Apocalypse as witches are the main characters in each season.

Coven and a Renewed Witchcraft Activism Awakening

Coven’s plot centers on a coven of witches, living in a classic Garden District colonial mansion in New Orleans, who are direct descendants of the survivors of the witch trials in

Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. (For more on the Salem witch trials and their impact on American culture confer Reis 1997;

Adams 2003; Le Beau 2010; Reed 2015.) The narrative’s main focus is the return to the Academy by Fiona Goode (played by

Jessica Lange), who acts as the current Supreme (the coven’s leader) and who is struggling with her recent decrease in power: the New Supreme is already on its way to replace her, and the story tells how her daughter Cordelia, the current principal of the Academy (played by Sarah Paulson), the

Academy’s new students, and Fiona’s opponent Voodoo Queen,

Marie Laveau (played by and based on the

11 historical figure of the same name) deal with this shift in power relations within the Coven itself and New Orleans at large. These power struggles reveal a string of intergenerational, racial, and class conflicts among the groups of women that point to the historical inflictions and their prevalence into the present time of these discussions.

The ongoing exclusion and marginalization of black witchcraft practitioners (led by Marie Laveau) by the white coven (led by

Fiona Goode) points to the continuing exclusion of the histories and perspectives of women of color in feminist movements that came to the surface during the emergence of the

#MeToo-movement, when actress Alissa Milano, who started the hash tag in relation to the Harvey Weinstein case and to encourage victims of sexual abuse to share their stories on social media, neglected to name the originator of the hash tag: Tarana Burke. Burke, an American social activist and community organizer, who has been promoting MeToo since 2006 to raise awareness of and provide a platform to women of color to share their personal stories of sexual abuse.

This ongoing exclusion of women of color and the shared histories of American women independent from their ethnicity and race is one of the most prominent narratives in Coven.

Coven features this racial tension in New Orleans that is played out between Fiona and Marie Laveau. In a flashback it is revealed that, in the 1970s, a former Supreme and Marie

12 Laveau divided their territory in New Orleans in a truce and the lines have been firmly set since then. This prevailing segregation is also illustrated in the headquarters of the respective covens: Whereas the Academy is situated in a grand historic colonial mansion in the prosperous Garden district of

New Orleans, Laveau runs a simple hair salon in a predominately black neighborhood in the ninth ward, one of the more devastated districts in New Orleans in the wake of

Hurricane Katrina. In Coven, this systematic and historically defined, racially and colonially motivated segregation is traced back to the so-called Salem Witch Trials in the 1690s in New England, when, in the trials’ aftermath, white witches fled south, claiming territory that was already occupied by black witchcraft practitioners.

This century-long conflict is especially tied to the historical figure of Tituba, who was a slave who allegedly practiced magic in front of the “afflicted” girls in Salem, which led the girls to accuse several members of Salem village

(today’s Danvers) and Salem town of witchcraft.1 In Coven,

Tituba is portrayed as the source who brought witchcraft to

America. At one point, Marie Laveau reminds Fiona about the origin of “white witchcraft:” “Everything you got, you got from us”, and that Tituba was taught by the Shamans of a

Native American tribe, a circumstance that therefore connects her practiced witchcraft to an older local tradition that

1 For more on Tituba, especially on the issue of race, please confer: Rosenthal 1993, Breslaw 1996, Cakirtas 2013. 13 predates the colonial witchcraft of the white witches of New

England (3x2 “Boy Parts”). In vehemently denying this legacy,

Fiona reveals her ignorance and anti-black sentiment.

Nevertheless, Fiona continually frames her disregard as classist, not racist. This conflict is then also picked up in the Academy’s student Queenie (played by Gabourey Sidibe), a young black fat-positive woman, who is torn between the coven of only white women––besides her–– and the African-American- centered coven of Laveau. Marie Laveau reminds Queenie that she belongs to them, instead of the white colonial witches who

“stole witchcraft from the slaves” (3x4 “Fearful Pranks

Ensue”). Later, Fiona makes the racist immortal Madame Marie

Delphine LaLaurie (played by Kathy Bates and based on the historical figure of same name, who tortured, mutilated, and murdered slaves in her New Orleans mansion in the 1830s) the slave of Queenie. The two women start to cultivate an unlikely friendship––nevertheless, it is problematic that it remains up to Queenie to educate LaLaurie and that even this unlikely bond cannot inform LaLaurie’s prevailing racist and ignorant world view (3x7 “The Dead”). This sentiment was also a pivotal point of discussion during the emergence of the #MeToo- movement, when women of color had to educate and inform their white peers of the differences in experience of sexual abuse and violence on women and the lack of public acknowledgment of the racial exclusion in the discussions.

14 It is also problematic to note that, although Laveau and

Queenie are pivotal characters in the series, especially in connection to the racial tensions that are the focus of Coven, both actresses are only credited as supporting characters, despite the fact that they appeared in more episodes than most of the lead characters, including Kathy Bates’s Marie Delphine

LaLaurie. Through this production decision, it becomes notable, that even in a TVshow that centers on the ongoing exclusion and separation of women of color, it still promotes and distributes such a highly separatist view on who’s appearance and labor is more seen and valued.

In addition, an intergenerational conflict is mostly played out in the depiction of how the former coven leaders,

Fiona Goode and Marie Laveau, are ruthless in holding onto their power, and are even willing to sacrifice the young generation to that end. For instance, Fiona murders Madison because she suspects her as her successor (3x3 “The

Replacements”), and Marie Laveau performs an annual child sacrifice to the devil-like deity Papa Legba in exchange for her immortality (3x10 “The Magical Delights of ”),

The pair performs a joint sacrifice and murder of the student

Nan to Papa Legba (3x10), while Cordelia, the secretly rising

New Supreme, does everything in her power to raise a new generation of educated and empowered young women.

Only in realizing that they have a shared interest in survival can Fiona and Marie Laveau finally join forces to defeat the

15 witch-hunters who have been persecuting both groups for centuries. (3x10) In acknowledging that they have indeed a shared history of oppression (albeit a different one) that is forced by the same people in power, the women can work together in fighting this system of oppression. This obviously points to a conflict that is later taken center stage through the #MeToo-movement, when white women have to face that they also have a “blind” eye for the struggles of women of color and that they have to acknowledge this discrepancy to unite and mobilize American women to challenge continuing mechanisms of exclusion and inequity.

The ability of both coven leaders to unite their communities against the systematic oppression and violence of the white supremacists of The Delphi Trust of witch hunters demonstrates how their shared interests trump the historical violence that made their cooperation so difficult in the first place.

The Delphi Trust (of which Cordelia’s husband is a member) is a secret society of witch-hunters that prides itself on hunting witches since before the time of Salem. (3x9 “Head”)

The Delphi Trust, which is also known as The Cooperation, is masked as a transnational asset management company that plays on all the staples of corporate America, a trope that includes images such as the training of a young witch-hunter during a father-son trip involving a cabin in the woods, the president of the Trust as an evil CEO, and echoes of public discussions

16 of a white supremacist conspiracy that operates transnationally and over centuries in general and Federici’s argument of the historical connection between capitalism and with hunts in particular. The first episode of Coven also features an event at a fraternity house that is associated with The Delphi Trust: the account of how a group of young men drug and gang-rape Madison (played by Emma Roberts), a student of the Academy, during a fraternity party, and video tape the ordeal with a smart phone features the contemporary fraternity house as a site of violence and echoes several recent discussions around sexual abuse at American universities (3x1

“Bitchcraft”), which were also notably visible through the

#MeToo-movement.

The witch-hunters are ultimately defeated through the combined efforts of both the “white” and “black” witches.

Coven’s final episode ends with Cordelia’s rise as the new

Supreme and her giving an interview in which she reveals the existence of witches to the world and calls young witches to recognize their power and unite. This new Academy represents a more inclusive feminism, that departs from the often

“whitewashed” perspective of previous feminist movements, with

Queenie and Zoe next to Cordelia, welcoming a new generation of witches to the boarding school. The episode concludes with

Cordelia’s speech to the press:

“We are not a cult. We don’t proselytize, we have no

agenda, we’re not recruiting. Women who identify as

17 witches are born as such, and their abilities–which we

call powers–are part of who they are, part of their DNA,

if you will. [...] There are so many young witches who

have resisted their calling because they’re afraid of how

they may be perceived, or what’s expected of them. [...]

When you hide in the shadows, you are less visible, you

have less protection. We’ll always be targets for the

ignorant.” The speech concludes with an address to

potential new students: “There is a home and a family

waiting for you.” (3x13 “The Seven Wonders”)

We have to keep in mind that this episode was produced and aired before the #MeToo movement broke out in the wake of the

Harvey Weinstein case in fall 2016, and still we can find interesting parallels in the use of (social) media to unite the interest of women in the United States––and beyond––to speak out against systematic oppression.

Coven comments pointedly on discussions of its time, such as the prevalence of white supremacy and intergenerational conflict, even within feminist discourses and the rise of alt- right anti-feminist movements and the continuing haunting historical racial tension in the United States, among many other pressing issues.

From Witches to Witch-Hunters, and the assumed difficulty in telling them apart

18 Apocalypse follows the events leading up to the end of the world and is set in 2020 in the underground shelter “Outpost

3,” which is set up by “The Cooperative” and located somewhere in the United States after a nuclear holocaust wiped out most of the population. Only those who are able to afford to buy their way into and those who are genetically selected––and even forced––to relocate to the shelter are able to survive.

For the first few episodes, the plot centers on such a group of “survivors,” before most of them are killed and

Cordelia (again played by Sarah Paulson) and her coven return to the American Horror Story universe for the first time since their uplifting and fairly optimistic season three finale (8x3

“Forbidden Fruit”).

Apocalypse then tells the story of the aftermath of season three and depicts a grim future post-Coven, where women are eager to come “out of the shadows” and reclaim power and visibility in the world––obviously referencing how women used social media and #MeToo to share their stories of the oppression they experience on a daily basis and as a public medium to organize.

The season then introduces a group of warlocks, who see themselves as disenfranchised and oppressed by the coven and are now placing their hopes on the new rising “Alpha,” Michael

Langdon (played by Cody Fern), who is the Antichrist and will ultimately supplant the Supreme in their hierarchy. For the first time in history, a man will then lead the warlocks to

19 “take their rightful place” at the top of magical powers and put “an end to ages of female dominance” (8x4 “Could It Be...

Satan?”). The coven is then confronted with the possibility that a man could take over as the next Supreme, a role exclusively held by women for generations.

Here, American Horror Story paints an apocalyptic picture of how a world in which men view themselves as disenfranchised by women will surely bring about the end of the world and echoes in evident ways the sentiments of a Post-#MeToo era.

The Cooperative, also known as the Illuminati and the driving force behind the post-apocalyptic events, illustrate notably public discourses and conspiracy theories surrounding the supposed elite that secretly steers world events.(8x9

“Fire and Reign”).

In contrast to the previous mostly optimistic outcome of

Coven, Apocalypse follows the current post-#MeToo climate, in which even powerful men in American politics and society at large generated a renewed cultural and political resonance for the figure of the witch and use it productively to proclaim allegedly unjust prosecution:

In response to the “Magical Resistance”, of such collective activities as the #bindtrump spell, Donald Trump has re-introduced the term “witch hunt“ largely because it is one of his preferred strategies for casting himself as victim, an unrightfully prosecuted witch, and his opposition as vicious witch hunters. According to the New York Times, Trump

20 used the term “witch hunt” more than 110 times on twitter, in the period between May 2017 and 2018 (Chinoy, Ma, and Thompson

2018). In the past year, he also introduced the term “Rigged

Witch Hunt”—which he used an impressive 84 times between

January to August 2018 alone (Paschal 2018). As of March 2019, according to the Factba.se database, Trump used the term over

261 times during his presidency (Milbank 2019). In turn, the

New York Times, for example, printed the term “witch hunt” more than 336 times in 2018 alone, which more than triples the rate of its use prior to 2016 (Beecher Field 2018). In contrast, Trump and countless of his allies still use “witch” to vilify women; his preferred targets include Hillary

Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, and Dianne Feinstein.

During the 2016 presidential election campaign, Hillary

Clinton was repeatedly defined as a witch by Trump supporters:

Clinton was “the wicked witch of the Left”, pictured with

“classic” features such as green skin, pointy hat, and broomstick, and her opponents even claimed she smelt of sulfur, aligning her, therefore, with stereotypical representations of witches (Sollée 2017). As we can see, use of the term is widespread on all sides of the political spectrum.

However, the use of the term “witch” to protest an alleged unjust procedure also extends beyond Trump. On October 20,

2018, an event took place at a bookstore called Catland that describes itself as “Brooklyn’s premiere #occult bookshop &

21 spiritual community space” in Brooklyn, New York, to “hex” then Supreme Court Justice nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, who faced several accusations of sexual assault during his Senate confirmation hearings. In the Kavanaugh case we find the same juxtaposition as before with Trump. While Kavanaugh was channeled in many online and real witchcraft performance rituals, supporters of Kavanaugh framed him as a witch: the email blast from the Republican National Committee included the phrase “STOP THE WITCH HUNT AGAINST JUDGE KAVANAUGH.”

Senator Lindsay Graham mocked a Kavanaugh protestor by suggesting, “Why don’t we dunk him in the water and see if he floats?” (Beecher Field 2018) and headlines like “Journalism

Hits New Lows in Kavanaugh Witch Hunt” (Hunter 2018) reveal the prevailing sentiment of a witch hunt in the hearings.

Further, the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements are often described as ruthless and unfounded witch hunt allegations.

Woody Allen, commenting on the Harvey Weinstein case and the emerging #MeToo movement, in a climate where allegations against Allen himself regularly find their way into public debates, proclaims: “You do not want it to lead to a witch hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself. That’s not right either” (Abramson

2017). As we are able to see before, these discussions are evidently echoed in Apocalypse––such as the representation of powerful men who paint themselves as disenfranchised and

22 oppressed victims of marginalized groups of people (e.g. women and people of color)––and depart significantly from the main themes in Coven.

Finally, Mallory (played by Billie Lourd) is revealed to be the New Supreme and to have the power of time-warping to defeat Michael Langdon and save the world. She then travels back in time to kill Michael Langdon in 2015, by running him over and thereby erasing most of the storyline of Outpost 3.

Right after, Mallory’s voice-over wonders: “The devil isn’t just going to give up. And in changing the past, a part of me will always wonder what it truly means for the future”, and it is then revealed that the coming of the Antichrist is still not prevented (8x10 “Apocalypse Then”). In a flash- forward scene, which is set in 2020, the young couple Emily

(Ash Santos) and Timothy (Kyle Allen), who are “selected for their exceptional DNA” to participate in the survival program at Outpost 3 and seem out of place in the first episodes prior to being killed early on in the mass murder, return and meet in this alternative world during a protest march. It turns out the couple is the Devil’s plan B in case anything goes wrong with Michael Langdon, and they are destined to conceive the new Antichrist. Fast forward: In 2021, Timothy and Emily are about to welcome a baby boy named Devan and, come 2024, they leave the 3-year old boy alone with a babysitter, whom they then find brutally murdered in the child’s bedroom. The dates colliding with the upcoming presidential elections of 2020 and

23 2024 and point in obvious ways to the continuously looming potential of “repeating” the past and the rising of an apocalyptic future in the wake of the #MeToo movement and the vehement backlash that has followed since.

The Rise, Defeat, and Rise of a New (Post-)Apocalyptic Order

As we are able to follow in this short (and by no means complete) rendition of the two seasons, they point to several explicit uses of the term witch and witch-hunt in recent public discussions within or in the aftermath of the #MeToo- movement. It is no surprise that, at a time when women’s rights, and human and environmental rights more broadly, are under increasing pressure, the figure of the witch is being used as a queer-feminist symbol of power, both rhetorically and in “actual” practices of witchcraft rituals––a phenomenon which can be especially witnessed in the United States.

Witchcraft, in this vain, is often understood as a means of fighting against social, economic and environmental injustices and allying with the marginalized and oppressed, as it was outlined in the many “witchcraft activism” endeavors at the beginning of this essay––a sentiment that is clearly echoed in

Coven and that the show returns to in Apocalypse.

As illustrated in this essay, Coven is in obvious ways informed by the growing public interest in the witch as empowered and empowering figure, while also pointing to the historical and ongoing economic and systemic oppression of

24 women and people of color––as addressed by Federici.

Apocalypse in turn is clearly informed by the use of the witch by powerful men to voice their concern of feminist movements that “went too far” in the wake of #MeToo and to declare a apocalyptic state of emergency in (re-)establishing historical power structures to retain the status quo.

With these evident references to current political discussions in American Horror Story at large, and especially through its implementation of the terms “witch” and “witch hunt(er)” as literal motifs in its multilayered storyline, it is interesting to witness how this story unfolds and to anticipate which traumatic adventures the Coven will be introduced to next.

* Note:

This article was written as part of Johanna Braun's postdoctoral research project "The Hysteric as Conceptual

Operator", funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): [J 4164-

G24].

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31 Bio

Johanna Braun is an FWF-Erwin Schrödinger PostDoc Fellow at

Stanford University and the University of Vienna, where she conducts her project “The Hysteric as Conceptual Operator” [J

4164-G24]. She holds an MFA and PhD from the Academy of Fine

Arts Vienna. Her interdisciplinary scholarship, situated between film, media and performance studies, examines popular culture, cinema, performance, and hysteria studies. In fall

2018, Braun organized the event series “#masshysteria.

Hysteria, Politics, and Performance Strategies” at UCLA.

32