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Netflix's The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a show that wants you to know exactly how progressive and feminist it is. But the show's messages about female empowerment are Severely one of its most prominent characters of color.
Tati Gabrielle's Prudence Night Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka) encounters just as her 16th birthday rolls around. Sabrina is meant to finally embrace her witchhood, the Church of Night, and a spot at the Academy of Unseen Arts.
Prudence-and her personal squad of fellow orphaned, mean-girl witches (collectively known as the Weird Sisters) -make a point of targeting Sabrina, in large part because she is half-mortal and accepted in Greendale's magical community despite being secretly baptized in a Catholic church as a baby, at first, refusing to sign her name in the Book of the Beast. To Prudence and Her Sisters, Sabrina's an outsider whose presence in their orbit presents a very real threat because of her founding for mortals-and the very real potential that she could reveal to the existence of their coven, putting them all in danger.
For Sabrina, on the other hand, the Weird Sisters are simply bullies trying to give her a hard time for being different, as the heroine of the show, she sets out to get on with the season unfolds. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this particular kind of premise in a vacuum, in the ways that The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina approaches the conflict, the show begins to be extremely problematic, racially-charged and messaging that has left a number of people put off.
In "Chapter Four: Witch School," the Weird Sisters target Sabrina in hazing ritual known as "harrowing" in an attempt to convince her to leave the school. In the process, Sabrina comes to learn about the dozens of ghosts haunting the campus.
When Sabrina's decided that she's having enough of the other girls' psychological torment, she confronts them, and with the help of the ghosts, she fights back by using her powers to lift the Weird Sisters into the air by their necks in front of a tree where 13 witches were hanged in the distant past.
Because Sabrina'S focused on witches, it is not surprising that this is a recurring theme throughout the show, but the practice takes on a particular meaning because Gabrielle is a black woman. We live in a country where the public lynching of black people was frequently used to terrorize black communities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and the imagery associated with lynching is still used to send threatening, racist messages.
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Never really engage with the race in any meaningful way. Greendale is an American town with a population that has lived in the area since the first colonized by Europeans. The show gives you the feeling of being racial and ethnic backgrounds peacefully coexisted in the town of its founding. While this is an idyllic concept, it has been noted that the United States has historically been treated in the United States historically. Did the town's black population endure slavery or Jim Crow? Who knows? All we're ever told is that, in the past, the death toll has risen.
But while the show might not want to engage with ideas about the complexities of race, it is impossible to watch them in their minds, especially when a woman is being hanged on screen.
Even though it is probably the intention of the production team to evoke the racist legacy of lynching, that is precisely what it's all about. . Other fantastical, genre shows like American Gods have tackled plots American Gods does that Sabrina fails to do, is to actually address the hangings and all of their real-world cultural significance. It communicates to the audience that the show understands how complicated and painful the history of the practice continues to be by having its characters actually acknowledge and react to the lynching itself and its racial implications. In not putting in that work, Sabrina'' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '
Just before the Weird Sisters are hanged, Sabrina urges them to stop them by giving a speech about how the original witches of Greendale would be appalled to know that women like them-their descendants-mighty one day try to harm one Another place where witches come together and learn their craft:
"13 witches have been hanged here by witch hunters. These women could not have had a place like the Academy-a school where witches would be safe. Even if they could, they'd never believe that the women inside its walls would turn on one another like this. "
Sabrina's speech-wise, Sabrina's speech is meant to be a kind of thesis statement about the show's feminist ideals, but it rings somewhat hollow because of the way the show clumsily handles Sabrina's retaliation. Ultimately, there's no real reason the Weird Sisters HAD To be hanged and so one can not help but wonder why Sabrina could not think of any other way to fight back.
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The lynching scene would have been more than enough to make The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Prudence's character continues to keep pace with the future. Later on, it's revealed that she's the illegitimate, the abandoned daughter of Father Blackwood, the Church of the High Priest (and Dean of the Academy), who happens to be a married man Reviews another black woman who is not Prudence's mother. It's a surprising plot that recontextualizes Prudence's use of the slur "half-breed" to refer to Sabrina. Following the twist, their rivalry morphs into a multiracial, black woman from her social station-specifically by exposing the truth about her heritage. The term "half-breed" should be seen as quite loaded in this context.
It's great that The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina it was made to make sure that characters of color like But it 's important to understand a show involving characters of color should be fully aware of its use of racially charged imagery. These scenes from the first season should be glaring red flags from the jump – and one can only hope that the show will be more mindful in its upcoming second season.
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