Rough Draft for RCA

In the show, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, many social issues like feminism, and male patriarchy are presented in an aesthetic form. In the show, “ The chilling adventures of Sabrina”, an old-time favorite character named Sabrina Spellman is brought back to life in a show that depicts Sabrina, the teenage witch in a different light. The show is depicted more of a supernatural revenge fantasy. In the show, Sabrina is a half witch, half human, and is struggling to decide whether she wants to become a full witch and leave her human life behind. During her struggling periods of time, she is faced with issues both in the human and witch world, that reflect on issues such as male patriarchy and exemplifies radical feminism to a certain extent.  In Sabrina’s school, her principal is depicted as very patriarchal in how he handles different situations and how he treats the female figures in the school. In the witch world, there is a level of respect held to the high priest and the devil himself, that women have to “give themselves into. Many times in the show, women are put as subordinate to men, but it is seen to be fought with feminism that to some can be extreme. Other social topics like sexuality and etc are also represented in a different light than most shows on Netflix do.

In episode 2, there are many depictions of feminism shown. In the previous episode, it is shown that Sabrina’s friend Susie is bullied by football players because of her appearance and sexual orientation. She is beaten and ridiculed and later on Sabrina finds out about the incident. When Sabrina takes this incident to the principal, the principal decides to not take any action against the football players because Sabrina did not give him specific names. When she realizes that he is using patriarchy because he wants to defend the guys in his school and believes what they did is no big deal, Sabrina decides to take it into her own hands. She gathers other witches and decides to take matters into her own hands. This can be described as the first scene where radical feminism is shown due to the fact it is a witch show and problems are expected to be solved in extreme ways with magic. She takes the boys into a cave and begins to play mind tricks and starts to seduce them up to the point where the boys end up making out with each other. Even though, Sabrina had good intentions in trying to solve Susie’s problems and trying to show them that they are not superior to them and cannot be protected by their masculinity, the way she solved the problem was radical. This form of issues is solved in this way because many tv shows about witches portrayed extreme solutions and in a way, the chilling adventures of Sabrina romanticized radical feminism. In episode 1, another form of radical feminism is also shown. When Sabrina is denied her access by the principal to open a club that helps support women, she decided she is tired of him using his power to stop them because of his views on women and how subordinate they are to men. She decides to use her power as a witch and scare him by filling his house with spiders, his biggest fears. This traumatic experience led for the principal to be absent from school which made it easier for them to get their club approved. Even though the intention of trying to fight patriarchy and trying to portray feminism is present, in a way it is shown in an extreme way that can lead make others think that radical feminism is the best way to fight off patriarchy.

Many articles have described the show as a show that has actually shown feminism in a good way and has talked about social issues positively. A lot of articles describe the show as the feminist show we didn’t know we needed.  An article begins to describe the show as “The girl power isn’t forced or overdone; it just comes naturally in the dialogue, storylines, and character development. Sabrina uses her words, and they’re incredibly powerful.”, even though Sabrina does use her words to convey some power, after further analyzing the show, I am able to see that there are more times was physical violence or mind tricks are being used to get what she wants instead of using more of a peaceful way. While watching the show I started to see how for some people Sabrina creating a club can be seen as a peaceful way to solve problems but there are more instances where she is violent and thinks in more of a dark way to solve these issues.

In the article by Sylvia John, she states “ radical feminism is portrayed a lot in shows that and in a way they are romanticized and created to be a solution for problems that most women face in society today”, a lot of tv shows especially supernatural tv shows try to create these kinds of topics as an aesthetic in order to fit the theme of the tv show. Other tv shows based on witches also demonstrate extreme ways that women try to get justice or try to become superior to men in order to show their powers. It is seen in the tv show Salem, where the witches are portrayed torturing men in order to get revenge for the men in the town being treated like gods.

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