Bewitched:

I’m one of those people who analyzes movies and television shows. I do this mostly in my head or in conversation, although when I was in my 20s I sat down and wrote out a five- or six-page treatise on symbolism in the movie The Lost Boys, just for fun. So, what I want to share with you today is not without precedent.

I imagine it’s obvious that unless there is an academic imperative, I don’t just sit around thinking about things I can analyze. Something usually triggers a thought process that I can’t let go. Let me tell you how I got to where I am right now: one day I posted a status on Facebook about my love of caftans, along with a series of selfies I took in the long caftan I purchased at a thrift store a few years ago. The post led to a comment from a friend about putting on eyeliner and deciding to “go full-on Endora.” Endora, for those who don’t know, is the mother of the bride in the 1970s television sitcom, Bewitched.

Being who I am, this comment started down a trail of analysis that had not previously occurred to me. The next day as I put on my own eyeliner, I found myself thinking about Endora, mothers, and mothers-in-law, both in general and in popular culture. By the time I was pouring my second cup of coffee, I had a theory.

Before I share this theory of mine, I want you to know that I did my homework. I knew I couldn’t be the first to consider this topic. I found a few articles that discussed Bewitched as an example of Religion in Popular Culture (Mary Catherwood, in Medium, 11.13.2016), a “Magically Feminist Show” (Isabelle Jeffery in Culture and the Sitcom: Student Essays, Summer 2017), and as a “a traditional show dressed in feminist clothing” (Holly Ojalvo, in Quartz, 5.3.2019). None seemed to discuss the show from the perspective I wanted to explore. At least, not exactly.

A long-time fan

I watched Bewitched for its full run. Born in 1958, I was six and a half almost to the day when Bewitched aired the first episode on September 17, 1964. When the last episode aired on March 25, 1972, I had turned 14 just seven days prior. I loved the show. I loved it because of the depiction of witchcraft more than anything else (by the time I was 12, I was voraciously reading anything I could find on the paranormal, witchcraft, and history related to witchcraft).

Like any other child, I took no conscious notice of any possible intended messages in the show, any more than I realized what a cultural shift shows like All in the Family represented, or how The Flintstones glorified the white middle class idea of the family structure of the 1950’s. I can understand how Bewitched can be interpreted at either end of the feminist-antifeminist spectrum, especially when considered academically.

However, I want to look at the show through the eyes of the young girl I was when I first followed the storyline, while also considering the perspective I have developed as a woman who struggled to be the “liberated” woman as depicted in popular culture.

The Enjoli woman

To understand at least one of the challenges to my developing identity as a young adult, one needs to know about the Enjoli woman. Enjoli was a perfume created in 1978 and marketed by Charles of the Ritz, a now defunct cosmetics company. I turned 20 that year.

The commercial for Enjoli blatantly stated the message that I had received subconsciously by that time: “I can bring home the bacon/fry it up in a pan/and never, never let you/forget you’re a man,” a woman sings as a lovely blonde shifts from wearing a business suit and holding a stack of cash to holding a pan in a kitchen to swaying sexily in a sultry evening dress. A man says, “Give her Enjoli – the 8-hour perfume for the 24-hour woman.”

The Enjoli woman gave us the perception that a “liberated” woman had the ability to do everything, all the time. In our innocence, this is the woman many of us tried to become. The reality is that a liberated person of any gender has the ability to choose what they do and when they do it. A truly liberated individual is not expected to work hard all day at a job, then go home, cook dinner, clean the house, help with homework, get the kids into bed, and then be ready to be the perfect sex partner to the person they supposedly share their life with.

Yet, even today this is the expectation for women. This is an anecdotal observation based on my own experience and those of many women I have discussed this with over the years of my adult life. You’ll find plenty online written about this commercial, including how it “doomed” us. And, it did; but not by itself. You see, those of us who came of age during the Vietnam-War-in-our-living room era had already been primed by shows like Bewitched.

Samantha and Serena

As we all know, the main character in Bewitched, Samantha, is a powerful witch who fell in love with a mortal man. She wants to be a good wife, which to her husband, Darrin, meant she has to give up witchcraft. Even when she does a spell that saves him (or his boss or his company), it always ends with Samantha feeling guilty and promising she wouldn’t do it again.

Of course, she can’t really help fixing things when she can do it so easily; it’s in her nature to nurture and support her husband. If you think of the “craft” in “witchcraft” as work (which it is), then you realize that Samantha is a “24-hour woman.” Samantha’s intent is always good, and her dedication to Darren is undergirded by love. Samantha is a model for the woman I wanted to be. The woman I thought I was supposed to be.

The message that I learned from Samantha and the Enjoli woman was this: if you love someone, you will be everything they want you to be, you will do everything they want you to do, and if you have to do something they don’t want you to do, you feel guilty for doing it. Oh, and when your child does something you know their father wouldn’t like, you chastise the child even when inside you are proud of their abilities, as Samantha does with Tabitha and Adam, who show talent for magic even as infants.

Samantha’s character is sympathetic and good. She is a beautiful middle-class blonde with perfect hair who strives to make her husband happy by hiding her inner strength – her magic. Her cousin Serena (also played by Elizabeth Montgomery) is the opposite. Though Serena is also beautiful, she has black hair, is a bit of a wild child, and loves to flirt and to flaunt her magic. Of course, Darrin doesn’t really like her.

Serena is probably the best depiction of a liberated woman in the show. The message I got about her was that she was too self-centered, selfish, loud, and outspoken. It was better to aspire to being a Samantha: demure and perhaps a little sneaky (but in a nice way). Another aspect of Serena’s characterization that puts her right into the “undesirable” camp is the fact that she often pairs up with Samantha’s mother in pushing Darrin’s buttons. So, we come to where I started while putting on eyeliner that morning.

Endora and Maurice

Samantha’s mother, Endora, is a strong character. In addition to perfectly drawn wide-winged eyeliner, she wears lovely, long flowing caftans. She pops into Samantha and Darrin’s lives whenever she feels Samantha needs to be prodded into leaving the mortal man she fell in love with. Endora “hates mortals.” However, as the quintessential mother-in-law, who she actually “hates” is her daughter’s husband.

This very typical antagonistic relationship between Endora and Darrin served to give young me the impression that husbands and mothers-in-law never get along. It’s a long-running meme that I saw in just about every other show I can remember from my childhood, including the aforementioned Flintstones.

Endora is also a free spirit. She and Samantha’s father are married, but they live very separate lives. She is strong minded, has personal power, and sometimes exudes a level of sensuality that is not expected of an older woman. She purposefully “forgets” Darrin’s name, applies magic in ways that affect Darrin negatively, and does everything she can to try to break them up. She is not meant to be a likeable character. Nor is Samantha’s father, Maurice, for that matter.

While Maurice comes to accept Darrin because his daughter loves him and is proud of his grandchildren (but only because they inherited the magic), he is a womanizer and chases younger women. When Endora and Maurice are together, the relationship is portrayed as simultaneously hostile and sexual, but not at all “domestic.”

It seemed to me that the message is that if a marriage isn’t traditional, it isn’t actually a committed marriage.

As a youngster, I loved the way Endora looked, but I thought she was not a good person, partly because she kept telling Samantha to leave “Derwood,” or whatever she called him that day. However, I have come to see Endora in a different light. Although the show underscored the stereotype of bitterness between mother-in-law and son-in-law, the show also drew a line between the traditional husband and the liberated wife.

Endora is a liberated wife. She raised a liberated daughter, and now that daughter, with all her talent and power, is choosing to try to give it up for a man. Not only a man, but a mortal man; that is, a man without magic. A normal, rather boring man with little to no imagination that doesn’t apply to his career. Even there, how many times does Samantha have to help him succeed? Of course, she does it secretly, behind the scenes. “Behind every good man there is a good woman” and all that.

"Bewitched" and social issues

There is so much to pull out of a show like Bewitched, and much of it has been addressed elsewhere. Is it feminist? Is it antifeminist? We know that not everybody agrees on that overarching question. On an individual character basis, however, I think we can see that there is much to consider if you’re a person like me who analyzes everything.

It’s a show of all white characters that deals on the surface with the idea of “mixed marriage.” There is one episode toward the end of the run that pointedly addresses racism. The episode was written by 26 tenth grade students who had visited the set at the request of Elizabeth Montgomery and her husband, the director, but in the entire 8-year run, as far as I can recall this was the only time a person of color was on the show.

Was this a mixed message? Did it really address the issue in a meaningful way, as the awards it earned indicate, or was it a "paternalistic approach to liberal racial tolerance [that] implies that only white patriarchs have the cultural authority to declare that racism is wrong," as critic Walter Metz wrote?

Many of us came away from the show thinking Serena was cool, but did we internalize her coolness or the message that she was the “bad” witch? Mr. and Mrs. Kravitz, the next-door neighbors, have been identified by one writer as representing the previous generation of married folk while Darrin and Samantha represent the modern forward-thinking couple.

Mrs. Kravitz’s nosiness is the judgment of an older generation against the younger. Does Mr. Kravitz’s apathy reflect an interpretation of men of the previous generation as being solely focused on whatever was in the newspaper; of not actually listening to his wife because he was “henpecked?” There is so much to unwrap.

There are many more characters that come to mind as I write this. Aunt Clara, the bumbling older witch who can’t quite remember her spells. She’s endearing and “cute,” but messes everything up. I can’t help but equate the way she’s written with what a generation younger than me calls “cute old people.” As a Jones-Generation woman who reached my “Beatles age” last year (i.e., 64 – if you know, you know), I don’t find this at all complimentary. What about the other witches? Uncle Arthur? Dr. Bombay?

I sat down at my computer one morning to unravel a thread about Endora and her relationship to her daughter. My beginning premise was that Endora was trying to stop her daughter from throwing away her personal power. I ended up unravelling a thread that led to the center of my own identity crisis. There was so much more.

There IS so much more; just like Endora, and just like the depths Samantha tries to hide.

This story first appeared on Medium