Tag: witch

Ethereal Stories: A beloved witch

It’s been a while since I’ve written little stories. Here’s a little one to remind you that when you have a crush on someone you shouldn’t be too hesitant to tell him/her.

Raoul

Her name is Apple. Like an apple. She probably has parents who have a lot of apple trees. Can you imagine a beautiful girl? Well Apple is even more beautiful than that. She has wonderful dimples, wonderful hair (red, but not too much) and she smiles all the time, even when it’s gray or rainy. In history class I am behind her and I admire her back. It’s a pity that the Bac test does not fall on Apple’s back, I would have been unbeatable. I try to listen to history, the one we should know, the cold war, the fall of the wall, the construction of Europe… All of this brings me back to Apple’s back. Her red hair over her green sweater. This afternoon: English! I will be on his right. So I’m going to work on his right profile, maybe my favorite. I will have to be discreet, especially not heavy! I would be sorry.

Apple

His name is Raoul. Still haven’t understood what prompted his parents to call him Raoul! It scrapes at the back of the throat, you can’t be affectionate with a name like that. “ My little Rara ! it can’t work. Too bad because he’s funny and rather cute, I can already see all my girlfriends starting to hang around him. Strangely he doesn’t realize anything, plus he seems shy. The Christmas holidays are approaching and I will spend two weeks without seeing him. It doesn’t seem to move him. This afternoon, during English class, I thought I saw him watching me. But nothing is certain, he could as well observe Coline who is sitting next to me. Coline is tall (I could say tall if I were naughty) and inevitably she overshadows me, you only see her, in the classroom, in front of the school, on the bus. It’s our benchmark, so obviously Raoul only sees Coline. It’s certain.

Raoul

Sorcery objective: I have studied the problem well, the only way for Apple to take an interest in me is to use proven and risk-free techniques. I watched tutorials, consulted blogs there are many processes. In some cases it is necessary to obtain an extract of the person to bewitch, I had no intention of cutting Apple into a slice.

Get a recent full-length photo. Not easy either. She is not on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook, I would have to be able to take her picture discreetly without anyone around, so that she is not hidden by a Coline for example.

No, the most accessible way is the so-called “encirclement” technique. The principle is simple: you have to go around the home of your loved one 33 times. In addition to the LPs, you have to recite some kind of weird sentences that I printed out to learn them by heart. It must be Tibetan, I’ve never seen it but it looks like it.

Apple

I am scared. I don’t know why but I’m scared. I’m sure they’re all flirting with Raoul on their Instagram Messenger and company. They’re all stuck in their head, and I’m a UFO. No social networks, no Meme (yes I know what it is!), no TikTok and thumbs up that skip to the next video half a second after half a second. So I read, I think of Raoul, I eat chocolate, I think of Raoul. I wouldn’t crack. I swore to myself not to pry into his life using the internet and I would hold on. So I invent stories, stories with Raoul who comes towards me smiling, or who cooks or who walks in the forest. At the end of the story, Raoul takes my hand, he says kind words to me (I don’t know what in fact, it’s up to him to find the right words) then he approaches my mouth and kiss. Pfff I look clever making me stories of princesses and charming princes who come to kiss me. Prince Raoul ! it doesn’t sound very good. I don’t know what sounds good with Raoul. Sometimes I imagine that it’s him who’s sleeping, on the beach, and I take advantage of his closed eyes to kiss him.

Raoul

I can’t stop learning the magic phrases by heart. There are about fifteen in all, each sentence is made up of about ten words that look something like this: KAFALOUMIKOLOPARA MIPOULARISOTOALAPOELE etc. Fifty times that I reread these damned sentences, I’ll never get there! Not to mention that I’m going to have to recite them while I go around Apple’s 33 times.
Speaking of which… Pomme lives in the countryside, in an isolated house, with flat land around it and probably lots of apple trees. So 33 times around the property, I calculated, that’s 66 kilometers, to do in one go otherwise it won’t work, the tutorial is formal!
I decided to do the 33 bike tours, in 4 hours it is possible. I would get up very early, my parents would still be sleeping and, keeping a good rhythm, I would be finished before going to class. People will think that I left for high school very early. I’m almost to the point on the last evening Tibetan phrases to repeat. I should have taken Tibetan as a second language for the Bac.

At Apple,

Apple’s dad finishes shaving, it’s still dark and he leaves for work in 30 minutes. Back in the kitchen, standing behind the window, he drinks his coffee, staring into space. He sees in the distance a young cyclist pedaling at a brisk pace. The young man is holding his handlebars in one hand and sheets of paper floating in the wind in the other. The picture makes him smile. After getting dressed, Apple’s dad goes back to the kitchen, he thinks amused of this cyclist who is perhaps revising his lessons on his bike. He turns off the light and does not notice that the same cyclist is going back to the same place always at the same pace.

Monsieur Pomme silently leaves the house which is still sleeping, gets into his car, triggers the opening of the automatic gate and says to himself that he should remember to change the orange flashing light of the gate, the one which starts up during the operation of the leaves. He quickly crosses the gate without bothering to look at the traffic, because there is no traffic in the rue de Pomme.
Except that morning, at 6:30 a.m., at the precise moment when Raoul, his nose buried in his papers, pedals vigorously, articulating his 24th MIPOULARISOTOALAPOELE. The shock is terrible, the bike becomes folding for the occasion, Mr. Apple’s car is badly dented and Raoul is lying on the road.

Apple

Dad is in the hall yelling on the phone, he’s yelling at someone who obviously doesn’t understand that there’s an accident and that help needs to be sent quickly. I rush in pajamas in front of the house. There, in the street, I see a twisted bicycle and a boy lying on its side. I remain frozen by the scene that I discover: Raoul, My Raoul, he is there, lying on the macadam, his eyes closed. I rush over to him, take his head in my hands and I don’t know what’s gotten into me, I slowly approach his mouth, I kiss him. So slowly he opens his eyes, he kisses me in turn and whispers something weird, probably Tibetan. I don’t care, it’s up to him to choose the right words.

Cinema: The Witch, this mythical figure

Art by : https://www.artstation.com/kilart

Mona Chollet, Witches the Undefeated Power of Women.

“If you are a woman and you dare to look inside yourself, then you are a witch.”

The hooked nose, warts, incantations and potions… the witch has always fascinated and the cinema has portrayed her many times. From the cantankerous old queen of Snow White to the brave and valiant Hermione, her representation has evolved a lot in cinema as in history. She has long made children cry and unleashed the fury of men. Put aside, denigrated, burned, feared, it is the object of all fears but also the source of many fantasies.
But doesn’t the fear of the witch come simply from the fear of the feminine, in its power and its marginality?
Because indeed she appears to be strong, independent, single, sometimes old and childless, coming out of traditional beauty and the dictates imposed by patriarchal societies.

In its early days, cinema mainly filmed the witch as the main figure of fear and anguish. A true cliché of a storybook witch, she is then ugly and shown as monstrous: aged, wrinkled, crooked nose, malevolent and above all shown in opposition to the young, pretty and naive first. The classic The Wizard of Oz is the prime example, but Disney’s version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Sleeping Beauty really didn’t help boost its image.

In the 1960s, the witch was domesticated. She has a husband, a family, is a housewife, seeks love and validation. Her physique changes completely, she becomes cute, well-groomed and dressed, always at the forefront of fashion. Her happiness can only be linked to the well-being of her family and her husband. In short, the patriarchy has done its work! To give examples, Sam in the Bewitched series, Gil in Bell, Book and Candle or Morticia from The Adams Family come to mind.

Today the cinema appears very rich in terms of representations and has ceased to convey a single image. Gone are the old black hats and the broom, today they are sexy, go to school and fight with wizards, are scary, make people laugh, are sometimes evil. They are the fantasy of a whole generation, some dreaming of marrying Emma Watson or better of becoming Emma Watson.

For this article on this blog, I wanted to recommend two films that deal with the figure of the witch. Two styles, two directors and two different visions complementing each other rather well.

Suspiria – Dario Argento (1977)

I won’t go into the questionable and recent version of Luca Guadagnino here, simply because I have a lot of grievances about him despite an interesting treatment of the occult. Indeed he develops an approach centered on the power of magic and women, which differs from the version of Argento rather centered on the monstrous.
The Suspiria of 77 tends towards the fantastic and the giallo, a genre which appeared in Italy between the 60s and 70s and which mixes murder, sexuality, fantasy, thriller, detective film and fantasy. It is mainly recognized for its particular colors, with a strong use of red, blue and yellow. The scenes are often outrageous and baroque, even extremely kitsch. If you want to know more, I refer you to the filmography of Dario Argento but also of Fulci and Mario Bava.

Suspiria is therefore an extremely cult film that any cinephile fan of the genre must have seen. It is the first part of the Three Mothers Trilogy, preceding Inferno and The Third Mother. This trilogy is entirely devoted to the myth of the witch.
Suspiria tells the story of a young dancer making her debut in a German ballet school full of secrets. Given the theme of the chronicle it is not a spoiler to reveal that the founders and teachers engage in black magic. The witch is approached here from the angle of the macabre and the monstrous. They are real fairy tale villains, powerful but diabolical. The young dancers are filmed like children wanting to unravel the mysteries of this school and understand the issues. The school building, with its astonishing architecture reminiscent of art nouveau, is in itself a character in its own right. A veritable castle of stories from our childhood, it is a source of terror but above all of wonder, for the spectator as well as for the young dancers.

Dario Argento uses the baroque and the fantastic to underline the strangeness of the place and the events. He is helped by Goblin and his music which is certainly magnificent but very disturbing. Argento also declares “having tried with Suspiria to mix the world of the tales of Walt Disney and Grimm with the violence of The Exorcist”. For the photography, Luciano Tovoli accentuates the recognizable primary colors of the Giallo and delivers a work worthy of paintings, which accentuates the fantastic and hypnotic aspect of the film. He also draws inspiration from German Expressionist cinema in his use of symbolism.

The Witch – Robert Eggers (2015)

The Witch differs radically from the previous one in its approach as well as in its aesthetics. It comes across as more grounded in reality, colder, and really dwells on the folkloric portrayal of the witch.
The Witch is the directorial debut of horror film prodigy Robert Eggers (The Northman, The Lighthouse) who has been proving his talent ever since. It shows us a Puritan family of the 15th century (and still the word is weak, next to the Le Quesnois family are atheists) driven out of their community and having no other choice but to isolate themselves at the edge of a forest. They will gradually find themselves confronted with strange phenomena and lose their footing.

The strength of The Witch is that it is not a work that is necessarily scary, but a work about fear itself. The fear that will plague an entire family and push them to destroy each other. The real threat is not the prowling witch but the fanaticism of the characters. Fanaticism that will push the characters to return the violence towards the eldest personified by Anya Taylor Joy, a young girl with a strong character, and accuse her of all the evils. Since she is beautiful and desirable, she can only mate with the devil. It is not innocent that The Witch is carried by a strong female character and at the dawn of her entry into adolescence, a pivotal period where the body changes and can appear as monstrous or sexualized. The monstrous feminine is also an important theme in horror cinema, highlighted by what is called the “Coming Of Age”, a subgenre that deals with the passage from childhood to adulthood and the loss of a certain innocence as well as the enhancement of one’s own personality. Like Carrie, Thomasin questions imposed dictates, sees herself sexualized by the appearance of her period and must face the gaze of her bigoted entourage.

The film therefore highlights the witch “marginal woman” wishing to emancipate herself from religion and patriarchy, here very well represented by the character of the father. Rather than strictly condemning acts of witchcraft, Eggers first exposes the disturbing aspects before rejoicing and exalting its power in the conclusion. Black magic appears as the creation of oppression, whether through folklore or extreme religious depictions of family. In order to document himself and provide a faithful historical representation, Robert Eggers has carried out meticulous research using period texts such as Malleus Maleficarum, a reference in the fight against witchcraft.
Image the witch

Mona Chollet.

“The witch embodies the woman freed from all domination, from all limitations, she is an ideal towards which to strive, she shows the way”