MUCH OF MODERN STORYTELLING is based on ancient stories and parables that we call fairy tales. In some cases these fairy tales serve as more than just superficial references and leave their mark more visibly in the content and structure of the modern story. Everyone who watches Charmed knows that they have often used elements of fairy tales in their episodes. But a closer comparison of individual fairy tales to the characters and events in Charmed leads to a view of the larger picture, namely a comparison of themes in fairy tales with themes in Charmed and ultimately the structure of the genre as it impacts the television show.
Four fairy tale themes that help shape the overarching story of Charmed are the power of love, the importance of innocence, the battle between good and evil and characters disguising themselves. These themes can be seen in broad strokes throughout the show: Love plays a predominant role, from the love of one’s sister to the love of one’s mate, to the love of humanity in general. Innocence is celebrated, both in individual characters and in the larger population as a whole: the normal humans the Charmed Ones protect are always referred to as “innocents.” The battle between good and evil is at the heart of the show: good witches fighting evil warlocks and demons. The element of disguise is prevalent as well, from every creature and person who has masqueraded as something other than they are to the sisters themselves, as they both hide their identity from others and, previous to the show’s start, had their identity hidden from them. To really understand the complexity with which these themes have been woven through the series, though, requires a closer examination of the sisters and the fairy tale characters they have taken on.
The power of love for both good and evil is a theme played out in many fairy tales. In Charmed, this theme is most strongly reflected in Phoebe. Piper may be the romantic of the family, but Phoebe has always been the most romantically adventurous, tending toward dramatic, passionate love affairs with men who embrace their bad-boy side. The most recent example was reformed-demon Drake, but as far as bad boys go, no one can hold a candle to Cole. While Phoebe and Cole were dating, Phoebe played the role of Beauty to Cole’s Beast, and their story, like Beauty and the Beast’s, was all about the ability of love to change the heart and conquer all.
While the details change across tellings, the crux of the story is always the same: Beauty, a good, deeply caring woman with a strong sense of family responsibility, is thrust into a relationship with a creature that is not what he appears. The Beast tries to woo Beauty, despite the fact that she can tell he is a hideous monster, needing Beauty to fall in love with him so that he can return to his human form. In a similar manner, Cole wooed Phoebe in an attempt to make her fall in love with him. Cole’s motives, though, were much darker than the Beast’s: Cole wanted Phoebe to fall in love with him so that he could use her trust to destroy her and her sisters. Also unlike the Beast, Cole was able to hide the demon in him, presenting only his human face to Phoebe for a long time. When Phoebe found out that Cole was half-demon, she struggled just as Beauty did to see only the humanity and the goodness in the man she loved. Eventually Cole won Phoebe’s heart and her love transformed him, turning him into a better person, just as the Beast won Beauty’s love and was transformed from a monster to a prince. Like the Beast’s transformation, Cole’s transformation began as an internal one but ended in a physical change as well: his demon half was vanquished, leaving him fully human. Love tamed the monster and conquered all.
Had everything ended there, Phoebe would have forever remained Beauty, who changed her prince through the power of her love. Unfortunately for Phoebe, that was not the end of her story.
When Cole became the Source of all Evil and Phoebe married him without knowing his dark secret, she took on the persona of a second, more tragic fairy tale character: the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid gave up her life as a mermaid in exchange for human form and the chance to live happily ever after with her prince. In the original fairy tale, the mermaid fails in her quest and dies, leaving her soul separated from that of her kin for all eternity. When Phoebe discovered that Cole was the Source and that she was pregnant with his child, she chose to become his dark Queen. She left behind her family and her responsibilities to live in his world and be his wife. Ultimately, she couldn’t let go of her old life or find happiness with Cole in her new one. She ended up losing Cole and the baby and nearly losing her own life—a fate only slightly kinder than that of her fairy tale twin. As if to underscore the part Phoebe had been playing, the next season’s opener featured Phoebe trading places with an actual mermaid. Devastated by her losses, she tried to remain a mermaid to escape her pain, and only the love of her sisters brought her back. Love nearly destroyed her but, in a very Charmed twist, it was the power of her sisters’ love that was able to save her.
Like Phoebe, Piper has played her share of fairy tale and fantasy characters, but the role of Sleeping Beauty, because of its association with innocence, is the one that most suits her. Particularly at the beginning of the show’s run, Piper was cast as the most innocent sister, the one who demonstrated the most heart and compassion; her earthy spirit was a breath of fresh air between jaded, cynical Prue and vivacious, ready-for-anything Phoebe. And as the sister most identified with innocence and its nurturance, Piper was also the first of her sisters (and the only one so far) to become a mother—having experienced more of life and lost some of her own innocence, she is in a position to better protect the innocence of her children.
Sleeping Beauty is a princess whose life is threatened by an evil witch. To protect her, her parents hide her away as a child and let her grow up, unaware of her own identity and destiny. Similarly, Piper and her sisters had their powers stripped when they were children in order to protect them from warlocks and others who would try to harm them. More so than the others, though, Piper’s sweet temperament and romantic spirit make her more appropriate to the image of the princess hidden away in the forest.
After Sleeping Beauty discovers her true identity, she succumbs to a witch’s evil curse, falling into a deathlike sleep when she pricks her finger on a spinning wheel and is woken by her prince’s kiss. Our first real hint that handyman Leo would be more than a love affair that didn’t quite work out, and instead was Piper’s true love, was when he used his Whitelighter powers to heal Piper, critically injured and hovering near death, effectively “waking” her from her sleep.
Paige plays a dual role in Charmed: during the course of the series she has appeared both as Snow White and a wicked enchantress. Historically, both Snow White and the wicked enchantress in her guise as queen appear in the same fairy tale as heroine and villainness, a contrast that serves to demonstrate Paige’s dual nature and the eternal theme of good versus evil.
Paige and Snow White are both pure-hearted orphans with pale skin and ruby lips. Like Snow White, who, after escaping her stepmother with a kind huntsman’s help, takes refuge with seven dwarves whom she cares for as a mother would, Paige is the ultimate caregiver. She worked early on as a social worker and, after leaving that job, did everything she could to care for her sisters and her nephews. She works, seemingly tirelessly, for the good of those around her, and the determination she has shown in becoming a better witch surpasses that of both her sisters. This goodness and light in Paige can be partly attributed to her being half-Whitelighter. It is in her nature to help others; it is, in fact, her destiny, as she has recently been trusted with witch and future Whitelighter charges of her own.
But just as Paige holds the potential for great goodness, she also has elements of darkness within her. She is rebellious and, of all the sisters, perhaps the one most vulnerable to darkness and the misuse of her powers. This part of her nature, the flawed witch, is personified by the enchantress character, who uses her power to gain what she wants. The wicked queen in the Snow White story wants to be the fairest in the land, and when Snow White threatens her status, she tries to have her killed. In the fourth season, Paige discovered that, in one of her past lives, she was an
evil enchantress. This discovery came at a time in which she was struggling to be as good a witch as Prue was. Her frustration over not being as powerful or as knowledgeable as Prue caused problems that affected her life and her relationships; her desire to be the best at any cost was its own kind of evil and nearly cost her the good side of her personality. When Paige confronted her past self, she might as well have been Snow White confronting her evil stepmother.
Paige’s ongoing struggle to balance the different aspects of her personality and her responsibilities as both witch and Whitelighter with her desires as a human woman serves as the perfect backdrop for the battle of moderation and excess, interest and obsession, right and wrong and, ultimately, good and evil that the sisters have fought in many different forms throughout the series.
Of all the sisters, Prue is the one who best demonstrates the fairy tale archetype of the hero in disguise. Prue’s disguises ranged from the simple, as when she pretended to be a hitwoman, to the complex, as when she changed herself completely into a man and into a dog. In the grand tradition of fairy tale disguises, many of her adopted personas were not so much external to her as they were an expression of some part of her she had repressed—and of all of the Charmed Ones, Prue was the one with the strongest tendency to suppress her true self, a fact which was touched on when her wilder side forced itself out and nearly ruined Piper’s wedding to Leo. The episode where Prue accidentally split herself into three worked similarly, showing us different parts of Prue’s psyche that usually remained hidden and revealing the complexity of her character.
It’s also no coincidence that the seasons before Prue’s death were also the seasons in which disguising their identity as the Charmed Ones was most important, hindering the actions the sisters were able to take in fighting evil far more often than it has in recent years. Prue’s death was a tragedy, but in a way it freed her sisters from having to suppress their true identity as witches. The external pressures still existed, but without Prue’s influence, they were free of the internal pressure, and the show changed because of it.
The four sisters demonstrate strong fairy tale themes in their lives and personalities. Phoebe is obsessed with love. Piper is moved by innocence. Paige is torn by the conflict between good and evil. Prue was constantly disguising herself, struggling with her own identity. These four themes—love, innocence, conflict and disguise—provide the structure for the entire television show.
By touching on these classic themes, Charmed ensures that it makes a connection with its viewers and reaches deep into their subconscious minds. This makes the show feel welcome and familiar while at the same time standing out from other current television shows, which use older stories, not to touch on age-old themes and concerns, but to bring the same stale programming to every show on every channel. All stories are based on something: another story, a truth, a theme or a trend. Charmed’s strength lies in the fact that the stories it draws on are ageless and classic, not subject to the whims and trends of the networks. Charmed is a modern fairy tale, taking the old stories and giving them new and more complex life, and like all great fairy tales, it will endure.
Debbie Viguié is the author of several books including Scarlet Moon, the Wicked series and Charmed: Pied Piper. Her book Midnight Pearls, a retelling of the little mermaid fairy tale, is on the ALA 2005 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults list. Debbie lives with her husband, Scott, and when she is not busy writing indulges her love of travel and theme parks.
A STAKE IN THE FUTURE
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RUTH GLICK WRITING AS
REBECCA YORK
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The history of witches like the Halliwells can be traced back to the Middle Ages and, Rebecca York argues, we’ve come a long way since then. With the popularity of Charmed as evidence, she sees an even brighter future.
CONSIDER THE HARSH REALITIES of modern life. We’ve got:
• The Department of Homeland Security
• The Patriot Act
• Airport screeners who make us walk barefoot toward the friendly sky
Will they keep me safe from the dark forces threatening to destroy our civilization?
I hope their efforts help. But I’m also putting a cauldron-full of faith in Paramount Studios. Their long-running television series Charmed is—well—an excellent good luck charm. With the three Halliwell witches on our side, how can we possibly lose the good fight?
Charmed is big-bucks entertainment. But it’s also more—a cultural icon with a welcome message about modern society.
At this writing, the series is in its seventh season on the WB Network. Reruns are twice every Monday through Friday on TNT. That’s astonishing in an era where a new show can appear on the horizon and vanish with the speed of light. And especially astonishing for a series about witches.
You can tell a lot about the health of a civilization by the way it treats its women and the roles they play in society. Based on the success of Charmed, we appear to be in fantastic shape.
I have a friend who likes to answer the question, “How are you feeling?” with the retort, “Compared to what?”
Let’s compare the three witches in Charmed to witches in the Middle Ages.
If you were a woman living in some burg in Westphalia in 1520, and your neighbor’s cow died or he couldn’t get it up when he tried to boink his wife—or he came on to you, and you told him to keep his wandering hands to himself—he might denounce you as a witch.
Which meant you were consorting with the devil.
In those days, consorting was a polite word for doing the nasty. And I do mean nasty.
Wrap your head around this: In the repressed atmosphere of the times, sex was dirty and shameful: something a husband was only supposed to do with his wife for purposes of procreation—under the covers with most of their clothes on.
Witch hunts were the perfect way for frustrated guys to get their jollies.
In theory, witches could be of either sex. Usually, though, they were female. And once a woman was accused, she was on a one-way train to hell.
She was taken to the local witch processing center where she was stripped. Then all the hair was shaved from her body so the learned judges could look for witch marks—particularly in the area of her private parts.
Once a witch mark was found—and this could vary from a mole to a vaginal tear resulting from childbirth—the next step was extracting a confession. The woman was shown the array of torture instruments the court might use on her. She could choose to confess before she was stuffed into an iron maiden (a hinged, body-shaped metal case with large spikes on the inside) or had her fingernails pulled out by the roots. But, even then, escaping alive was basically impossible. Most witches were burned at the stake after writing out a confession that usually included a description of the devil’s penis and an account of the orgies she had attended with him.
Many of these hapless women were raped in prison. If the executioner was merciful, he strangled the victims so they wouldn’t have to endure the pain of being burned alive.
Contrast that ghastly picture of a medieval witch hunt with life in the beautifully furnished Victorian San Francisco mansion where the Charmed Ones live.
On the surface, it’s the American dream, except that in almost every episode demons invade the premises, leaving a heap of shattered mirrors, smashed furniture and shredded upholstery. From time to time, you see the Halliwell sisters sweeping up the mess. But by the next time we tune in, everything is back in perfect working order.
Not so bad, considering what a “burn the witches” mob could have done 500 years ago. Still, the Halliwell sisters aren’t sharing their secret with greater San Francisco. We, the viewers, and a few chosen confidants are the only ones in on their paranormal powers.
Despite our enlightened era, some people would condemn them as evil. Others want to steal their powers. And then there’s the weirdness factor—a definite minus when you’re trying to blend in with the neighbors like norm
al folks.
Consider “normal” a relative term. The interplay of the mundane, the humorous and the supernatural is one of the fascinating aspects of the series. These women spend a great deal of their time fighting the fiend of the week, yet they crack wise at the drop of a bustier. For example, in “Blinded by the Whitelighter,” in the third season, a guardian angel named Natalie berated the Charmed Ones for not acting with suitable decorum.
Natalie said, “No more braless, strapless, fearless attire.”
Prue mumbled, “Okay, but then I have nothing to wear.”
The juxtaposition of comedy and the sisters’ deadly serious mission was showcased perfectly in “Bride and Gloom” when Phoebe was captured by a warlock bent on turning the three sisters evil, while Piper and Leo met with wedding planners making chipper suggestions that would up the cost of their ceremony and reception.
Playing the paranormal against the normal works brilliantly for the show. Despite being witches, each Halliwell sister wants a stable home life with a loving husband and a family. But there are stumbling blocks. They must find a man who can accept the whole package (woman and witch). And while on their quest, they might get tricked into marriage with a demon.
Every long-running TV series must deliver what viewers crave while at the same time growing and developing. For Charmed, this means the writers must continually up the ante—pitting the Charmed Ones against ever-increasing supernatural threats.
Setting aside the supernatural, the rules of good drama mean that the plot must keep the sisters from living happily ever after. The moment all three Charmed Ones settle down with the right man, the series is over. So Phoebe and Paige are doomed to a string of misguided and broken relationships, and even Piper, who married her Whitelighter, must endure endless domestic and supernatural squabbles with her husband.
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