{"id":10247,"date":"2016-02-13T14:12:45","date_gmt":"2016-02-13T18:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=10247"},"modified":"2016-02-13T14:12:45","modified_gmt":"2016-02-13T18:12:45","slug":"kissing-covens-i-watch-the-sisterhood-of-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2016\/02\/kissing-covens-i-watch-the-sisterhood-of-night.html","title":{"rendered":"Kissing Covens: I watch “The Sisterhood of Night”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Despite the title, spooky cover, and synopsis (ARE OUR TEENS IN A WITCH SEX CULT? HAVE GAYS BURGLED BRITAIN\u2019S SWANS?<\/a>) this is not a horror film. It isn\u2019t an update of The Craft<\/em>, although in some ways its atmosphere is reminiscent of that movie. It\u2019s a modern riff on The Crucible\u2013the Deadly Doll called it \u201cThe Teencible<\/a>\u201c\u2013based on a short story by notable male mammal and odd duck Stephen Millhauser.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s also the closest fictional depiction I can think of to what it was like to be in Riot Grrrl<\/a>. It\u2019s a touching, melodramatic, genuinely beautiful story of teenage girls coming together to share their secrets, finding in one another a haven from a hostile, consumerist, image-obsessed, misogynist and sex-crazed world. Like, I cried.<\/p>\n

Also, it includes the glorious graffiti, EMILY PARRIS IS A BLOG WHORE.<\/p>\n

The two lead girls are terrific, swan-necked hypnotic Georgie Henley as Mary Warren and low-voiced angry Willa Cuthrell as Catherine Huang. It\u2019s written by Marilyn Fu and directed by Caryn Waechter, and both the dialogue and the direction are so committed to that apocalyptic teenage mindset, where you\u2019re always either trapped or exultant. The music is important the way pop music is important to teens. The sun is a kind of glowing, golden, edge-of-adulthood sun you\u2019ll never see again. There are great images: a girl in a white fur coat and her best friend dressed as a golden \u201cDavid Bowie bird,\u201d doing an extremely silly arm-waving dance on a suburban street, you\u2019ll tear up. Repeated shots of girls throwing their hands in the air to dance\u2013there\u2019s so much dancing in this movie\u2013or lowering them, ceremonially, to hold one another. Ah, this movie just worked for me on every level, from start to finish. There are smart explorations of the way the Internet can trap some of us and liberate others. The Sisterhood uses silence and secrecy to bind themselves to one another\u2013one of the very first things that happens is that a girl dramatically leaves Facebook!\u2013but isolated girls outside the Sisterhood find their own solace in speaking out. The portrayal of forgiveness and women\u2019s solidarity is a relief after The Craft<\/em>\u2018s more ferocious outlook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are things Sisterhood<\/em> doesn\u2019t do that I wish it had done, and the fact that it didn\u2019t do them says unpleasant things about our culture. This would have been a stronger movie if it had a Tituba figure, for example. Why not make the charismatic, mysterious, tenderhearted girl leader black, and let that affect how she\u2019s viewed and treated by others? There are also two spoilerous major issues that are explicitly raised throughout the movie, and we\u2019re led to believe that the Sisterhood might have been personally affected by them, but in the end it turns out no, none of the main characters were actually [spoilers]. Those choices seem to make Mary, especially, an \u201cEverygirl\u201d\u2013but one thing I learned in Riot Grrrl is that there\u2019s no such thing.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the title, spooky cover, and synopsis (ARE OUR TEENS IN A WITCH SEX CULT? HAVE GAYS BURGLED BRITAIN\u2019S SWANS?) this is not a horror film. It isn\u2019t an update of The Craft, although in some ways its atmosphere is reminiscent of that movie. It\u2019s a modern riff on The Crucible\u2013the Deadly Doll called it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[38,56,31,119,113],"class_list":["post-10247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","tag-forgiveness","tag-friendship","tag-god-bless-the-1990s-because-no-one-else-will","tag-horror","tag-woman-is-the-irony-of-the-community"],"yoast_head":"\nKissing Covens: I watch "The Sisterhood of Night"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Despite the title, spooky cover, and synopsis (ARE OUR TEENS IN A WITCH SEX CULT? 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