Good Witch and Bad Witch

     Supernature, witchcraft, ghosts, monsters and so on are always a popular topic in the ACG culture (animation, comic, and game) in Japan. Recently I play two Japanese role-playing games related to the witch hunt, which I think demonstrate two specific types of witches in contemporary culture.
     The first one is called The Witch’s House. The heroine Viola was trapped in a witch’s house, facing the evil and magical traps the witch Ellen set to kill her. As the story continued, it seemed that Ellen had already killed dozens of kids in the house in order to keep herself alive by sacrificing the children to the demon. However, when Viola managed to destroy the house and escape from Ellen eventually, it turned out that Viola, whom players are controlling, was the real witch. The so-called “witch” throughout the game was the real Viola. Ellen cheated Viola to switch body and then took over whatever Viola used to have. The true identity of the main character was the witch, and the real Viola was just trying to get her body back. However, the story ended up a tragedy. Ellen, the real witch, successfully deceived Viola’s father and made him shoot his real daughter.
     Meanwhile, the other game named Wizard of White Box is a completely different story. The main character Maria lived in a forest with a wizard who literally had a white box on his head. One day, Maria accidentally encountered a dark shadowy creature in the forest and seemed to be in danger. The wizard came back in time and eliminated the monster. However, there is also a reversal in this story. Maria was the real witch and the wizard used to be the warrior who was sent to killed the witch by villagers. It turned out that Maria and her family had been prophets in the village before, but their ability to foretell the future decreased day by day. Eventually, their failure to predict disasters was regarded as their curse to the village, and the name of witch spread out. The villagers blamed Maria for every difficulty. Yet, the wizard of the white box they sent to kill the witch fell in love with her and let Maria forget her experience and her real identity by magic in order to keep her safe.
     Similarities between these two stories are apparent. Both the witches are covering their identities and pretending to be an irrelevant girl. Both of them hope to be normal and happy and living in ordinary life.
     Yet, the differences are also distinguishable. Ellen, who sacrifices children to the demon in exchange for her power and her life, represents the classic bad witch throughout the history. She is cruel, selfish, diabolical, and even erotic by implying her sexual interest in Viola’s father in the end. Her power is not inherently born. Instead, she voluntarily seeks for power from a devil and burns her parents to death as the first sacrifice. As Palmer claimed in his articles, witches, especially female witches, are the boundary for deviant and transgressive behaviors. In the past, witches were the women who fell out from social norms at that time, like prostitutes and sexual nonconformists.The public eliminated rebels simply by claiming they had witchcraft. They did so because they were evil. Nowadays, it seems that we will not consider a woman a witch basing on her sexual behaviors or her nonconforming attitudes toward the patriarchal norms. We set the boundary of deviance on certain behaviors like murder and massacre. However, in The Witch’s House, the reason that Ellen kills dozens of children and seduces her body’s father still falls into the classic category: she is a witch. She inherently has the evil in her. Or maybe a step further, she is a woman.
     On the other hand, in Wizard of White Box, Maria is apparently the good witch. First of all, her power to foretell the future is inborn. She doesn’t have a choice. She even wants to give up the ability if she can. Unlike The Witch’s House, there is no demon in this story. It also shows a trend that more and more witchcraft is designed to be inherent in many stories. In other words, as long as the witches don’t voluntarily seek for the power or have any other choice, then they are innocent. What’s more, villagers’ attitude toward Maria also fits one of Palmer’s explanations. The elite in the village knew that Maria and her family were not witches. However, the villagers needed some scapegoats to blame for the natural disasters and their own failure. Therefore the elite intentionally pushed Maria onto the rack, providing villagers a way to express their dissatisfaction and rage.
     As far as I concern, the real witchcraft still represents the deviance in our social norms. By the real witchcraft I mean the strong power that people voluntarily seek for. The inborn ability, which is more and more prevalent in the pop culture, is still sending out information that you are innocent because you don’t have a choice. You can’t choose to be a witch, but you are allowed to be born to be one. It sounds like the way we are talking about sexual orientation now.