OUAT's Evil Queen

When thinking about contemporary representations of witches in today's society, I immediately thought of the Evil Queen from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Not having been a huge fan of Snow White as a child, I am not overly familiar with the Evil Queen from the film. The extent of my knowledge of the Disney's Evil Queen is that she possesses dark powers that allows herself to transform into a witch, and therefore poison Snow White. In recent media, the Evil Queen has taken on a new persona in the television series Once Upon a Time, a show and character of which I am more familiar with. Once Upon a Time (OUAT) is a fictional television show that creates stories based on traditional fairy tale characters, one of whom is the Evil Queen form Snow White. In this modern spin of the fairy tale character, the Evil Queen, known as Regina in OUAT, is introduced as a hard, ruthless, and heartless villain who uses her dark magic to claim her revenge against Snow White. Throughout the series, however, the viewer learns more about Regina and her past, and the character begins to change for the better. Instead of using her magical powers for evil, she begins using them for good.

When comparing OUAT's Evil Queen to the ideas within Palmer's essay, several similarities come to the forefront. Most obviously, the idea of witches emulating sexual transgression is paralleled with Regina. Sultry makeup, elaborate hair, and tight-fitting bossom-baring costumes help sexualize the Evil Queen in OUAT. Even in her human form of Regina, she oozes lust and desire with the help of blood-red lipstick and a sexy swagger. While not knowing what witches of the 1400-1700s looked like, it is easy to conjure up a picture in ones imagination of a sultry, confidant woman, not unlike Regina. In addition, Regina is one of, if not the only character, on the tv show to be shown in bed with other men (yes, there have been several men), a plot line that further enhances her sexuality for the viewers. To go even further, the first man she was shown sleeping with on the show was a forced seduction; using her dark magic, Regina forced this man to sleep with her, an act so witchy even she regretted it later. It is perhaps for this reason alone that one can associate Regina as being a witch.

There is, however, yet another point from Palmer's essay that can be seen in OUAT's Evil Queen, and that is the idea of witch hunting. In OUAT, both the Evil Queen and her human counterpart had to endure multiple "witch-hunts," several of which resulted in a trial and most of which involved her escaping with the use of her magic. No other character in the show (aside from Little Red Riding Hood, who turned into a werewolf every full moon), has been hunted down for the powers they possess or the fear the people felt towards them. Clearly, the Evil Queen in OUAT is a witch.

The one dissimilarity between the Evil Queen of OUAT and Palmer's argument is that of the status of witches. Palmer argues that most of the witches that were hunted down between 1450-1700 were middle-aged (or old) and poor. The Evil Queen is, in the fairy tale land, a queen, and in the human world, the mayor of the town. She is therefore not poor by any means. Her age is hard to guess, but one would certainly not consider her to be "middle-aged," and her background story suggests she is in her late twenties. By this argument alone, there is no parallel between the Evil Queen and the arguments within Palmer's essay.