#52 A charmed web she weaves…
18/02/21 09:41
In the 1980s, I used to have a piano lesson every Tuesday. I hated them – we’d drive to a dingy area of Dronfield where my teacher would make me play dreary hymns in her cold front room, and tut because I hadn’t practised. Afterwards my dad would take me to McDonald’s – jam after the pill – and then we’d go home to watch Bewitched, which was not jam but nectar.
I remember those Tuesdays – the lows of music lessons, followed by the highs of Samantha twitching her nose and making it all go away. As much as I hated learning the piano, I loved Bewitched. Even as a child, I sensed its radical and subversive nature, relishing the power of the female spell, which left the patriarchy flailing pathetically. There’s one episode where Sam nips off to Paris for lunch with her glorious mother Endora. She’s sublimely unconcerned by the exoticism of the trip, and you get the impression she’s done this many times before – before she had a go at being a suburban housewife. I always firmly believed that Samantha, who is clearly hundreds of years old, is just messing about with this marriage – trying out a phase, for lols. She’ll go on to much greater things, once she’s done with Darren. It’s just a brief pagan experiment.
Anyway, because of my great love for Bewitched, I was keen to watch WandaVision, an ambitious Marvel head-spin-off which pays homage to this great show, along with several others. Those unfamiliar with the Marvel universe might find the set-up a stretch, but all you really need to know is that Wanda can move things with her mind, and her husband Vision is a kind of android. They’ve moved to Westview in New Jersey to enjoy an idyllic family life under the radar, so part of the fun of is them disguising their powers and pretending to be ordinary, pretending everything’s dandy. The first episode is set in the 50s and subsequent ones move through the decades, like a kind of sitcom-many-headed-HYDRA, each paying homage to a different show. Elizabeth Olsen does a great job of capturing Samantha/Wanda’s pixieish exasperation, occasionally followed by an arrested expression, like the Lady of Shalott realising the curse is come upon her…
Shoot, where was I? The plots are pleasingly farcical and the supporting cast enjoyably cartoonish, particularly their nosy neighbour Agnes. It’s a proper blast from the past, with a Stranger Things-style nerdy satisfaction in identifying the various inspirations – everything from The Dick Van Dyke Show to I Dream of Jeannie. Even a passing reference to Contact, which made me remember another quote from that film: ‘You’re not real. None of this is real.’
In fact, WandaVision is a kind of heightened reality, every laugh a belly laugh, every gesture slightly overdone, which lends a note of hysteria, keeping a lid on something much, much bigger, something else out there trying to get in - a red toy helicopter, giving you pause, making you reconsider, before shaking your head. It’s nothing. Snap out of it. Stop.
Sorry, for a minute I was somewhere else entirely.
I remember those Tuesdays – the lows of music lessons, followed by the highs of Samantha twitching her nose and making it all go away. As much as I hated learning the piano, I loved Bewitched. Even as a child, I sensed its radical and subversive nature, relishing the power of the female spell, which left the patriarchy flailing pathetically. There’s one episode where Sam nips off to Paris for lunch with her glorious mother Endora. She’s sublimely unconcerned by the exoticism of the trip, and you get the impression she’s done this many times before – before she had a go at being a suburban housewife. I always firmly believed that Samantha, who is clearly hundreds of years old, is just messing about with this marriage – trying out a phase, for lols. She’ll go on to much greater things, once she’s done with Darren. It’s just a brief pagan experiment.
Anyway, because of my great love for Bewitched, I was keen to watch WandaVision, an ambitious Marvel head-spin-off which pays homage to this great show, along with several others. Those unfamiliar with the Marvel universe might find the set-up a stretch, but all you really need to know is that Wanda can move things with her mind, and her husband Vision is a kind of android. They’ve moved to Westview in New Jersey to enjoy an idyllic family life under the radar, so part of the fun of is them disguising their powers and pretending to be ordinary, pretending everything’s dandy. The first episode is set in the 50s and subsequent ones move through the decades, like a kind of sitcom-many-headed-HYDRA, each paying homage to a different show. Elizabeth Olsen does a great job of capturing Samantha/Wanda’s pixieish exasperation, occasionally followed by an arrested expression, like the Lady of Shalott realising the curse is come upon her…
Shoot, where was I? The plots are pleasingly farcical and the supporting cast enjoyably cartoonish, particularly their nosy neighbour Agnes. It’s a proper blast from the past, with a Stranger Things-style nerdy satisfaction in identifying the various inspirations – everything from The Dick Van Dyke Show to I Dream of Jeannie. Even a passing reference to Contact, which made me remember another quote from that film: ‘You’re not real. None of this is real.’
In fact, WandaVision is a kind of heightened reality, every laugh a belly laugh, every gesture slightly overdone, which lends a note of hysteria, keeping a lid on something much, much bigger, something else out there trying to get in - a red toy helicopter, giving you pause, making you reconsider, before shaking your head. It’s nothing. Snap out of it. Stop.
Sorry, for a minute I was somewhere else entirely.
- WandaVision, 9 episodes, Disney+
