Season seven of The Walking Dead just started, returning a terrifying vision of a zombie apocalypse to the small screen. It's quite a departure from TV 40 years ago, when the supernatural was often depicted as funny and cute, like on the show, Bewitched. At least that what it seemed on the surface.
When the sitcom Bewitched debuted in 1964, it was part of a strong TV trend of the 60's that put supernatural themes into the trusty form of the sitcom. There was I Dream of Jeanie, The Addams Family, The Munsters and more. Shari Zeck, Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts and GLT's culture maven said that as cute and fluffy as the shows seemed, there was something more going on there. Unlike supernatural TV shows of today, that tend to put it all out there -- hip deep in gore -- the shows of the past often had interesting, and even subversive, subtext.
"Those shows all featured someone who had extra powers," said Zeck. "That either had to be hidden or contained in some way. Those shows collectively were basically about outsiders who had some secret power that they had to suppress or keep hidden. But of course the entire interest of the show was bout their outsiderness. Collectively those shows were about an era in which more people on the edge of socially acceptable society were finding their way in. And the first way to find your way in is to be a joke."
This is particularly true in the case of Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie and Nanny and the Professor, observed Zeck. "It's because they're female leads, and I relate this directly to the women's movement. In order to fit in, these extraordinary, powerful supernatural women had to suppress what was extraordinary about them, but in the end it couldn't be suppressed. In the end, that's why we watched the shows."
