I've recently been advised that UPN has gone off the deep end with the character of Willow on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Now, I don't watch Buffy-- outside of "Enterprise" and "Smallville", I don't watch TV at all-- so I may have my facts wrong on this, but my basic understanding is that Buffy's sidekick Willow became a Wiccan a few seasons ago, and with the exception of standard television treatment of the Magic, they were doing a pretty good job until recently. Now she's apparently turned to the "Dark Side" and they're running taglines like "Hell hath no fury like a Wicca scorned." Since I don't watch the show, I don't want to go into any more detail than that. Now, of course, I'm disappointed, but I've never expected a whole lot from the entertainment industry. I do hope that UPN gets a barrage of reasonably intelligent uproar, and it would be nice to see an apology-- but I'm not holding my breath.

Everyone-- and I'm not speaking just of the Pagan Community, I mean everyone-- seems to expect them to make documentaries that suit their own social, political, and economic views. They're businessmen, and they're there to make money. It has nothing to do with a vast right-wing conspiracy-- the entertainment industry has always co-opted reality in favor of profitable entertainment. Technology, history, and even the laws of physics get rewritten for the sake of entertainment. I've seen Hollywood describe the Druids as an underground Christian sect created to stop the Antichrist (Warlock: The Armageddon), yes, but the Christians get equal-- if not greater-- mistreatment. Every time you turn around, some Christian organization is getting its knickers in a knot about some movie or television show. (They seem to be selectively observant; for some reason they seize upon movies like Dogma, but missed End of Days. The liberties the latter film took with Scripture notwithstanding, they should have protested the film because it was, from an artistic standpoint, a partial-term abortion.)

I think it's a particularly sore spot for us, since we have so few characters we can identify with on TV or in the movies. Willow is the only "Prime Time Pagan" I can think of off the top of my head. Oh, there are other series with Pagan flavor, from what I hear, but as far as I know we've got no other recurring characters on television. The movies give us a bit more to choose from, but only in quantity, not quality. Even Practical Magic got things wrong, and that was after the original book was heavily edited. We just don't have that kind of representation in entertainment, and it's more than likely going to be a while before we do. While our numbers are growing, they're almost impossible to quantify, A good chunk of the population has no idea who we are, or even that we exist, so it's pretty unrealistic to expect the mainstream media to pay too much attention to us. It's a simple matter of money... they have no reason to expect that they're going to turn a profit targeting us.

Of course, this begs the question-- how do we prove otherwise, with nothing to choose from?

The answer? Alternate sources. For example, my entire existence as columnist and commentator is dependent on "alternate" media sources-- the Internet and small-press magazines. When you consider the fact that my work, as a general rule, isn't "entertainment", it's amazing I have an audience at all, and yet... here you are.

The Pagan Community is full of authors, artists, and performers of every flavor and persuasion. We can offset the limited amount of Pagan-oriented entertainment available from the "mainstream media" by providing our own. You can already find a number of Pagan musicians taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the Internet, and as technology expands, I truly hope we're going to see more Pagan entertainment available.

I have a friend who has collected most of the production runs of his favorite cartoons and television series in the form of computer files; he's one of those that had Star Wars Episode II the night before it came out. He downloads these things from a variety of sources, and any one of these could be used to distribute material that isn't bootleg as well.

I have another friend, Widgett, who does a weekly audio column on his website called "Widge Goes Off", produced entirely with his personal computer. One of his regular topics is technology in the media. He spends a lot of "air time" talking about the changes happening with traditional media, as well as mocking the people who just can't accept the reality of it. Ironically, his very presence on the net is proof of the fact that those changes are inevitable.

When the Internet was new, the Pagan Community took advantages of the opportunities it presented for networking. Now, our community has grown, and the Internet has grown. Perhaps we should take advantage of the new opportunities provided to us to fill the new needs we've developed.

© 2002 by Cather "Catalyst" Steincamp