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For all that I complain about Bewitched, there is one episode that I really like.
Of course, I still have to watch it in the context of the era, because it does some things that, today, I would not find acceptable. But the message really does have good intentions. This episode is actually so important that it was prefaced with a personal message from Elizabeth Montgomery. She addressed the camera directly at the top of the episode about the importance of the message and how strongly she (and the advertiser) feels about it.
In this episode, Tabitha has a best friend stay the night. She wishes her best friend was really her sister because she doesn't much care for having a little brother. So Samantha tells her that having her friend sleep over is like having a temporary sister. The little girl arrives. She's black, and her father works with Darrin at the advertising company. Tabitha gets into it with another girl at the park over whether or not she can be sisters with someone of a different color.
Darrin's company is wooing a new client, who believes in making sure anyone he hires for anything has the type of home-life that he approves of before hiring them. So this guy shows up at the Stephens' house unannounced and Lisa opens the door. The client misunderstands who Lisa is, with some help from a child's way of not quite explaining things. He gets the impression that Darrin is married to a black woman and this is their other daughter (he already knows about Tabitha and Adam).
Later, the two girls talk about how they wish they could be really sisters. Tabitha accidentally changes Lisa's skin and hair color. She changes her back, but then changes herself to match Lisa. So we have literal blackface on this show, which made me very uncomfortable. But Lisa points out that their parents would be upset if their children are the wrong color, so Tabitha goes back to her own color. Then both girls are sad that they don't look alike anymore, and therefore can't be sisters. So Tabitha accidentally gives them contrasting spots - she has black-skin-color spots and Lisa has white-skin-color spots. And then she can't take them off because, subconsciously, both girls really want to be sisters.
The rules of this universe are that one witch cannot undo any spell that another witch casts (otherwise that would solve all of the show's plot devices before they start). So Samantha can't get rid of the spots as long as Tabitha really doesn't want to. So she has to do some digging to find out why Tabitha doesn't want to.
The girls talk about the racism they experienced from the other girl in the park and how they really want to be sisters. So Samantha tells them:
"Sisters are girls who share something. Usually the same parents but if you share other things - good feelings, friendship, love, well that makes you sisters in another way." She insists that they can be sisters if they want to, no matter what skin color they have.
This convinces Tabitha that they can safely get rid of the spots and still have the connection they want.
Meanwhile, the Stephens are hosting the office Christmas party downstairs and Lisa's parents arrive to pick her up from her slumber party the night before (the father had to go out of town to secure another client, so the Stephens were basically babysitting for a couple of days).
Earlier in the day, the client fired the advertising agency because of Darrin's "mixed marriage", but he didn't put it clearly enough for anyone to understand that this was the reason. Just that he didn't approve of Darrin, and since nobody knew that he had come over and spoke to Lisa, nobody knew what it was he didn't approve of.
In an attempt to woo him back, Darrin's boss invited the client to the Christmas Party at the Stephens' house. Apparently (this all happened off-screen), the client was "curious" enough to accept. So he shows up immediately after Lisa's parents do, while Lisa's dad stepped away with their boss to talk about the new contract he just acquired for the company, leaving Lisa's mom standing in the hall with Darrin, when the client rings the doorbell.
Mistaking Lisa's mom for Darrin's wife, he opens his big ol' bigoted mouth to say how brave he thinks they are and how maybe someday what they're doing will become acceptable. And yes, he phrased it like that, implying not only that it wasn't currently acceptable, but that he didn't think it ought to be, only that maybe someday in the future it might be.
He offers Lisa's mom a little black baby doll for her daughter for Christmas, and Darrin is handed a white baby doll for Tabitha, and then says he didn't know which side of the family that Adam took after so he decided to play it safe with a stuffed ... panda bear. Yeah, picture that for a moment, if you don't immediately get it.
Then he runs off for eggnog before either parent can react. Lisa's mom has no idea what just happened, but Darrin (having just been taken off the account at this client's insistence because of being "unsuitable" or whatever) figures out that the client must think that they're married and this is why he was fired from the account.
Meanwhile, Samantha gets the kids straightened out and Darrin's boss, Larry, has a chat with the client. Now that who is married to whom and which child belongs to whom is understood, the client wants Darrin back on the team. As it finally dawns on Larry the reason for the client's decisions, he steps back for a moment, while the client puffs up with pride at being such an understanding, forgiving sort of man.
Larry steps back into the conversation and tells him, in no uncertain terms, that he doesn't want his account because he doesn't want to work with a man like this. Overhearing this conversation, and shocked and pleased at Larry's character, Darrin tells Samantha that, in the spirit of Christmas and given the circumstances, if she sees an opening where her witchcraft would help, she has free reign.
Shocked, the client goes on the defensive and even says "but some of my best friends are Negroes!" So Samantha wiggles her nose, and suddenly the client is seeing everyone at the party with black skin.
So, again, literal blackface that made me uncomfortable, but for a purpose they felt was helpful back in the '60s.
The client freaks out because, well, regardless of anyone's racist beliefs, if everyone around you suddenly changed skin color in front of your eyes, you'd probably freak out too. So he leaves.
The next morning, the Stephens' and Lisa's family are all opening Christmas presents together around the tree. The doorbell rings and it's the client. He asks Darrin to take his account and offers an apology:
"I found out I'm a racist. Not the obvious, out in the open kind of a racist, not me, no, I was a sneaky racist. I was so sneaky, I didn't even know it myself."
Usually, particularly in older shows, when they cover the topic of racism, there's only one kind of racist - the mean ones who actively discriminate, but never any real violence. It's like, on these shows, racists don't lynch people because "we're past that now", but they're visibly angry and say mean things, and usually have some kind of power to prevent people from doing something, like entering a building or patronizing an establishment.
These shows offer a caricature of a racist, to make them easy to identify as racist but not *actually* truly offensive. And I kinda get it - they have 23 minutes to make a point, so they're going to do it in as clear a way as possible that will get past the very conservative censors.
This is the only episode of any TV show that I can personally recall seeing where they addressed the fact that racism comes in other forms. They showed a man who believes he is a "good guy" whose racism is more subtle and uses more microaggressions rather than outright violence or hatred. And they showed him humbled and ashamed as he struggled with the realization that he was not as good a guy as he thought he was.
And the producers and actors thought this was such an important message that they took the time to break the 4th wall and tell the audience how strongly they felt about this message. Even the advertiser got in on it. Which is a pretty big deal. Had they simply showed the episode, boycotts would have been called for whichever commercials were aired at the time, and the producers would have had to do some kind of damage control to keep advertising clients and soothe viewers.
But, instead, Oscar-Meyer put their logo right behind Elizabeth Montgomery in her preface, and her speech included their name among those who felt the subject of their episode was important and who stands behind it. I'm sure boycotts were probably still called for, but the producers, the network, and the advertiser all got out in front of it and took responsibility for their stance.
So, as someone with light brown skin, which has lightened enough with my years out of the sun that nobody can even tell my chicana heritage by looking, I can't say that the blackface in this episode is justified under the "it was the era" excuse or not.
I will instead say that *if* the blackface can be excused for the era, and *if* the viewer can sit through the discomfort of modern sensibilities seeing it, I am rather proud of the show for making the attempt they did to address racism, and in particular that there are different types of racism and that all types are unacceptable.
I have a love-hate relationship with this show. I have seen most of the episodes before over the years, but I am watching the entire series now as part of my experiment to compare and contrast TV romantic couples over the decades and moral lessons of their relationships.
Watching this show now, after having developed the particular viewpoint I have on feminism and romantic relationship ethics, I am sitting in a strange place where I still manage to enjoy the show while simultaneously hating every character in it. As a character-driven media consumer, this is a weird place for me to be in. But I will say that the show is giving me lots of fodder for rants.
So far, this show is at the bottom of the list for me in ethical romantic partnerships. I somehow manage to still enjoy watching it, but I don't recommend it. I think everyone in this show is a terrible example of a person and the lessons learned at the end of each episode are not the lessons I feel should be the takeaways. People are punished for bad behaviour, but not for the reasons I think they should be.
This episode is the exception. Darrin doesn't go on any of his anti-witchcraft rants and doesn't try to hamstring Samantha and none of the other relatives jump in to interfere in their relationship and remove anyone's agency. In this one instance, Darrin is right to be concerned about the effect of witchcraft - namely getting found out and doing harm to someone else with the inexperienced child's wish-craft.
This episode focused entirely on an actual, real harm to society, and both the botched and corrective witchcraft was the solution. And the harm it highlighted was a subtle, insidious form that is not easily recognized because of the lies and misdirections we are taught about said harm, intended to confuse us and muddy the issue.
So, for once, I applaud Bewitched for going in the right direction. It could be done so much better today, with a more sophisticated touch on the subject, but given the era, I'm actually kind of surprised at how well it *did* do.
Of course, I still have to watch it in the context of the era, because it does some things that, today, I would not find acceptable. But the message really does have good intentions. This episode is actually so important that it was prefaced with a personal message from Elizabeth Montgomery. She addressed the camera directly at the top of the episode about the importance of the message and how strongly she (and the advertiser) feels about it.
In this episode, Tabitha has a best friend stay the night. She wishes her best friend was really her sister because she doesn't much care for having a little brother. So Samantha tells her that having her friend sleep over is like having a temporary sister. The little girl arrives. She's black, and her father works with Darrin at the advertising company. Tabitha gets into it with another girl at the park over whether or not she can be sisters with someone of a different color.
Darrin's company is wooing a new client, who believes in making sure anyone he hires for anything has the type of home-life that he approves of before hiring them. So this guy shows up at the Stephens' house unannounced and Lisa opens the door. The client misunderstands who Lisa is, with some help from a child's way of not quite explaining things. He gets the impression that Darrin is married to a black woman and this is their other daughter (he already knows about Tabitha and Adam).
Later, the two girls talk about how they wish they could be really sisters. Tabitha accidentally changes Lisa's skin and hair color. She changes her back, but then changes herself to match Lisa. So we have literal blackface on this show, which made me very uncomfortable. But Lisa points out that their parents would be upset if their children are the wrong color, so Tabitha goes back to her own color. Then both girls are sad that they don't look alike anymore, and therefore can't be sisters. So Tabitha accidentally gives them contrasting spots - she has black-skin-color spots and Lisa has white-skin-color spots. And then she can't take them off because, subconsciously, both girls really want to be sisters.
The rules of this universe are that one witch cannot undo any spell that another witch casts (otherwise that would solve all of the show's plot devices before they start). So Samantha can't get rid of the spots as long as Tabitha really doesn't want to. So she has to do some digging to find out why Tabitha doesn't want to.
The girls talk about the racism they experienced from the other girl in the park and how they really want to be sisters. So Samantha tells them:
"Sisters are girls who share something. Usually the same parents but if you share other things - good feelings, friendship, love, well that makes you sisters in another way." She insists that they can be sisters if they want to, no matter what skin color they have.
This convinces Tabitha that they can safely get rid of the spots and still have the connection they want.
Meanwhile, the Stephens are hosting the office Christmas party downstairs and Lisa's parents arrive to pick her up from her slumber party the night before (the father had to go out of town to secure another client, so the Stephens were basically babysitting for a couple of days).
Earlier in the day, the client fired the advertising agency because of Darrin's "mixed marriage", but he didn't put it clearly enough for anyone to understand that this was the reason. Just that he didn't approve of Darrin, and since nobody knew that he had come over and spoke to Lisa, nobody knew what it was he didn't approve of.
In an attempt to woo him back, Darrin's boss invited the client to the Christmas Party at the Stephens' house. Apparently (this all happened off-screen), the client was "curious" enough to accept. So he shows up immediately after Lisa's parents do, while Lisa's dad stepped away with their boss to talk about the new contract he just acquired for the company, leaving Lisa's mom standing in the hall with Darrin, when the client rings the doorbell.
Mistaking Lisa's mom for Darrin's wife, he opens his big ol' bigoted mouth to say how brave he thinks they are and how maybe someday what they're doing will become acceptable. And yes, he phrased it like that, implying not only that it wasn't currently acceptable, but that he didn't think it ought to be, only that maybe someday in the future it might be.
He offers Lisa's mom a little black baby doll for her daughter for Christmas, and Darrin is handed a white baby doll for Tabitha, and then says he didn't know which side of the family that Adam took after so he decided to play it safe with a stuffed ... panda bear. Yeah, picture that for a moment, if you don't immediately get it.
Then he runs off for eggnog before either parent can react. Lisa's mom has no idea what just happened, but Darrin (having just been taken off the account at this client's insistence because of being "unsuitable" or whatever) figures out that the client must think that they're married and this is why he was fired from the account.
Meanwhile, Samantha gets the kids straightened out and Darrin's boss, Larry, has a chat with the client. Now that who is married to whom and which child belongs to whom is understood, the client wants Darrin back on the team. As it finally dawns on Larry the reason for the client's decisions, he steps back for a moment, while the client puffs up with pride at being such an understanding, forgiving sort of man.
Larry steps back into the conversation and tells him, in no uncertain terms, that he doesn't want his account because he doesn't want to work with a man like this. Overhearing this conversation, and shocked and pleased at Larry's character, Darrin tells Samantha that, in the spirit of Christmas and given the circumstances, if she sees an opening where her witchcraft would help, she has free reign.
Shocked, the client goes on the defensive and even says "but some of my best friends are Negroes!" So Samantha wiggles her nose, and suddenly the client is seeing everyone at the party with black skin.
So, again, literal blackface that made me uncomfortable, but for a purpose they felt was helpful back in the '60s.
The client freaks out because, well, regardless of anyone's racist beliefs, if everyone around you suddenly changed skin color in front of your eyes, you'd probably freak out too. So he leaves.
The next morning, the Stephens' and Lisa's family are all opening Christmas presents together around the tree. The doorbell rings and it's the client. He asks Darrin to take his account and offers an apology:
"I found out I'm a racist. Not the obvious, out in the open kind of a racist, not me, no, I was a sneaky racist. I was so sneaky, I didn't even know it myself."
Usually, particularly in older shows, when they cover the topic of racism, there's only one kind of racist - the mean ones who actively discriminate, but never any real violence. It's like, on these shows, racists don't lynch people because "we're past that now", but they're visibly angry and say mean things, and usually have some kind of power to prevent people from doing something, like entering a building or patronizing an establishment.
These shows offer a caricature of a racist, to make them easy to identify as racist but not *actually* truly offensive. And I kinda get it - they have 23 minutes to make a point, so they're going to do it in as clear a way as possible that will get past the very conservative censors.
This is the only episode of any TV show that I can personally recall seeing where they addressed the fact that racism comes in other forms. They showed a man who believes he is a "good guy" whose racism is more subtle and uses more microaggressions rather than outright violence or hatred. And they showed him humbled and ashamed as he struggled with the realization that he was not as good a guy as he thought he was.
And the producers and actors thought this was such an important message that they took the time to break the 4th wall and tell the audience how strongly they felt about this message. Even the advertiser got in on it. Which is a pretty big deal. Had they simply showed the episode, boycotts would have been called for whichever commercials were aired at the time, and the producers would have had to do some kind of damage control to keep advertising clients and soothe viewers.
But, instead, Oscar-Meyer put their logo right behind Elizabeth Montgomery in her preface, and her speech included their name among those who felt the subject of their episode was important and who stands behind it. I'm sure boycotts were probably still called for, but the producers, the network, and the advertiser all got out in front of it and took responsibility for their stance.
So, as someone with light brown skin, which has lightened enough with my years out of the sun that nobody can even tell my chicana heritage by looking, I can't say that the blackface in this episode is justified under the "it was the era" excuse or not.
I will instead say that *if* the blackface can be excused for the era, and *if* the viewer can sit through the discomfort of modern sensibilities seeing it, I am rather proud of the show for making the attempt they did to address racism, and in particular that there are different types of racism and that all types are unacceptable.
I have a love-hate relationship with this show. I have seen most of the episodes before over the years, but I am watching the entire series now as part of my experiment to compare and contrast TV romantic couples over the decades and moral lessons of their relationships.
Watching this show now, after having developed the particular viewpoint I have on feminism and romantic relationship ethics, I am sitting in a strange place where I still manage to enjoy the show while simultaneously hating every character in it. As a character-driven media consumer, this is a weird place for me to be in. But I will say that the show is giving me lots of fodder for rants.
So far, this show is at the bottom of the list for me in ethical romantic partnerships. I somehow manage to still enjoy watching it, but I don't recommend it. I think everyone in this show is a terrible example of a person and the lessons learned at the end of each episode are not the lessons I feel should be the takeaways. People are punished for bad behaviour, but not for the reasons I think they should be.
This episode is the exception. Darrin doesn't go on any of his anti-witchcraft rants and doesn't try to hamstring Samantha and none of the other relatives jump in to interfere in their relationship and remove anyone's agency. In this one instance, Darrin is right to be concerned about the effect of witchcraft - namely getting found out and doing harm to someone else with the inexperienced child's wish-craft.
This episode focused entirely on an actual, real harm to society, and both the botched and corrective witchcraft was the solution. And the harm it highlighted was a subtle, insidious form that is not easily recognized because of the lies and misdirections we are taught about said harm, intended to confuse us and muddy the issue.
So, for once, I applaud Bewitched for going in the right direction. It could be done so much better today, with a more sophisticated touch on the subject, but given the era, I'm actually kind of surprised at how well it *did* do.
