Piper (Holly Marie Combs), Prue (Shannen Doherty), Phoebe (Alyssa Milano).
Season 1 of Charmed (1998) -
RONALDGRANT / MARY EVANS / SIPA
“Charmed” is a series that mixes the magical and real world, allowing its audience to identify and project themselves into the story and the characters throughout the seven seasons.
She was part of the wave of series of the late 1990s and early 2000s that brought strong, independent female characters to the fore.
Now available on Prime Video, the series could seduce, with its very strong identity, a new generation of fans.
The
Charmed
he can act again?
From 1998 to 2006, in France as in the United States, the series brought together several million viewers who assiduously followed the adventures of the Halliwell witches.
Very quickly, the series established itself and knew how to unite different generations around it: children, adolescents but also adults.
Charmed
, broadcast on M6 at the time, had become THE family event not to be missed during the famous Saturday night trilogy.
To the point of becoming a reference in pop culture and obtaining the status of "cult series" and, finally, becoming one of the vintage brands that streaming platforms are seizing to inflate their offer.
This time, Amazon Prime Video won the song…
20 Minutes
went in search of early fans to understand
Charmed's
success
.
The power of three: the power to conquer hearts
For them, undeniably, one of the main ingredients that made the success of the series is the endearing dimension of the characters.
Very quickly, we are curious to see them evolve.
And for good reason: the scenario was conceived as a marvelous projective medium halfway between realism, proximity and surrealism (a brown of magic could not hurt!).
For Pauline (24 years old) or Juliette (22 years old), the witches of
Charmed
are heroines with whom they identified, with whom they wanted to be like.
“Actresses, I adored them!
With my friends we were wondering in the playground "which one are you?"
".
Moreover, the stars of the series, in particular our 4 witches, remained iconic actresses of the end of the 1990s, the beginning of the 2000s.
Charmed
thus became a “madeleine of Proust” for Pauline who does not sulk. idea of watching the series again since we immerse ourselves in it like a childhood memory, with ease and pleasure.
Charmed's
strength
also lies in having established itself as a series of apprenticeships that accompanied its audience for 7 years.
Théo (21 years old) explains that he "looked through my childhood and my adolescence: it was part of my life".
Like
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(a series largely revamped in recent years),
Charmed
is far from the completely cutesy, Manichean series that non-fans can imagine.
On the contrary, she held a discourse of her time and of her time, against a background of
American Dream
and Judeo-Christian morality.
Between two fireballs and a demon attack,
Charmed
explored American society, family relationships, love, issues related to the world of work or the place of women in this society imbued with the weight of traditional patriarchal patterns.
And the opposition between witches (Good) VS demons (Evil) takes on its meaning in a still very bipolar world, barely out of the Cold War.
With the series, children and adolescents have been able to learn and understand elements of sociability, codes of their society, to project and be inspired, well beyond the fantastic aspect.
Team "Girl Power"
The other strong point of the series is to be part of a production wave at the time, like
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
for example, where women are put (finally!) In the foreground.
If the series is far from being 100% feminist and progressive, it helped to initiate a turning point in the audiovisual world but also shaped the universe of a whole generation which saw women being heroes.
Three witches, therefore three women (it should be noted that the choice of their magical witch identity is not trivial), having the main roles and being the embodiment of the ultimate power… It was unprecedented!
Juliette remembers with enthusiasm that “it was something that we didn't see elsewhere at the time!
The series was very
girl power
!
".
Fans salute these three heroines of everyday life (and of the magical world), ambassadors of a new model of femininity: strong, independent, emancipated, and imperfect too.
The Halliwell sisters have their good and bad sides, their little flaws and make mistakes, unlike the models of feminine perfection that we had seen a lot until then.
That's what makes them so familiar and likable to us.
Phoebe, Piper, Prue then Paige have become role models leading their personal lives (family, friends, loves, shit), their professional life, and their witch life - as an illustration of the famous mental load of the women before it becomes a benchmark in 2020. The Halliwell sisters are also committed women.
In some episodes we clearly deal with still current issues such as breastfeeding in a public space, or the recognition of women in the professional world.
Moreover, when we hear their flagship magic formula, "the power of the three will set us free", and when we watch them hold hands in the face of adversity, we see that sorority and intergenerational female solidarity are in the cards. honor.
The power which liberates women is this power which passes through union.
With its imperfect feminism, often essentialist and hypersexualized - the fault of Brad Kern, the only screenwriter from season 2 with the debate of Constance Bruge, who impregnated with a
male gauze
weighing the scenario, the series is nonetheless associated to the idea of
empowered women
and conveyed this representation with it.
"With the 2020 glasses, there would be a lot to complain about, but for the time, it's really interesting" concludes Grégoire (22 years old).
Charmed
: a whole kitsch-cool universe
An (almost) feminist and cult series?
Everything could be brought together for
Charmed to
seduce new generations.
Except that the series is “so 2000”… Cardboard hells, completely
cheap
demonic explosions
,
grotesque magical creatures, all-leather costumes a bit BDSM from the Demons and luminous monks' dresses from the Founders… This whole kitsch universe is quite comical to see today.
For Grégoire, “
Charmed
is really of his time, follows all the aesthetic codes and techniques of the time… And it would be quite funny to see that again!
To dive back into it in the same way that a generation went back to
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
”.
And then, the recipe works since if we accept this kitsch-cool universe, we realize that the scenario has not aged too much - like the tales of our childhood which retain meaning despite the years - and humor either, as Théo points out.
Indeed,
Charmed
is this complete universe, with its codes and its aesthetics, developed over the episodes with its share of inconsistencies, good and bad ideas.
As Théo explains: “Everything is codified, very referential in
Charmed.
C
ome costumes, like those of the Valkyries or sirens are iconic.
It contributes to the phenomenon.
As with
Twilight
or
Buffy
,
Charmed
has her own universe.
".
With a little benevolence and a second degree ("so 2020"), today's public might well become attached to the Book of Shadows, to "pendulum sessions", to energy balls, and indulgently appreciate the mask of Balthazar the big red demon bodybuilder aka Cole Turner.
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