Barbara The Witch: Mediacorp's Very Own Barbie Movie from 1997

When the Barbie movie came out in the middle of last year, my memories brought me back to a Channel 8 about witches back in my childhood. The key messages were quite similar, albeit with worse storytelling, aesthetics not as great, but all in all a somewhat close, vintage Halloween counterpart to the summer-themed Barbie.

I never had a Barbie doll in my childhood, but I did have a small affinity for witches. When I was old enough to critically think about the fairytales I was read to as a child, I questioned why the witch couldn't win for once- they deserved a chance too!

For something produced by Mediacorp in the 1990s, this show was surprisingly progressive for its time. Of course by 2024 standards it is still problematic, but bear in mind this was a time in TV history when blackfacing was common, fat-shaming was portrayed as comedy, and you hear characters denigrating women all the time, from calling women "sl*ts and b****es" in the show's actual dialogue to advocating rape as a way to woo women ("get her drunk and sleep with her so that when the rice is cooked she would have no choice but to marry you!"), in what they claimed to be family-oriented dramas. I grew up affected by this poison on TV and it might have damaged my brain enough to still be keeping a blog in my 30s.

This story was told from the point of view of a 30-something Singaporean chef Pan Zheng Ye (Zheng Ge Ping), who married the daughter of a single mom Barbara (Chen Li Ping), who was also a witch. Yes, a literal witch with magical powers, who flew on umbrellas, bathed in moonlight and kept crystal balls. Barbara made the mistake of falling pregnant out of a wedlock and got punished by the Witch's Club by having her powers halved. She raised her daughter alone and hoped her daughter could become a witch too, but her daughter gave up her witch career and got married to Pan Zheng Ye to be a Stay-At-Home Mum. 

Barbara had to navigate her difficult but fulfilling relationship with her son-in-law and deal with his antogonistic friend Dong Guo Tai. Her conflict with Dong Guotai caused her to temporarily lose all her powers. The ordeal eventually helped her to learn the importance of family ties, and to use her superpowers for the greater good. After truly understanding the purpose of doing good for its own sake, Barbara regained her powers as a witch. Throughout the series there was significant discussion about woman-centric topics like their aspirations and need for community.

A brief history of witches

In the medieval times, witches were women whom people believed used magic to inflict harm on people. They were frequently thought to cook spells or summon evil spirits to bring diseases, disasters and kill people. The 1400s saw a spike in witch-hunting, and women who were believed to be witches were executed, commonly by burning or hanging. By the 1800s, it was estimated that a between 50,000 to 85,000 women had been executed as witches, some of whom confessed under torture.

People who were accused of witchcraft were predominantly female, even though men too, had been executed. Older, widowed or aggressive women were especially targeted. Modern day theories assess that women who were perscuted as witches were likely to have suffered from some mental health ailments that were not understood at the time.

In the 21st century, superstition has become less extreme. Such cruel trials have been made illegal in most of the developed world. Women are, however, still vilified for our bodily functions, for our mental health issues, our personalities, our choices... it goes on. They have simply taken the letter "W" from the word "witch" and replaced it with a "B".

"It is literally impossible to be a woman" 

The reason the America Ferrera monologue from the Barbie Movie had resonated with so many women and femme-presenting people around the world was because most of us have felt we had fallen short of the ideals of what a "good woman" was.

Nobody is a "good woman", because it is impossible to be one. A good woman in traditional Asian culture is one who lives for her parents, then her husband, then her children. She does not have things that are incovenient to the people around her, like her own wants or aspirations. Now do you know any autonomous being who is like that who wasn't abused into this state, or suffering from mental health issues from squashing their own identity?

When you ask anyone to think about the golden image of a woman, what does she look like? Always married (young), married to an affluent successful scholar, always with children (what happens if a woman has fertility issues then?), always conventionally attractive, career, hopes and dreams optional (preferably not inconvenient to her parents, husband and children). Even if the woman followed the rulebook of studying hard, getting married young and having children, oh no, there is a correct and a wrong way to do this, too! The subjects need to be approved by your parents, you need to marry a man of your parents' liking, your career needs to be one of the respectable few, and you need to give them an acceptable number of grandchildren.

Over the course of my childhood, I have heard with my own two ears women get literally vilified for one or more of the following. I am not even talking normal criticisms, I am talking "get treated a like a bad person":

- Not dressing up

- Dressing up too much 

- Being physically active as a child (that's called "being naughty")

- Having differing opinions

- If she was a mum, not quitting her job to care for her kids full time

- If she was a stay-at-home-mum, not looking for a job even when the kids are grown

- Wanting to marry a financially stable man because she wants to prioritise the family and raising her kids (can you believe this? Isn't this the traditional expectation of women, to stay home with the kids? Apparently it is also wrong!)

- Reporting her sexual assault

- Not reporting her sexual assault

- Calling out her assailants "the wrong way"

- Saying something a bit too angrily

- For being a strict mother

- For having a dating history 

- Prioritising work over her kids

- (Rightfully) prioritising her kids over work

This might sound like hyperbole, and fortunately not all women will experience vilification to this extent, but I'm just stating the kind of comments I have personally heard about the women around me.

Vice-President Kamala Harris is having her plans, proposals and demeanor torn apart and scrutinised for not being good enough. At the same time, all of us who grew up being pressured and vilified for not measuring up, for not being perfect enough, are now watching in wide-eyed horror as an alleged sex offender, violently bigoted man with suspected mental illnesses is running for the President of The United States.

How does this tie back to the concept of witches? Witches are women deemed evil because they had crossed some arbitrary lines defined by society. They are often portrayed as jealous, bitter outsiders, are usually older women (go figure). They, apprently, cannot stand seeing the younger women who fit into the golden image of a happy woman get any happiness at all and do their darndest to ruin it. And these "evil" women are telling you this narrative cannot be further from the truth.

Reclaiming the narrative

The Witches' Club that Barbara belonged to had an identity that is very similar to that of the typical single older woman in the 21st century, even if the show did not know it then.

A witch in the Witches' Club was not allowed to marry, have children or be in a relationship. They do not age like normal women. Barbara was at least in her 60s in the show but retained the youthful looks of Chen Li Ping.

In real-life in 2024, there is a growing population of women who have chosen to stay single and celibate all over the world. Mainstream media sources have covered this significantly. The main reasons for this phenomenon are: rising costs of living, to the extent many cannot afford housing or to raise a child, and the disproportionate amount of domestic labour women have to perform for their families compared to men. Single women experience less stress and are happier than their married counterparts. Shocker! It is also not uncommon these days to see 60 year old women who actually look as young as 40 like the witches in the show, all thanks to increased awareness of healthcare and skincare.

The members of the Witches' Club also didn't get to enjoy superpowers for nothing. To remain in the club, they must not use their powers for evil and must complete 64 good deeds every year. It's an equivalent of "with great power, comes great responsibility". The witches were also not allowed to publicise their powers, and by extension, they could not claim credit for any good deeds that they did using their magic.

Their superpowers appeared to symbolise the financial power and independence women increasingly enjoy towards the end of the 20th century. These powers allowed the witches to travel the world, create their own clothes, food and jewellery (except everything would be black- but more about this later). Hence, the witches could opt out of participating in society entirely, and by extension, be exempted from following society's rules. Similarly, in real life, financially independent women are cushioned from the impact of society's discrimination, though they still suffer forms of misogyny to varying extents.

"I don't know how to feel, but I want to try" 

 

While the show portrays witches in a positive light, it did not invalidate the wishes of women who wanted romatic relationships. Yes, it is amazing to be single, older, powerful woman with freedom and power to right the wrongs in society. However, it is not wrong either to want to be a housewife, to devote your life to your family and raise your children. There was no "see la? Who ask you to choose XXXX when you could have been XXX? I told you so!". Barbara had every right to choose the path of freedom and independence, just as Lala had her right to choose love and to be a stay at home mother. (Stay at home mothers make a lot of sacrifices for their families and it is a very honourable choice too!- as long as she is not 100% financially dependent on him) Likewise, Barbara was thankful for her friends and family, but what she wanted was a higher purpose- she was allowed to want more out of life than just being a grandmother. Barbara did not impose her will onto her daughter and they both lived very happily under one roof as a three-generational family.

Even witches sometimes experienced the base human feelings that normal humans did. Barbara and her rival witch, Sara had their fair share of disagreements, but spending all that time with Barbara influenced Sara to envy what she had. Barbara had a family and good friends, and Sara in the later episodes started wishing she could experience that same human connection and community warmth.

Barbara, after losing her powers, telling Sara that she was thankful for her blessings in life

I thought the heartwarming part about this whole rivalry was that instead of making Sara become bitter and tear Barbara down even more out of jealousy, they actually reconciled their different viewpoints and became friends towards the end!

Finally, the show highlights the sisterhood Barbara had with her human friends, who also had to contend with strenuous relationships with their respective sons-in-law. One of her friends, Feng Ying, was a traditional woman who could not stand up to her son-in-law's (Dong Guotai)'s abuse. She likewise raised a meek and submissive daughter who could not find it in her to stand up to her husband's cheating, abuse and tyranny. Barbara supported Feng Ying and stood by her, punished Dong Guotai (though her methods were questionable), and gave Feng Ying's daughter the final push to publicly call him out in front of reporters, file for a divorce and fight for custody of her children.

Barbara and her friends doing volunteer work together

A witch could produce any material good that she needed, but everything she created from her own powers was black. It symbolised the fact that we all need human connections; no matter how self-sufficient a witch was, she needs love and relationships (platonic or otherwise) to bring colour into her life.

Instead of pushing the image of the traditional Singaporean who kept their head down and minded their own business, and that of the "good woman" who stayed silent in the face of injustice, who internalised the hurt inflicted on her instead of holding her abuser accountable, Barbara was loud and relentless. She symbolised that "loud and annoying" "SJW" who is always calling out the "class clown" for his unfunny racist and misogynist jokes*. She symbolised that "busybody" who would stand up for someone if she saw a fight on the streets.

*Lying to advance your cause is another story altogether 

The show has a relatively unproblematic portrayal of the male protagonist Pan Zheng Ye as well. He was an honest, one-track minded hardworking man with very human flaws, typical of the average Singaporean of that generation. He was under a lot of pressure from his in-laws (his ex-fiance's mother, as well as Barbara) to earn enough to provide for his wife, his future children and his in-laws. He tried his best to be a good husband and father, making compromises with his mother-in-law (and her doing the same for him), and finally learning how to stand up for himself and his family and play by his own rules. It is a good reminder that societal expectations hurt everyone, men or women.

General Thoughts about the show

The progressiveness of this show was quite refreshing. It is one of those 7pm shows on Channel 8 that were actually family and child friendly. I thought it was a good show for young girls as it would expose them to positive messages about girlhood; that they did not have to choose the conventional path of finding love, getting married and having children if they did not want it. That life will not always be the beautiful fairytale seen in Disney movies. That you can NOT want to be a princess, and this does not make you a bad person. That you don't need a prince to bestow upon you happiness or give you nice things before you are worthy of them. That the people we think are witches aren't necessarily evil; they just don't care about advancing the fairytale plot.

However, for all it was worth, I still thought it was a pretty bad show compared to Singaporean classics like Wok of Life or The Little Nyonya.

Barbara's character was bratty, entitled and did not have any concept of boundaries especially with her son-in-law. She even sexually harrassed him on a few occasions, by telling him she could see his underwear as a way of showing off her superpowers. She did not know how to raise her grandson properly and was a destructive influence to him- using her spells to help him cheat in exams, exposing him to dangerous potions and letting him watch rated films late into the night. She ended up being blackmailed by Dong Guotai, the main antagonist, to the point where she had to help him win money at a casino lest have her identity as a witch exposed. 

I mean, the show did try to hold her accountable through her daughter Lala and the chief witch Neela, but it was almost like she learned nothing at all and every episode of her dysfunction ended with her son-in-law apologising to her for rightfully getting angry because of her disrespect. It took her losing all her powers (in the second last episode) to finally learn how to be better person. SIGH.

The way she tried sticking up for her elderly friend Feng Ying was also questionable, at best. Dong Guotai was a horrible man who needed to be held accountable, sure, but what did suspending him in mid-air and swinging him into walls do to advance her cause? Those were nothing short of death threats, which were illegal, my dear Barbara. Why not make the police appear whenever Dong Guotai was abusing his family? Or tip off Ministry of Manpower as Dong Guotai made his employers work longer and longer hours without OT pay?

Worst of all, there was a scene in the first episode when Barbara stalled two men who were beating someone up, thinking she was doing a good deed- turned out the guy that they were beating up raped a 9 year old child. The fact that that whole scene was portrayed as comedy, like a cute little "oopsie I didn't know I accidentally helped a rapist get away" moment instead of the horrific shit it was, was just so frankly disgusting.

"What is a woman doing in a workplace instead of in the kitchen where she belongs?" /s

Pan Zheng Ye's woman superior before he started his business was also protrayed in such a distasteful manner. She was power-hungry, abusive and unreasonable, because she was older and unmarried! I don't get why the show still chose to write in a caricature when the rest of the show was otherwise a good attempt at challenging sexist stereotypes. It is not as if people aren't still speading bullshit IN 2024 about woman bosses (especially unmarried ones) being toxic because they don't have a man's love (see my point above about married women statistically being unhappier), negatively affecting our credibility with the teams that we lead!

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"What was I made for?"

These days people love witches because they have been made popular by works like Harry Potter and Maleficient. Compared to the days of conventional fairy tales, witches have become symbols of female vilification less and less. 

No matter what form female vilification takes, however, the misogyny that motivates it all remains the same. 

As long as you are a woman who wants to live by her own principles, who wants to live by her own rules, meet her own needs and fulfill her own aspirations, there will always be a segment of population who will vilify you for the things you do. There will always be people who cannot believe you are genuinely happy living life on your own terms. You will be deemed weird, bad, undesirable and undeserving of love or happiness. Or worse, deserve horrible unspeakable things happening to you.

Their disdain need not be outright hostility; it can come in the form of fake compassion for your legitimate concerns ("You are afraid of being sexually assaulted at a bar? Hope you recover from YOUR issues, and don't see all men as bad."). 

It can come in the form of passive aggressive "help" - forcing you to go for match-making, forcing you to go for ettiquette classes, because otherwise you'd be left on the shelf and single = bad.

It also can come in the form of silencing, guilt-tripping and gaslighting ("You really want to ruin a friendship and his life by reporting him for sexual harrassment?" "You friendzoned the poor nice guy? Why don't you give him a chance, even though he distributed your IG photos to sleazy telegram groups without your permission and followed you into the ladies?")

**All of the above are fictitious examples but I won't be surprised if they have happened to many women in real life.

A witch is one of the worst things society thinks a woman can be, but over time, witches have become multi-dimensional and real. Likewise, women who don't follow the norms of society are owning their life choices and increasingly turning a deaf ear to hate that has no basis. They are demonstrating that their lives are full and they deserve to be loved, outside of this narrow constraint.

These women in their 30s who were branded as bad daughters at home, blamed for the bad things that happened to them, blamed for their singlehood, criticised for wanting more out of life than marriage and kids, criticised for wanting marriage and kids BUT with a man qualified enough to provide stability...they are also supportive friends, dedicated sisters, nieces, aunts. They are joyful and optimistic despite the stresses life put them through. They inspire the world through beautiful speeches, art, music, dance or writing. They are true to their desires. They are in tune with their intuition. They just do what they want and reject what did not align with their values. 

Most importantly, they do not degrade, bully or put down others to derive power; they are powerful because of the strength of their own character. 

They are not fazed by labels like "not a real woman", "not wife material", "witch", because these terms have become so tainted that women have long started to recognise the misogyny behind it.

Because if every woman is a "witch", then no woman is.