Role of magic |
As a witch who is half mortal and half witch, magic is first presented as a quality that is superior to Sabrina's mortal qualities. Magic is used to manipulate and trick mortals.
In the later incarnations of Sabrina, Sabrina's magic causes trouble and interferes with her life as a normal teenager. |
Sabrina's Personality |
Perhaps the most significant change in Sabrina is in her personality. As we have already discussed, Sabrina turns from a trickster, to a girl whose greatest ambition is helping her friends and family.
We also found Sabrina's appearance to be intertwined with her personality. In Sabrina’s earliest incarnations she is sexualized and subversive, in that first comic frame she is posed coyly on the floor, with her breasts drawing the eye to them, her legs apart, but she also seems dangerous like a black widow or praying mantis. In later versions of Sabrina she not only appears more childlike and innocent, and her role also changes from being empowered to more passive. |
Sabrina's Environment |
Her
home environment also changes. In most incarnations she lives with her
aunts, while in the most recent version she lives with her father, and
her mother is institutionalized.
The most notable environmental change take place in her animated series. In this series Sabrina has to rely on her older male uncle - even her aunts rely on him as an influence for logic and rationality. |
Impact on Contemporary Culture |
Sabrina's 53 years of existence demonstrates how a single character can impact the lives of several generations. More significantly, the Sabrina story has not been static, Sabrina has been represented differently in the stories that she has been featured in. However, we think that the different representations of Sabrina show the reflection of the development of cultural values and norms over the past 52 years.
An alternative view on how Sabrina has impacted contemporary culture, is that Sabrina demonstrates how a single character can be used to create different stories and items that will create the greatest profit over time. We do not have an answer as to why Sabrina's story has been so successful, but we would like to think the the central issues of friendship, family, and the pursuit of love make it a timeless story. |
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Implications for Professionals Working With Cultural Material |
Sabrina the Teenage Witch is a story that has been important to several generations - which demonstrates the way that a story can and ought to change with time to maintain its relevance.
Sabrina’s long history also has implications for how individuals dealing with cultural materials, notably LIS professionals, arrange their collections - You can walk into a library and potentially expect to find Sabrina in a multitude of locations, based on theme, audience, and format. Which indicates that stories that reach across generations might necessarily not fit within these same categories when organized. And yet spread across the library, it provides an opportunity to make connections between old and new readers and viewers of the text. Sabrina also shows how various mediums can change how a story is told and despite the repetitive nature of her 90s story arc that we talked about earlier, this got popular because individuals could get deeper in the story. LIS professionals should provide opportunities for individuals to engage with different forms of media so that they can find personally relevant texts. |