When I first saw the new Netflix series, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, despite how well everyone spoke of the series, I didn’t particularly care for it – and that’s an understatement. It had been well over a decade since the TV sitcom, Sabrina the Teenage Witch had wrapped up. Due to my lack of familiarity with the history of the titular character prior to that series (aside from the official video for the song Sugar Sugar) I naturally (and foolishly) made the unstated assumption that that series was the most faithful to the source material, thereby judging the faithfulness of any Sabrina portrayal thereafter by how well it fit with the picture which that sitcom portrayed.
This is why, at first, I really really didn’t like The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina – because it is as different from the 90s sitcom as a series featuring so many of the same characters could possibly be. Though the 90s sitcom has some pretty dark undertones (such as the curse that prevents her from having a relation with her mother) most dark tones are kept in the background, giving the series a rather campy flavor. The Netflix series, on the other hand, is dark and gritty from start to finish. In the 90s series, there is nothing demonic whatsoever about witches or magic, and any suggestion that there might be is looked down on by actual witches as mere superstitions of mortals. In the Netflix series, on the other hand, all witchcraft is tied in to an underground church dedicated to none other than Satan himself.
Now, I’m nothing like those religious viewers who would object to Satan’s role in the show on the basis of there being something inherently evil on account of the show being oriented toward Satan rather than God. For my part, I am an atheist – so God or Satan, both are just Spaghetti Monsters to me. The reason why I did not like the Satanic references were that they set a dark tone to the show which I considered at the time to be contrary to everything that Sabrina is about.
There were other differences in the series that also irritated me. For example, in the sitcom, the titular character was obviously Sabrina Spellman, portrayed by Melissa Joan Hart – but without a doubt there was another character who completely stole the show from her. That character was Salem Saberhagen, a wisecracking cat who is always trying to see what he can get away with. And in case describing him as “wisecracking” didn’t give this away, Salem had the ability to speak (in a voice provided by voice actor Nick Bakay) and he does so as frequently as any of the human characters. This ability to talk was due to him having once been a witch himself who, due to having attempted to take over the world, was sentenced to spend one hundred years as a familiar (i.e., an animal associated with a witch or witches) specifically, as a cat.
In the Netflix series, however, familiars have a different backstory. Rather than being witches who were turned into various animal forms as a punishment, they are goblins who have taken on animal forms in order to be of assistance to specific witches. Though they have the ability to speak, it is rare that they actually do so, as they generally use telepathy instead to communicate with their human witches. Salem, in this series, is no exception to this rule. As a matter of fact, he only speaks once, and very briefly so, in the entire first season – just before the first time that he assumes his feline form. With my concept of Sabrina being so firmly rooted in the sitcom, the idea of a non-vocal version of Salem seemed to me like a betrayal of all things Sabrina.
Little did I know that the original version of Salem, back when he was first created by Archie Comics in 1962 also didn’t speak. As a matter of fact, according to Wikipedia, the comic book version of the cat didn’t speak until decades later when he was reworked to be more in line with the sitcom. As far as I can tell, the earliest work in which Salem has the ability to speak is a made-for-TV movie that came out just before the sitcom did.
As I learned more about the original concept of the characters, I found that the Satanic tones of the Netflix series are also not as far removed from the original source material as I first thought. I haven’t been able to access old Sabrina comic books (the closest I have been able to get is several episodes of animation from the 1970s closely affiliated with the animated portrayals of Archie’s gang from the time period) and as as far as I can tell, witches are not affiliated with any “Satan” per-se in any of the older source materials. Nonetheless, there is something inherently malevolent about witches in the original comics and old animation – although it tends to be more of a comic malevolence rather than anything that most people would see as seriously evil.
In the 1970s animations (and I as I understand, in the early comic books as well) Sabrina is often assigned to hex Archie and his gang. In these activities, she is sometimes accompanied by her aunts, Hilda and Zelda – as well as Salem who can’t tak, but also unlike in the sitcom, does have the ability to cast spells. But these hexes tend to be pranks rather than life-ruining curses. The main difference between Sabrina’s attitudes to these hexes and that of her companions is that she (unlike them) delights when the hexes backfire and turn out to help rather than hinder the Archie gang.
Last but not least, in at least one animated episode, Paint Story, a certain spirit who is supposedly the source of power for witches threatens to take away Sabrina’s powers because she hasn’t been hexing people enough. Again, nothing quite as unsettling to modern audiences as Satan worship, but close enough to warrant assertions that the new Netflix series is no more of a departure from the source material than the 1990s sitcom – it just departs in a significantly different direction.
At any rate – a month or so after I had renounced the Netflix series as a betrayal of the source material, I had learned how baseless that accusation was, so I gave the series another chance. As I saw more of it, I came to appreciate it greatly. It is well worth all the rave reviews that it receives and more. I would like to share with you some things that I particularly love about this series – but since this post is getting to be long enough already, I will have to do so some other time.
Very interesting!