Or (as I pointed out in the other thread) it was the Appalachians being prone to Earth tremors. The eastern part of North America is still relaxing after having been scrunched up against what’s now northwest Africa hundreds of milions of years ago.
Shakespeare put ghosts and witches in his plays for the same reasons people put them in movies today: they’re creepy and scary, and make for good drama. They’re absolutely “supernatural” plays. Just like today, people like scary stories.
Belief in the supernatural is widespread today, so I’m not sure how that’s relevant. Half the people involved in creating the modern shows mentioned in this thread likely believed in ghosts, if they’re reflective of the American public in general. Probably more, since Hollywood tends to attract more than it’s normal share of woo.
Well, no. The witches in MacBeth aren’t literary devices, they’re flesh-and-blood characters whose actions provoke the central conflict of the play. MacBeth was loyal to his king until the witches put a bug in his ear with their prophecy. Without them, there’s no play at all. The ghost of Hamlet’s father is no different. Hamlet is spurred to action by the sight of his father’s unquiet ghost. A ghost whose existence in independently verified: Hamlet only goes looking for it because a pair of guards have seen it before the play starts, and have told him about it.
Certainly, these characters can be read as symbolic or representative of other things, but so can any other character in the play. They aren’t specifically metaphors or literary devices.
Today we tend to see supernatural entities as morally neutral. In Shakespeare’s time, listening to witches at all was a moral error, because anything they said should be suspect - so MacBeth began his descent by being willing to take what the witches three said seriously. So they are characters who set up the plot - and characters who embody temptation
In the final season of Sherlock, the heretofore unmentioned sister of Sherlock and Mycroft appears to have psychic abilities, or at least the skill to hypnotize basically anyone into following her commands with just a word or two.
Alias was non-stop ludicrous and comic-booky, with the most ludicrous portryal of the intelligence community ever mounted onscreen, and DNA replacement therapy and assorted other SF silliness. Still, it more or less played by the rules of (TV, at least) thrillers. Throughout the run, one of the villains had been pursuing relics of (basially) an ancient alchemist, and in the final season, actually becomes immortal. I’d lost all faith in the storytelling long before then anyway, but it was a still a dopey ending.
Miami Vice’s fourth seaon episode “Missing Hours” involved a UFO cult (and, somehow, James Brown) and it’s implied that Trudy is “visited” or abducted, or something. It was the same season in which Sheena Easton’s character becomes a megastar (who still plays tiny clubs for budgetary reasons) based on a weak cover of “I Got You Babe” so reality had left hebuilding in a lot of ways.
Maybe, but I don’t know if tremors would cause the Raggedy Ann doll to get up and do a Chucky impersonation. It’s been awhile since I saw the episode, but I believe it was strongly implied, if not flatly stated (by the adult John-boy narrator, maybe?) that it was actual poltergeist activity, which had been thought at one time to be caused by girls entering puberty.
I’m still trying to figure out why The Devil (and Cylon Leader) is narrating the opening of BSG (1978)
Of course, it’s only the red-headed Waltons’ daughter who is supernatural.
When you want the straight dope on something, you want to hear it from an informed source.
I wonder if that was the same episode where the production crew found a real mummy by accident. While filming at an amusement park, a prop man moved something he thought was a dummy and the arm broke off. It turned out to be the desiccated remains of an outlaw from the old west.
Maybe it was only the 6th season of JAG, but Donald Bellisario had been doing variations on the same theme for 20 years at that point (and he still is).
Well, yes, but this risks characterizing two of the greatest literary works in the English language as “scary stories about the supernatural”. Which I’m sure is not what you mean, and which they certainly are not.
It’s relevant because belief in the supernatural today cannot reasonably be compared to the beliefs in Shakespeare’s time. Do we today, for example, have a law called “The Bill Against Conjurations and Witchecraftes and Sorcery and Enchantments"? It was passed in 1562. Or how about its successor, “Acte Against Conjuration Witchcrafte and Dealinge with Evil and Wicked Spirits"? That was enacted in 1603, coincidentally just around three years before Macbeth is thought to have been written. Beliefs in these things were entrenched in society and genuinely feared.
We’re just going to have to disagree on this. Yes, the witches provoked Macbeth, but that has little to do with the central theme of the play, and in a modernized version Macbeth would have been provoked in more realistic. believable ways. The real point is the contrast between Macbeth’s bravery in battle and the weakness of character that leads him to be both ruthlessly ambitious and irresolute, the corrupting influence of the more empowered Lady Macbeth, and the cascading series of murders that drives them both into madness. None of that has anything to do with anything supernatural.
True, they aren’t. But it’s not unreasonable to see the witches as metaphors for temptation and, ultimately, as agents of justice for the unscrupulous. It’s a dramatic theme as old as drama itself.
Lizzie on The Blacklist can from time to time talk to ghosts although it is entirely possible this is due to brain trauma. Jason on SEAL Team also recently had a chat with his dead wife but he was tripping balls at the time so not a ghost in the traditional sense except that she seemed to know things that he didn’t.
The Punisher (on Netflix) definitely took some beatings both in his Daredevil appearances and his own show that would not have been survivable by a base-level human being. Not only could he take such beatings, he could also fight after and win. It might not have been supernatural but it wasn’t natural either!
The Time Tunnel had at least two episodes where the plot was driven by the supernatural instead of science fiction. In one, the ghost of Nero (the Roman emperor) raised havoc. The other was the “King Arthur” episode, where Merlin did indeed have magic powers.
I’ve always thought it was funny that the “Nero’s ghost” episode was immediately followed by the one in which the collapse of the walls of Jericho was attributed to an earthquake instead of Divine Intervention.
My fanwank is that My Favorite Martian, Bewitched, I Dream of Genie, Gilligan’s Island, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Green Acres all take place in what I call The Wacky Hijinks universe, where the excessive use of supernatural power in the first three examples has weakened the fabric of reality, allowing all sorts of inexplicable things to occur.
It is, in fact, precisely what I meant, and exactly what they are. (Well, Macbeth more than Hamlet, but it’s still an element in the latter.) You seem to be characterizing “scary stories about the supernatural” as mutually incompatible with “the greatest literary works in the English language,” and I think it’s that misapprehension that underlies your error here.
They were burning Harry Potter books in Tennessee last week because they’re worried it’ll turn their kids into sorcerers.
Well, there have been plenty of versions of Macbeth set in modern eras, either in costuming and staging (such as the Patrick Stewart version from 2007), or in wholesale adaptations (2001’s Scotland, PA which set the drama in a fast food franchise in 1970’s Pennsylvania) and they generally do not jettison the supernatural elements, so I think you’re objectively wrong on that count. But you’ve also contradicted your own argument. You can’t argue, simultaneously, that Elizabethan society believed in the real existence of witches, but also argue that the witches are inconsequential to the play and not necessary to the “real” theme of the play. Surely, if Shakespeare believed that witches were a real and immediate danger, the “real” theme of the play would be “Look out for witches.”
Sure, but that’s true of literally any character in Shakespeare. The reason he is such an evergreen source of academic research is that almost every element in his plays work on multiple levels, from ghosts and witches to verifiable historical figures. You seem to be arguing from an assumption that, because ghosts aren’t real, any ghost in literature must “really” be something else, but that’s not a well grounded assumption.
Spin City had an episode where Mike Flaherty (Michael J Fox) had a curse put on him. Flaherty is originally skeptical but becomes convinced (along with other characters) that the curse has real power and works to have it removed.
Here’s a question.
What’s the longest running show that NEVER had a supernatural or alien episode, or at least where they 100% confirm there was never ever any actual supernatural thing at work and not give a last minute OR IS IT!?!?
So basically
- No ghosts of dead loved ones or relatives who tell the heroes something they didn’t already know
- No Psychics or Mediums who actually know the future
- No someone with precog that is able to accurate predict multiple things in close proximity without explanation
- No Fake Santa that might actually be a real Santa
- No aliens or UFO’s that leave open possibility they were real
- No “Well the entire season was in someones head so anything wacky that may have happened is explained away by that being their inventions”
Did any of the 10 seasons of 24 involve a ghost showing up? I forgot.
Gunsmoke?
Hawaii 5-0.
Meet the Press? 
Law & Order (the original - I wouldn’t put it past SVU).
Some examples from one of my favourite old school blogs, Frantic Planet (mostly irreverent reviews of British 70s/80s light entertainment shows, but sometimes delving into weird episodes of 70s/80s US shows):
The Dukes of Hazzard & CHiPs – Science Fiction Double Feature
That Time The Waltons had a Poltergeist
Baywatch does Monsters and Mermaids
Vampires Are Real (Sometimes) (Starsky & Hutch, Diagnosis Murder)
OB
OK, @Miller, this has been a fun debate, but I just want to defend myself on a couple of points you made that I think were inaccurate, and after that I’ll let you have the last word if you want.
Who is “they”? Turns out, “they” is a lunatic preacher in Tennessee and a couple of dozen hillbillies. Would you consider that a mainstream view in modern society? But in Shakespeare’s day, belief in supernatural woo really was mainstream.
I suppose I could nitpick by saying that in Patrick Stewart’s version, the three witches are three modern-day nurses, but I get your point – it was still supernatural. But that’s not the core of my argument.
Why not? Shakespeare used the witches as a convenient device to inflame Macbeth’s ambitions and set the plot going because it was a concept not only familiar to the audience of the day, but regarded as a reality. That doesn’t make them consequential to the ensuing drama.
As you said earlier, the three witches were certainly meant to be regarded as flesh-and-blood creatures, but as you also said, the elements in Shakespeare’s plays work on multiple levels. The three witches are frequently regarded as being metaphorical:
The Three Witches represent evil, darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses.
Three Witches - Wikipedia
Weird Sisters, also called Three Witches, the creatures who prophesy the destinies of the main characters in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The term Weird Sisters was first used by Scots writers as a sobriquet for the Fates of Greek and Roman mythology. Through its appearance in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, the expression passed to William Shakespeare.
Weird Sisters | fictional characters | Britannica
My argument is ultimately that the three witches are just a brilliant MacGuffin – a term popularized by Hitchcock to mean “an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself”. That the MacGuffin also serves as a metaphor is part of what makes it so perfectly apt, and typical of how Shakespeare’s works are so rich in meaning.
Since this is the Straight Dope I’ll be pedantic here.
Donald P Bellisario (creator of Magnum PI, Airwolf, Quantum Leap, JAG and NCIS) retired in 2007 after clashing with actor Mark Harmon (who starred in NCIS as Gibbs). Bellisario retains a producer credit from continuing shows, spin offs and remakes meaning he gets money but he has had no scripting or creative input for about a decade and a half.
That said NCIS still includes ghosts every so often. A fairly recent episode had Gibbs arguing with the ghost of one of his dead wives. His friend Fornell caught on to what Gibbs was doing and insisted Gibbs showed him the ghost (Fornell had also been married to her) so Gibbs turned into her ghost! All light hearted and Gibbs and Fornell vowed to each other they would NEVER mention to anyone what transpired.
TCMF-2L