Adapting a Witch to Modern Beliefs and Values: Persecuting the Outsider through Trial, Stage, and Film
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Mads Larsen
Abstract
In 1590, after Norway’s most famous witch trial, Anne Pedersdotter was burned alive. Resource scarcity and religious competition transformed an old superstition into a witch craze to which Anne fell victim. Her story became a play in 1908 and a film in 1943. The two adaptations attempt to give Anne’s persecution more modern explanations. In the play Anne Pedersdotter, Anne has psychic powers that make her neighbors think she is a Satanic collaborator. In the film Day of Wrath, Anne embodies humanistic aspirations that would have been delusional in her own era and that are perhaps also poorly adapted to human nature in general. The trial and the two fictional versions of the trial all illustrate how thought patterns that evolved for small groups of foragers can be overstimulated in post-agricultural environments. This article identifies cognitive dispositions that, in periods of crisis, can trigger persecution of outsiders, discusses how those universal mechanisms manifest themselves in different cultural contexts, and examines the historically specific beliefs and values that animate the two fictional versions of Anne’s story. The article concludes with reflections on how the evolved cognitive mechanisms that led to beliefs in witchcraft often manifest themselves, in the present, as conspiracy beliefs directed at minorities.
© 2020 by Academic Studies Press
Articles in the same Issue
- Title
- Table of Contents
- ARTICLES
- Disney’s Shifting Visions of Villainy from the 1990s to the 2010s: A Biocultural Analysis
- The Viking and the Farmer: Alternative Male Life Histories Portrayed in the Romantic Poetry of Erik Gustaf Geijer
- Adapting a Witch to Modern Beliefs and Values: Persecuting the Outsider through Trial, Stage, and Film
- Reflective Imagination via the Artistic Experience: Evolutionary Trajectory, Developmental Path, and Possible Functions
- REVIEW ESSAYS
- Six Recent Books on the Neuroscience of Creativity: Notes from the Underbelly
- Forays into the Dark Field of Evolutionary Horror Film Research: A Meagre Harvest
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel. The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition
- Johannes Breuer, Daniel Pietschmann, Benny Liebold, and Bejamin P. Lange, eds. Evolutionary Psychology and Digital Games: Digital Hunter-Gatherers
- Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei. The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World
- Henrik Høgh-Olesen. The Aesthetic Animal
- Julie J. Lesnik. Edible Insects and Human Evolution
- Debra Lieberman and Carlton Patrick. Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law
- Randolph M. Nesse. Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
- Neema Parvini. Shakespeare’s Moral Compass
- David Reich. Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
- Tali Sharot. The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals about Our Power to Change Others
- Carol Cronin Weisfeld, Glenn E. Weisfeld, and Lisa Dillon, eds. The Psychology of Marriage: An Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural View
- Wojciech Załuski. Law and Evil: The Evolutionary Perspective
- Contributors
Articles in the same Issue
- Title
- Table of Contents
- ARTICLES
- Disney’s Shifting Visions of Villainy from the 1990s to the 2010s: A Biocultural Analysis
- The Viking and the Farmer: Alternative Male Life Histories Portrayed in the Romantic Poetry of Erik Gustaf Geijer
- Adapting a Witch to Modern Beliefs and Values: Persecuting the Outsider through Trial, Stage, and Film
- Reflective Imagination via the Artistic Experience: Evolutionary Trajectory, Developmental Path, and Possible Functions
- REVIEW ESSAYS
- Six Recent Books on the Neuroscience of Creativity: Notes from the Underbelly
- Forays into the Dark Field of Evolutionary Horror Film Research: A Meagre Harvest
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel. The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition
- Johannes Breuer, Daniel Pietschmann, Benny Liebold, and Bejamin P. Lange, eds. Evolutionary Psychology and Digital Games: Digital Hunter-Gatherers
- Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei. The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World
- Henrik Høgh-Olesen. The Aesthetic Animal
- Julie J. Lesnik. Edible Insects and Human Evolution
- Debra Lieberman and Carlton Patrick. Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law
- Randolph M. Nesse. Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
- Neema Parvini. Shakespeare’s Moral Compass
- David Reich. Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
- Tali Sharot. The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals about Our Power to Change Others
- Carol Cronin Weisfeld, Glenn E. Weisfeld, and Lisa Dillon, eds. The Psychology of Marriage: An Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural View
- Wojciech Załuski. Law and Evil: The Evolutionary Perspective
- Contributors
