“Why ‘Twitches’ is as Socially Significant as it is Entertaining”

Co-written by Ariann Barker

With the Disney marathon last weekend, what aspects of the movies did you pay attention to? The characters, the plot, the setting? Well, while watching and taking notes of whenever I sensed a relation to social justice, I noticed how positively influential these movies are for learning, growing young people. Especially the movie Twitches.

As if two teenage girls banding together to defeat evil isn’t badass and feminist enough, what makes the inspiring main characters even better is that they are both of Afro-Bahamian descent. This representation is a big step up from the usual whitewashed media displayed all over our TVs. Two nonwhite strong female leads were enough for me to believe the movie stuck out from others.

Not only was the cast diverse, but the main characters Alexandra and Camryn (played by the greatest twins ever: Tia and Tamera Mowry) showed so much depth and insight into their lives, their personalities, and their relationship with each other. The narrative follows a typical ‘separated at birth’ storyline, however, the dialogue and characters add so much more; Camryn represents the sun with her sun amulet and was originally named Apolla, while Alex represents the moon with her moon amulet and was originally named Artemis. Greek history and symbolism take up a big chunk of the plot, and both probably remain unnoticed by lots of watchers although these aspects contribute to the brilliance of this movie.

While watching the movie, I was somewhat confused. In most Disney stories, the girls would’ve ended up with a romantic interest. I was shocked to see that instead of divvying up the sisters’ attention for each other into pieces to be taken by male roles*, the story instead focused on the relationship between the sisters and true sisterly love.

These days, it is rare to see a movie containing representation, honorable character development, a solid plot containing clever elements, and feminist girl-power undertones, but in the past? The idea was almost unheard of! Twitches was a Disney movie ahead of its time, and still remains a classic yet to be overruled.
*In the sequel, there was some romance, however, it was concentrated towards the end of the story.