Coffee Tables and the Twenty-First Century Witch Trials
From hexed cauldrons to fam-cams and school: a bullying pipeline
Have you ever brandished an entire manual on obliterating someone you hate? It sounds bizarre, but it’s not too far from reality.
You and I are no strangers to the infamous ‘witch trials’, which aimed to wipe out alleged witches from all across Europe. It all began with Heinrich Kramer, a Dominican friar, who authored the manual Malleus Maleficarum. No, it isn’t about a Malarial protozoan; it translates to The Witch’s Hammer and was a manual on how witches, primarily ‘questionable’ women, made pacts with the devil. They were accused of having inflicted misfortune on Europe in the 1400s. This prompted thousands of innocent women, and even children, to be tried and tortured. They were either set ablaze alive or hung to death. The worst part is that the ‘tradition’ continued well into the late 1600s, almost till the beginning of the 18th century.
Something very similar happened in the dazzling world of K-pop and K-dramas, too. The Korean entertainment industry has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Anyway, this isn’t about me. Remember the Oscar-winning Korean movie, Parasite? Lee Sun Kyun was a versatile actor. He acted in many Korean movies and dramas, the most famous ones being My Ahjussi, Coffee Prince, and Parasite. I recommend you watch the one listed first. He was well known to be a family man, with no controversies or scandals. Let’s say his co-actors and fans venerated and cherished him. He was a happy man. Then, what made him take his own life? Similar was the case with Sulli, Jonghyun, Goo Hara, Moon Bin, and many more idols [singers]. What made them take the drastic step?
People pointed fingers at the witches because the latter had extensive medical knowledge. The women also dared to do anything other than their traditional roles. This made it easier for remorseful and insecure Kramers to target them. They blamed them for destroyed crops, epidemics, sickness, and general misfortune. Commonfolk complied with the Kramers out of fear, which soon turned into pure terror. They, too, after all, could be accused of being into witchcraft.
People ruthlessly bullied the K-idols, both online and offline. People hated Sulli for disclosing her dream of wanting to be a mother. They loathed her for posting pictures of people she adored, among a list of other normal, daily-life activities. She broke societal norms, was a feminist, and stood up for the rights of the oppressed. This infuriated the victims/perpetrators of misogyny and patriarchy. To them, she was threatening. Having gone through years of depression and anxiety disorders, she finally couldn’t take it anymore. On one of her last live streams, she was seen asking her bullies what she had done to deserve the hate. Hers had been a case of extreme bullying. The last stream was completely silent, with her staring blankly into the camera with melancholic eyes as if saying goodbye. She was found dead the next day. Goo Hara was Sulli’s closest friend, and she died shortly after her friend did. She, too, was a victim of bullying, and so were the other idols. Lee Sun Kyun was entangled in the complex case of a fraudster woman who falsely accused him of illegal drug consumption. The media and police intentionally toyed with his life. They leaked personal calls and chats and made him look like a villain; despite him having tested negative for drugs, three times. The public demanded a lie-detector test, which again proved his innocence when it was carried out. But three police interrogations, three negative DNA tests, and a lie detector test later, nobody believed him. He cried and pleaded innocence, complied with the police, and was proven innocent too. Yet, people harassed him. It was a case of the blind leading the blind. His life had completely fallen apart. Then, some seventy days later, he was found dead in his car. His suicide note was heartbreaking and read, “I cannot do anything anymore. There is no other way but this.”
One of the definitions of hatred is ‘prejudiced hostility or animosity’. In this scenario, it is often a response to a perceived threat and aims to dissolve the cause of discomfort. Owing to the nature of the human mind, it often turns destructive, morphing it into its most primitive form and creating intolerance.
Social contagion — let’s get into what that is — happens in a plethora of ways. I place them under the umbrella category of ‘coffee tables’. There are different kinds of those; you can find some of them on social media. A few others are found where people engage in direct physical conversations. Yes, I’m talking about gossip, media portrayal, and observed learning through subconscious mimicry. The spread of false information, fueled by fear, prejudice, and preconceived notions, is often a result of coffee table gossip. Unverified details, in different versions and flavours, spread like wildfire. This is what the above-mentioned term means. They manage to garner even more public opinion. And that is how a mob comes into being: by sharing their hate. They then spend days and nights proving their versions of the story right, even if it requires them to tear apart lives. Their sole purpose in life is to bully their common victim. Gosh, they’re about as sharp as marbles, I’d say.
The witches and the idols were victims of mass hate and bullying. But this phenomenon happens on an individual level too. I still remember being twelve and squeaking, making my parents aware of the fact that I would soon be a teen. This was back in seventh grade, and I was still blissfully unaware of malicious people. Things started going south when I was suddenly enveloped by unreasonable and vilified jabs at my character and morality. Teachers started belittling me at school; the once smart and capable child had become a disappointment, no longer deserving of respect and love. As expected, guilt, shame, and unworthiness engulfed me, which resulted in seven years of severe depression, self-hatred, and low self-esteem. And I still suffer, thanks to them.
In my case, my active bully was my class teacher. I didn’t understand what I had done until one day when I did — I had only failed to please her. It had never been my fault. She had always expressed manipulative traits, now that I think of it — gaslighting, slut-shaming, and using trauma as an excuse for slandering people. She would also show narcissistic tendencies and would constantly try to make me ‘confess and repent’ of imaginary sins I had committed. The other teachers had believed her words for face value and continued to be passive bullies.
What fascinates me is that there was never any reason for a grown woman to be threatened by a seemingly innocent child. The bullying was unprovoked and almost opportunistic. And it did not end there; it continued throughout high school, every time she became my teacher. I had started to skip school because of the emotional distress it brought me. The last year of school was when I finally stood up for myself and passively confronted her behaviour. I could not do it actively; after all, I was a child. How dare a child question authority? Luckily, people had started to notice her questionable behaviour, and I had started to reply to her provocative questions.
Thus, the mob led to the public execution of witches and the social murder of the stars. The mob, for the innocent women, were the Kramers, the church, and the brainwashed and scared common folk. Parallelly, insensitive netizens and foul media propaganda were responsible for the murder of the stars. The teachers were my mob.
The people wronged were scapegoats. They became the bearers of the mob’s insecurities.
Who are the real witches, then? Was it the women who were murdered, or the Kramers? Aren’t our stories — the witches, the stars, and mine — no different from a twenty-first-century witch hunt?
What’s scary is that it isn’t uncommon and continues to happen. It is crucial to understand the origins of hate — the emotion is not to be declared a sin; it is to be introspected. Every emotion is, after all, a signal. It is the language in which the body makes one aware of the soul’s needs and wants. It undoubtedly becomes even more important to combat the emotion with rationality and empathy. And collective betterment as a society isn’t the only aspect that needs work. Individual evolution is equally important, if not even more. Despite progress in education, technology, and luxury, human IQ and EQ remain surprisingly stagnant. There continue to be Kramers and witches, and atrocities prevail on even larger scales
Thus, we ought to work on ourselves. Maturity, to me, is not becoming primitive in the face of perceived threat.
Let’s not become Kramers; let there be no more witch hunts.
