If you watched the premiere of American Horror Story: Coven and couldn’t understand why Emma Roberts’ character, Madison Montgomery, used her telekinesis and flipped an entire bus of frat boys, this is the question the season wants you to sit with. Some of those boys assaulted her. The rest didn’t — but they were there, and they did nothing. Only one of them tried to stop it.
The whole season hinges on whether Madison was right. A few men did something unforgivable to her. The others were complicit by their silence. And one, the exception, made an effort to intervene. When she flipped that bus, she didn’t sort the guilty from the innocent. She took them all.
That’s what makes the moment so uncomfortable, and it’s why it echoes a real case. At Cornell, a few men in a fraternity allegedly preyed on a victim. Most of the men didn’t participate — but they didn’t help her either. Fifty-seven of them were part of a group chat where “free p***y” was offered. Only one did anything to help: he reportedly took photos and video of the group chat and handed them to her lawyer as evidence.
So the question Coven is really asking is an old one. Does one bad apple spoil the bunch? And if most of the bunch just stood by, are they really so different from the ones who acted?
Or here’s the harder version: should Madison have waited until she could hurt the men who deserved it without also taking the one good guy who tried to help her? Or does that one exception get lost the moment you decide the whole group has to answer for what a few of them did?
