The Wicker Man: NOT Starring Nicholas Cage

Because goodness, that one isn't even remotely the same movie.

This movie poster is an icon.

This movie, you can just tell, was an absolute blast to film. Everyone looks like they’re just having the merriest of times while on screen and, considering how much fun this thing looks, I have to assume—have to believe—that the rest of the time on set was also a magnificent party. This is the kind of movie I want to work on. I think we all do.

Oh, and surprise! It’s a musical!

Well, maybe not in the strictest sense, but The Wicker Man (1973) wouldn’t be The Wicker Man without its music. Which, among many other problems, is one of the reasons the 2006 remake doesn’t land. It’s not the only reason, but seriously, I do not understand how you can remake a movie with such iconic and integral music and just, like, skip over that part.

This is a movie about reproduction. Both in nature and in people. The sex is just dripping off the screen, to the point where it still feels overtly sexual even by today’s standards. I don’t know how that would have been received back in the 70s, but my instincts are that, for many people, it would have been shocking. For the hippies just coasting out of the 60s, it probably wasn’t quite that big of a deal, but most people weren’t hippies.

Yet this preoccupation with sex and fertility is still where it gets much of its weirdness from. Sexual freedom is part of Summerisle’s culture, and that’s demonstrated through their practices and through their music. It makes protagonist Sergeant Howie more than nervous, and it’s not just him. I’ve seen a lot of people deeply uncomfortable about the amount of nudity and openness about discussing sex with children in this movie. The fact that I’ve seen others equate nudity and sexual education with child abuse is actually kind of gross. These things aren’t inherently abusive or inappropriate unless viewed from the lens of a puritanical culture.

Which…I guess we can’t escape that entirely. Some things are just too deeply ingrained in western culture that it’s hard to shed them. However, that’s part of the reason why this movie works. It challenges the cultural lenses that most of its viewers come from, and it really makes you sit in that discomfort. You’re not just getting a song about banging the landlord’s adult daughter, you’re going to see her dancing and singing naked on screen for a solid five minutes in an attempt to seduce our hero.

This isn’t a movie of half measures. It goes all in on what it’s trying to do.

But more than just this overt sexuality, what I find most interesting is that The Wicker Man is very open about being a constructed culture. The first Lord Summerisle made up a bunch of shit and they’ve all bought into it, knowingly or not. And they’ve done so because that constructed culture is a hell of a lot more fun than boring old Anglicanism. I know which spirituality I would chose, and I know how this movie ends!

The take away here is that given enough repetition and time, you will find true believers in anything. This is the very reason cults continue to exist, and continue to ruin and take the lives of people the world over. This isn’t some radical new idea that The Wicker Man is playing with. It’s maybe one of the oldest ideas out there. The only difference between a cult and a religion is respectability. 

And the people of Summerisle consider themselves deeply religious. They’ve gone all in and their little colony has prospered for generations. Their little fertility cult has happily built up a belief system that brings them joy and community. If it weren’t for the whole human sacrifice piece, I would say ‘more power to ya!’ 

What’s not entirely clear to me is if the actual wicker man is a new practice to them or not. It’s definitely the first time they’ve actually done this ritual, but it’s never explained if this was something the current Lord Summerisle introduced to the community or not. The idea of the wicker man may have been a theory, something that was in the realm of lore and possibility, but certainly not anything that had been truly experienced on the island yet. If it is the case that their current Lord introduced this idea, then I think that makes The Wicker Man all the more tragic.

There is no evidence that Summerisle has a culture of death (unlike modern day America, but whatever). Quite the contrary: they don’t even use the word death or dead to describe those that have passed on. This appears to be a lovely community that is raising its children to be free and unashamed of experiencing pleasure. These people love their home and love the lives they have built there. So when that is threatened by a dwindling harvest, it’s not surprising that they would start looking for a solution that would preserve their way of life.

When did they decide to collectively commit murder? When was the notion of a sacrifice introduced? These are important questions, and I don’t think they have an obvious answer. Yes, they all conspired to bring Sergeant Howie to their little paradise, and test his commitments to his own faith. But that’s not the same as deciding to actually sacrifice him.

As we’ve seen in our own culture and politics, there is a lot of slipping and sliding down the slope of acceptability. This isn’t a new idea. If you make ideological changes slowly and subtly enough, you can lead people to some very terrible places they wouldn’t have otherwise gone. Not if you’d been upfront about your intentions.

What is clear is that by the time they’re loading up Sergeant Howie into his appointment with the wicker man, nobody is going to rescue him. They’re in too deep. Even if some of the islanders participated with the assumption that they’d never actually go through with the ritualized murder, there’s no way they can betray their community when the time comes. Which is the double-edged sword of communities. The fear of banishment can be a powerful driver.

Which has me worried about our own little culture of death we have going on here. How many of those cultists are in too deep and fear being banished? What kind of crazy thing might they do to keep their own appointments with their own wicker men?

Because I certainly don’t think they’ll be sacrificing themselves for a better apple harvest. I think they might be bringing in something much worse.

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Next Time on Bramble & Bray…

I’m thinking about how very British folk horror tends to be. Is this a genre that is strictly British? I actually came to surprising conclusion on this one, so I hope you enjoy my exploration.

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This Week’s Discussion

Without Summerisle’s unique sense of community, there wouldn’t be The Wicker Man. And yet, isolation and individuality are the name of the game in American culture. I’d love to build a little community here that feels a bit closer to Summerisle than modern America, but minus all the actual murder (fictional murder only please!).

What would you want from a community such as this one I’m trying to build here at Bramble & Bray?