BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA:
Film title: The Wicker Man; Director: Robin Hardy; Year made: 1973; Country of production: Great Britain; Language of film: English; Length of film: 84 minutes (director’s cut: 99 minutes).
GENRE:
Feature film
SYNOPSIS:
Police Sergeant Howie from the West highlands police (Scotland) travels to a remote island, Summerisle, to investigate the disappearance of a girl who has been reported missing. All the residents of the island claim that they do not know the girl in the photo shown to them. Howie, a devout Christian, increasingly encounters signs of ancient pagan beliefs that deeply disturb him. He becomes increasingly suspicious that the missing girl has been chosen as a human sacrifice for an upcoming pagan fertility ritual. In the end it turns out that he has fallen into a trap and been lured to the island because he himself, being sexually untouched, i.e. “virgin,” is the perfect victim for the ritual. He is burned in a large cage made of willow wood, which is shaped like a giant man – the Wicker Man.
BACKGROUND/CONTEXT:
The screenplay draws heavily on the influential work The Golden Bough by James George Frazer, first published in 1890. One of Frazer’s main theses, that almost all ancient religions contain fertility cults in which animal and human sacrifices play a central role, forms the core theme of the film. The king (or a representative) must die so that the annual cycle of birth, blossoming, maturity, and death is maintained and the nature deities are satisfied.
Another important motif is that of the hunter and the game. Throughout the film, the investigating officer, Howie, sees himself in the role of the hunter. But in the end, it turns out that he was the prey from the beginning. In the last third of the film, as the day of the sacrificial ritual approaches, there are first hints of the true nature of the situation, e.g. when a person dressed as a hobby horse with a conspicuous red cloth cape appears several times in the distance and lures the sergeant into pursuit through winding alleys. (This is reminiscent of the scenes featuring the “girl” in the red dress in the cult film Don’t Look Now by Nicholas Roeg, which was released in the same year as The Wicker Man.)
Music plays an important role in this film. It is used in a way that is familiar from musicals. Folkloric songs accompany the ritual daily life of the islanders. The chaste police sergeant is tempted by the beautiful innkeeper’s daughter with a siren song.
Despite its prominent actors (Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland) the film was a B movie with a low budget. Although the story takes place in the blossoming month of May, with a maypole and young women dancing “skyclad” (= naked) around a bonfire, filming took place in November and December. The film had to be shortened by 15 minutes for the original US theatrical release.
KEYWORDS:
Folk beliefs; human sacrifice; pagan religion; fertility ritual; burning man.
ACADEMIC COMMENTARY:
One might ask what conditions are necessary for a B movie to become a cult film that continues to fascinate not only cinephiles but also scholars from various disciplines decades after its release. In 2003, the cross-disciplinary conference “The Wicker Man: Rituals, Readings and Reactions” was held in Scotland. This resulted in an anthology (Franks et al. 2006). Much intelligent commentary has been written about the film from very different academic perspectives, from archaeological, historical, anthropological, religious, cultural, film and musicological points of view. I highly recommend this insightful book. It draws attention to the ambivalences that appear on various levels in the film.
These ambivalences are certainly partly responsible for the fact that the film has not long since been forgotten. It deals with the clash between two cultures, a pre-Christian pagan culture and a strictly Christian culture, each of which considers itself culturally superior and closer to the “truth.” However, apart from religious and ritual aspects, neither external appearances nor social behavior mark a difference between mainlanders and islanders. A greater zest for life and sexuality that is less suppressed by public opinion and social morality are contrasted by Christian morality and an emphasis on social norms and order. As a representative of “modern” mainland culture, Howie portrays the Christian missionary who wants to bring the “true faith” to the islanders, even resorting to violence if necessary. In this respect, this film character would be suitable for the role of a violent villain with a double standard. However, this is not the case. He is portrayed as a person who is true to himself and acts according to high ethical standards, but who falls victim to a collectively supported ruse and has to pay for it with his life. In this respect, despite his uptightness and rigid morals, he is somehow a sympathetic character… and ultimately a martyr from a Christian perspective and a privileged, because “pure,” victim from a pagan perspective.
What constitutes a crime from a Christian perspective, namely the murder of a human being as a victim of a pagan religious ritual — even though the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ for the redemption of mankind is at the heart of Christian teaching — has a different ethical significance from a pagan perspective, as portrayed in the film, since sacrificial death is only a transition to new life in the eternal cycle of becoming and passing away.
One point that was rarely addressed in the essays in the above-mentioned book was how strongly the film reflected the zeitgeist of the time. At that time, rural communes emerged in Great Britain (and also in Germany) as part of the hippie, counterculture and New Age movements, and with them the British folk-rock music genre. The first (modern) Glastonbury Music Festival took place in 1970, the first Stonehenge Free Festival in 1974. The UK-based Pagan Federation was founded in 1971. All this was accompanied by a renewed interest in alternative and pagan world views and old folkloric customs.
The inhabitants of Summerisle form a community that leads an alternative and morally less restrictive social life and espouses a more nature-oriented spirituality, as is also the case in folk-oriented countercultures. Nevertheless, they are only outsiders from the mainland perspective, and form a cross-generational community. It does not appear to be an anarchic hippie community, but rather a social system with a yearly cycle regulated by pagan religious rituals, as found among indigenous peoples. But in terms of appearance and cultural background, they are people just like you and me, with hairstyles and clothing in the style of the 1960s and early 1970s, as could be found in any British city at that time. And Lord Summerisle lives in a feudal castle and plays a rather authoritarian role in the community. Therefore, much of the fictional island alternative culture seems almost a bit staid from today’s perspective. What makes this film so special is that it does not take a clear moral stance, as one might expect, but rather encourages us to reflect on our values.
Much of Frazer’s Golden Bough is now viewed critically in folklore studies, and some of it has been disproved. Archaeologist Richard Sermon explains that it is quite possible that “the very first wicker man may have been the one built and burnt on Burrowhead [the location of the filming – GM] in the autumn of 1972” (Sermon 2006, 42). Based on the available sources, he considers it quite possible that the legend of the wicker man could be Roman propaganda. Nevertheless, it has become an integral part of the esoteric scene through his portrayal in the film: The annual Wickerman Festival in Scotland and the Burning Man Festival in Nevada attempt to recreate the Celtic culture of Summerisle. Furthermore, the film is highly regarded by the pagan community – despite the human sacrifice at the end – because the cinematic portrayal of paganism is removed from the context of satanic horror that had been common until then: “The Wicker Man offers a unique experience to Pagan audiences because its narrative takes place within a Pagan spiritual framework” (Higginbottom 2006, 135).
From the perspective of esoteric studies, the film therefore has another very interesting aspect besides its depiction of folk magical practices. It is an example of the invention of a tradition within the neo-pagan community.
Gerhard Mayer
Bibliography:
Franks, Benjamin, Stephen Harper, Jonathan Murray, und Lesley Stevenson, Eds. 2006. The Quest for the Wicker Man: History, Folklore and Pagan Perspectives. Luath Press.
Higginbottom, Judith. 2006. „‘Do As Thou Wilt’: Contemporary Paganism and The Wicker Man“. In The Quest for the Wicker Man: History, Folklore and Pagan Perspectives, edited by Benjamin Franks, Stephen Harper, Jonathan Murray, und Lesley Stevenson. Luath Press.
Sermon, Richard. 2006. „The Wicker Man, May Day and the Reinvention of Beltane“. In The Quest for the Wicker Man: History, Folklore and Pagan Perspectives, edited by Benjamin Franks, Stephen Harper, Jonathan Murray, und Lesley Stevenson. Luath Press.
