The Wicker Man
This is a weird movie.
It's a good kind of weird, an anachronistic kind of weird, a religious hysteria kind of weird. But make no bones about it, this is not your average movie. Mundanes, move along.
Are they gone yet? Okay good. You're in for one hell of a freaky ride.
The Wicker Man is about an island, run by village folk who harken back to the old ways. And we're talking old ways: sucking on frogs to cure sore throats, dancing around maypoles, dressing up as fools, sacrificing maidens to keep the crops bountiful...oops, I've given away too much.
Enter an incredibly uptight, prudish, extremely Catholic, British police officer. Mix well. Add in some really bad 70s music, Christopher Lee, and a lot of bad photography and you get this movie. Which is not quite a horror movie, although it was released in the tradition of the Hammer horrors. Heck, to date, nobody really knows what to do with this flim. If you're a Christian or worship a non-traditional religion, this movie will likely rattle your cage. And it rattles cages in a good way, raising some thought provoking questions about who is in the right -- the religion that works for the majority, or the established hierarchy of the rest of the world. And really, who's the "established" religion anyway? Which came first -- the pagan chicken or the Christian egg?
What a lot of reviews don't mention is the rampant Anglocentricism throughout the film. We have a typical British officer casting aspersions on a Scottish community. For the American equivalent, it might be like a fundamentalist Christian minister visiting an all-black community. There's a lot of history there.
If said blacks suddenly started reenacting African rituals, most people (the reasonable ones anyway) might suspect it of bias. After all, African-Americans, just because of their heritage, didn't hop around shaking spears and dancing around flames. So why, then, are the poor Scottish folk shown as believing in all kinds of pagan beliefs, some of them randomly selected from other cultures?
To Americans, this may not seem like a big deal. To Europeans, or at least to the British, it might seem quaint. To anyone who is Scottish or pagan, it's blatant prejudice. I should know, Maleficent's a pagan, I'm a Roman Catholic, and we know all about the differences between the two religions. This movie does not.
At heart, the Wicker Man was an observation by Julius Caesar about the Gauls. See my Druid History article for more information. Julius was a conquerer, talking about people he defeated -- he was by no means an accurate representation of druidism. And modern Scottish people aren't any more affiliated with druidism than African Americans are affiliated with nature spirits.
The movie was a horror flick preying on the fears of the Europeans -- that Christianity DIDN'T WORK. You don't find that nearly as much these days in America. In the 70s, in Europe, this was a big deal.
However, given its background, we took the movie for what it is: a social commentary, a psychological horror, about the clash between modern and ancient times. As Carl Sagan pointed out in the Demon Haunted World...you can teach people that demons aren't real, but they'll just call them aliens instead.
This movie is worth seeing, if only to experience the crazy ending. But make no mistake: the snide British commentary about how great The Wicker Man is constitutes a good part of what makes this film a "horror."
It's a good kind of weird, an anachronistic kind of weird, a religious hysteria kind of weird. But make no bones about it, this is not your average movie. Mundanes, move along.
Are they gone yet? Okay good. You're in for one hell of a freaky ride.
The Wicker Man is about an island, run by village folk who harken back to the old ways. And we're talking old ways: sucking on frogs to cure sore throats, dancing around maypoles, dressing up as fools, sacrificing maidens to keep the crops bountiful...oops, I've given away too much.
Enter an incredibly uptight, prudish, extremely Catholic, British police officer. Mix well. Add in some really bad 70s music, Christopher Lee, and a lot of bad photography and you get this movie. Which is not quite a horror movie, although it was released in the tradition of the Hammer horrors. Heck, to date, nobody really knows what to do with this flim. If you're a Christian or worship a non-traditional religion, this movie will likely rattle your cage. And it rattles cages in a good way, raising some thought provoking questions about who is in the right -- the religion that works for the majority, or the established hierarchy of the rest of the world. And really, who's the "established" religion anyway? Which came first -- the pagan chicken or the Christian egg?
What a lot of reviews don't mention is the rampant Anglocentricism throughout the film. We have a typical British officer casting aspersions on a Scottish community. For the American equivalent, it might be like a fundamentalist Christian minister visiting an all-black community. There's a lot of history there.
If said blacks suddenly started reenacting African rituals, most people (the reasonable ones anyway) might suspect it of bias. After all, African-Americans, just because of their heritage, didn't hop around shaking spears and dancing around flames. So why, then, are the poor Scottish folk shown as believing in all kinds of pagan beliefs, some of them randomly selected from other cultures?
To Americans, this may not seem like a big deal. To Europeans, or at least to the British, it might seem quaint. To anyone who is Scottish or pagan, it's blatant prejudice. I should know, Maleficent's a pagan, I'm a Roman Catholic, and we know all about the differences between the two religions. This movie does not.
At heart, the Wicker Man was an observation by Julius Caesar about the Gauls. See my Druid History article for more information. Julius was a conquerer, talking about people he defeated -- he was by no means an accurate representation of druidism. And modern Scottish people aren't any more affiliated with druidism than African Americans are affiliated with nature spirits.
The movie was a horror flick preying on the fears of the Europeans -- that Christianity DIDN'T WORK. You don't find that nearly as much these days in America. In the 70s, in Europe, this was a big deal.
However, given its background, we took the movie for what it is: a social commentary, a psychological horror, about the clash between modern and ancient times. As Carl Sagan pointed out in the Demon Haunted World...you can teach people that demons aren't real, but they'll just call them aliens instead.
This movie is worth seeing, if only to experience the crazy ending. But make no mistake: the snide British commentary about how great The Wicker Man is constitutes a good part of what makes this film a "horror."
Labels: Horror, Movies, Spirituality
posted by talien | 8:26 PM
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