‘They Do Love Their Divinity Lessons’: An Introduction to The Wicker Man By Robbie Edmonstone WICKER MAN’S LEG-LOPPING MYSTERY: A Galloway landmark left by a cult 1970s movie has been chopped HS[R ;SSHIR PIKW JVSQ E ½KYVI WIX EPMKLX MR XLI ½REP WGIRIW SJ The Wicker Man had remained in their concrete bases at Burrowhead for some 30 years. Investigations have started after the legs – standing about 5ft high – were sawn down and removed, leaving two stumps in the ground. BBC Scotland News, 23 November 2006 Outwardly, people are more or less civilised, but inwardly they are still primitives. Carl Jung, Four Archetypes As blood-curdlingly horrifying as the news of the above theft was for devotees of Robin Hardy’s 1973 art-horror meisterwerk, in truth there was something of the poetic about it. For what other conclusion could there possibly be to the bewildering story SJ E ½PQ XLEX MW [LSPP] XVERW½\IH [MXL XLI trappings of cultism yet, paradoxically, has steadily established its own ^IEPSYW GYPX SJ SFWIWWMZIW# -W MX ER] [SRHIV XLEX E ½PQMG XSXIQ IZSOMRK WYGL fervour and froth in its fans – an annual rock festival, a fanzine, Nuada, a two-day academic conference in 2003, a literary adaptation, three critical books, an abhorrent Hollywood remake and the obligatory Iron Maiden music video – should have been so YRXMQIP] WIZIVIH JVSQ MXW GSVTSVIEP GSRGVIXI VSSXW# Of course not. As you read this article, in the back ½IPH SJ ER MRXIRWMZI GVST JEVQ MR %]VWLMVI WXERH X[S ½ZI JSSX PYQTW SJ [SSH HYWX] [MXL XLI EWLIW SJ burnt sheep, goats and virgins, charred by-products SJ ER ERRYEP WEGVM½GI EMQIH EX MRGVIEWMRK XLI QEVOIX yield of turnips, potatoes and runner beans, their new custodian hysterically barking out pagan non sequiturs in a bad wig and white robes whilst a dozen other prominent representatives of the British agricultural industry sway in time to his frenzied chants, the obsessive fanaticism in their faces hidden by animal facemasks yet betrayed by the rhythmic, primitive K]VEXMSRW SJ XLIMV KIRY¾IGXMRK FSHMIW WMPLSYIXXIH against a blood-red setting sun. Well, either that or some opportunistic capitalist bastard has chopped
them up for sale on eBay. My central point remains unchanged: The Wicker Man is a unique and fascinating ½PQ [MXL HIZMERGI from cultural, political and religious norms at its very core, and as such it comes as no surprise that its legacy produced such a deviant act of theft and vandalism in Galloway last year (the region, that is, not the Respect Coalition MP for Bethnal Green). Man’s inward primitivism, it seems, is still just as relevant now as it [EW JSV XLI QEOIVW SJ XLI ½PQ ]IEVW SR Why all the fuss then – or, as Edward Woodward’s 2IMP ,S[MI TYXW MX ³3L [LEX MW EPP XLMW#´ *SV ostensibly there seems no reason why the ashes of XLMW ½PQMG SHHMX] WLSYPH LEZI GSRXMRYIH XS WQSYPHIV through the decades. Filmed in 1973 on a shoestring budget in the perishing cold of deepest darkest Scotland, deemed unworthy of exhibition and released as a B-picture to Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, chopped and schlocked-up by American drive-in exploitation mogul Roger Corman and accidentally thrown away and buried forever under a motorway, everything about The Wicker Man’s production and distribution is, as Allan Brown notes, ‘a textbook example of How Things Should Never Be Done’.1 The story itself is hardly exceptional: a simple investigation thriller that portrays a pious policeman
;SSH[EVH MR LMW EXXIQTXW XS ½RH E QMWWMRK KMVP [MXLMR XLI ½GXMXMSYW 7GSXXMWL MWPERH SJ 7YQQIVMWPI ¯ E neo-pagan society presided over by the mysterious
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Lord Summerisle (played by Christopher Lee). The acting, too, often rankles, with Woodward’s pitchperfect Presbyterian brogue being offset by the hideous Braveheart-like enunciations of Lindsay Kemp and Diane Cilento (whose obvious distaste for oor national dialect could doubtlessly be attributed to the fact that she was going through a messy divorce from shortbread-tin Scotsman Sean Connery at the time). Ingrid Pitt makes no attempt to purge the Polska from her accent, and Britt Ekland is dubbed throughout by the Scottish singer and actress Annie Ross. In truth, The Wicker Man could not be further from the calculated and manipulative smoothness of contemporary Seventies horrors such as The Exorcist, Jaws, The Omen and Carrie. But it is precisely in this divergence from mainstream ½PQ GSRZIRXMSRW [LIVI XLI ½PQ´W XVYI LSVVM½G pleasures lie. There are no sinister tunes, buckets of blood, demon children or violent sprees of murder (the ½PQ´W FSH] GSYRX is, in fact, only one): Hardy instead chooses to WEXYVEXI XLI ½PQ with a malevolent, skulking sense of unease that lurks behind every nook and cranny of the island. It’s there in the black beetle, tied by its legs to a nail by the local schoolchildren; the recurrent images of hares, suns and phallic symbols; the naked KMVPW NYQTMRK SZIV XLI ½VI XS FI MQTVIKREXIH F] XLI Gods; the bizarre animal masks worn by the villagers; the voracious promiscuity of the landlord’s daughter. -X´W EPWS XLIVI MR XLI JEFVMG SJ XLI ½PQ MXWIPJ [MXL JVIUYIRX NYQT GYXW NEKKIH IHMXW WSYRH GPMJJW PIRW ¾EVI and exaggerated angles all working together with Hardy’s relentlessly unstable camera to highlight the deep cracks that increasingly become evident in the community’s cheery façade. Taken in isolation, many of the scenes from The Wicker Man could comfortably belong to the comedy and musical genres, but when viewed in context it becomes clear that the bright colours, couthy accents, folk songs and boisterous dance sequences displayed exist to assuage the black undercurrent lurking beneath them. And when this PSRK VITVIWWIH WXVIEQ MW ½REPP] EPPS[IH XS FYVWX XLVSYKL MR XLI ½PQ´W GPMQEGXMG WGIRI XLI IJJIGX MW profoundly disturbing: no-one who has ever watched this sequence will ever forget it, and despite the poor HMWXVMFYXMSR SJ XLI ½PQ MX LEW FIGSQI SRI SJ GMRIQE´W most iconic images.
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8LI MHIE SJ VITVIWWMSR EW E HI½RMRK JIEXYVI SJ XLI horror genre is by no means new, and a Freudian VIEHMRK SJ XLI ½PQ [SYPH FI UYMGO XS MHIRXMJ] The Wicker Man’s horrifying and uncanny dénouement as ‘the return of the repressed’, a violent realisation of the primitive and malevolent desires which both Freud ERH .YRK MHIRXM½IH EW IWWIRXMEP XS XLI LYQER GSRHMXMSR 1SVI MRXIVIWXMRK XLER XLMW LS[IZIV MW ½PQ XLISVMWX Robin Wood’s harnessing of this theory to ideological ends, an argument that proves useful when examining XLI ½PQ ;SSH WYKKIWXW XLEX XLI LSVVSV ½PQ MW X]TM½IH by a particular type of symbolic monster embodying the values bourgeois society seeks to repress, giving the examples of deviant sexuality, alternative ideologies and the proletariat to illustrate his point. 8LEX XLIVI MW RS MHIRXM½EFPI QSRWXIV MR The Wicker Man, however, proves to be one of its most interesting facets, and much SJ XLI ½PQ´W appeal resides in its constant play with notions of monstrousness. Initially the binaries between good and evil seem clearly drawn in XLI ½PQ SR SRI side stands the virtuous Scottish policeman, played by the titular hero of TV hit The Equaliser, and on the other the eccentric English landowner, Dracula, Prince of Darkness. But as the plot unfolds and Howie’s impotent investigations continue, it is increasingly this representative of mainland civilisation – and Scottish society itself – that is portrayed as QSRWXVSYW ;I ½RH SYX XLEX LI MW E ZMVKMR VIJYWMRK to indulge in even the most trivial of sexual acts until he has married his girlfriend. He is the butt of his JIPPS[ SJ½GIVW´ NSOIW HITPSVIW HVMROMRK PI[HRIWW and mirth-making and is obsessed with his religious faith, a faith that is quite consciously paralleled with the paganism of the islanders through the soft-focus WIUYIRGIW SJ LMW GSQQYRMSR EX XLI WXEVX SJ XLI ½PQ -W XLIVI ER] HMJJIVIRGI XLI ½PQ WIIQW XS FI EWOMRK FIX[IIR ,S[MI´W IEXMRK ERH HVMROMRK XLI ¾IWL ERH blood of Christ and the Summerislanders’ belief in JIVXMPMX] VMKLXW# %VI 'LVMWXMERMX] ERH MXW JSPPS[IVW ER] less monstrous than the pagans that they eventually converted through years of colonialism, torture and FPSSHWLIH# While cleverly refusing to take sides and answer these questions, it is nonetheless remarkable how frequently The Wicker Man works to divest its ‘protagonist’ of the
power that he would normally be rewarded in a more GSRZIRXMSREP ½PQ 8LI GSQTSWMXMSR SJ ,EVH]´W WLSXW JVIUYIRXP] TPEGIW ,S[MI EW ER EPQSWX EVFMXVEV] ½KYVI on the peripheries of the frame: frequently shot from a distance, from a high angle and frequently off-centre. Furthermore, the monochromatic insipidness of his uniform stands in stark contrast to a mise en scène saturated with the vibrant earthen tones of the old world. Howie is frequently the least interesting aspect of the image, and his overall lack of dominance can be effectively contrasted with that of Lee’s Summerisle [LS EW WM\ JSSX ERH ½ZI MRGLIW SJ ,EQQIV iconography, positively radiates ZMWYEP TS[IV VI¾IGXIH in frequent low angle close-ups and centrally framed shots of his body. A distinct bias towards the archaic rites of the islanders is similarly evoked through the frequent use of lingering, fetishistic close-ups and long takes focusing on the iconography of paganism: coxcombs; dried foreskins; animal foetuses; maypoles and countless other images. The question arises: who, in the early 1970s haze of free love, consciousness expansion and nature worship, could possibly favour the stoic, stiff-lipped trappings of Howie’s mainstream religious society over the open-air orgies, topless women, salacious sing-songs and beer binges that the ½PQ TSVXVE]W# 8LI EVGLIX]TEP 'LVMWXMER GSTTIV [MXL his side parting, regimented walk and uniform may VITVIWIRX XLI TS[IVW SJ PE[ ERH SVHIV MR XLI ½PQ FYX it is hard not to notice the bias that Hardy’s camera has for the island’s laid back hippie hordes. 8LI RIX VIWYPX SJ XLMW FMEW MW XS QEOI XLI ½PQ´W GPSWMRK scenes all the more disturbing: throughout The Wicker Man we are encouraged to look down on Howie, to take a certain voyeuristic pleasure in his torment and humiliation. Within a repressed society of what Wood terms ‘monogamous, heterosexual bourgeois patriarchal capitalists’, much of the appeal of these scenes is one of iconoclasm, of fantasising over the ½PQMG HIWXVYGXMSR SJ SYV S[R QEMRWXVIEQ [E] SJ life at the hands of deviants. It is no coincidence that Howie’s last fateful act is to dress up as the archetypal fool, Punch, and when he is eventually unmasked it becomes clear just how foolish he has FIIR XLVSYKLSYX XLI ½PQ 2SXLMRK LS[IZIV GER prepare us for what happens after this unmasking, when the fantasies we have enjoyed quite simply go XSS JEV ,EZMRK WTIRX XLI HYVEXMSR SJ XLI ½PQ VIZIPPMRK in the pathos of Howie’s situation, with the arrival SJ XLI ½PQ´W WSPMXEV] NIX FPEGO EGX SJ QYVHIV [I EVI immediately cast as accomplices to the crime, creating a feeling of deep unease that continues long after the credits have rolled.
restored, but The Wicker Man’s greatest strength lies in is its refusal to allow us this comfort. Howie’s death is not the death of a martyr, but of a piece of livestock, LMW JVIR^MIH L]QRW ERH ½REP FPSSH GYVHPMRK GV] XS LMW ‘saviour’ being drowned out by the loud and cheery cuckoos of the beaming islanders. His wicker gibbet becomes a crucible wherein all the values of our society – justice, peace, love, compassion and piety – are burnt to ashes, and the effect is staggering. It is not enough that we have just watched the destruction of our society in this horrible immolation: we actually willed this to happen throughout. The greatest enduring shock of The Wicker Man, then, is not the climactic plot twist, nor is it the destruction of Howie: it is the realisation that lurking repressed within our own psyches is a dark, inward primitivism that could drive us, like the Summerislanders, to violence, murder and ¯ IZIR [SVWI ¯ XLIJX SJ MRZEPYEFPI ½PQ TVSTW
Witness Robbie’s primitive tour of Wicker Man locations – a three-part documentary entitled ‘The Wicker Yin’ on YouTube: http://tinyurl.com/37rlmw Endnote 1. Allan Brown, Inside the Wicker Man:The Morbid Ingenuities (London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 2000). Select Bibliography Allan Brown, Inside the Wicker Man:The Morbid Ingenuities (London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 2000). Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York, Columbia University Press, 1986).
It is, quite simply, a tremendously effective ending. In QSWX LSVVSV ½PQW XLI TPIEWYVI SJ [EXGLMRK WSGMIX]´W destruction at the hands of a monster is tempered F] XLI ORS[PIHKI XLEX F] XLI IRH SJ XLI ½PQ EX PIEWX the monster will have been destroyed and order
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