The Wicca Woman: Gender, sexuality and religion in The Wicker Man

Brigid Cherry

 

LONG CONSIDERED ONE of the cult classics of British cinema, The Wicker Man is popular with UK-based fans of the horror genre. In a study of female horror film fans, a number of the participants named The Wicker Man as one of their ten favourite horror films.¹ Although the film did not figure amongst the ten most favourite overall, and the percentage of participants naming the film was relatively small (6%, or 6 out of 107 participants), it appeared in position 32 out of 336 titles listed in total. Given the film’s cult status, it was therefore considered suitable for further analysis in the context of its reception and interpretation by female fans. Whilst the preferences of the majority of female fans are not specifically correlated with feminine generic forms or positioned with respect to feminine subjectivity, the tastes of this audience segment are orientated principally around representations of firstly, strong characters – often female, though these may also be male – and secondly, monsters of human-like or attractive appearance. Furthermore, a strong correlation exists between a taste for horror cinema and interests in the paranormal and alternative belief systems. In particular, there is a strong interest amongst the participants in Pagan subjects including Wicca and witchcraft: 61% of all participants state an interest in Wicca or other Pagan belief systems, whilst 10% claim to be active in this area. It is in this sense that the title of the paper refers to the Wicca woman; as viewer, rather than as any specific character or aspect of the text (though there is no intent to link Paganism with a liking for horror). Interrogating the representations of gender and religion which occupy positions at the heart of The Wicker Man, as well as the iconography and characterisation of both feminine sexuality and monstrosity, may however account for the subversive pleasures the film offers – particularly for these female fans.

It is interesting to note from the findings outlined above that horror fans do consider the film to be a notable example of the genre. Whilst it is indisputable that the film is classifiable as a cult (it certainly bears many of the hallmarks of that quasi-generic label, as well as a cult fan following), its location vis-à-vis horror cinema might appear to be rather more problematical. It is neither a morality tale which might be said to gender socialise its teen audience, as the slasher film is, for example,² nor does it share the concern of body horror and vampire cinema with aberrant sexual practice rendered through metaphors of disease and contagion. Nor does it fit the mould of Hammer Horror, as Anthony Shaffer himself has stated,³ or even bear much surface resemblance to Hammer productions. Nevertheless, some viewers do find the film horrific and consider the film to be an example of the horror genre; as one fan (a psychiatric nurse in her late 30s) states:

I can honestly say that this is one of the most frightening films I have ever seen. The villagers are bizarrely and creepily backward and the plot is cleverly constructed so that the final twist comes as a genuine surprise.

It is important, then, to position the film with respect to horror cinema and approach it from a theoretical angle which encompasses previous discussions of the horror genre. In the popular media, the film has been claimed by Empire magazine as Britain’s greatest horror film and it has been called an intellectual horror on the nature of sacrifice (Anthony Shaffer), a fantasy with a little bit of horror (Roger Corman), and the Citizen Kane of horror (a newspaper review).⁴ In general, the horror fans themselves outline a broad and inclusive generic definition based upon emotional affect as well as the more typical generic conventions.⁵ Although The Wicker Man contains elements borrowed from the melodrama and the musical, it is, as several horror fans contended, a deeply disturbing film: ‘being burned alive – [a] genuinely horrific concept’ was one response (from an archaeologist in her early 30s). This reliance upon mode of emotional affect as a marker of horror is perhaps the key factor in its classification, at least for some viewers. In general, female horror fans who participated in this research preferred gothic, occult, supernatural and psychological forms of horror over slasher, serial killer, monster or gore films. Factors mentioned with regard to The Wicker Man focus on the shiver sensation and the thriller aspects, as well as the shock of the ending. One fan (a student in her early 20s) linked this to notions of realism: ‘I like The Wicker Man because it is more realistic; the hero dies in the end.’ Further, The Wicker Man shares, in addition to these modes of emotional affect, a number of key thematic aspects in common with the preferred forms of horror, and it is these, most notably as they are related to gender, sexuality and religion, which are explored further here.

Drawing on discussions of gender and horror provides a theoretical backdrop to these actual viewer preferences. The gendered representations typical of the horror genre – the monstrous-feminine,⁶ the predatory queer sexuality of the female vampire,⁷ and the subversive affinity between monster and female victim codified through ‘the look’⁸ – are disrupted in The Wicker Man. It is these very plays with the usual generic conventions which appeal to and interest the female fans, and the focus here is on how these disruptions contribute to their viewing pleasure.

Aspects of feminine sexuality and the monstrous-feminine can be seen in The Wicker Man’s concern with good and evil framed within the narrative focus on religion. A theme that is commonly found within the horror genre, and that has been clearly identified (in the Hammer films of the time, for example, by Hutchings⁹), is sexual repression. In The Wicker Man, though, this theme is neither straightforward nor unproblematical. The Wicker Man, like many horror films, explicitly links sex and death, but unlike the typical horror film, it reverses the usual balance of the equation such that it is the denial of sex that results in death. This is framed, however, within the images of overt and unrepressed sexuality, the permission of which is a central tenet of the alternative religious doctrine practised by the Summerislanders.

In its linking of sex and death, then, The Wicker Man disturbs the conventions familiar to us from much of horror cinema, yet at the same time codes the predatory sexuality of the Paganised belief system as a form of monstrosity in general and the monstrous-feminine in particular. These themes are presented in opposition to the Christian leaning towards sexual repression and the refusal of sex outside of marriage (which appears to be central to Howie’s faith and certainly accords with his position as a significant figure of a traditional patriarchal culture). Furthermore, this aligns him, significantly, with a feminine position typical of the genre. It is most frequently women who, in the horror film, must remain chaste in order to avoid the punishment associated with sexual activity (as in the slasher film). Moreover, female roles in the genre often divide along lines of active and passive sexuality – just as Lucy must die having been willingly seduced by Dracula, whilst Mina who remains pure of heart is redeemed. It is Howie who stands in for the passive female role in The Wicker Man (his fiancée Mary is firmly established as belonging to patriarchy but she does not appear in the film). In contrast to the feminised Howie, the main female characters in The Wicker Man are sexually active, even predatory. Willow is equated with Aphrodite and offers sexual initiation to the young men of the island; Miss Rose openly discusses the sexual dimension of the May Day rites with her pupils and lounges seductively at the foot of Lord Summerisle’s piano. The Pagan culture as depicted here is both coded as feminine and highly eroticised. This, then, is a key opposition in the film and one which is played out further in the rural versus mainland antithesis of the narrative, and focused around the Christian-male/Pagan-female dichotomy.

This religious and gendered opposition is complicated further by the fact that The Wicker Man, in keeping with the conventions of the rural horror film, explicitly equates an isolated community with corruption and depravity, if not evil. The urban-rural conflict is an established narrative trope of the horror genre. In Men, Women and Chainsaws, Carol Clover sketches out the placing of urban characters into a rural environment in which the social rules and norms to which they are accustomed no longer apply.¹⁰

Unlike the typical rural horror film, however, The Wicker Man depicts neither a confrontation between the urban sophisticate and the degenerate country savage, as Deliverance (1972) does, for example, nor is it a teen slasher like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) where vulnerable youth is pitted against an amoral masked killer. Rather, it is an encounter between religious doctrines in which the themes of sex and death as outlined above are presented within the framework of an oppositional Pagan culture at odds with established Christianity. And just as the sex and death equation is reversed, so too the urban/rural character opposition is turned on its head. Here the naive police officer (a rural character himself, albeit from the civilised mainland) meets the provincial yet cultured laird (a representation of urbanity courtesy of the star persona of Christopher Lee). Although the outsider here is not from a higher urban status or class as are the interlopers into the rural idyll in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Deliverance (1972), and the more recent The Blair Witch Project (1999), his coming from the mainland, as well as his status as an officer of the law and as a Christian, are acknowledged, if not respected, as indications of authority and status by the rural community he wanders into unaware.¹¹ It is significant and notable that his origins on the mainland are a mark of attachment or belonging which unites him with a civic culture. In this respect, landscape becomes a lesson in the cultural geography of ‘comparative religion’ (to borrow a phrase from Miss Rose).

We see, for example, that in travelling to Summerisle to investigate the supposed crime, Howie has to traverse a significant geographical barrier: the sea. In this way, he leaves all contact with law and religion, the institutions of civilised society, behind, travelling not by boat, but by plane. As a policeman, an officer of the law, he is thus literally and metaphorically above the rural culture. He passes over, rather than travels through or across, the landscape. More significantly, the seaplane cannot cross the actual boundary between sea and land; when he arrives at Summerisle, Howie has to rely on the harbour-master to bring him ashore in the rowing boat. Here, he has his first confrontation with the rural community and is confounded for the first time. The plane thus represents Howie’s civilisation (which over-flies but cannot overcome the wilderness) and it must be abandoned before he can enter the rural community. It is at this point that, like other city dwellers in the rural-urban horror film, he starts to lose his way.

In the opening credits, Howie examines his map as he overflies, firstly, the (masculine) crags and barren rocks of the islands and then, as he reaches his destination, the (feminine) lush vegetation and blossoming orchards of Summerisle.¹² Ultimately, the map proves to be an empty sign and, although (or perhaps because) we never see the map again in the film, it suggests an important dimension which is now discussed in more detail.

The loss of bearings is frequently used as a narrative device in the cult horror film; in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), for example, Brad and Janet take a wrong turn in the rain. Howie’s map, like the map in The Blair Witch Project which Josh discards, proves useless. He needs the map to find his way to the island, but once there he is literally and figuratively lost. Once he comes ashore, he is confused by the lie of the cultural landscape and he loses his way. All the familiar landmarks are present (the harbour, the church, the pub, the post office), but on Summerisle they signify a cultural, and more importantly gendered, change. In its return from Christian to pagan roots, the cultural contours are no longer familiar to Howie. Through the depiction of pre-Christian western traditions of folklore and eroticised ritual – principally the fertility rites and the hedonistic practices associated with these – as well as the sacrifice, rural culture is represented as both savage and sexually liberated. In contrast, as the Christian outsider, Howie is the perfect example of repressed sexuality and therefore can no longer read the map correctly. In the fertility symbols that dominate the iconography of the film, and not least in the maypole, the naked fire dancing and the corn dollies, Howie no longer has access to the familiar co-ordinates. Here again, connections with the horror genre are significant. As Tanya Krzywinska asserts in A Skin for Dancing in, the rural setting of the British horror film is intimately linked to pre-Christian agrarian religious practices.¹³

The standards of religion, education, law and everyday life are thus absent or violated (just as they are elsewhere in the horror genre, particularly, though not exclusively, where the occult film is concerned). This is most notable with respect to religion and its signifier, the church. The church itself is in ruins, its priests long gone, its ground no longer consecrated and the graves despoiled. Howie is confused and angered by what he sees: a naked women sits astride a grave as she anoints it with her tears; another woman holds forth an egg (yet another fertility symbol) as she breastfeeds a child in the ruined nave; a gravestone makes reference to the ejaculation of serpents; trees and umbilical cords are planted upon the plots; and a hare, Rowan’s totemic animal spirit, has been placed in her coffin. In an act of desperation Howie breaks apart a packing case and places a makeshift cross on the ruined altar, reclaiming it for his masculine god. But this attempt to reinscribe the map with the key symbol of Christianity cannot insulate him from further confusing pointers. Howie’s position of authority as a police officer is ignored and he is given no respect; at every turn he is hindered and is constantly referred to Lord Summerisle for permission – to land on the island, to look at the school register, to examine the record of deaths, to exhume Rowan’s body (only the last is he actually required by law to do). Meanwhile, degeneracy, indecency and the corruption of the young (as Howie sees it) take place within the schoolroom; this itself is linked to the Pagan religion practised by the islanders, with its Wiccan spells on the blackboard and the set reading from The Rites and Rituals of May Day. Furthermore, the village streets and houses are a maze-like territory. There is not only a link here with the feminine in the conception of the maze as representative of female sex, but it is a clear call to the conventions of the female gothic. Along the same lines, the village shops are full of unfamiliar and, to Howie, blasphemous goods – they are both uncivilised and unchristian. The postmistress serves up fertility cakes and practises a form of folk healing (which Howie would undoubtedly label witchcraft); the chemist’s shop contains a cornucopia of snake oil, foreskins and rams’ heads among the apothecary’s jars and bottles of preserved animals – all perhaps ingredients for a Wicca’s spellcraft (and all again having references to the gothic and the uncanny). As one participant (an artist in her 30s) in the study states:

The use of British folklore (Morris dancing, John Barleycorn, maypoles and old wive’s tales) to such disturbing effect is inspired. I have always found such things both fascinating and slightly sinister and was pleased to see them presented as such in a film.

All the landmarks with which Howie is familiar are thus disrupted and corrupted, and the expectations he has of solving the alleged crime are thrown off course by the landscape’s cultural and religious unfamiliarity. His outburst at Lord Summerisle is just the least sign of this; recall that he makes emphatic reference to a ‘law-abiding, Christian country.’ At this point it is pertinent to address aspects of Howie’s character which are presented in the opening sequence of the extended version of the film. It is made clear in these scenes that Howie is heavily, perhaps overly, reliant upon the institutions of church and state, whereas women are held at arm’s length. He is disapproving of graffiti claiming that Jesus Lives and Jesus Saves (the message has been spoilt by the unruly means of delivery) and regards singing and dancing on Sunday as anathema. More importantly, he is keeping himself pure for his wedding, although he has been going steady with Mary (herself linked with the virgin in the conversation between McTaggart and the postman) for two years without ever ‘tickling her fancy.’ In this it is clear that women are unexplored territory for Howie. When this is taken in conjunction with the representation of rural landscape in the film as gendered, the link to feminine sexuality becomes pronounced and it is clear why Howie is lost.

This is important since it may disrupt identification with Howie (which we might expect with a sophisticated urban character lost in a savage wilderness), particularly for female viewers such as the participant quoted above who likes the film because Howie does die at the end. Here, perhaps, are the beginnings of a revenge fantasy for female spectators, but more significantly, it indicates that identification is mixed and fluctuating. As the psychiatrist nurse quoted above states:

I particularly like the way that Edward Woodward’s prudish, repressed policeman gains none of our sympathy until the very end of the film when he is burnt to death in the wicker man of the title.

This in itself suggests a disturbing experience for some viewers, but also suggests that the viewer’s sympathy (and indeed identification) lies with other characters throughout most of the film. Following this argument through, it is important to consider the representations of feminine sexuality further.

The significant landmarks of Summerisle, which include the cliffs, the beach, the caves and the standing stones (there have been recent claims that circles such as that at Stonehenge represent the female sex organs), as well as the crops which make Summerisle famous, are strongly linked with the re-establishment of the ‘old religion’ and, through the links with sexuality and fertility, coded as feminine.¹⁴ In this respect, the representation of femininity, indeed of the monstrous-feminine, refers as much to the rural and religious landscape as to any characters in the film. In Howie’s response to the land and its people, feminine sexuality is coded as monstrous. When Howie sees the village women actively participating in sex to make the fields fertile and when he sees the girls leaping naked over the balefire, he is horrified. His discussions with Lord Summerisle on the subject horrify him further, with the introduction into the conversation of parthenogenesis, impregnation by the god of fire and virgin birth – all of which have parallels within Creed’s model of the monstrous-feminine. If there is a monster as such in the film it is in the figurations of feminine sexuality through landscape and religion, and the inherent link with the Earth Mother archetype which Howie’s point of view codes as the monstrous-feminine.

Moreover, in returning to the question of genre conventions, we must not forget that the point of view (the look) is central to horror cinema. We need to ask here, who looks? Certainly Howie, as an investigator looking into the murder (and thereby at the rural community as murderers, or indeed as the perpetrators of the even worse crime of sacrifice) becomes ‘reluctant participant-observer’ (in Christie’s phrase).¹⁵ This is made clear as he joins in the May Day parade under cover after his abortive house-to-house search for Rowan. The subject position here leads to spectator investment in the investigative narrative, but what does this mean for the female viewer?

The concept of landscape as both narrated and narrator is relevant here. Christie stresses that the ‘re-representation’ of landscape in film is carried out through the control of perspective and enunciation. In this, the act of seeing (point of view) is inscribed in the filmic landscape. Howie, as the main character focus of narrative point of view, sees askew, however. As outlined above, he is not able to interpret the confusing signs in this pagan religious landscape; namely, that death is present in Arcadia, and that femininity and sexuality are inscribed into both. The landscape as narrated (seen through patriarchal Christian point of view) does not match the landscape as narrator (presenting itself as feminised Pagan space). In the heathen wilderness of Summerisle, Howie’s patriarchal law, indeed his masculinity, is challenged. He is refused entry, asked for proof, denied information, and sent for permission from the laird at every turn.

It is too simplistic, however, to suggest that since Howie is the bearer of the look, the – thus feminised – landscape possesses ‘tobe-looked-at-ness’.¹⁶ Traditionally, in the horror film, it is the feminised, yet male, monster who looks at the abjectly terrified female victim. And if we see Howie’s aborted return of the gaze, interrupted by his failure to read the map correctly, as mirroring (as Williams describes) the traditional horror film heroine obscuring her own gaze via a hand or arm raised across her eyes, then this too indicates his figurative femininity. Yet it must be noted here that female fans of the horror genre tend not on the whole to find pleasure in such representations of cowering femininity. Their affinity with the monster is much more complex and they identify most strongly with aberrant (or at least strong) femininity and with humanised (particularly if male and sexually attractive) monstrosity. Indeed, one participant (a temp in her 20s) expressed the opinion that Willow was a strong and active heroine who, in attempting to seduce the passive Howie, was thereby trying to save his life.¹⁷ Although this appears to indicate an oppositional reading against the grain of the narrative – even to the extent of casting the monstrous-feminine in the role of heroine – it also suggests a possible identification with the predatory female and highlights the general tastes of the female audience in their preference for active female characters.

Significantly, other gender representations in The Wicker Man are not without similar complexities and contradictions. We see this clearly in the figure of Lord Summerisle, as the following quotation (from a civil servant in her late 20s) illustrates:

The ‘villain’, Lord Summerisle, is like so many of Christopher Lee’s characters in that he is charming, witty, sharply intelligent, suave and hospitable on the outside, yet quite obviously a calculating killer on the inside.

Indeed, many of the female fans express an interest in or attraction to Christopher Lee (the inverted commas around ‘villain’ underscore the suggestion of an oppositional reading and a strong desire for the character).

Furthermore, despite the patriarchal structure of lord and villagers which defines the Summerisle community, the relationship is not a straightforwardly masculine one. Lord Summerisle is strongly aligned with the feminine aspects of the Pagan culture outlined above, literally so in his case when he takes on the role of the man-woman teaser in the May Day rite. Just as Howie is figuratively feminised even as he is literally coded as a patriarchal figure of church and law enforcement, so too is Lord Summerisle – but in this, unlike Howie, he does carry the traits of the gothic (or humanised) monster. The character is both appealing to, and invites identification from, the female viewers. Another participant (a teacher in her 30s) put the inclusion of The Wicker Man amongst her favourites specifically down to ‘Christopher Lee in a dress.’ This, then, is suggestive of a subversive affinity between monster and female subject, though like other figurations in the film, it too is complex.

The two key figures of patriarchal authority in the film are, then, figuratively female in important respects, and the eroticised ritual of the film is thereby at odds with the phallocentric narrative point of view and mode of address. The gendered difference explored above as represented through the rural landscape and its associated religions and rites, provides entry into the narrative for female horror film fans. Disruptions of the established order, which in The Wicker Man occur principally through its reconstructions of Pagan religion and figurations of femininity, open up a space in which the patriarchal religious culture of the puritanical Christian tradition can be confronted and resisted. The Pagan (and highly gendered) rituals – the spring rites of May Day, the folk spells of the matriarchal wise women and the revenge fantasy of the final sacrifice – can provide female viewers with the thrills and shivers they seek out in the horror genre.

In returning to the question of genre and female audience, whilst one cannot claim that the film is an example of feminist horror in any unproblematical way, it offers female audiences a number of pleasures. The representations of strong (and sexually predatory) female characters, the female-centric representations of oppositional religious culture, and cross-gender identification, as well as the appeal of the star Christopher Lee, allow entry into the narrative for the female spectator. It should be noted that whilst the viewing preferences of female fans are not always for particular kinds of horror that are coded as feminine (the female gothic or maternal melodrama), their tastes do tend towards those films which contain certain elements or generic conventions. Principally, these include aberrant femininity or sexuality, strong female protagonists and attractive monstrosity, all of which are offered up within The Wicker Man, although not always – as shown in the case of both masculinity and the monstrous-feminine – straightforwardly. It is the plays with the usual codes and conventions of horror cinema that seem to offer pleasures for the female viewer.

Finally, then, to return to Carol Clover’s analysis of the rural horror film, if the standards of urban life no longer apply, class status is disrupted and the country becomes a threat. In The Wicker Man, this is orientated most strongly around gender, both in its disruption of patriarchal law and religion, and in the threat of eroticised (and feminised) culture and landscape which it presents. Within the urbanrural horror narrative, the country takes revenge upon the city for some form of exploitation. Commonly, this is economic, cultural or ecological. Here we see this focused on the conflict of religious cultures as the practitioners of the Pagan religion take revenge upon the usurping Christianity. Unusually, then, this invites identification with the rural Other – not least in the form of the oppositional Pagan religion – which may therefore offer subversive pleasures for the female fan.

Bibliography

Case, S.-E., ‘Tracking the Vampire’, Differences, 3 (2) (1991), pp. 1-20.

Cherry, B., ‘Refusing to Refuse to Look: Female Viewers of the Horror Film’, Identifying Hollywood Audiences, ed. Richard Maltby and Melvin Stokes (London: BFI, 1999), pp. 187-203.

Christie, I., ‘Landscape and ‘Location’: Reading Filmic Space Historically’, Rethinking History, 4 (2) (2000), pp. 165-174.

Clover, C., Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the modern horror film (London: BFI, 1992).

Creed, B., The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, feminism, psychoanalysis (London, New York: Routledge, 1993).

Hardy, R. (Director), The Wicker Man – Special Edition Director’s Cut (Canal+, [1973] 2002).

Hutchings, P., Hammer and Beyond: The British horror film (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993).

Jancovich, M., Rational Fears: American horror in the 1950s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996).

Krzywinska, T., A Skin for Dancing in: Possession, witchcraft and voodoo in film (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 2000).

McKie, R., ‘The vagina monoliths: Stonehenge was ancient sex symbol’, The Observer, 6 July 2003, p. 7.

Mulvey, L., ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, 16 (3) (1975), pp. 6-18.

Williams, L., ‘When the Woman Looks’, Revision: Feminist essays in film analysis, ed. M. A. Doane, P. Mellencamp and L. Williams (Washington, DC: American Film Institute, 1984), pp. 83-99.

 

¹ Cherry, ‘Refusing to Refuse to Look’.

² Although The Wicker Man predates the slasher cycle proper, it does fall within the time frame of the precursors of the slasher such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), which was made a year after The Wicker Man.

³ See the interview on the British DVD release.

⁴ All of these quotations are taken from the documentary The Wicker Man Enigma on the British DVD release.

⁵ For a fuller account of fan definitions of genre, see Cherry, ‘Refusing to Look’, or Jancovich, Rational Fears.

⁶ Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine.

⁷ Case, ‘Tracking the Vampire’.

⁸ Williams, ‘When the Woman Looks’.

⁹ Hutchings, Hammer and Beyond.

¹⁰ Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws, pp. 124-37.

¹¹ Similar themes can be identified in The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), though the focus in this film is transposed onto questions of race as much as religion.

¹² It is perhaps not insignificant here that the change in landscape is mirrored in the musical change from the mournful title song to the upbeat and melodic fertility song ‘Corn Rigs’.

¹³ Krzywinska, A Skin For Dancing In, pp. 72-116.

¹⁴ McKie, ‘The vagina monoliths’.

¹⁵ Christie, ‘Landscape and ‘Location’’.

¹⁶ This is a reference to Laura Mulvey’s seminal diagnosis of the traditional ideological functions of women and ‘Woman’ in mainstream narrative cinema. See Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure’.

¹⁷ This response is to the original version of the film which lacks the ‘Sacrifice to Aphrodite’ scene.