WICKER MAN OR STRAW MAN?

Thou hast conquered O pale Galilean;

                       The world has grown grey from thy breath.
                                          Swinburne: Hymn to Proserpine

 

I’ve always been a great admirer of the of the Shaffer brothers.  The first production of The Royal Hunt of the Sun broke new territory. Seeing Equus at The Albery back in the 1970s was one of my great theatrical experiences.  I’ve always enjoyed Sleuth, not least for the marvellous mansion in which the film is set and that adds so much to the labyrinthine twists. 

In many ways, too, I loved The Wicker Man – I’m speaking here of the original version, I loathed the re-make – when I first saw it.   I’ve always liked seeing Ingrid Pitt.   The vistas of the opening sequence I found stunning, and the music haunting throughout; the finale is genuinely shocking on a first encounter, and Britt Ekland (with due respect to Matthew 5:28: and, anyway, I was an atheist at the time of first viewing) looked terrific in the nude.

One can, however, admire the intricacies of a Hindu temple without in any way subscribing to the tenets of Hinduism; and to admire the skill of someone’s writing, or the range of his learning, does not mean that one has to share his view of life.  For the purposes of this essay I am treating the writings of both brothers as representing the same sort of outlook.

 

In the conclusion to Royal Hunt, Martin muses:  “We gave them greed, hunger and the Cross: three gifts of the civilized life.  Where people sang in the fields, slaves shuffle underground, and they don’t sing there.”   A statement sweeping enough to generate a lot of issues.

Greed, in my experience, is a universal human vice, and I know of no culture that needs to be taught it. That hunger was unknown in lands conquered by the Spaniards seems doubtful in view of the sacrifice of babies to Tlaloc, the Aztec rain god.  This before the Spaniards got to Mexico.  And many through the course of history have found the Cross to be a symbol of liberation rather than enslavement: the part played by evangelical Christianity in abolishing slavery should not be under-rated.

That reference to the singing workers has always contrasted oddly for me with Shaffer’s reference in his Preface to “two great and joyless empires”, or with the fact that the capture of Atahualpa brings the whole Inca Empire to a standstill.   The play, also, fails to mention the Inca practice of capacocha.  It was still human sacrifice, even if the victims were generally drugged and left to freeze, rather than in the Aztec fashion of having their hearts cut out: a practice to which the Spaniards were bigoted enough to take exception.

In Equus, the source of Alan Strang’s hatred of bridles and saddles is traced to a picture in his room of a chained Christ on his way to execution.  The sort of thing that could give you a warped view of life. 

Whatever appeal such an image might have for Mel Gibson, it is generally very much an outsider’s view of Christianity.  The apostles were not inspired to lay down their lives by the thought of a Christ in chains, but by a Christ they believed to have risen from the dead.  But the sort of anti-Christian sentiment in Equus is carried across into The Wicker Man: whatever view we may think it takes of paganism, it is unquestionably a critique of Christianity.  Or Christianity as perceived by the Shaffers.

Lord Summerisle appears to object to being termed a pagan, but does not mind being termed a heathen.  In general usage, however, ‘pagan’ is the less pejorative term of the two, and therefore is the one I shall persist in using. 

For until the sudden dark turn of events, the paganism of the film seems viewed in quite a positive light.  Perhaps its cause is helped by having three such strikingly-beautiful women representing it, and by the urbane and relaxed Lord Summerisle against the repressed and tight-lipped Howie. 

Against Howie’s cold legalism – he is a very legalistic Christian, as well as being a policeman – we have almost a sense of fun, of being in touch with nature: pro-life, where Howie’s Christianity is anti-life. Certainly, the RE lessons are a great deal more interesting than the sort of stuff most people my age had to endure.   The carnival costumes, before they become sinister, are almost benign, suggesting a link back to ancient nature traditions.  If not Merrie England, then, at least, Merrie Scotland.    Who would not prefer  “And on that bed there was a girl, and on that girl there was a man,” to Howie's mumbled ‘”I don’t believe in ... (inaudible) ... before marriage.”?

‘”They are naked, naked”’ merely sounds a note of prissy outrage.  Even though Howie has a point.  Think of what the anti-paedophile wing of Political Correctness would have made of nude pubescent schoolgirls jumping over flames, had PC been in existence when the film was made.   The Orkney child abuse allegations of the 1990s are probably a pretty good clue. 

The saying that, ‘The Devil gets all the best tunes,’ is certainly true in this instance.    All the ‘pagan’ songs are terrific,  although the lines in  The Landlord’s Daughter

                        Though she’s not the kind of girl

                        You’d take home to your mother.

have always seemed to me to be a Howie-like  inconsistency.  If Mum were a suitably-liberated pagan, then presumably Willow would be just the sort of nubility she’d welcome; if not as a daughter- in-law, then at least as a suitable temporary shag-partner for her young man.  Be that as it may, against any of these songs, Howie’s rendering of the Twenty-Third Psalm sounds strident and discordant.  Certainly it’s not a tune I’ve ever heard before.  But perhaps Howie singing “... though I walk in death’s dark vale,” in the Crimond version would sound too harmonious and turn him into what – by the parameters of the film – he must not be: a Christian martyr. 

 

Within this film there seems to me more than one nod in the direction of Swinburne’s Hymn to Proserpine.  Swinburne himself regretted the triumph of Christianity as much as does the fictional narrator in his poem.  Swinburne, after all, would attend a brothel once a week for a spot of flagellation: on himself.  The Christian tradition has tended to a dim view of that sort of thing: flogging has generally been for punishment rather than pleasure.   Oh for the good old days with “the breasts of the nymphs in the brake”; when achieving the laborious climb to the Temple of Aphrodite in Corinth would reward you with a sacred prostitute.  Compare that with the Victorian take on things: Gladstone doing nightly patrols for the redemption of fallen women.   

The best corrective I know to rose-tinted-spectacle views of paganism is Flaubert’s novel Salammbô: the torture of animals, the indifference to slaves, the savagery of the punishments, and the sacrifice of children as burnt offerings to Moloch.  The descriptions of the crucified lions or the de-trunked elephants are as ghastly examples of cruelty to animals as you are likely to come across.

 Even the worldview in The Iliad is not such as many of us would long to regain.  All those fickle deities who needed to be kept happy: and the delicate balancing acts so that by propitiating one you didn't alienate another.  Having to sacrifice your daughter to get a prevailing wind: irritating your wife in the process, and thereby precipitating your own eventual murder. 

            Pace Swinburne, Christianity didn’t invent asceticism.  Paganism could be quite as grimly ascetic as anything Christian.  Indeed, the austere, world-hating, body-despising strain within Christianity has arguably been the result of importing the ideas of pagan Gnosticism, and in direct contradiction to the opening of Genesis. 

 

But I have no wish to misrepresent Anthony Shaffer.  Shaffer is not Swinburne, and the negative sides of pagan religion are also shown.  One would hesitate to accept a prescription from that particular island pharmacy.  As they chant, the islanders have the characteristics of the brainwashed members of a cult.  If Howie’s Christianity is nonsense, then this sun worship must be nonsense on stilts. 

The tormenting of the black beetle in the desk is unpleasant.  Howie’s, “Then why in God’s name do you do it?” is probably the best and most unanswerable thing he says; and, appropriately, he receives no answer.

 The child who starts by pulling the wings off flies usually moves on to more horrible things.  So do the islanders.  And as one who cannot bear even simulated cruelty to animals, the sounds of animal distress as the flames take hold is, for me, far and away the most upsetting aspect of the film.

Quite possibly, we are back in the territory of  Peter Shaffer’s two empires.  The Pagans and the Christians are both in the wrong.  That, certainly, is a conclusion that would delight Richard Dawkins.  Although not Dan Brown.

                   

If viewers have come away from the film with distorted ideas about paganism, that is probably their fault rather than the fault of Anthony Shaffer.  Miss Rose, after all, only says to her charges about the Maypole that, “In religions such as ours it is the image of the penis.”  But I have known admirers of the film who have been convinced by this scene – I was myself, at the time – that every maypole is a phallic symbol.

Yet the actual origins of the maypole remain obscure.  It may be the penis of the god Freyr, but it may simply be the world ash tree, Yggdrasill.  Probably it’s both: either is a legitimate symbol of renewal.   But it does not mean that young people dancing round a maypole are necessarily re-enacting an orgy at one remove.  They may simply be celebrating a tree bursting into leaf as a symbol of the spring. 

I have known other viewers convinced of the reality of wicker men in our pagan past.  In fact, the only certain reference is in Julius Caesar’s De Bello Gallico.  Caesar writes of the Gauls burning criminals in man-shaped wicker cages as offerings to their gods, and speculates on what might happen if the Gauls were to run short of criminals.  (Presumably, given the Gauls, such an eventuality would have been unlikely).  But there is no reference that I know of to this being part of British pagan practice. 

The songs, likewise, have been cited by viewers I have spoken to as a living heritage out of the pagan past.  In fact, Sumer is Icumen in is a medieval Christian poem, and Barley Rigs is by Robbie Burns.  The others, haunting as they are – and seeming to echo half-remembered tunes and words – were actually composed especially for the film.  (But see qualification of this point in Readers' Comments.)

            That the apparent pagan realities are not what they seem is manifested most clearly in Britt Ekland’s nude dance.  It comes as a disappointment to learn that the swaying rear view is not of Britt Ekland at all, but of a body double; although who the rear in question belonged to, and why Britt Ekland refused to be filmed below the waist, are issues that remain unclear. 

 

I saw a marvellous poster once entitled ‘The Dragon and George’:  the reptile snoozing against a tree, and beside him tiny skeletons of  man and  horse. The great extra touch was the bottle of HP sauce.

            The Wicker Man is in a similar debunking vein.  It is like the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal, in which the Priests of Baal win.

            Actually, we don’t know whether the modern priests win or not: we merely have a cryptic sunset.

            More than with most films, one wonders what happens next.  But perhaps it’s best not to know.  If there were a sequel depicting a fantastic harvest on Summerisle, then no policeman capable of resisting a beautiful naked blonde dancing seductively in the next room would be safe from farmers.

            Would the Priests win, though, because they were in the right; or simply because they were up against a pretty duff Elijah?  For whether or not wicker men ever existed, Howie is unquestionably a man of straw.  Think how easily Lord Summerisle wins the argument about parthenogenesis. 

            If I am left with a sense of dissatisfaction about the film, it must be the sort of disappointment you would get if you were represented in court by an inadequate lawyer, or were in the audience for a debate in which the main speaker on your side were not up to the job. 

            For if there is a voice missing from The Wicker Man, then it is the voice of the one who gave Christianity its name.  The one who called himself the good shepherd, and who claimed authority over nature; who spoke of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field; and who, by his death, brought  a tradition of animal sacrifice to an end.