Cultural Competence? Moi?

[featherynscale]

We watched The Wicker Man last night, the original one. As unlikely as it seems, I'd not seen it before. I'm guessing that this is a film that plays very differently depending on the cultural context the viewer has. About halfway through, I'm looking at triadruid, and saying "What kind of movie is this supposed to be?". He reads the box blurb to me; "The Citizen Kane of Horror Films," is what it says. I take a moment to consider what Citizen Kane would be like as a horror film. Then I realize he's saying that the movie we're watching is a horror film. I would not otherwise have realized this, mostly because it's full of folk-singing, and happy children skipping and dancing. Somebody did not study at the Edgar Allen Poe School of Single Effect, I'm thinking.

Anyway, who are we supposed to be sympathetic to in this film? Sgt. Howe does get killed at the end of the film, but he's also sort of an ass throughout. The Summerisle people get most of the film's attention, with all their little cultural oddities, and they seem like a pretty likeable bunch. But then, you know, human sacrifice (and particularly the sacrifice of someone who doesn't buy into their system), which is not fun times with the family. And, as triadruid points out, it's difficult to imagine Christopher Lee in a role where he's not the bad guy.

All in all, it was a little like watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show, except that RHPS is morally ambiguous and promotes the 'bad guy' over the 'good guys' on purpose, where this seems to stumble into it accidentally. Ah well, maybe it's just the 70s.

Comments

[malvito.livejournal.com]

Let me start by noting that I absolutley love this movie, and do consider it to be one of the finer horror flicks that I watch regularly.

The horror is difficult to define, because it is not Out-There, In-Your-Face horror. No slasher in a hockey mask, no monster jumping out of the pond. It is a horror that is a great deal more subtle, as it does not announce itself. It very much gives you a set of circumstances that follow very logically, but then lead to an event that catches you unprepared. (Other noteworthy examples of this would be the original THE STEPFORD WIVES or a John Frankenheimer film entitled SECONDS.) It is a horror that prefers to creep you out over trying to get you to scream.

I think the audience is supposed to be very ambiguous as to whom to root for. Sgt. Howie is the Christian, i.e. the conventional religion; in any other film, he would be the clear-cut Good Guy, but, as you have noted, he conducts himself badly throughout. To a group of people who are friendly and sweet and just pretty much trying to live their lives in a way that suits them (and in a way that looks awfully darned nice to the audience, what with the folk music and the sensuality) he is an inconsiderate, self-centered bully. Even (or, to some, especially) to the point of fashioning a cross for a grave that is not a Christian, as though he arrogantly assumes that, via this desecration, he is somehow saving the grave's occupant, whether said occupant would want it or not.

Of course, then you get to the end, where this group of people, for whom the audience has developed a great deal of sympathy, have placed Sgt Howie into the Wicker Man and have set it afire, and, as he slowly burns alive, sway merrily back and forth as they sing a jarringly atonal round of Sumer is acomen in, their calm, happy voices drowning out his terrified bellowing. His words become more and more apocalyptic (and, simultaneously, less and less heeded, if heard at all), and the thin line between sanity and madness pretty much burns down with the Wicker Man.

except that RHPS is morally ambiguous and promotes the 'bad guy' over the 'good guys' on purpose, where this seems to stumble into it accidentally.

Morally ambiguous? In spades. Stumble into it accidentally? Anything but.