THE WICKER MAN: A MISOGYNIST ROMP (WARNING: POST CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Oh the irony -- I am just getting back on track as a feminist blogger (Typepad finally reactivated my account today after I updated my credit card information a week ago) when my husband decides to rent The Wicker Man, starring Nicholas Cage and Ellen Burstyn. This movie was so absurd and poorly done that its rampant misogyny is actually unintentionally funny.  (SPOILER ALERT:  THE REST OF THIS POST GIVES AWAYS THE ENTIRE PLOT)

Cage, a noble self-sacrificing cop, runs to the rescue of Willow, his ex-fiancee, who has gone to live in a pagan matriarchy where the women run things and the men serve only as mute laborers. 

It doesn't take long for the movie to start taking swipes at both feminism and femininity in general.  Cage walks in on an all-girl classroom in time to see the teacher ask the students to identify the male-essence in its purest form.  "Phal-lic Sym-bol! Phal-lic Sym-bol!" chant the girls in unison.  Later, Cage finds himself in the laboratory of the island's woman doctor-- chock full of jars containing highly developed dead fetuses, natch.  And, of course, it turns out that the little girl for whom he is searching is actually his child, a fact that his ex-fiancee, Willow, had concealed from him for years -- because women do that, you know, i.e. use our greater natural control over human reproduction to keep men out of the loop.

What was striking to me was Cage's "masculine" instinct for protecting women-and-children as contrasted with the portrayal of the women-and-children as all, without exception,  ungrateful bitches who use his protective instinct against him -- even the little girls.  In the very first scene, before Cage travels to the matriarchal island, Cage picks up a doll on the highway after it has flown out of a car window.  He pulls the car over and hands the doll to the little girl sitting in the back seat.  But the little bitch just looks at him stonily and hurls the doll back onto the road.  Notwithstanding her ingratitude, Cate risks his life to try to save her moments later when a truck smashes into the car causing it to go up in flames. This incident is utterly irrelevant to the rest of the movie except, I guess, to demonstrate Cage's masculine nobility and the eee-vil inherent in the female half of the species.

Cage's courage and self-sacrifice are more than matched by the cruelty and deviousness of the women he encounters on the island.  The little girls in the schoolroom lie to him outright.  They also confine a bird inside a desk "to see how long he can stand it."  But, despite being met with a universal lack of cooperation in his quest for his daughter, Cage doggedly continues the search, suspecting that his daughter is intended as a human sacrifice for an upcoming harvest festival.

At the denoument, however, it turns out that the ex-fiancee has cruelly tricked Cage yet again.  The daughter is not to be the human sacrifice.  The "missing daughter" was an elaborate ruse to lure Cage to the island so that he can be the human sacrifice.  And he is. He is surrounded by murderous bitches, who break his knees and put a cage of bees over his head, before having his own little girl light him on fire as the women scream, "KILL THE DRONE! KILL THE DRONE!"

Again, despite betraying a pretty foul view of powerful women and women in general, the movie is so campy that it's actually kind of fun to watch if you can make it to the very end (it drags a lot, due to poor pacing and pointless flashbacks to the irrelevant opening car scene).  The commenters at the Internet Movie Database (linked at the beginning of this post) have a fine ol' time mocking Cage whose character, at the climax of the flick, impotently screams, "YOU BITCHES!!! YOU BITCHES!!!!"  They also got a kick out of the fact that Cage couldn't even keep up with the little girl as she runs ahead of him, luring him to the place where he is to be surrounded by a mob and killed.

I vaguely remember some bad TV dramas from the '70s involving evil man-hating matriarchies, in which the noble men always outwit or overpower the evil women.  One consolation of "The Wicker Man," I suppose is that the women, while murderously cruel, are not incompetent. None of Cage's masculine weapons are of any use in the face of the women of the island -- not his police badge, not his bravado, not his fists (he beats up Leelee Sobieski and a couple of other women too), and not his technology. I can see why a number of highly respected actresses, like Ellen Burstyn, were drawn to the opportunity to play women who are both powerful and successful.  Alas, the movie portrays female power as wholly evil, but far from being a successful anti-feminist screed, it is more effective as a window into the worst fears of your typical misogynist. 

Here are some other reviews:

The Village Voice: Old Familiar Misogyny Poisons Neil LaBute's Cult-Thriller Remake

Wicker Man does to Women what William Hung Does to Singing

Comments

[norbizness]

Well, we are talking Neil LaBute here. Watch the original: it's got Christopher Lee AND The Equalizer, Edward Woodward!

[Alarming Female]

My first thought was "sounds like a bunch of "Bad Seeds," but then I went to IMDb and my second thought was "Ellen Burstyn sure has some stand-up titties; Pagan bullet bra or boob job?"

A review posted on the site serves as apologia,

I do have to warn you that if you are not a Nicholas Cage fan, this will not be a role to win you over- there are parts where it is painful to watch him. Everything else is relatively flawless though- if you let yourself get into the movie, you honestly feel as if you are on an isolated island where the "old ways" are still very relevant to society, something that even the original couldn't seem to do if you looked closely enough. The story is definitely fleshed out a bit, and if you're open to a new take on the story I think you'll have a great movie-going experience. I think that the important thing to remember here is that it's a movie- a brief distraction from real life whose purpose is to entertain- NOT a commentary on paganism.

(emphasis mine)

Which "old ways" is this guy remembering? The witches at Salem weren't REAL, numbnuts.

Makes me almost want to see it. But not.

[Comrade Kevin]

The original, which is all I am familiar with, paints women in a picture of temptress and very much in control of the situation, though no less beholden to the evil desires of the man behind the controls.

It's one of my favorite cult movies, though you could formulate an entire post about how wrong it is to rejoice in the fact that a man of God who sincerely believes in his faith gets burned in the end.

It's the inquisition turned inside out.

[Dean]

I have long loved the original. My love for the first version has so far kept me from seeing the second.

I'd be very interested in your take on the earlier film. In it, I believe, the protaganist is also a policeman, but the villagers are a mix of men and women led by a spooky character played by Christopher Lee.

[Richard]

Stereotypes develop after long periods of time and for a reason. They are not always fair or accurate, but the people who are the object of the stereotype are wise to note it, and examine it for any kernels of truth. I think the way you saw extreme feminism exaggeratingly portrayed in the movie (I haven't seen it) is blow back from the way extreme feminism is practiced in real life. You see the same with groups like PETA. I'm all for treating animals humanely, for instance, but when PETA breaks into a Red Lobster to release the live lobsters from their tanks, they open themselves for a stereotype and chronic loss of credibility. In many ways, extreme feminism has done the same thing.

[The Happy Feminist]

. . . Or jackasses could refrain from perpetuating misleading and ignorant stereotypes about people they know nothing about.

I agree with you that stereotypes develop after long periods of time and for a reason. Often that reason is a desire to discredit a particular group, or hatred for a particular group. I would note that this particular film seemed to embody a hatred of women in general, as well as feminists.

. . . the people who are the object of the stereotype are wise to note it, and examine it for any kernels of truth. . .

Interesting. Would you also counsel black people to examine racist stereotypes for any kernals of truth?

[The Happy Feminist]

I have to say that I am dying to see the original "Wicker Man." I'd never heard of it before, but it sounds excellent.

[Barbara P]

Richard,

Let's say I wanted to take your point to heart - that there are "extreme feminists" out there doing outrageous things, making all feminists look bad (the way PETA makes animal rights groups look bad). What exactly do you think should be done about it?

"Extreme Feminism" is not an organized group, like "PETA" is. And there are no (silly or otherwise) demonstrations that I know of that are done in the name of "extreme feminism". I *have* seen a sort-of "man-hating" attitude (held by otherwise "traditional" women) that's vaguely thought of in popular parlance as "feminist", but I don't buy it. I certainly don't see feminists (extreme or otherwise) advocating what is essentially immoral behavior (as depicted in this movie).

With such a vague definition, (unless you call "extreme feminism" any feminist thought that anti-feminists don't like!) there is absolutely no way for a supposed "regular feminist" to distance herself from it. And what about the fact that some ideas may be unpopular simply because they're misunderstood, but not because they're outright immoral? If a feminist really believes something is right, but knows it's unpopular to say, should she be quiet because otherwise she might paint feminism as being "too extreme"? If early feminists had followed that advice, there's a good chance that women wouldn't have the vote now!

I'll agree with you that surely some feminists aren't very nice people (if only because any group has it's rotten apples), but I can't possibly accept that the stereotypes against feminists (especially as depicted in this movie) are anything approaching reasonable or fair. There's no "kernel of truth" that feminists, by virtue of their feminist beliefs, are nasty people, or that any flavor of feminism teaches ingratitude, deception and downright cruelty.

[Barbara P]

I read my comment again and noticed I wrote "otherwise" way too often in the 2nd paragraph. Thank goodness we're not being graded on these comments! :o)

[Annamal]

I don't know if you're into sci fi at all but if you are it would definitely be worth reading Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold who apparently got sick enough of the old "planet of women who really just need sex with a man to sort them out" trope that she wrote a book about a man coming from a planet of patriarchs where women are absolutely forbidden.

It's much better than you'd think (the guy's comical suprise that parenthood isn't recognised for the huge amount of work that it is was great).