{"id":4494,"date":"2012-07-20T16:49:04","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T22:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4494"},"modified":"2012-07-21T07:44:11","modified_gmt":"2012-07-21T13:44:11","slug":"the-wicker-tree-and-the-wicker-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4494","title":{"rendered":"“The Wicker Tree” and “The Wicker Man”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don’t count on me for breaking pop-culture news. That Pagan classic film The Wicker Man <\/a><\/em>was released in 1973, but I did not see it until the mid-1980s.<\/p>\n

I always say that I missed the 1980s in pop-culture terms. Part of that was due to graduate school and a general turn away from or just not caring so much about music, movies, etc. And catching up on the 1970s, evidently.<\/p>\n

I did finally see\u00a0The Wicker Tree<\/a>, which sort of re-uses the first movie’s plot. (Here is an article connecting them published before the newer film’s release: “The Wicker Tree: The Return of the Pagan World<\/a>.”)<\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks to Netflix, I am only two years behind instead of ten years or more.<\/p>\n

As Star Foster noted in one of her blog posts about the newer wicker flick<\/a>, in comparison with The Wicker Man, <\/em>“Robin Hardy played a brilliantly cruel joke on us by giving us more sympathetic victims and utterly vicious Pagans.”<\/p>\n

I see a huge difference between the two, but I don’t know if it is not due merely to my being more prepared for the second film. When I saw The Wicker Ma<\/em>n, I honestly did not know where it was going. Sgt. Howie’s search for the missing girl was sincere, and there was no cinematic villain in sight.<\/p>\n

<\/em>In The Wicker Tree<\/em>, Sir Lachlann and his lady were more obviously sinister and villainous, while the young Texas evangelical Christians were of course portrayed as innocent and clueless. It’s probably in the secret Filmmakers Code somewhere: “All missionaries are either evil or deluded.” (Before the 1960s, missionaries or wannabe missionaries might be heroic,<\/a> but not since then.)<\/p>\n

You have to be clueless yourself if you cannot see where it is going from the young couple’s arrival in Scotland. The plot hits you in the face with the subtlety of a fresh-caught herring.<\/p>\n

Pagans liked The Wicker Man<\/em> because many could imagine themselves in a place like Summerisle. Not so this time around.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don’t count on me for breaking pop-culture news. That Pagan classic film The Wicker Man was released in 1973, but I did not see it until the mid-1980s. I always say that I missed the 1980s in pop-culture terms. Part of that was due to graduate school and a general turn away from or just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-4494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1au","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9556,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9556","url_meta":{"origin":4494,"position":0},"title":"“A Completely Alien Society”: The Making of “The Wicker Man”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 30, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The Wicker Man, made in 1973 and starring Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle, Edward Woodward as Sergeant Howie of the West Highland Police, and Britt Ekland as Willow, the Aphrodite Pandemos of Summerisle, is remembered simultaneously as \"the best British horror film ever\" and one of the favorite movies of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":247,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=247","url_meta":{"origin":4494,"position":1},"title":"Another Pagan Classic","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I have been re-reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History, the leading entry in the literary genre of \"when Classics majors go bad.\" It was first published in 1992, and I did my part for her royalty payments by sending at least three hardcover copies as Christmas presents in 1993. Sales\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":602,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=602","url_meta":{"origin":4494,"position":2},"title":"The Shock of It All – 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 21, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier post here I did finish Christine Wicker's Not in Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America. To be honest, the subtitle should read, \"How magic is transforming Christine Wicker.\" The book maps closely to Susan Roberts' 1974 book Witches U.S.A.. The author, a middle-aged female\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2421,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2421","url_meta":{"origin":4494,"position":3},"title":"The Wicker Conspiracy","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone's favorite Pagan-themed movie of the 1970s turns up on a list of \"15 conspiracy movies that don't fall apart at the end.\" (Via Ann Althouse.)","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1911,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1911","url_meta":{"origin":4494,"position":4},"title":"The Horror! The Horror!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"At The Witching Hour, Peg surveys some lists of best Halloween films. For pagan-themed horror films, or those including witches, at any rate, you can't beat The Wicker Man, The Craft, Practical Magic (Griffin Dunne, 1998), The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973), Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), The Devil Rides Out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6163,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6163","url_meta":{"origin":4494,"position":5},"title":"Wicker Man, Wicker Masks","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 15, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"At The Bosky Man, Andy Letcher tells how playing a gig at the Ludlow Medieval Fair let him to meet an Irish band whose members perform wearing wicker masks, made by a 90-something-year-old Irish mask-maker who is the last of his kind. That's a pity because both invoke an odd,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animals\"","block_context":{"text":"animals","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-_CtWSYbQ3kQ\/UpMeipWWpkI\/AAAAAAAACKM\/p1w1eedfN7I\/s320\/Scary%2Bmask.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4494"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4500,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494\/revisions\/4500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}