Cult Classic
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Summary
Frederick Kerr joins us to talk about The Wickerman and his first time seeing it, and why he thinks it's one of the most underrated cult classics of all time. Also, we talk about the first time we saw it on VHS and why it's a cult classic.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Well, Frederick Kerr, welcome to the podcast. It's good to have you on. How are you?
00:00:06.880
Great. And Hannibal is with me. Welcome back, Hannibal.
00:00:11.920
An interesting name choice, a pseudonymous name choice for this podcast, I guess.
00:00:21.540
Frederick Kerr, you are a little bit older than Hannibal and myself.
00:00:27.400
So why don't you talk a little bit about the first time you saw The Wicker Man?
00:00:35.140
Did you have the chance of seeing it in a theater, or did you see it later on?
00:00:41.620
The film was released, at least in Britain, in 1973.
00:00:48.540
It was filmed, apparently, most of it was filmed in, actually, October 1972,
00:00:54.420
although it was supposed to be for May Day, the spring.
00:01:00.580
So you can read about the history of the making of the film.
00:01:21.420
And, of course, for example, I'm trying to remember when, for example,
00:01:26.960
the Dunwich Horror with Sandra Dee and, what was it, Dean Stockwell,
00:01:35.600
Well, that had a little larger release and was more talked about.
00:01:42.960
But, of course, pre-internet, you didn't have a way of communicating very well.
00:01:48.120
And so unless, among us who were young writers,
00:01:56.800
when it was still being published in Bloomington, Indiana,
00:01:59.960
if they didn't draw attention to something, it could be months, even years,
00:02:06.520
before you'd hear of some underground book or much less a movie.
00:02:14.300
I mean, because obviously this is the day before VHS.
00:02:19.920
So I didn't see the film until it came out on VHS.
00:02:32.040
Because by that time, people would have heard about it.
00:02:37.220
But not until there was some distribution would have even been mentioned in passing,
00:02:43.160
and not necessarily favorably even, just because of the nature of the film.
00:02:47.520
So when you first saw it on VHS, you know, late-'80s, early-'90s, something like that,
00:02:55.780
Because I'm just curious, I think, you know, when you first saw something or your first impressions,
00:03:02.720
Well, this was also, remember about in the early-'80s, there was Conan the Barbarian came out,
00:03:17.920
And so The Wicker Man, I think it was everybody's reaction was it was the first sort of pro-pagan film,
00:03:28.220
even though Conan and the Barbarian and, of course, Excalibur's about looking for the Holy Grail,
00:03:35.720
Oh, yeah, that is definitely a traditionalist movie.
00:03:42.940
In the-'80s, you had some of these, like, glimpses, even though they were all pulpy,
00:03:48.520
you had these kind of glimpses of right-wing, even traditionalist, archaeo-futurist films.
00:03:54.780
I remember when I was a kid watching Excalibur, I loved that film,
00:03:58.500
and I would, you know, go back to the sex scene parts with Sir Lancelot and Guinevere.
00:04:08.080
Interestingly, that's where, you know, The Wicker Man fits in a very interesting time for films.
00:04:14.740
You know, it's sort of a folk horror-type film from the late-'70s
00:04:18.920
that combines a lot of elements of the older counterculture,
00:04:24.180
but takes them in a, you know, weirdly traditionalist direction in a lot of ways.
00:04:30.760
Yeah, I mean, this is what I was thinking, because I, unlike you two,
00:04:34.300
I only saw this movie for the first time this year.
00:04:42.040
and I was like, oh, I've always heard of this movie,
00:04:44.280
and I've not seen this abomination, the 2006 version with Nicolas Cage,
00:04:53.040
where it just looks like the worst movie ever made.
00:04:56.320
But, so I hadn't seen it, but I had heard of it as a cult classic,
00:05:08.680
and this is why I ask you, like, when you first saw it,
00:05:11.040
is the film, you don't really know what it is when you're watching it.
00:05:18.380
And when you go in to, if you imagine going into the theater,
00:05:22.080
and maybe you've read, like, a one-line synopsis,
00:05:42.120
And then you go in, you wonder, am I watching a comedy?
00:05:48.780
where, you know, you have all of these sexually liberated townsfolk
00:05:55.120
So it's kind of like a post-60s pro-hippie film.
00:06:03.200
And then at the very end, you really do think that it's a comedy,
00:06:06.180
that it's, or it's, you know, a comedy of manners,
00:06:09.660
where there's this fool didn't understand what was really going on in the town.
00:06:13.500
And then when you finally see the appearance of the actual wicker man,
00:06:18.500
you're aware that you're watching something like a horror film,
00:06:26.560
of the first time you actually see the wicker man
00:06:29.540
and the screams of Sergeant Howie of Christ, Jesus Christ.
00:06:41.560
It definitely, like, can't really be categorized in any genre.
00:06:45.400
I mean, you have Christopher Lee, obviously a famous horror actor,
00:06:56.340
but it's also one that has, like, a lot of levels to it.
00:07:02.220
And it's one that you kind of, I don't know, it's like,
00:07:06.500
it has a lot of themes, but even those themes are fairly ambiguous
00:07:14.300
Yeah, again, go into the whole theme of the film.
00:07:18.440
It's, you know, as we were talking about a little earlier, I think,
00:07:23.120
it's a confrontation of Western modernity in its full force
00:07:28.060
and its very confident Protestant, you know, Christian rational face
00:07:33.860
with the sort of archaic soul at times of a lot of European men.
00:07:40.840
You know, I think of, you know, the philosopher Haman had this line
00:07:45.120
that he looks upon logical proofs the way a well-bred girl looks upon a love letter.
00:07:49.840
And, you know, you have to think that was the sort of the smiling faces
00:07:54.200
of the island's inhabitants to Sergeant Howie throughout the entire film.
00:08:01.520
And also, I was thinking about just, you know, who he is.
00:08:27.020
you know, you are a representative of the king.
00:08:35.500
And you can kind of see that in his last name, which is Howie.
00:08:51.020
He's also his name, which he reveals while he's being burned.
00:08:54.020
He says, take this, your servant, O God, kneel Howie.
00:09:08.880
You know, and I often wonder, in the last moments,
00:09:16.660
someone who is going to be executed by the Bolsheviks or something,
00:09:24.220
well, you know, have I been lied to all this time?
00:09:35.000
But so, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thing
00:09:38.240
because oftentimes the way we look at the world, you know,
00:09:44.180
from 2016 is we look at it as kind of like Christianity is this,
00:09:49.660
oh, it's this mythical, mystical, irrational thing
00:09:56.680
And it's just, you know, it's a residue of an ancient time and so on.
00:10:03.440
why it's like a movie for our movement is because it has the correct position.
00:10:10.240
And that is that Christianity is, it's two different things.
00:10:15.960
On the one hand, it's not a traditional, mystical religion.
00:10:22.860
particularly in the case of this Sergeant Howey figure,
00:10:29.080
It's important that he's Protestant and not a Catholic.
00:10:32.860
But he's lost touch with the real grounding of religion.
00:10:39.260
And he's even, might have even lost touch with things like sacrifice and so on.
00:10:44.140
And he, so he doesn't understand what religion really is.
00:10:47.260
It's this institutional, rational, you know, law-giving aspect of the state.
00:10:54.380
And he is, you know, a deductive reasoning detective.
00:11:09.660
That's the view of the German idealist of all stripes.
00:11:16.740
And so basically you have Christianity as a, as part, as part of the modern world,
00:11:29.600
and it's confronting like organic ancient wisdom.
00:11:33.100
You know, it's like these townsfolk are simpler,
00:11:40.460
And they're able to laugh at things, whereas he's, he's only able to cry.
00:11:45.420
Well, uh, your point is well taken because as you recall in the film,
00:11:50.460
when, when, uh, uh, Sergeant Howie is going through the, the village,
00:11:55.280
and he's interviewing the school teacher, interviewing the, the librarian,
00:12:00.700
and all he keeps reminding, even when he goes to the, to the green man, the pub, uh, he's reminding people,
00:12:09.580
well, these are the, the, these are the law, this is the law, this, and this is a,
00:12:14.960
and you are under Christian, a Christian, Christian law, and, and you're breaking it.
00:12:20.880
And this is, this is an outrage against, against the Christian institutions,
00:12:28.740
And yet, and yet there, whether, um, the, the school teacher is teaching the kids to, uh, not, you know,
00:12:36.480
not have hangups about nature and about, um, uh,
00:12:41.080
sex and fertility and, yeah, yeah, precisely, yeah.
00:12:46.400
Well, you know, I think it's worth, it's, it's worth teasing out a little bit here,
00:12:49.940
the difference between sort of the modern secular world, uh,
00:12:55.600
a sort of Protestant like Sergeant Howie confronts in the Britain of his day
00:13:00.180
versus this sort of, uh, lush and verdant paganism he stumbles into.
00:13:06.560
You know, I, I'm not, uh, I'm not, I, you know,
00:13:09.760
I don't know where to really take that completely, but, you know, it's, there,
00:13:13.440
there, there's the, there was the counterculture at the time, which was, you know,
00:13:17.620
they had talked a lot about open love, uh, free love and things like that,
00:13:21.740
but it never, it never touched in many ways to the, you know,
00:13:25.760
on the deeper sort of hierarchical consciousness of, of, of what actually embracing nature
00:13:32.340
and embracing, uh, the world sort of would be like, you know, there's.
00:13:36.960
The way I would view a lot of the hippie counterculture is probably different than the
00:13:43.840
way most right wingers do. And that is, I think, and we, like, we are, we all, we're men of the
00:13:50.300
right. We almost look at images of like Woodstock or whatever, and just be like, ah, goddamn hippie
00:13:56.880
commies, you know, we should, you know, throw them in prison. But I think to just have that
00:14:02.540
knee jerk reaction is to misunderstand them a little bit and to see that there were, there
00:14:08.920
was actually like a, to, to try to see them on their own terms and see like hippiedom or
00:14:14.960
the counterculture as to a degree as, as like a genuine attempt to get back to the real, to
00:14:22.240
some organic grounding for the social order. And it, it took terrible forms. I don't think,
00:14:28.600
you know, I don't think any of us think that polymorphous perversity or anything like that
00:14:33.940
is some, you know, positive thing, but this, this idea of not being, not having hangups
00:14:40.380
about sex, having, having a, like a proper understanding of love and death and, and the
00:14:46.240
joys of life and, and so on that they were, I think the, the hippies were kind of an understandable
00:14:52.920
and you could say perverted, kind of ironically perverted reaction, but it was actually something
00:14:58.880
genuine. It really was an attempt to reground society. And to that extent, I think there's
00:15:05.420
probably like some things that we can learn from them and, and some things that are, are,
00:15:11.320
are somewhat redeemable about them. I mean, it was the, the whole movement like went wrong.
00:15:16.580
It was connected with the left. It was connected with all sorts of craziness. It was connected
00:15:21.420
with Jewish intellectuals connected with, and the, you know, culture critique and so on,
00:15:26.100
but, but there actually was a kind of genuine organic quality to it. And, and so, um, I, yeah,
00:15:32.520
I mean, and that, that's where it's like, you kind of things kind of flip around where you,
00:15:37.040
you have this community that you could see as like a hippie commune, but at the, you know,
00:15:42.520
on, on one level and, but then on another level, it's like, it's the ultimate traditionalist
00:15:47.840
society. I mean, it's an absolute monarchy. Yeah, it is a benevolent monarchy where they
00:15:54.000
have a sense of lordship. They have a sense of high and low. They have the sense of the
00:15:57.340
perennial seasons. I think that's something that in, in like postmodern life that we've
00:16:03.140
totally lost. Well, yeah, what, what strikes me is it is really such a moral film and it's
00:16:11.620
a more highly moral community. It is a community of, of love, a community where even the Lord,
00:16:20.380
like he, the, you, you have a Lord who is above these people and station and wealth and so on,
00:16:25.760
but who actually still has a connection to his people. He loves his people and it's, and it's,
00:16:31.820
it's, it's, it's from his, his, his grandfather, uh, uh, doing that, that, uh, uh, uh, horticultural
00:16:41.300
research and, and re reestablishing and, and making this island bountiful. And, and throughout
00:16:48.260
the film, the generations respect each other and, and the scene in the school where they're passing
00:16:54.380
on, uh, the knowledge and the respect. Yeah. And it is, again, there's this like one
00:17:01.780
more layer of irony where, um, the reason why this island Sumerile became, uh, so bountiful
00:17:11.100
is because the, this Victorian gentleman, you know, used all of this new knowledge of
00:17:16.200
genetics and evolution and science. But he's described as a free thinker, you know?
00:17:19.960
Yeah, exactly. And he did that to actually restore something. So it's, again, it's this like
00:17:25.180
perennialism, uh, of something dying and being reborn and coming back and so on. I mean, it's
00:17:30.740
like, you know, there's this, what was that? Like there's that when they're around the
00:17:33.700
maypole, they're singing this song where it's like, um, you know, in the tree, there
00:17:37.700
is an egg and the egg, there's a bird and the birds, a feather and the feather becomes
00:17:41.400
a bed. And then there's a woman on the bed and a man on the, on the woman. And that has
00:17:45.280
a child. And then the child is a man and the child dies and he goes to a grave. And then
00:17:49.700
on the grave, there's a tree. And, and it's, it's just this, like the great chain of
00:17:53.480
being. Um, and you know, I, I, I do think that is something that we've just totally
00:17:59.020
lost in society where we can't really face death. Uh, you know, I, I, you know, there's
00:18:05.780
a bit of a digression, but I mean, it is kind of, if you look at like the, the, the degree
00:18:10.280
to which our, the contemporary world can't, can't, can't face death as unwilling to, you
00:18:15.120
see these kind of Silicon Valley technologists who want to live forever. And, you know, I
00:18:20.060
guess that they would, they could live in like a brain and a vat and they just be a
00:18:23.660
thinking, you know, organism that's kept, that's kept alive through electricity. And
00:18:28.500
maybe you could even digitize yourself. I mean, it's just this kind of just hyper
00:18:32.900
rationality. And then also like, if you look at so-called traditionalist in modern
00:18:37.560
American society, if we go back like 12 years to the Terry Schiavo affair, uh, where
00:18:43.000
it's like, we have a brain dead woman that we must keep her alive. We're pro-life
00:18:48.600
therefore, you know, someone who could never, never have any experience of the
00:18:52.520
world, never think again, Oh, we need to just keep pumping, pumping her lungs full
00:18:57.180
of oxygen. So she has the appearance of life. I mean, it's just, we, I think both
00:19:01.620
the, the, the left and the right, if you want to call them that have no concept of
00:19:06.440
death and rebirth and life that we're just being, you know, you know, as Heidegger
00:19:11.360
would say, you know, we have a sort of thrownness, but no being, so to speak.
00:19:18.600
Absolutely. Um, well, we should, you know, we should, we should talk about
00:19:22.940
Christopher Lee, uh, you know, the famed descendant of Charlemagne as Lord of the
00:19:28.980
Christopher Lee is related to everyone. You know, he's related to Ian Fleming
00:19:33.500
and, uh, and Charlemagne. That's a, that's an interesting, yeah. Well, yeah.
00:19:39.920
It comes from a legitimate noble family. Uh, and yeah, you know, he's slumming it as an
00:19:45.020
actor, but, uh, here he's sort of, you know, reviving, I guess, a little bit of
00:19:52.700
Yeah. I, it is funny because Christopher Lee, you just, you look at him, he, he does
00:19:57.020
seem noble. Uh, you know, even, even in his, even though he does have a strange look
00:20:03.080
to him, you know, he's not, he's not stereotypically handsome, but there is
00:20:07.640
something about him that seems noble, noble, but then also a little bit devilish
00:20:11.460
at the same time. Like he, he is an, an amazing figure, kind of like perfectly
00:20:15.720
cast. Uh, it's, it's hard to imagine anyone else. Um, but, uh, a heathen. Yeah.
00:20:22.720
But an enlightened one, we hope. Yes. I think one of the greatest lines at all of
00:20:28.680
cinema is that, what was it from, uh, Sergeant Howie is like, those women are
00:20:33.240
naked. He's like, well, you, you can't expect to jump through a flame with clothes
00:20:37.520
on. That would be dangerous. Uh, well, I mean, yeah, no, we should, we should talk
00:20:44.680
more about that. We should talk about the futile, futile angle of the island, uh,
00:20:49.060
especially in contrast to the, to the Britain that Howie is coming from, which
00:20:53.780
is sort of, you know, the decaying Britain of the seventies, pre-Thatcherite
00:20:57.740
Britain, uh, you know, the sad socialist isle in contrast to the, to the, to the
00:21:03.140
merry absolute monarchy of, uh, Summer Isle. I, I, I think Sergeant Howie
00:21:08.920
definitely is a representation of, of that, like, sad Britain of, of the
00:21:13.760
1970s. Um, yes. Uh, just obsessed with law, totally joyless. Uh, yeah. Um, it's
00:21:24.600
like, where would you rather live? Summer's Isle or, uh, or, uh, or, you know,
00:21:28.840
Sergeant Howie's. Yeah. And, you know, there's also the need, uh, there's, you
00:21:32.680
know, getting back to, uh, getting back to Lord Summer Isle's
00:21:36.560
grandfather, you know, he sort of recognized that people don't live by
00:21:40.580
production alone, but they, they need myths to, you know, to live by, to,
00:21:45.460
to animate themselves. They need more than mere, you know, mere bread alone. Um,
00:21:51.060
which is what you get with these people, that this is a real community. You
00:21:55.500
know, it's not just based on sort of selling their apples. Uh, you know, they,
00:22:00.080
they, they didn't sort of just, you know, they might've bought into the,
00:22:03.500
uh, restitution of the old gods at first because it was seemed to be good
00:22:08.400
for crops. But now you, you realize that there's a, there, there's a big
00:22:13.260
difference between the community of Summer Isle and, uh, sort of the
00:22:17.300
communities around us today, which are animated by, you know, mere profit or
00:22:21.840
just pleasure seeking without a higher purpose.
00:22:25.320
Oh yeah. And people in the suburbs who just, uh, they, they know members of
00:22:29.960
their own household, but none of their neighbors. And they just kind of go watch
00:22:33.480
TV in their household. Uh, yeah, it's total atomization. Whereas the, the people
00:22:38.360
of Summer Isle, like they work together, they're kind of all in on it. Uh, they have
00:22:43.200
this tradition that everyone, you know, takes literally participates in. Um, I mean,
00:22:48.740
yeah, I mean, it is, um, that's how humans are meant to live.
00:22:52.260
And, and they're not diverse. They, they, they don't, they don't, they don't, they
00:22:57.740
don't, they don't have, have, you know, Somalis brought in, uh, uh, transplanted
00:23:05.520
there. No one's wearing a burka. Uh, and, and no one's suggesting that it would be a
00:23:14.880
No one's suggesting, you know, that they can make a few extra bucks by, uh, by
00:23:19.040
getting in a few Somali immigrants to pick the apples instead of villagers.
00:23:23.080
Yeah. Uh, they, they are a community in a way that, that we don't ever know. Um,
00:23:29.060
you know, another theme that, that is interesting is this kind of like dual face
00:23:34.740
of Christianity, uh, that, you know, and I think this is another, this is another way
00:23:40.460
where these themes are ambiguous and, and kind of like, once you, once you think,
00:23:45.700
you know, the movie, you could always flip things around is that, um, Sergeant
00:23:50.540
Howie, you know, he, he views Christianity as this, as effectively like a modern
00:23:57.040
rational system. Uh, but he, he certainly does take part in, in its rituals, but he
00:24:02.380
doesn't seem to ever understand them. And so, you know, you have all of these
00:24:06.820
situations where, uh, Lord Summerisle is, is kind of challenging him to be a true
00:24:12.600
Christian. Um, you know, it's like when, when women are, are jumping through the
00:24:17.240
flames, this is a fertility ritual. This, this is immaculate conception. And, uh,
00:24:23.140
and, and Summerisle reminds him, he's like, look, you know, your, your God was, uh,
00:24:28.340
you know, impregnated by a ghost. That's right. Yeah. You know, you believe in this.
00:24:32.960
And in terms of sacrifice, I mean, what, what is Christianity without the central
00:24:37.540
notion of sacrifice? Like you have to pay something. Yeah. And that basically it's
00:24:42.260
the biggest sacrifice of all. You sacrifice an actual God. I mean, that, I mean,
00:24:46.340
again, the, the fact that you, the, the, the symbol of Christianity is a crucifix
00:24:50.820
just cannot be underestimated. It's, it's not a hammer or a raven. It is a defiance
00:24:57.680
to the world. Or a moon. Uh, yeah, it, it is a, it is a, it sacrifices at the heart of it
00:25:03.420
is such an indispensable notion. I mean, um, yeah, that, that orthodox slogan, you
00:25:08.500
know, death to the world, you know, the first element you get of Sergeant Howie's
00:25:13.680
sort of defiance, you know, is when he, he knocks aside, um, a lot of the stuff on
00:25:19.160
that grave and, you know, leaves a cross there. You know, it's, he's, he's, he's
00:25:24.820
literally, actually, he's literally, uh, defying, uh, you know, defying, uh, death
00:25:29.880
there in a way. It's the sort of first intimation of his sort of primordial
00:25:36.520
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and, and just to go back to even the, the, the theme of
00:25:41.700
death that, you know, it's, he's having this, uh, conversation with a school
00:25:45.040
teacher who, what, what is that actress's name? She was actually married to Sean
00:25:48.340
Connery. Uh, I'm forgetting. She's a very attractive woman, very handsome woman,
00:25:53.960
as they say. Uh, but, uh, she. Oh, it's Diane. Cilento. That was Cilento. She was
00:26:02.100
Miss Rose. And then Ingrid Pitt was, was the attractive librarian. Remember, he, he
00:26:08.620
busts into her when she's in a, in her bathtub. So we get to see another view of, of
00:26:14.460
her. She was big in, in hammer horror films. It's female vampires. She played
00:26:21.300
Elizabeth Bathory. Yeah. Interesting. There are a lot of these connections. And
00:26:25.680
then you have, you know, uh, Christopher Lee and, uh, Brett Eklund were both in the
00:26:29.960
man with a golden gun. So you have all these, there's a small acting pool, I
00:26:33.840
guess, uh, kind of connection. The man with the golden gun came out the year after
00:26:38.940
this. It probably must've just started filming right after they, uh, uh, they
00:26:43.000
finished up, uh, it was a smaller place then. Yeah, it was just the world was a
00:26:47.380
smaller place. Um, but, but, but there, there are all these other situations
00:26:51.620
where, you know, it's like, uh, the, uh, Sergeant Howie tells, uh, Summer Isle,
00:26:56.500
it's like, you're sacrificing me and for nothing. And he says, what do you mean?
00:26:59.380
You know, I'm paraphrasing, but he said, what do you mean for nothing? Like I'm
00:27:02.700
giving you the greatest achievement of Christianity. You are becoming a martyr.
00:27:06.420
Yeah. And, you know, and, and it's, it's all of these, it's all of these ways that,
00:27:11.880
that Howie, and I would say most modern Christians have just totally lost
00:27:16.760
touch with the real essence of their religion. And I mean, that, and again,
00:27:21.840
that's the dual aspect of Christianity. It's a, Christianity is an anti-religion
00:27:26.220
at some, at some point. I mean, it was a, a radically, the, the, the Christianity
00:27:30.860
that followed Paul, a Christianity for the, the, this Jewish, uh, Jesus religion
00:27:37.880
for the Gentiles, that is for everyone where, you know, Greek, there is no man,
00:27:42.920
there is no woman, there's no Greek, there's no Jew, we're all one in Christ.
00:27:45.780
This new radical new notion was, it was really kind of like an anti-religion because
00:27:50.720
you're, you're, you're separate, you're ripping out religion from a grounding in
00:27:56.740
Well, you know, it's, it's, it's like they say, it's not a religion, it's relationship.
00:28:03.480
Yes. I remember when I was in Texas in a small town, which is a very nice town of
00:28:08.480
Fredericksburg where they no longer speak German. They supposedly, when you would be
00:28:12.500
there, they, they were just speaking German and, you know, the, a coffee shop or a gas
00:28:16.920
station. But anyway, I remember seeing these extra large t-shirts that said,
00:28:21.360
Jesus died for me. I was thinking, geez, what a, what a waste.
00:28:28.760
You know, like this, yeah, this personal religion, that is one, definitely the personal
00:28:33.600
religion of the, of the last 25 years. It's definitely one way that Christianity has,
00:28:38.620
has evolved. But, but it's, it's an anti-religion at some point. But on the other
00:28:43.420
hand, you can't get away from the, from like the deeper perennial traditional
00:28:48.680
aspects of Christianity. I mean, it is, it is a religion about ritual sacrifice and
00:28:54.640
Yeah. And again, you know, it, I don't think this movie would have worked, you know,
00:28:59.380
with Sergeant Howie being a Catholic, for instance, or, you know, or even Orthodox.
00:29:04.100
He is a Protestant in the sense, he has shorn himself of everything but the Bible,
00:29:13.640
Right. Exactly. You know, it's, you know, lacking in some of those other elements.
00:29:19.520
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's Howie. I mean, I, again, I, this might've been an
00:29:23.100
unconscious thing, but I, I, I think it, it might've been quite conscious. It's Howie.
00:29:27.660
It's, it's about the how. It's about the mechanism and the reason. It's not about
00:29:31.880
the, the what or the, or the, the, the whence or the, you know, the why and all,
00:29:37.200
all these like the grounding of something. But yeah, I mean, that, that is like the,
00:29:43.380
the, the irony of it. And, and I don't know. I mean, I think if, if Christianity is
00:29:48.200
going to survive in the 21st century, it probably will survive in, in, in a primitive
00:29:55.380
form that I think most, most Westerners would, would find embarrassing. I think it would
00:30:00.920
probably survive in this, in this kind of reduced, uh, primal emotional form that you
00:30:08.300
see, you know, it's in some places in America, you definitely see in Africa, uh, and so on.
00:30:14.680
Um, I, I think the kind of, you know, the, the, the high church Christianity, when it's,
00:30:19.140
when all it is, is about law and reason and order or something. Well, why don't you just
00:30:24.700
become a liberal? Yeah. Well, you know, cut out the middleman.
00:30:27.260
You know, it's an interesting question. I've, uh, I've talked to this, uh, with some
00:30:31.560
Christian traditionalists before. And, you know, the question becomes, you know, that
00:30:36.140
with the growth of, of Christianity in places like Africa and, uh, Asia, uh, and if you take
00:30:42.320
Christianity seriously, uh, you know, and you're convinced of its final victory. However, your,
00:30:49.880
your sort of civilizational status or your racist status doesn't really matter ultimately because,
00:30:56.700
you know, what we'll end up winning will be the spirit of all of man united, uh, united
00:31:04.360
in Christ at the end of time. So civilization and races can rise, fall and be destroyed.
00:31:11.220
But if you, if you care deeply about the West, about, you know, European-ness, uh, you know,
00:31:19.040
how do you go about preserving that in the face of all this at the same time?
00:31:22.320
Well, Christians are looking forward to the, to the end of, of this, of this earth, this
00:31:28.920
world. If they, uh, they're looking forward to it. So they don't, so, so they don't care
00:31:35.920
about, you know, uh, if they're, if they're Christians, well, we don't care if they're, if,
00:31:43.100
if all of Africa moves, moves to Western Europe or, or, uh, the Western hemisphere, if, if they're
00:31:52.340
Christians, all the better, but they're looking forward to this. Uh, so it's, uh, you can even
00:32:00.020
see this in, in cucks. And I don't, you know, I, I, you know, I, I, it's, it's interesting
00:32:06.100
because in someone like Eric Erickson, where they'll, they'll talk about these things,
00:32:10.700
like, you know, uh, if, you know, I don't want to support Donald Trump precisely because
00:32:17.820
he doesn't follow the, he doesn't follow the law. He doesn't truly believe in Christ as
00:32:22.420
I see it. And, you know, America doesn't matter to them at some level. Um, whereas, you know,
00:32:28.960
the, the real, there is something pagan to nationalism in the sense of being connected
00:32:34.700
to the soil, being connected to the people, being connected to history and a tradition
00:32:39.920
and this idea that you, you just, you defend this because it's yours. Well, I mean, we have
00:32:45.200
it's real and it's, it's not some supernatural thing. It's, it's a very, uh, people are real
00:32:51.860
nations are real. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have to remember, you know, one of the earliest
00:32:58.360
conflicts with the, uh, Christian church in the Roman state was whether or not a Christian,
00:33:04.040
you know, could just, uh, pay the sort of obligatory, um, you know, oblige to the, to
00:33:10.840
the state gods, which, you know, to, uh, to a pagan, it's just, it's, you know, sort of
00:33:16.740
a wave of the hand. Um, but to a Christian, you know, it requires a, uh, an acceptance of
00:33:22.420
something, um, of this world, which they cannot do to get back to the film. You know, maybe
00:33:27.500
we should talk a little bit about the music throughout the movie, which is just, uh, sort
00:33:32.240
of haunting in its own way. Cause this is another thing, the, uh, cause I was saying that the
00:33:37.440
film can't be categorized as genres because in another level, it's a musical. Yeah. It
00:33:43.300
has these, you know, these performances like in the, you know, in the, in the pub, uh, in
00:33:49.020
the green man in, uh, that, that where you have, you know, actor singing, it really feels
00:33:54.500
like a musical. I mean, the music is, is, you know, all throughout this movie. Um, and,
00:34:00.620
and it is like in the, in the music that you have these little bits of wisdom, like what
00:34:04.120
I was talking about, like when they were singing around the maypole, just this, this kind of,
00:34:07.540
you know, this notion of, uh, the great chain of being and rebirth and death and, and, and
00:34:12.740
so on. Um, well, the, the, when they're singing the innkeeper's daughter. Yes.
00:34:18.780
Even that I think is, is a, it's a good, it's a good song because it lacks the hangups about
00:34:27.260
sex. Like it's not, it's not about being, it's not about being totally debauched. I mean,
00:34:33.740
that's, that's in a way like the, the, the, just a photographic negative of puritanism is
00:34:39.420
to be, you know, some just polymorphous perverse, you know, lunatic who has sex with everything
00:34:45.980
and, you know, masturbates and blah, like that, that's this kind of, that's the kind
00:34:51.100
of like reverse side of puritan Christianity, which is being totally debased. Um, and, uh,
00:34:58.740
you know, and, and you can kind of, you can see this certainly, particularly in the old
00:35:02.960
Testament, there does seem to be something about this Semitic mind that, uh, imagines, uh,
00:35:09.160
a kind of sexuality that I, I think for most, uh, uh, for, for, for Europeans,
00:35:15.980
it's just totally alien and, and, and utterly, uh, disgusting and repulsive. But yeah, uh,
00:35:22.900
anyway, um, it is the innkeeper's daughter. I mean, it's, it's like, look, you know, maybe
00:35:29.320
the innkeeper's daughter isn't the most admirable person, but in every town there's an innkeeper's
00:35:35.300
daughter and, you know, she serves a certain purpose and she is in her way, a kind of goddess.
00:35:41.720
She's like a fertility goddess of sorts. And even, even the innkeeper's daughter should
00:35:48.060
be respected and, and honored in her, in her way. And I, you know, I, and I think it's
00:35:53.920
important just not to be hung up on, hung up on demanding that everyone be chased and
00:36:00.200
so on. Obviously paganism has a, a very strong place for, uh, heathen paganism is very strong
00:36:06.340
place for the family, for, uh, the social order and hierarchy and love and so on. Um,
00:36:13.140
but you know, we're human beings. I mean, you know, it's, it's like everyone has to go visit
00:36:20.200
the innkeeper's daughter once in a while, you know, remember, you know, the community has
00:36:24.100
to reproduce itself. And, you know, as, as Dr. Kerr was pointing out earlier, you know,
00:36:29.160
this is a homogenous community and within, you know, within a, within a group of your
00:36:34.720
own, you, you should be okay with, you know, uh, bring, you know, bringing on a legacy.
00:36:41.200
It's the way in which you have your own immortality in some sort of way.
00:36:46.000
Right. That, that's why like, you know, um, Rowan Morrison isn't dead. You know, she's,
00:36:52.240
she's a hair, she's in the trees, she's in the wind, you know, kind of thing. And, and
00:36:57.600
that, that might be poetic or you could say euphemistic, but it actually is, is like a
00:37:01.940
proper way of seeing life is that a tree is growing on your grave. Uh, but, uh, yeah,
00:37:11.260
I mean, like obviously sex is part of culture. I mean, it's, it's interesting that Sergeant
00:37:14.880
Howie is a virgin, um, you know, in his, I mean, the actor looks to be in his, well into
00:37:21.120
his forties. Um, I don't know if the character is supposed to be a little bit younger than that.
00:37:25.440
Well, even, even the opening scene is his, uh, where he's holding hands with his, with
00:37:31.220
his fiance and their communion. She's an, she's an older female, older looking female. She's
00:37:40.520
No, no. And you have to make issue. I mean, the world must be people. You, you, you can't
00:37:49.620
Right. Well, not only, especially for us at this late era of our people, we need
00:37:54.620
to, uh, you know, we, we, we need to, we need to, we need to people our continents.
00:38:00.760
Yeah, exactly. And, um, you know, we, we have a, uh, there is kind of like even a certain
00:38:06.180
kind of Puritanism amongst modern people where it's, uh, it's not pure sexual Puritanism
00:38:13.680
because obviously there's, we live in a hookup culture and so on. Uh, at this, it, but it
00:38:18.120
might as well be Puritanism because, but it's, yeah, it's a barren culture. It's, it's a
00:38:25.280
Yeah. It's basically people hooking up, but using condoms, uh, or, or sometimes some kind
00:38:31.220
of prophylactic, prophylactic and, and not making issue. And so you have, again, if you
00:38:36.840
ever go to New York city and you meet all these cute girls living in Williamsburg or
00:38:41.740
wherever, uh, you know, they, they're, they're, they're smart. They're often beautiful. Uh,
00:38:48.940
they're also, uh, 37 years old and they've never had a kid.
00:38:52.260
In that sense, our, our, our society today is profoundly aerotic, you know, erotic coming
00:38:58.760
from the original Greek for wholeness. Uh, we, we, we lack all, you know, we, we, we're
00:39:05.920
just barren. We're a void. We're aerotic in a lot of ways.
00:39:08.960
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's like the, the flip side of Puritanism is
00:39:14.780
not the, the green eroticism of, of paganism. The flip side of Puritanism is, is, is
00:39:21.520
perversity and debaseness where you're, you know, you're, you know, what is the, what
00:39:26.420
is the movie that comes out on, on, uh, Valentine's day this upcoming year? You
00:39:31.160
know, shades of, what is it? 15 shades of gray. Yeah. Like even darker, you know? So
00:39:36.920
it's all about totally non procreative, totally non organic and real, you know, S and M and
00:39:44.660
masturbation and just weird, you know, psychologically disturbed sex acts. Uh, it's, it's the kind
00:39:53.220
of sex that only a Puritan could love. Uh, you know, and again, you don't, you know, I, God,
00:40:00.500
sorry. I'm, I'm really, this is, this is meant to be a Halloween podcast, but it's become a
00:40:05.160
anti-Christian podcast, but it's like, there, there are many Christian ministers who are not
00:40:11.240
like this. Jerry Falwell, from what I've heard has, I've never heard major accusations of sexual
00:40:17.780
infidelity or impropriety, uh, and so on, as well as with his son, Jerry Falwell Jr., who
00:40:23.520
is supporting Trump, you know, uh, God be with him. Uh, however, are we really surprised
00:40:30.260
when we learn that this Puritanical minister was, you know, renting boys on some weird website
00:40:38.860
and doing meth? Were we really surprised? Are we really surprised when this news comes
00:40:44.000
out? It seems to be only a matter of time. And again, it's an expression of a, of a malformed
00:40:50.700
sexuality. It's not an expression of a, of a healthy flourishing sexuality like we see
00:40:57.680
in Summer's Isle. Right, right. Well, you know, I guess if we can, if we can get a little
00:41:03.880
bit to the, uh, to the, to the horror nature of, of the film, which really comes there at
00:41:08.820
the end, uh, you know, as, as the villagers are singing, you know, Summer is a coming in that,
00:41:13.960
that great old folk song. We're, you know, not just, uh, Sergeant Howie, but the viewer
00:41:21.740
is really confronted with, uh, with life and death in a way that's very different than the way they
00:41:29.780
would go about seeing it, you know, in the modern world. Uh, you're, you're all of a sudden seeing
00:41:34.920
the giant wicker man, you're seeing it burn and you're like, oh my God, this is happening.
00:41:38.820
You know, you're not expecting it throughout this entire film. And then, well, even though,
00:41:43.540
even though we know the name of the film from the outset, we don't know what the wicker man is
00:41:49.440
and we see it, the view, the viewer sees it at the same moment that Sergeant Howie does.
00:41:55.120
Yes. It's very effective. It absolutely is. That shot of him. And actually not only is that,
00:42:02.160
there's another level to it. We see the wicker man, the very moment that the act were the actor,
00:42:07.180
Edward Woodward's season. Yeah. Uh, because there's actually one, one of these, uh, little
00:42:11.820
tidbits that I was, I was, I discovered actually after Googling the wicker man is that he actually
00:42:17.540
never saw the effigy until he was dragged up the hill. And so there was like a genuine sense
00:42:25.080
of surprise and shock and horror in his face. Yeah. We, we should talk about how, uh, you know,
00:42:31.360
the, the wicker man itself as a concept comes from Caesar's Gallic war commentary, uh, you know,
00:42:38.500
where he's talking about, uh, the various Celtic tribes he's conquering and the, uh, the wicker man,
00:42:44.560
uh, in, in Caesar's commentary was where they would execute, uh, various criminals and what have you.
00:42:51.080
As justification for invading, uh, Gaul, they, they spread these, these stories that they engaged
00:43:00.280
in human sacrifice and all, and maybe they did, but, um, the Romans certainly, uh, seized upon that
00:43:08.800
as an excuse, uh, this, this feigned indignation, uh, while they were, you know, slaughtering thousands
00:43:16.880
of people in the, in the arenas and stuff, these blood sports, but they were allegedly, uh, uh,
00:43:22.600
just shocked and, and, and they had to stamp it out. Right. Yeah. You know, you think of the sort
00:43:29.560
of atrocities attributed to the Germans and world war one and the like, you know, it's just same
00:43:35.460
sort of impulse. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I'm reminded of, you know, Americans feeling that
00:43:41.720
they had to spread democracy to Iraq because of some of these tales, tales, which some of which
00:43:46.980
might've been true. I, I'm sure many of which were totally untrue. Uh, Madeline Albright saying,
00:43:51.880
oh yes, it's, it's, that, that 500,000, uh, what was it? Iraqi children or Iranian children,
00:43:59.320
whoever we had, had, had, uh, uh, uh, uh, we're boycotting. Oh yes, it's worth it.
00:44:06.840
Yeah. Well, she was making a blood sacrifice of sorts of those children. I mean, in a way that
00:44:12.100
was the symbolic content of that very famous phrase where they said, is it worth it? Are
00:44:16.160
these sanctions worth it? This is before the Iraq war. Are these sanctions worth it? If, um, we we've,
00:44:21.400
we've learned that there's starvation of, you know, some million children or something. She was like,
00:44:25.180
yes, it is worth it, which I guess she, she has to say, but on a, on a deeper symbolic level,
00:44:30.160
that was her own blood sacrifice that she was making to her wicked God. She's no Caesar.
00:44:38.060
No, no, she's not. No, I mean, that is again, another element to this culture. I think there
00:44:43.140
is this, uh, you know, Dionysian and, and Apollonian, you know, conflict in throughout history. And,
00:44:52.100
uh, you know, Nietzsche articulated in that manner, but, but you can think about it in other ways,
00:44:58.180
but in some ways the Roman world was, was the kind of great big Sergeant Howie writ large.
00:45:04.140
And, you know, it was conquering these outer, uh, outer lands, this outer wilderness. And,
00:45:11.340
you know, again, it's, it's like with Conrad, I mean, this, this too was once a dark continent. I
00:45:15.640
mean, the, the old Britain was, was something, uh, much more primitive and dark, but then also much
00:45:22.820
more rooted and, and, and organic than the, uh, the, the, the, you know, the kind of decadent
00:45:29.700
empire that Rome was becoming. Um, uh, you know, uh, obviously the, uh, the modern Britain has,
00:45:38.400
has taken on the Sergeant Howie mentality in spades to a point where he needs to have a little bit of
00:45:44.140
the more Dionysian wisdom. Oh yeah. Um, you can imagine his, uh, his, his descendants going about
00:45:50.640
shrieking, shrieking about anti PC digressions in modern Britain or doing something like we have
00:45:57.060
to ban this Richard Spencer from coming. Yeah. We have to ban racism and, and, uh, uh, yeah,
00:46:04.940
I can imagine a Sergeant Howie of 2016 going into the, you know, the traditional Britain group or
00:46:10.020
something like racist heathens. There's, there is racism in this Holy, on this Holy place.
00:46:15.720
It is being defiled. Do you not understand that you live in a politically correct culture?
00:46:21.180
You know, kind of, uh, kind of thing. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's, it's definitely there.
00:46:25.320
I think, I think the, the, the way I've always seen it is that you need a little bit of both.
00:46:29.600
You need some Apollonian and you need some Dionysian, uh, to be a full human being. And if you have
00:46:35.640
one or the other, you lose yourself and you've become perverted. I mean, if you, if you have no
00:46:41.120
reason, if you have no law or you, you have no, uh, you know, spirit of, of, of, uh, of, uh,
00:46:49.700
of scientific inquiry or something, then you do become, you know, the, the, the stereotype of a
00:46:55.660
hippie. You, you become too organic. You become just, you know, root too rooted. You, you, you lose
00:47:01.700
yourself in, in, in, in, you know, ignorance and imbecility and so on. At the same time,
00:47:08.900
if you totally evacuate the Dionysian from your life or from your culture, you, you also
00:47:15.700
lose that like deeper folk wisdom and that, that you, you lose that spirit that makes you
00:47:21.660
a human being. Uh, so yeah, I mean, I, I think that's, that's, uh, definitely the lesson.
00:47:28.920
You draw on that sort of horror aspect a little bit, uh, not just the horror aspect, but the sort
00:47:34.360
of, uh, strangeness you feel with the wicker man. When you're watching a lot of these scenes,
00:47:39.180
it's almost like you're, you're seeing the world around you, but everything's a little
00:47:43.380
bit off. Uh, you know, Sergeant Howie is sort of initiated into the paganism of the island
00:47:48.420
slowly in that way, but not just for Sergeant Howie, but for someone that's even a secular
00:47:55.000
humanist or someone who rejects religion altogether, the sort of world they're peering
00:47:59.580
into just seems slightly off. And, you know, you don't really understand why. And that's one of the
00:48:05.720
things that's so intriguing about this film is that there are so many moments like that. You know,
00:48:09.800
we've talked about the graves, the teacher and everything else, but you're, you're like,
00:48:14.200
you're peering into a world that's almost your own, but slightly tweaked.
00:48:18.400
Yeah. They're wearing masks. I mean, I think that's also another interesting thing where
00:48:24.140
Howie's like, take off that mask. Uh, but, uh, anyway, uh, so what are you guys doing for
00:48:33.160
Halloween? How I've noticed Halloween in modern America has become, it's, it's basically like
00:48:41.240
all holidays with maybe the exception of Christmas. They just become excuses to go
00:48:48.140
out and get drunk and maybe pick up a girl. Although the real Halloween has, I would say
00:48:53.100
a deeper meeting. Uh, it's obviously like it's a, it's a harvest festival and, and even in the kind
00:48:59.800
of Gothic aspect of Halloween, it's a way of experiencing death about, uh, and, and confronting
00:49:06.500
death in some ways. So, um, bobbing for apples is obviously like a, it's a, it's a, that, that's
00:49:12.180
some, I remember doing that as I was a kid. That's some kind of like deep connection you have
00:49:16.080
with Halloween. Yeah. But whenever I, you know, whenever I peruse Facebook or something
00:49:20.580
like that, it seems like where I, I've been in big cities for Halloween a couple of times,
00:49:24.600
it just seems to be girls, uh, dressed up like sexy versions of superheroes. That seems
00:49:34.100
No, uh, something, something I was thinking of because, uh, I spend a lot of time in a resort
00:49:41.480
town and, and we see lots of, uh, and, and also there are a lot of weddings here in the
00:49:48.480
summer and, and something that struck me, uh, watching the wicker man again is just the,
00:49:54.360
the physical appearance of all the people in, in, in the, the community. They were all healthy
00:50:00.980
looking, even though the aged, the, the, the elders, they were still healthy elders. Whereas
00:50:07.340
something that just struck me this summer, hiking around the marina where they have weddings,
00:50:13.680
uh, wedding parties and, and whatnot, hiking around there with my dog, seeing all these fat
00:50:21.520
people, young people, fat chicks, fat guys. And, and it struck me, you know, there's nothing
00:50:30.420
appealing about any of these folks. Yeah. And, and I thought, you know, but, but looking at the
00:50:41.800
fit, looking, looking at Summer Isle in the whole community, the various age groups, they all looked
00:50:48.340
healthy. Yes. They were appealing looking people. Um, when I was in Amsterdam a few months ago,
00:50:59.000
one of the things that, that you, you, you noticed is that the, if you see fat, fat young females,
00:51:06.980
almost without exception, they're British or American tourists.
00:51:11.000
Hmm. Uh, I, unquestionably, I, I, uh, I had the displeasure about, it's a little bit more than 10
00:51:19.540
years ago now, going to this, uh, Northern, uh, English town to, to visit a friend of mine. And,
00:51:25.740
uh, the, the, it was a Friday night and the, it really did prove that all of those images you see
00:51:34.240
on the dredge report, like it's all true. It's happening. You're just these, you're on the fat
00:51:38.960
shore. Yeah, exactly. The Jersey shore of, of, uh, of England. It was just these, these fat,
00:51:46.980
drunk women, you know, loudly screaming or like just vomiting as if you're sneezing. You know,
00:51:53.920
it's like, it's not even a problem for them, just vomiting somewhere, uh, crying, uh, acting and,
00:52:00.000
you know, acting in some just utterly vulgar manner with a, with a man, uh, dressed in just the most
00:52:06.660
appalling outfits. You could think fat women, almost like showing off their midriff.
00:52:11.740
In, in, in many, in many skirts, fat women in many, fat, fat chicks in these gauzy, uh, uh,
00:52:19.420
wedding costumes that they'll wear once, but gosh, they're just, uh, yes, it is, uh, it is, uh,
00:52:29.000
it is quite an appalling, uh, sight to behold. Um, but that's, uh, that's where we are as a culture.
00:52:35.480
Yeah. And it doesn't seem to be as bad and, and, and, you know, other parts of, uh, of the world.
00:52:42.440
Like I remember Halloween growing up, you know, I was, I was brought up, uh, as a Catholic and,
00:52:48.080
you know, go to all souls day and everything, you know, so you think about the dead a little bit,
00:52:52.840
the sort of turning of the season. I always sort of liked that aspect of it, of it all. I,
00:52:58.300
I'll probably go visit some sort of graveyard or something, uh, before the time is done,
00:53:03.840
you know, maybe, maybe drink some wine and toast to the dead while there.
00:53:10.580
I like walking through graveyards. I might have to do that this Halloween.
00:53:14.460
Yeah, no, it's, it's a weirdly, uh, comforting thing to me at least.
00:53:18.720
Yeah, absolutely. On this grave, there is a tree.
00:53:24.020
And hopefully from that tree sprouts a renewal.