Episode 85: On 'The Wicker Man'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2020

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since its release in 1973, Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man has exerted a profound influence on the development of horror cinema, a rich vein of folk music, and the modern pagan revival more generally. Anthony Shaffer's ingenious screenplay gives us a thrilling yarn that is also a meditation on the nature of religious belief and practice. Just in time for Halloween, Phil and JF discuss the philosophical ideas that undergird this folk horror classic, focusing on the perennial role of sacrifice in religious thought. REFERENCES Robin Hardy (director), The Wicker Man Stanley Kubrick (director), The Shining Terence Fisher (director), The Devil Rides Out Piers Haggard (director), Blood on Satan’s Claw John Boorman (director), Deliverance Rob Young, Electric Eden Gerald Gardner, English wiccan Margaret Murray, English anthropologist Cecil Sharp, English ethnomusicologist Phil Ford, "Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica" Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:20.8	For more episodes or to support the podcast,
0:23.3	go to weirdstudies.com. Now, those children out there, they're jumping through the flames,
0:38.3	in the hope that the god of fire will make them fruitful.
0:58.0	Really, you can hardly blame them.
1:00.0	After all, what girl would not prefer the child of a god to that of some acne-scarred artisan?
1:05.0	And you encourage them in this?
1:08.0	Actively. It's most important that each new generation born on Summer,
1:11.5	I'll be made aware that here the old gods aren't dead.
1:15.5	And what of the true God?
1:17.4	To whose glory, churches and monasteries
1:19.0	have been built on these islands for generations past?
1:22.1	Now, sir, what of him?
1:24.4	He's dead.
1:25.6	He can't complain. He had his chance and in modern parlance.
1:30.2	Blew it.
1:37.0	What?
1:39.0	That's a scene from the 1973 folk horror film The Wicker Man.
1:44.3	In this film, a Scottish police investigator flies to Summer Isle, a remote island off West
1:50.1	Scotland, to look for a missing girl.
1:53.0	The locals seem friendly enough, but are clearly hiding something, and the devout Sergeant
	...

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