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The Rhetoric Of Spirituality, Gender, And The Environment In The Wicker Man (1973) And Midsommar (2019), Emma Frances Bloomfield
The Rhetoric Of Spirituality, Gender, And The Environment In The Wicker Man (1973) And Midsommar (2019), Emma Frances Bloomfield
Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference
The Wicker Man (1973) and Midsommar (2019) are horror films that address dominant ideologies including the patriarchy, anthropocentrism, and Christianity. Both films have a nature-connected cult that sacrifices for the community and performs rituals informed by pagan eco-spirituality. I perform an ecofeminist rhetorical criticism to analyze how, despite these shared themes, spiritual, gender, and environmental messages differ between the two films. In The Wicker Man, the audience is invited to sympathize with Neil’s character, his Christianity, and his individualistic masculinity as he is sacrificed in the cult’s harvest ritual. Alternatively, the main character in Midsommar, Dani, gets revenge …