Is matriarchy a death sentence? A Wicker Man analysis

 A movie about women empowerment that should give you the chills.

This movie was a remake of the (much darker) Wicker Man version from 1973. In this modernized version, classified by Wikipedia as 'black comedy horror film' Nicolas Cage is a police officer traumatized by guilt over a road accident where he could not save a little girl. While in this deep state of depression, a letter gives him a new-found purpose: to search for his ex-girlfriend’s daughter. His ex-girlfriend, who left him to live with a cult in an isolated island, was calling him there to investigate a possible kidnap. With the little girl trapped in the car in his mind, he sees the chance of making things right this time.

As our main character approaches the island, totally isolated and without any cell phone signal, we start to have the impression something is off, but of course, Edward is not supposed to notice, right? The local bar is run by women, with only a few men present, but with their heads down. The school has a female teacher and only a few boys in the room. The whole place seems to be run by women…

He meets his ex-girlfriend, and we realize he still had feelings for her and to further hook him, she kisses him and breaks the news that the little girl he is looking for is in fact his daughter. Now, deep in the rabbit hole looking for clues on his daughter's whereabouts, the spectator is led by the toes as he seems to fall for a trap, we just don’t know exactly how macabre – yet.

The island has a leader – a woman served by many other women and a few men – everything about the place seems perfect, peaceful, beautiful. But the men are merely there as servants, around the women in charge.

The man soon realizes that the island engages in pagan rituals and is led to believe women are sacrificed during these strange rituals. If Edward was more aware of fertility rituals, he would know that the female is rarely sacrificed, as the womb requires more time to produce and is more 'valuable' than the male as the seed is numerous. One man, for example, can impregnate several women at the same time and a women will require nine months only to produce one offspring, so males are in disadvantage here.

By now, if you haven’t watched the movie, you can already see where this story goes, right? The ‘ex-girlfriend’ was in fact in full allegiance with the island leader and in the past was sent to the city to seduce a future ‘wicker man’, get pregnant and produce a fake story to attract the man to the island, where he would be incommunicado, isolated and where all inhabitants would conspire to make him believe he was in control when in fact he was being led to slaughter.

Once the wicker man saw his daughter, she ran to the sacrificial altar, where the man innocently followed only to meet his fate in the fire, sacrificed to the 'island gods'. Ironically, the fire is set by his own daughter.

The movie ends in a bitter note: two ladies are in a bar now hunting for their next wicker man so we don't forget they are a bunch of psychopathic witches.

My takeaways

While patriarchal societies tend to value male nature so they can protect women and children - who are physically more vulnerable, a matriarchal society – to invert a natural order of strength – will require that the male nature be crushed so the female can overrule.

The outcome is a structure where men are mentally castrated in their own strength, while being used for what that same society can benefit from them: infrastructure, jobs women will not or cannot perform, defence, etc.

For the men in the island, it might be the case that they were there willingly and even would defend its structure, in a brainwashed and/or fearful defeat. Regardless of what the case might be, while in patriarchal societies women are protected and allowed to flourish in their own nature (nurture, care, home making, etc.), matriarchal societies will not last because it requires males to be subjugated, denying their nature and what they were designed to do (lead, provide, protect their own).

What women envy is not the sacrificial nature of the male

In Freudian psychology, we frequently hear about the 'phallus theory' or

'penis envy'.

From https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/penis-envy

Penis envy is a theory from early psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. He believed that when female children realize they lack a penis, they feel “castrated” in comparison to males. Freud believed this was a pivotal moment in female sexual development and a source of mental illness.

His focus on the genitalia was more symbolic but pointed out the fact that there is an intrinsic value on the male nature - or 'things they get to do that women don't'. The part that is left out is that male nature is also about sacrifice. This part of the deal, women do not necessarily envy. Good men will more naturally be willing to sacrifice their lives for their women, their children, their countries, their values. As in Edward's case in the movie Wicker Man, he did not think twice before putting himself in an unknown situation to save a little girl even before he knew it was his daughter. Would the same plot make sense with a woman?

Now, back to matriarchy, it is not necessarily like the movie, so overt and obvious. Matriarchy is ingrained in our culture with the cult of the goddess, with man ‘simping’ for women and letting women rule the house. A house ruled by the woman will not produce strong children because the offspring needs a strong father to flourish. The saying ‘Happy wife, happy life’ or ‘the woman is always right’ only further demonstrates that the matriarchal family structure had its early stages many decades ago and the result is the slow death of western culture.

From collapsing birth rates, growing divorce rates and less and less faith in God, it should not surprise us that what we have today is degeneracy and hopelessness, but at least we have more female CEOs, right!

Conclusion

While in this 'black comedy' movie, the women in the island are empowered and rule the men in an apparent success, the reality is that women will eventually despise being always in charge and with weak males and will eventually sabotage - consciously or unconsciously - their power trip because matriarchy will never be sustainable or natural. The Wicker Man is not a comedy after all, it's just a plain horror movie.