Your bag is empty.
This article contains light spoilers for ‘Wicker.’
In Wicker, a fisherwoman fucks a human-basket hybrid played by Alexander Skarsgard, and lives happily ever after. The trailer probably already told you that much—really, nobody is quite interested in such a film for the plot. We’re much more interested in the carnal logistics of a man made of wicker.
Monster fantasies are nothing new, even if they are played by the painfully handsome. But the fantasies have become all the more mainstream in recent years thanks, in large part, to the proliferation of romance novels and smut featuring a widening array of otherworldly creatures. You have your sea monsters, orcs, werewolves and vampires. There’s also a book about a woman who “milks” a minotaur that has over 83,000 ratings on Goodreads. It was only a matter of time that the film industry would pick up on the trend with something a little more creative than Twilight.
Wicker is just that: A capsule of the current trend of sexy romance stories without a ton of substance but with a unique hook. Somehow, it is not the first erotically-charged movie about a man made of wicker; that would be The Wicker Man, the far superior 1973 film. But this repetition is not the issue with Wicker, which opens in select theaters Friday before its nationwide release on Oct. 30. Instead, it’s that Wicker ascribes to a far more boring trend in popular culture than the romance novel boom: Heteropessimism, the attitude that heterosexuality is inherently flawed, dissatisfying and in some cases, ought to be resigned from entirely.
To give a slightly more detailed summary of the film beyond just “woman has a horny basket for a husband,” the story follows a fisherwoman in a small village where she is one of the few unmarried adults. She is isolated by her community, both for her singleness and the fact that she smells like fish. Eventually, she grows sick of the ridicule, and asks a local basketweaver to fashion her a husband. Then, well, the basket becomes a sentient man whom she immediately marries and gives her bed-breaking sex. How does this happen? We are never told. But to be clear, the story is intended to be a fable, a simple tale with a moral lesson in the end rather than a fleshed-out feature with fully realized characters. And that is perfectly fine. In this simple fable world, though, there are a handful of social realities that we are supposed to relate to as viewers. Namely: Men completely suck, marriage is mostly a disappointment, and women are always secondary to the whims and desires of their husbands.
And maybe that is indeed all true in a world where wicker people can come to life, but what about in this world? If we are expected to take a moral lesson from the movie, then surely we are expected to relate to at least some of the realities of that one, even if mostly presented in jest. In the Wicker village, brides are celebrated not with a ring on their finger but an iron collar on their necks. Every human man in town is a sexual dud, and their wives only have sex with them as a chore of appeasement. The happiest couple in town is, at best, in dire need of a third to join them in bed. It’s mostly played for laughs, but there is intended to be a chunk of truth there, too. Of course, there is some truth to these plot points, and the greater moral lesson is that relationships ought to be built on mutual desire, trust and respect, absent of social pressures. In the end, it is everyone’s judgement and lack of care for one another that leaves them in a mess.
The thing is, I can appreciate that sentiment. Men and husbands should indeed focus on their wives’ happiness and fostering a mutual bond, sexual or otherwise. Research on healthy relationships consistently finds that they are characterized by open communication and shared respect for each other’s emotions and goals, and that women often feel unduly burdened by managing their male partner’s emotions in the absence of other strong social networks. But to act as though human marriage is inherently miserable and oppressive is a bore, and one that ultimately challenges nothing. We are already bombarded with that narrative, despite the data continuing to reflect that married people across demographics are among the happiest. Couldn’t there have been at least one monogamous, heterosexual human couple to make it out of the film with contentment?
Wicker ultimately tells the viewer that heterosexuality is a bad deal, unless you are special and smart enough to ask a craftsman to make you a man out of plant materials. This is part of the appeal of monster romance, and why the genre is growing: It allows the viewer to imagine themselves as enjoying sex and companionship without dealing with human heterosexuality. And that can all be a perfectly fine and fun fantasy—after all, this is supposed to be fun. But in Wicker’s commitment to creating a parallel world where the same tired negativity about the state of relationships is repeated, the fantasy loses its humor.
Sure, marriage is a drag and men are bad at sex. Can’t we want better for ourselves without resorting to magic?
