What do the Gothic Environments in The Wicker Man and Mexican Gothic Reveal About the Relationship Between the Natural World and the Social and Moral identities of the People who Inhabit It?

This gothic environment in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic (2020) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) serves as a reflection of how the natural world that has been constructed in both pieces of media shapes the moral and social identities of the inhabitants of either Summerisle or High Place. For the purpose of this essay, I will be defining the gothic environment in two ways. Firstly, as the literal sense, for example where the media is physically set and the people who inhabit it, exemplified in High Place with the Doyle family and the island of Summerisle. Secondly, as defined as such by Deckard here:

‘In ecogothic, land and waterscapes are themselves extreme, sites of monstrous fecundity that seemingly threaten human civilization, where vines and vegetation run rampant, where decay ferments and festers, or where plagues and vermin spread deliriums. ‘

Deckard, P.1

Mexican Gothic and The Wicker Man embody this definition. In the opening credit scene of The Wicker Man, we see Howie’s plane fly over these ‘extreme waterscapes’, the ‘monstrous fecundity’ is seen in the islanders paganistic obsession with fertility. Similar to Mexican Gothic, High Place is located within ‘extreme’ mountains that can offer a ‘quick death’ [Moreno-Garcia. P.19] to those who don’t know their way around. The ‘monstrous fecundity’ mirrors Doyle’s fascination with eugenics and keeping his bloodline “pure”.

The sublime ‘extreme’ environment in both of these pieces of media allow us to construct the nature of the inhabitants of this natural world. As defined by Burke, the sublime is ‘ought to be solid, and even massive’ [Burke, P.3] and ‘found on pain’ [Burke, P.3]. The islanders have grown and lived surrounded by the sublime, same with the inhabitants of El Triunfo, suggesting that these inhabitants are habituated to this gothic environment ‘founded on pain. This is opposite to the othered of these lands. Following the gothic trope of being summoned to a place, both Howie and Noemi are affected by the gothic environment, whether they realise it or not. When Burke stated:

‘When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we everyday experience.

Burke, P.3

The ‘delight’ that he mentions here, is seen in the construction of the two patriarchal figures, Howard Doyle and Lord Summerisle. Not only do they (or their family members) both manipulate the natural world around them to control the inhabitants, but to have this ‘certain distance’ from that gothic environment, invokes a delight in a them. This then runs true when Deckard later goes to say that the gothic environment: ‘Rather than reduced to a backdrop onto which to project psychosexual or cultural fears, nature itself becomes a character, often embodied in spirit-form.’ [Deckard, P.2 ].  These ‘psychosexual or cultural fears’ run through the gothic environment and it’s inhabitants.

This is when you can start defining the social identities of these inhabitants in the gothic environment. According to Stets in Identity Theory and Social Identity Theory (2000), social identity can be defined as ‘a person’s knowledge that he or she belongs to a social category or group’ [Stets. P.225] with the categories being defined by processes of self-categorisation and social comparison, but only if it exists in a ‘structured society’ where you are able to compare said categories that carry varying degrees of ‘power, prestige [and] status’ [Stets, P.225].

In The Wicker Man, it is clear that the islander’s adhere to paganism, their “social category”, which stands as a stark contrast to Howie’s Christian identity, which within this constructed society of Summerisle, others him. The islander’s social identity is entwined with the land. When you look at Hogg and Adams theory of social identity, it relies heavily on the ‘social categories in which individuals place themselves’ [Stets, P. 225], but this is only viable when there are other “social categories” to compare to. The islanders of Summerisle are an isolated community, this society is all they have known.

A lot of social identity is created by their mirroring with the fertility cycles of the land. We see this established close to the beginning of the film when the children are dancing round the maypole for a May Day celebration. During this scene, we see children reciting the lyrics on a loop about their beliefs in the circle of life. Starting with ‘in the woods, there grew a tree’ [Shaffer, 23:54], it transcends from nature to conception to death, where they sing:

And for that man there was a grave. From that grave there grew a tree. In the Summerisle, Summerisle, Summerisle, Summerisle wood, Summerisle wood.

Shaffer, 24:27

Only to repeat again starting from the beginning ‘In the woods there grew a tree, and a fine fine tree was he’ [Schaffer, 24:40]. This pivotal moment shows their beliefs that their livelihood is entwined with the land. Additionally, to this, ‘the phallic symbol’ [Shaffer, 25:10] of the maypole does not go unmissed. The social identity of the islanders (especially the children) is constructed around fertility and reproduction with the “natural world”. We see it again with the young girls leaping over the fire:

‘Take the flame inside you. Burn and burn below. Fire seed and fire feed. To make the baby grow. Take the flame inside you. Burn and burn belay. Fire seed and fire feed. To make the baby stay’

Shaffer, around 37:33

They sing these lyrics when jumping over a small fire, naked. This can be interpretated as a hope to be burnt to in order to spark new life, such as a baby. The repetition of ‘fire seed and fire feed’ drives in the reality of this as the ‘fire seed’ must grow in to something that the ‘fire feed[s]’. Then, again with a conversation between  Again, their teachings are being entwined with the land and it’s reliability to produce again. This can then be linked to the reasoning behind the sacrificial element we see later on the film.

Similarly, in Mexican Gothic, High Place is physically and symbolically dominated by a fungus called ‘the gloom’ which is ultimately used to control the bodies and minds of the inhabitants within High Place, or for the purpose of this essay, the gothic environment.  The Doyle’s “social category” is not only defined by their aristocratic imagery, but their colonial identity. Towards the start of the novel, this colonialist identity is established when the train Noemi in on runs through El Trufino, stating that after the War of Independence, ‘the English and French were welcomed during the tranquil Porfiriato, their pockets growing fat with mineral riches’ [Moreno-Garcia, P.17]

Here, we see this gothic environment slowly starting to construct the Doyle’s social identity. Even after this boom, ‘the Doyles lingered’ [Moreno-Garcia, P.18]. The word lingered suggests an unwanted presence, like a trauma, or like the colonial legacy that is left within El Trufino after the War of Independence, it “lingers”.  This presence, like Kristeva’s theory of the abject, is ‘a weight that repel and is repelled, an inaccessible and intimate base of memory’ [Kristeva, P. 129]. It shows that the Doyles and lingering sense of colonialism is neither fully gone nor fully integrated therefore it is clinging to the land and its inhabitants.

This colonialist identity is also pushed on the land when Francis states that ‘Uncle Howard… even brought European earth here’ [Moreno-Garcia, P.18], showing that even the very earth he walks on was to non-English for him. But then the environment or land is bent to the Howard Doyles fascination with prolonging his life while keeping the bloodline pure by his use of the ‘gloom’. In The Ethics of Identity, it is stated that:

‘Any form of culture is to hold this or that as a good; it would be an exercise in narcissism…to declare that your culture is good because it contains things you have identified as good’

Appiah, p.129

Howard identifies his ideologies (and therefore his social identity) ‘as good’ through the use of the gothic environment he is manipulating and therefore embodying this narcissism. We know this from the conversation with Francis and Noemi after she awakes from a vision. We find out that Howard Doyle is ‘three hundred [years old], maybe more’ [Moreno-Garcia, P.213] and has been engaging in incest for this amount of time in order for his family to ‘interact with the fungus’ [Moreno-Garcia, P.213].

Howard Doyle’s incestuous activities links to the readers felling of abject. By using Kristeva’s definition, ‘abjection is constructed through the non-recognition of what is close to it: nothing is close to it’ [Kristeva, P.129] or the “violent uncanny”. A familial love that overstepped solidified boundaries. To build from this, the gloom and High Place is defined by the abject. High Place is ‘close to’ a normal dilapidated house but a house where ‘the gloom (the natural world) was alive’ [Moreno-Garcia, P.218].

On the level of moral identity, to which I will be using the definition by Hardy and Carlo, which they consider ‘the degree to which being a moral person is important to an individuals’ identity’ [Hardy, Carlo, P.212], both Noemi and Howie serve as foils in their gothic environments.

Noemi’s actions are motivated by her desire to align with her moral compass, to save her cousin, Catalina, and too eventually escape High Place, even when it contradicts her constructed social norms, an upper-class, daughter to a father that had ‘turned a small chemical dye business into a fortune’ [Moreno-Garcia, P. 5]. However, it is this moral identity of hers (that I want to argue) that drives her to reject the Doyle’s family worldview and the ultimate goal of using her in their “reproduction”.

As Hardy and Carlo further explain, ‘moral identity may entail having morally relevant schemas readily accessible for social information processing’ [Hardy and Carlo, P.213]. These “schemas” that they refer to is the ‘mental knowledge structures that represent various aspects of ourselves, our relationships, and our experiences’ [Hardy and Carlo, P.213]. We see these well-defined schemas when she enters High Place. Her educated mind set allows her to follow logic and reason. This is seen when she expects to care for Catalina right away, she pushes to see her the minute she is shown to her room:

            “I’d like to speak with Catalina,” Noemi said.

Florence, who must’ve thought that was the end of their conversation, already had a hand on the door knob.

            “Today?” the woman asked.

            “Yes”

Moreno-Garcia, P. 24

This sense of urgency to see her cousin establishes not only the has schemas, but her moral identity as well. This sense of urgency to see her cousin establishes her as morally good, this means she is also able to identify injustices and have the capacity to fight them. This is where the gothic environment can remove this sense of urgency, therefore affecting this urgency.

In the Mexican Gothic, it seems that the women with strong, established moral identities are able to deflect the mycelium in its attempt to control the inhabitants. Ruth, the daughter who attempted to kill Doyle, was able to fight against it, Catalina, although in her state in the novel, is ‘not quite as compatible’ [Moreno-Garcia, P. 214] with the mycelium, and Noemi, searches for a cure for Catalina at the hands of a native women, Marta Duval.

The turning point of the novel, however, is when it is revealed that Doyle’s first wife is the ‘human mind that could serve as a vessel for memories’ [Moreno-Garcia, P.283]. When she is discovered, she is discovered as this transcorporal entity of mushrooms and body, ‘anchored to the wall, like a monstrous Virgin in a cathedral of mycelium’. This sublime description of her, according to Burke, should be invoking terror in the reader and yet, we see this catholic imagery. This could suggest that the gloom or Doyle is able to not only mould the moral identities of the inhabitants, but can also extend this to the reader as well.

In contrast to Noemi, Howie’s moral identity is rigid and constructed through his faith. His entire worldview is governed by a binary moral schema that renders him unable to interpret or even empathise with the islander’s pagan beliefs. This inability is evident when he goes into the school as they talk about the phallic nature of the mapole at around 25 minutes in the movie and states ‘everywhere I turn there is degeneracy… and the corruption of the young’ [Shaffer, 25:48]. Rather than attempting to understand this social logic he out right denies it, despite being the othered on the island.

When we see Lord Summerisle and Officer Howie walk around his gardens, it is revealed that these ‘old joyous gods’ [Shaffer, 43:12] were brought back by Lord Summerisle’s Grandfather after he used ‘the unique combination of volcanic soil and the warm gulf stream’ [Shaffer, 42:47], to successfully grow a new strain of fruits not native on the island. It’s the belief gods, Lord Summerisle states, that ‘[brings] fourth fruit in great abundance’ [Schaffer, 43:12], this belief is what would construct the moral identity of the inhabitants. The need for this unnatural fruit to grow each year has shifted their morality to the point where sacrifice seems to be the saving factor.

This can then be argued that the natural world, shown by the gloom in Mexican Gothic and the ‘new strains of fruits’ [Shaffer, 42:52] in The Wicker Man, can be classed as almost unnatural. There is this lingering sense of colonialism embedded within both of the unnatural world which allowed a patriarchal to figure to govern the social and moral identities of their “underlings”. Lord Summerisle tells Howie one should always be open to the regenerative influences’ [Shaffer, 39:26]. The use of ‘regenerative influences’ doesn’t align with talking about humans but more nature and fruits and as stated before, the social identity of the islanders mirrors the fertility of land, here, Lord Summerisle is confirming this as he looks over the nude dancing girls. Similarly, when the gloom (or Doyle) shows Noemi the vision of the child being eaten, it concludes with ‘Doyle was a god. Doyle existed, persisted. Doyle always is’ [Moreno-Garcia, P. 218]. The gloom, and in turn Doyle, at this point is trying to bend Noemi already strong-willed moral identity to crumble under the patriarchy in High Place and to ultimately Doyle.

Ultimately, both works suggest that moral and social identities are profoundly shaped by the gothic environments, manipulated or otherwise. The gothic environment reveals hidden structures of beliefs that govern social categories, and how the land is deeply entangled in the construction of both identities. Whether it’s the controlling mycelium in Mexican Gothic or the sacrificial connection to the land in The Wicker Man, the gothic environment and the natural world is used to construct and reveal the moral and social identities of its inhabitants.

Bibliography

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Appiah, K. A, The Ethics of Identity, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2003

Scovelll, A. Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange, London, Auteur Publishing, 2017

Deckard, S. ‘Ecogothic in the Twenty-First Century’ ,Wester, M. and Reyes, X.A. Twenty-First Century Gothic, Edinburgh, 2021

Hutchings, P. 'Uncanny Landscapes in British Film and Television', Visual Culture in Britain 5, No.2 2004

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