The Nostalgia of Setting, Sex and Sound in the Wicker Man Films

The 1973 Wicker Man presents a specific kind of nostalgia for an imagined past: a bucolic setting that is geographically remote and untainted; sex as manifested in both a past with a natural and shame-free approach to eroticism, and with more clearly defined gender roles, and sound comprised of real and imagined folk songs evoking a bygone era. It is these issues that this chapter will examine beginning with a brief overview of the relationship between nostalgia and remaking in broad terms and then focus on these ideas as specifically related to the Wicker Man films. It will then turn its attention to the setting, sex and sound focuses as vehicles for on-screen nostalgia.