The death of actor Edward Woodward this week, who starred in the British cult film The Wicker Man back in the 1970s, got me thinking of just how easily perceptions can be shaped by fiction.
One of the reasons The Wicker Man is notable is because the plot fuses some modern neo-pagan beliefs with modern paranoia about pagans. The result is a plot about a community that ritually sacrifices humans in order to appease a nature god they depend upon for survival, which periodically get quoted as examples of what modern pagans are "really" doing.
The Wicker Man, however, certainly isn't the only film to wield that kind of power over people imaginations. There are people who dislike the Catholic Church for no real reason other than what they saw in The DaVinci Code. There are accusations that Harry Potter teaches kids about Wicca and other occult paths, which is news to Wiccans and occultists.
Quite simply, anything considered a movie and not labeled as a documentary contains fiction. Even those movies labeled "based on a true story" (which none of the above movies are) contain invention, often considerable amounts of it, and watchers need to remember that. It's not just religions that get this treatment either. As a historian, I've had to train myself not to wince through historical movies and then have to do damage control when students accept such films as fact.
I am greatly saddened by the news of Edward Woodward’s passing. I never saw the Wicker Man, but he was brilliant in Breaker Morant. May he rest in peace.