The Wicker Man is actually metaphorical of the condition of Nazi Germany, albeit somewhat more subtle than Orwell's retelling of the birth of Soviet Russia in Animal Farm. The closing scene is the first clue, being so openly an analogue to that of James Whales' Frankenstein (1931) - the difference being that whilst in Frankenstein our sympathies are very much with the creature, in TWM, however, we're part of the mob, mindlessly chanting Sumer Is Icumen In as Sargent Howie screams his last. It operates as a tidy cinematographic equivalent of The Milgram Experiment in that the humanity of the islanders has been subsumed in respect to a higher moral authority which has been demonstrated to be entirely corrupt. The islanders, like the people of Nazi Germany, have been fed an entirely bogus pseudo-religious construct based on the flimsiest of folkloric precedents; they have been rendered docile, manipulated by mere spectacle; anaesthetised by enforced compliance to the extent that they willingly participate in a horrific murder which is, in actuality, a desperate buying of time as the foundations of the aristocratic order of Summerisle begin to crumble.

It's interesting to speculate on what purpose might be served by the clumsy segue from the opening Highland Widow's Lament, as respectfully sung in a traditional manner by Shiela Mackie (who also sang willows Song) with Northumbrian (!) pipes & chorus, into Paul Gionvanni's sublime though purposefully non-traditional setting of Burns' Corn Riggs. There is a lurch of conciousness here between the traditional, and the faux-traditional, between the real world and the world of Summerisle, where Giovanni's increasingly surreal perversions of traditional themes are as twisted as the neo-pagan beliefs of the islanders themselves. A totalitarian state has been contrived from an interpretation of folkloric elements, the Frazerian notions writ large whereby the people were believed to be entirely ignorant of the real meanings behind the customs they themselves perpetuated! The customs of the people have been used against themselves, and hitherto vague symbolism (i.e. the may-pole) have become didactic absolutes. Even their own natural bawdiness becomes a moral prison. How else might we interpret the weeping in the erotic night scene? Or else the beguiled faces of the musicians as they sing Gently Johnny whilst poor Ash Buchanan is being abusively initiated (though I doubt he's complaining) by Willow McGregor in the room above whilst Lord Summerisle utters his chilling, yet beautiful, soliloquy which consistently misquotes Part 32 of Song of Myself from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass?