Promotion for 'Simpsons' movie angers British pagans

By PHILIP JACKMAN
Toronto Globe and Mail
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

A rotund Homer Simpson, clad only in underpants and holding aloft the very pinnacle of his desire -- a doughnut -- might seem like a suitably pagan symbol of today's times. But pagans in England don't like it one bit.

They are mighty angry about a giant figure of the cartoon character that has been painted on a hill next to an ancient pagan landmark in southwest England -- the giant at Cerne Abbas in Dorset.

The 180-foot Homer has been there since Sunday as part of a publicity stunt to promote the new "Simpsons" movie, which opens in Britain this month. The Cerne Abbas giant, carved out of the chalk hillside, has been there since at least 1694, when a payment of three shillings was recorded in the Cerne Abbas church warden's account for recutting of the giant.

He (there's absolutely no doubt that the giant is a he) is also 180 feet high and carries a huge club. These days, his chalk outline is recut every 25 years.

"There are plenty of people who aren't pagans who really aren't happy about this," Ann Bryn-Evans, joint district manager for the Pagan Federation of Wessex District, said. "It's very difficult to explain to people who don't care much about this sort of thing. To some people, the countryside is the bits in between the places they have to go to."

She says some people have accused her of being completely humorless. "But from a pagan point of view," she said, "we find this very disrespectful and hurtful."

Local folklore has long attributed special fertility powers to the giant. Women who wanted to become pregnant would spend a night on the hillside, most often within the confines of the multiple square yardage of his manhood. Young couples would make love on the giant for similar reasons.

Michael Brown, managing director of the marketing firm Beatwax, who came up with the Homer idea, said reaction to the hillside Homer has been mixed but that the publicity has been fantastic.

The Homer figure was drawn with 200 liters of biodegradable white paint, which Brown says will wash away when it rains. With the super-soggy summer that Britain has been enduring this year, the Homer critics might soon get their wish.

But Bryn-Evans is not so sure.

"Basically, it has been coming down in sheets today," she said Tuesday, "but it hasn't washed away. ... And I'm afraid we're going to be stuck with this for quite some time."

Brown counters that it depends on what you mean by "coming down in sheets," and says the paint will wash out. Either that, or the landowner's sheep will help by eating away at any parts of Homer that don't quickly disappear.