What does Olivia Colman's hot sex with a basket tell us about heteropessimism? | Emma Beddington

Apologies if this is too personal, but is there anything in your home that turns you on? A sleek standard lamp, say, or a sexy piece of kitchen kit? I’m casting an eye around here and wondering. I used to have the hots for my furry heated throw when it was sleek and glossy, but it’s so matted and grubby now, it gives me the ick. I still fancy the big kitchen cupboard, though. It is steely blue and so capacious, and its generous spice rack gives me a frisson every time I look inside.

I’m prompted to ask by the release of Wicker, the loopy erotic fable in which Olivia Colman’s fisherwoman enjoys a mutually supportive, sexually satisfying partnership with Alexander Skarsgård, whom the basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) has woven from wicker. I haven’t seen it yet, but the trailer is joyful and the premise is sending people – mostly women – wild.

The internet is full of horny comments about Skarsgård who, the fisherwoman’s neighbours gossip, is “strong as a tree and just as hard” (he’s certainly very pleasingly woven; a real statement piece). I also enjoyed an article in New York magazine, entitled What Would Happen If You Had Sex With a Wicker Dick?, in which an exceptionally game gynaecologist addresses this question with utmost seriousness, tackling splinters, lubrication and condom advisability, while also declaring, disarmingly: “But what do I know about wicker? Nothing.”

Unfortunately, I feel obliged to spoil everyone’s fun by wondering: what does it mean? Why has a film whose romantic (erotic) hero is plaited twigs sparked such enthusiasm? Have we all become basket cases? Because this wicker husband is no outlier: non-human romantic heroes have been wildly popular for a while.

At the more human-shaped end of things, romantasy has exploded (there’s wild excitement for romantasy queen Sarah J Maas’s latest), revealing a seemingly infinite appetite for stories about humans getting it on with goblins, elves, minotaurs and mothmen. Sentient object smut gets even wilder: I took an online quiz, guessing which objects of desire came from a real cultural product and which were made up, and completely flunked. There’s real erotica, I learned, about a front door, coronavirus, a garden rake, a coffee mug and Clippy the Microsoft Word paperclip (which does have very come-hither eyes).

So are humans sick of each other – and are women in particular sick of men? Depressing cautionary tales about everything from men’s reluctance to commit, to manosphere-enabled and excused misogyny have fuelled a climate of reported heterofatalism: exhausted disillusionment with the unequal burdens and trials of heterosexual relationships. Wicker features some pretty on-the-nose heteropessimism: married women have to wear giant thunking collars and the men mostly seem to be boorish lumps. So why not choose wicker? You don’t need to mankeep a woven spouse and they won’t add much to the domestic load – at most they need a quick wipe with a damp cloth and some furniture polish.

But hang on. Skarsgård may be part 70s coffee table, sure, but he’s all man: he’s man-shaped, fixes stuff, wears tweedy trousers and, of course, has a penis. Even the more out-there object erotica novels “overwhelmingly pair human women with male creatures and objects”, according to New York magazine. Unsurprising, maybe, when the latest ONS data indicates 93.7% of UK women identify as heterosexual. Reports of heterofatality may be exaggerated.

If anything, I see Wicker-mania and its ilk as indicative of a yearning escapism, a desire for life to be lighter, sexier and sillier. When everything is horrible, why not imagine, and enjoy, a world where – unlike this one – anything’s possible, including mutually satisfying relationships, gender equality and sex with macaroni cheese (also real, yes)?

Speaking of escapism, back to cheerier matters. If nothing at home is igniting your loins, what would you make a sexual partner out of other than flesh and blood? Wicker seems way too scratchy. I came up with a shortlist of cashmere and cake, but neither seem sufficiently sturdy.

Hmm, maybe Christmas cake, specifically, would work? It’s extremely durable and delicious, and if your fruity lover starts getting difficult, you could always keep them in check by biting a warning chunk off their edge. Yes, this could give Stir-up Sunday a whole new meaning.

Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist

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