midsommar

(spoilers) written on 7/06/19

I started this blog, along with my other ones, at a critical point in my life. The lifeline that things give me, that art gives me–that lifeline is that it makes me think. It puts me outside of myself and makes me inspect what I feel, what I believe, what I know, and what I will learn in the future.

As artists, I feel like we have a responsibility. To be honest, transparent, to challenge, to say the things we want to say.

Over the past 4 years, since the last post I have changed so drastically. Mostly this is a place for me, as my blogs have always been. To clear my head, to help me solve problems and questions I have about work, to critically think. To grow…

Yesterday I went to Midsommar (SPOILERS to all 0 people who will read it other than me) with my brother. I didn’t want to see it alone because well let me break this down so I can keep things in order:

I generally don’t find things scary-scary. It depends. Like, thriller-horrors would be more apt of what I can handle. I enjoy body horror, not because of the violence or anything, but body horror is so much an extent of our worst fears. It’s what is the reality of our insides while we present ourselves to the world. And as bodies change, so do we.

I’ve always been interested in the idea of what happens when your world falls apart, you know? And for so many people, to see it played out helps us understand more.

Do I love seeing smashed in faces? Peoples heads being cracked upon on porcelain? Constant pain and suffering, real or imagined? No, but it’s a useful tool and when well done it can be so vivid and beautiful (in its ugliness.)

When I was growing up, Voldermort scared me. The things that rode on the horses in LOTR, terrified me. I hated the bleak world and the coldness. I used to sleep with the spines of A Series of Unfortunate Events away from me, so I couldn’t read the titles. Sometimes just knowing the books there were enough.

I guess the perception of real and fake is what helps me distinguish. It’s more like emotions and manipulation of humans that unsettle me and horror ratchets that up to an insane mix. So maybe, due to how over the top the genre is, and in its nature i think comedic, I can handle all of this.

That being said? I hate creepy things in backgrounds, and I jump at insane noises, and really really really creepy visual representations. In Tod Haynes’ Safe, nothing is outright horrific. I mean, the details of that film are heavy but what really scared me was this man in a mask who was creeping through a field at this rehabilitation center Julianne Moore’s character had to go to.

That’s the image I’m left with. I don’t like thinking about it before bed.

My thoughts on Midsommar

grief,

The movie is simple in what it says, which makes it all the more complicated. Dani, one of our main characters, loses her parents and sister when her sister, suffering from bipolar disorder, commits murder-suicide. Dani’s boyfriend, Christian, is a typical grad student 20-something. His group of friends consist of Josh (annoying white dick) and Mark (black dude. so we can see how this one plays out), and some newfound weirdo swede Pelle.

Dani and Christian have a failing relationship. They’re both different people at completely different times in their lives. It’s obvious Dani suffers from some sort of anxiety disorder. She wants to be peaceful, in a typical way that women are more socialized to be, and Christian doesn’t know what he wants because he’s stupid.

I feel like Ari Aster uses the realistic approach to directing actors because I felt right there like. Her boyfriend gaslights her, annoys her, pressures her, and she can’t handle everything thrown her way. She’s ill-equipped, right now, to be with anyone let alone Christian.

I want to say this is normal. And it is. But there’s an overwhelming sense of dread that carries over the film from their relationship. It isn’t because he’s a man, that’s simply a part of the issue, it’s because it is all wrong. It’s clear they’re both immature. It’s clear that Christian needs to learn how to Respect Women, like they all do, it’s clear just how disgusting and awful men can be.

I don’t feel like I should get bogged down by this point, because the film turns us around from focusing on how fucking difficult interpersonal relationships are and how gross men can be into this “just being the way it is.” Should men change, have more empathy, be socialized to not drive us close to crazy? Yes. But it’s also this relationship. It’s them. Unhealthy coping mechanisms and interactions, especially under a power structure, normalize these behaviors.

God, I don’t want to get into every detail I just want all these thoughts out my brain. Ok so Dani is a psych person in grad school and the rest of the boys are anthropologists. Mark, the black dude (ayoooo), wants to do his thesis on summer festivals in different parts of Europe. Pelle is from some dumb white people cult commune. Mark is going to then tour Europe for this specific purpose (watching and recording festival doings.)

First of all, why the fuck they’re going to middle of nowhere Sweden with some weirdo named Pelle who is SOOOOO scandinavian is beyond me. But whatever. Dani, especially, needs this very strange break.

And for me, the moment she accepts is the moment every single person in the film loses grip of themselves. The camera starts shaking on the plane, which is like…wow did they all die on the pLANE, in my brain. But anyway, they’ve all ran from their problems. Oh sure, this 9 day festival will totally fix our relationship.

Well, it won’t and it doesn’t. The commune does drugs fucking constantly during this dumb festival that happens every 90 years. It’s all white people that dress the same in all white with what I am assuming is traditional to nordic roots.

And this gets us into the next point: Nordic colonization. Now, I’m not sure how much he meant for this film to be a “white people are evil and bonkers” thing, since he’s a white dude himself, but the very fact that little is said about the people of the land and how everyone must dress the same, look the same, they’re all WHITE, is telling. The only non-white people we see are Mark and a couple with a black mixed man and a south asian woman from London.

You can see little hints of them being outside of this commune’s ideal. At one point, a man totally ignores Mark and shuffles away from him after a seemingly mild comment that could definitely continue to spark conversation. But they hide their customs because they cannot get out and why would Mark ultimately be able to access it?

This question continues on. The couple and he are so out of place. They witness an insane ritual and the couple needs to leave while Mark simply sees it as a custom, something that continues to happen and is therefore acceptable, although outside of this world we know this to be false. And, like anyone, normal emotions would come out.

They don’t do that here. Death is something that’s inevitable, of course, but it is finite at 72. They live their lives in acts. They do everything together. They live together from the time they’re 18 – 36, then 36 is proving further worth and they can do true work.  It is a community. They share parental responsibility (women), they make things together, worship together, cry together, and in a really bizarre scene (kinda unecessary but typical for this director atp) show that they kinda fuck together.

It’s not normal, it’s forced. Their land is theirs and they are the inhabitants and nothing outside of what they have deemed acceptable can thrive. The outsiders are picked off visually until there’s only one Other left.

They become unwelcome to anything not deemed fit and it seems that the answer to that is lies and violence. But there’s always a smile on their face. Death is beauty, right? They promote unity, but push the only non-whites into a corner. They manipulate all the friends insecurities, as cults do, and build down their effectiveness as a team (the outsiders) to promote weak spots and overpower.

Nothing they do is a choice. Perhaps this is why it’s more than just about a relationship and particularly how a man is with a woman. Dani is so fucking lost but she’s a likeable character. Christian is not a likeable character but they just shouldn’t be together. All this could have been solved but instead they ran away to cover it up.

The whole commune boasts about real emotions. It’s fake. They are constantly on drugs and have no boundaries because cults need to break down the familial structure. Oftentimes, you are all equal, though there are those that are still superior, no matter your age which can lead to awful forms of abuse and indoctrination.

There is no special 1 on 1 relationship, really, because they all belong to each other. Setting up the mentality that you are simultaneously not attached and can erase all types of complex emotions for being chained to a “community of happiness” means that without them you are nothing.

There’s a patriarchal overhanging there for sure as well. It would seem equal, but the differences are what the women do (holding, bearing, making) and the men do (orators, physically doing rituals.) There are group efforts, of course, but naturally there are set roles. For such a free open-minded community they are certainly set in their ways.

The shots of the commune really interested me, too, going back to the racism and colonization history because I saw that land as death. The punishment they’ve bestowed on others and each other. The forced emotions, the shared spaces, the homogeneity. The non-white people absolutely stood no chance. By the time you see how fucking quickly Mark’s best friend is to shun him is when you, or a black viewer, sees and knows exactly what that is. We will never be a part of this and if the others fail to conform, you’re not here either.

They play with this idea of “usefulness” as well. Purposefully enacting incest to make use of someone who could be born with defects or intellectual disabilities because that means their mind is “unclouded.” It’s entrapment. They create the hell they’re living in.

I was angry after I watched it. Not because of the content. It’s well made, well edited, certainly well shot, and amazingly done acting wise. Visually it’s so stunning. The brightness in their fake world and constant sunlight (there is a break of dusk, but you never see that) displays the fakeness.

There’s a scene where Dani is freaking the fuck out, having an anxiety attack, and all the women gather around her and “share” those emotions. They’re performing. While their own trauma may or may not exist, Dani is her person and hers alone. Only she understands everything that has happened in her life and in her relationships. The commune set up absolute disasters to make sure they got their outcome for peace. To lure this really lost but kind girl, who begged to be let go, into thinking this is her community. She’s perfect for them (minus her frame); white, doe-eyed, blonde. But she’s not happy when she’s drugged. She’s not happy all the time. She can’t be.

The end of the film, to me, serves as a reminder that you can never escape your pain. You can’t force it out, you can’t lie it away, you can’t think you’re controlling death and turning decay into beauty, you can’t do any of this. Perhaps what Ari Aster wanted to say along with the grieving process and trauma etc is that we don’t have a choice in anything we do. But I don’t agree with that assessment.

We see a descent into madness and being so stuck that you are immobilized and accept it. Nothing in this place is even close to normal, but what other choice do they have? For me, in showing this, I felt like we are told we do have a choice in our lives. That only we can determine. A sense of community means help, it doesn’t mean shared screams and cries. How is that possible when you’re never sober? How is it possible if you have never seen the real world that you could understand what Dani feels? Christian would do better than that.

That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? Christian would be in the muck with her. It would be difficult to get through, but they would get through it. All of them would. Because you have to live through it. Constant daylight, never having moments to yourself, not diving into or acknowledging that things are fucking scary, and disgusting, and awful….

Believing that we create a faux sense of harmony by indulging in aspects of life others would deem taboo for happiness. It’s all about control, this commune thinks they have controlled and taken back their lives and happiness. It is a trap. There’s a lot of circular imagery and feeling of heaviness throughout the film. It’s because we can’t escape.  And we have to find a way to live through it all to see the true beauty. By the end of the film, there’s a lot of pain, true pain, being shown.

I interpret the screams of a man from the commune while he is being burned due to volunteered sacrifice as him realizing….he feels. It’s not just once and it’s gone. No one shares his pain in his last moments. He feels. I interpreted it as the drugs he took to not feel death did not take fully and he wasn’t expressing peace but pain.

In the end of the film, Dani is covered in flowers after she is deemed May Queen (she won a dancing contest and everyone was fucking high. Yea. I hate these people) and you feel her pain. The film ends with a smile because she has accepted whatever the fuck is going on right now. She’s not even in her right mind. There’s constant distortions to show that she is trippin trippin because they’re always. On. Drugs.

But she is bogged down by those flowers. It is beautiful, but she can hardly move, hardly breathe, and presenting it through gorgeous imagery shows us that the fakeness is the escapism we claim to want. In this aspect though, Dani will never be free. She was never going to be free in the first place because things stick with you. It’s the living part that we need. It’s the dealing. After the film, Dani could go back to her own life or she could completely delve into psychosis. She could stay and be miserable or leave and be a person. We don’t know what she accepts but it’s clear that that isn’t a choice for her in the end, either.

The frustration and anger I felt wasn’t at these messy characters or their messy relationship or Christian being a messy  dumb boy idiot. It was at the “community” and their lies and pain. Their manipulation and control. How fucking unhappy that place made me as a viewer and made me as Dani. I was fuming. At the best of times, I do not understand genuinely evil things. Colonization is about capture and power, but why would your fellow human do this? At worst, it frightens and infuriates me.

Why can’t you help me why are you doing this to me. why? why? why? why? these are questions we ask ourselves, the universe, god, etc. This question has no answer and no solution. No amount of culture can determine that. No amount of taboo in culture is acceptable if it comes at the cost of more pain to promote an impossible utopia.

They want to eradicate everything, the way cults do, so their way of life and thinking reigns supreme. And it’s so fucking barbaric truly. The same words used against the land and its people, black people, etc are exactly who they are. Disgusting, primitive, stupid for their idea of enlightment. It makes me furious and fucking sad. I wanted them out of this trap, this box, this place that isn’t real.

Dani, Christian, Mark, Josh…they could have continued living the way they did. They could have. Maybe someone would get fed up, maybe in the future they won’t be friends, maybe it would have continued. We don’t fucking know. But we know that we are here and true honesty with yourself, true CONTROL, true life is experiencing everything you are thrown and surviving. Then feeling true contentness, getting to your personal nirvana, understand yourself to help and understand others. To smile and laugh after you’ve cried and kicked and dealt with it. Not being so fragmented from escaping life,  and choice, and others, you can’t do anything but smile.