Midsommar
1/21/20

I don’t think people got Midsommar very right. When I say people, I mean “I don't think that people who explain things like Midsommar got ‘it’ right when they explained Midsommar”, which is to say “it” being “the movie.” And also to say that “people” is “the people who explain things.” Henceforth referenced as “the explainers.”

I’ll say this much: I watch a lot of explainer videos. I’ve had all sorts of people explain all sorts of things, to me. I’ve had things explained at me even. I’ll say this much again. I was born from a cocoon spun from the fibers plucked meticulously out of the baby food which was fed to me by way of airplane, or train depending on which mode of transportation my parents had selected to metaphorically and also literally “feed” me. I am a product of products probably, someone likely had to explain the mechanics of existence before I could be fully formed. I love grasping at straws, but mostly, I love grasping at spoons with which to be fed.

My early days of spoon grasping would consist of the typical misantropic veneer of acquiring certain trivialized pieces of intelligentsia, say for instance I could be like “so uhhh have you read The Sound and The Fury? No? Well I’d say that Transformers is actually pretty Faulkner-esque.” That was at the same time I was reading Frog and Toad are Friends. To children. Who were five years old. At a Barnes and Noble. They did not care about Faulker. I haven’t even read Faulker, I skimmed the Wikipedia page six years ago. And for what it’s worth I think Frog and Toad have a relationship that is too loving to be reduced to simply “friends.” And these five year olds deserved more.

And so do we.

After seeing Midsommar, which I saw after seeing Hereditary the year before, which I saw after seeing Drive three years before on my family’s Roku that only supports 720p resolution, I was hungry. Hungry as I had been hungry before. MIDSOMMAR ENDING EXPLAINED, I said with my keyboard. What I saw was more like “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” Because it was wrong. The videos declared triumph, the articles declared triumph. Triumph on behalf of Dani. Triumph on behalf of the new community that has accepted her. Triumph over the evils of an unsympathetic, emotionally abusive boyfriend and the acceptance of Dani by a new family who can help her through the pain of loss.

What.

Do…. do I need to see the movie again? Do I need to see the movie again? You know, I almost saw the director’s cut but it was playing at a theater too far away from me at a time too inconvenient and so I looked up the changes that the director’s cut had to offer. More scenes of Christain being an ass of a boyfriend. For the record, he is an ass of a boyfriend. The birthday cake thing was a laugh and a half, and not in the good way.

But I have to wonder if the authors of these articles and videos really saw the cult as a serious place of empathy and comfort for Dani, because I thought that what they did to her (and what is implied will keep happening to her for the rest of her life as an existing occupant of the film’s continued universe) is a twisted homunculean-esque blob barely resembling empathy. The emotional abuse doled out by Pelle and the rest of the gang (basically bloomer wojack gone wrong, isn’t that sort of the movie’s aesthetic?) is so much worse.

I am not qualified to talk about the signs, effects, or mechanics of emotional abuse. This is a serious topic that should be handled delicately by a trained professional or by someone with greater emotional intelligence than me. But I will maintain that I am about to discuss the topic in a manner NO LESS COURTEOUS than those who choose to explain the movie to me in a way that so blatantly disregards the logistics of communication.

So with my admittance of noviceness out of the way, let’s get into the Meat and Potatoes. Be ready to enhance that image, zoom in, etc. etc. (thank you Ari Aster for your attention to detail regarding runes but I do think you overestimated the ability of the “explainers” to get right the emotional core of the film).

Number One: Saying that “you know how that feels” is not how you comfort someone. Say for the sake of this exercise you’ve been feeling your relationship with your significant other becoming more distant. Say for the sake of this exercise you’ve come home to witness a brutal murder-suicide of your entire nuclear family unit. Say your name is Dani. In the emotional wake of this life changing event that will require a lifetime of therapy and support in order to overcome you experience an overwhelming moment and begin to cry. Now I’d like to ask all of my EXPLAINERS which of the following choices seems to be the most empathetic: 1) Saying “it’s okay I know exactly how you feel, I lost my parents too” or 2) literally anything else. Spoiler warning: it’s #2. So when Pelle sits down to comfort Dani as he does THROUGHOUT THE MOVIE to say “awww it’s alright I also lost my parents so you don’t need to worry” it is actually Bad. It can also be surmised that Pelle lost his parents to the ritual rebirth that happens when the old people get to be 72 but that’s not even important, just makes him that much worse.

Number Two: I want to talk about Christian for a second. Christian is not a good boyfriend. Christian is not a good friend. Christian is greedy, shallow, and uhhh something else bad. He’s not good, and I’m not saying he is good. What I am saying is that there are parts of his behavior that AS A CHARACTER IN A MOVIE I don’t really blame him for. I don’t think there’s enough discussion on the tragedy that he suffers as well, albeit a miniscule tragedy in comparison to Dani’s. But imagine for just a moment that a young couple, drifting apart, growing more emotionally distant, and suddenly something catastrophic happens. Clearly Dani needed emotional support. But is Christian really the one that people should expect would be providing that emotional support? He was a bad boyfriend before the freaking murder-suicide. He was not capable of being someone who could provide the care, attention, and love to Dani in the way that she needed. In the end, the fact that they were still together doomed them both because Dani was looking for support in Christian and Christian literally could not provide that support, being the garbage man that he was. And he was garbage! Garbage through and through. Garbage for cheating on Dani. Garbage for abandoning Dani. Garbage for not listening to Dani. But I still don’t think that his behaviour constitutes the celebration of his brains being melted from the inside as his fleshy-person-prison is engulfed in a vengeful flame.

Number Three: What kind of a community is this, bro? I am lucky enough to have some really, really good friends. I know I cannot speak for everyone when I say: hey, when I’m sobbing, I am not comforted by everyone else sobbing! But this is how I feel. This is not a good way to comfort someone! I mean, maybe as some sort of cathartic exercise that supplements a session of active listening over maybe a nice glass of lemonade and a box of tissues. But certainly not as the main course, if comforting is to be seen as a meal (“comfort food”, anyone?). When I saw Dani’s cries being swallowed by the sounds of the women around her, I saw robbery. This was her sincere expression of despair, as a result of a situation specifically crafted by the people of the community (I am not convinced that she discovered Christain cheating by accident), so for the cult folks (the gang) to then posture as a source of safety is theft. Dani never has the chance to express her emotions in a way that is individual. Her suffering is always contextualized as “one of many similar experiences that everyone goes through and we’re all in this together” which like no it’s not. At all. So when the explainers say that Dani has finally found a new family slash new home slash whatever and they fail to mention that this family is evil, manipulative and abusive, I think they miss a major point of the story.

Number Four (the last number): THE SMILE. Yes, the smile. I’ll be honest, the thing I wanted spoonfed to me most was the smile. Just tell me, movie explainers, why would Dani smile as the last person she had anything resembling a close relationship with goes up in flames? Let’s see. Vox says: “For Dani, though, the purging is complete. She is spent. And Christian is going up in flames before her eyes. As she watches, she realizes that he is gone. She is free. She smiles. Dani — an orphan — finally has a family.” I couldn’t disagree more, and this is what has stuck with me most about this movie. That smile is not a happy smile. Just like Dani was robbed in the wooden bunkhouse of her cathartic bawl, she is robbed here too. She starts to sob, looks around at everyone else sobbing, and suddenly the sincere expression of terror and loss becomes subsumed in the pulsing, disgusting mass of flesh sacks in white robes spilling crocodile tears and she has no choice but to smile, because to cry would be to become swallowed and ultimately forgotten completely. The smile is the bird landing on the Pequod’s mast as it swirls down into the sea. The smile is out of necessity, the fight or flight instinct that guides our survival tactics. It’s the only thing she has left, before the next crop of unsuspecting victims are brought into the camp for the same ritual of systematic emotional (and physical) destruction, and she is forced to repeat the cycle as a new part of the whole.

To me, this is the ultimate tragedy of Midsommar. Dani has everything taken away from her, one by one, and when nothing is left she is forced to smile because not smiling means losing the last thing she has left: the barrier that keeps her form separate from the sea of… LCL…. fluid? Stay tuned for some discussion of Midsommar and Evangelion sometime in the near or distant future.

Dani was robbed, but I think in equal part the audience was robbed. Not by this amazing film, but by a sea of content creators who did a very shallow reading of a very rich and fruitful text and in turn spoiled what was potentially an interesting, engaging, and necessary discourse on companionship in the face of tragedy. Instead we have to discuss that through the lens of “are you in the right headspace” message templates and misappropriation of the phrase “emotional labor.”

So, those are my thoughts on Midsommar. If anyone has a case for why Her Smile (™) is actually a happy one please feel free to email me. Otherwise thank you for reading and I’ll see you next time.

Forever Yours,
Sam