MIDSOMMAR: Is It Deep or Dumb?

What's up with Jared Again? Director Ari Aster surprised and delighted horror fans with his 2018 family horror film Hereditary, so expectations for his follow-up were understandably high, and according to contemporary horror king Jordan Peele Astor, it more than delivered. those expectations creating a date, the most idyllic horror. The movie of all time now Peel enjoys his horror movie accompanied by a healthy side of social commentary and

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meaning, as we've covered in our videos on get out and us, so his response got us thinking: is there something significant in this twisted vision? from the Swedish countryside or are they all bear carcasses and no substance, let's find out in this ingenious mid-summer or high-summer edition.

I'm just going to call it Midsummer Deep or Dumb and as always, spoilers ahead, well let's dive into a recap that brings us Midsummer. to 20-something dany and her stupid boyfriend christian, who is about to leave her, but when dany's sister commits suicide and her parents, christian can't exactly be at peace out of guilt, he half-heartedly, He invites her to accompany him and his fellow graduate students in anthropology. a trip to sweden for a special mid summer festival once every 96 years they arrive at an idyllic swedish commune and almost immediately it gets weird two old men jump off a cliff in a harakiri style ritual this girl puts a pubic hair on christian's foot and people dancing and moaning while tripping over balls, these Brits wear out reasonably and disappear quickly.

Has anyone seen Connie? Things get creepier and creepier and the grad school siblings are subsequently murdered one by one in creatively gruesome fashion, but things go comparatively better for Dany, who wins an all-female stone dance competition and is crowned. May queen and is celebrated by the entire community, then Christian gets involved in a strange sexual ritual that Dany sees through a keyhole, but she doesn't have much time to mope because there is about to be a cool human sacrifice. and she gets to select the ninth person to set on fire we patiently wait for your verdict she chooses you guessed it christian danny smiles as he and his fellow human sacrificial lambs burn the ending to find out if this movie is

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or not first we have to decipher the Astor's bloody depiction of a summer festival, it's important to note that this film doesn't worry too much about the complete anthropological fidelity of summer, even though an iconic Swedish holiday isn't a bloodbath in which grandparents jump off cliffs. or hapless foreigners are put on funny hats and burned to a crisp according to poe tid holm author of the book celebrating the swedish way midsummer is about celebrating summer eating herring drinking beets and staying up late is a light and happy tradition , she notes, is held to welcome summer and the season of fertility and involves dancing around maple trees, decorating everything with ferns and plants, and visiting sacred springs.

As for that death ritual title, he also clarifies that, as far as he knows, there have never been sacrifices in the middle of summer, not even in ancient times, and what about strange sex? stuff that was completely astor's twisted creation, however, having babies is a big part of midsummer, which is why many swedes are born a square nine months after the sexy solstice, it's cool and about those psychedelics that apparently celebrate that the Swedes are much more likely to get drunk than to trip, duly noted, but don't go thinking Aster made it all up during a particularly hard-working acid trip.

The guy did his homework and spent months researching and eventually drawing on Swedish traditions and folklore, as well as Norse mythology. In fact, Harga is a real rural town. and many of the film's images are consistent with true Swedish summer celebrations with a maypole. Similarly, the somewhat creepy paintings on the barn walls are also faithful to actual Swedish agrarian societies. People really eat herring and wear flower crowns. The aster also draws from other religious traditions such as the blessing of the crops from a famous 19th century anthropological study by James George Fraser. These clearer details, all faithful to Swedish culture, are complicated by the film's darker turns, but We'll get to that later, Astor even went so far as to learn the Scandinavian runic. alphabet that was used to write Germanic languages ​​in northwestern Europe before the adaptation of the Latin alphabet, told the bell ringer that each item of hargra clothing is decorated with specifically chosen runic symbols and in different hieroglyphic languages ​​that they invented specifically for the film, A notable example comes when Christian puts on a white robe before entering the world's strangest fertility ceremony, the robe is decorated with the upward arrow, the Tiwas symbol associated with the Norse god, representing bravery, masculine energy. and manhood, appropriate tears, he sacrifices his hand to save the world, which is appropriate for a guy who is about to be sacrificed well, Dany, in contrast, has two runes on her dress that show the duality of her character , an r-shaped rune that symbolizes the journey and a thawgaus rune in the shape of an hourglass that could mean a new beginning or a loss of hope for both symbols.

The interpretation, but each one feels relevant to Danny's journey when it comes to death, was likely inspired by long-debated Viking mythology and folklore. Certain written and visual accounts from the prehistoric Viking period depict sacrifices of horses, dogs, birds, and yes, humans, which apparently occurred every 9. For years, these accounts have been disputed by scholars, but they are largely in agreement that they were sacrificed. humans, it probably happened before 10 50 AD, so regardless of whether some creative liberties are taken, other surprising moments are also infused with elements of Norse mythology, for example, it gets Christian. Inside the carcass of a bear before being burned alive Bears are important in Norse mythology Viking men put on naked skins before battle and some even believe that the skins protected them from fire Perhaps even more grotesque is the fate of Simon , the Brit, whom Kristen finds open lungs somehow still breathing.

This frightening vision is a recreation of the blood eagle. A Viking torture ritual that involves revealing a guy. The blood eagle was first documented in 865, but scholars aren't sure if it's possible and no one has exactly volunteered to be the guinea pig at that time. There are harga love rituals, some of which resemble reality, for example, we see young harga women picking different types of flowers in real life, they picked 7 different types of flowers and put them under the pillow to evoke the dreams of your future partner. instead, the seductive Mayan Christian places a carved love rune under his bed in a more shocking moment.

Christian discovers a pubic hair in his cake. One love spell Astor insists comes from actual Swedish folklore. At a different point, Christian's drink is slightly redder than the others, suggesting that there is Menstrual Blood in there, which Aster also says comes from tradition. We've had trouble confirming any of the practices and trying to make people at the library think we're weird, so don't say we don't make sacrifices for you anyway. The point is that Astor had fun combining truth and fiction, old and new mythology and history to build his eerie haven of cell phone-free agrarian life, since ritualized human sacrifice is as normal as sourdough bread, which it certainly isn't.

It's a criticism if every horror film were limited to The genre would actually be pretty boring, but by using this potpourri of references, Aster tries to make a deeper point. Let's look at the two very different ways the film's outside characters react to these rituals. We'll start with Dany, who despite the insane arsenal she has. Get off ends the movie with a smile, what are we supposed to do with this? Has Dany turned evil or is there something else. We think he does and his character arc proves it. Danny begins the film quite firmly installed in a cold and alienating secular society.

With the cold and lonely streets of the city, the colors are dull and we get the feeling that this is not a happy world after losing her entire family, no one really comforts Dany and her boyfriend only stays with her to seem like a good guy, his world feels quite absent from the community. and emotional support she is shown alone in her home with phone calls providing much of her communication with the outside world her detachment is evident in her first phone call with Christian the camera is placed directly on her face without a single cut to him that imply that you are speaking to someone who is not fully present, I am very lucky to have you.

Several other conversations are shown in mirrors, which could imply that people aren't really connecting and are only seeing each other's superficial public faces. Her boyfriend is constantly trying to get away from her. She was only going to go to that party for 45 minutes, she forgets her birthday and he pressures her to take hallucinogens despite her recurring panic attacks from early on. Her Swedish friend Pella tells her that despite being orphaned when she was a child, she always told me I have felt embraced by a family, a real family that everyone deserves, you deserve it, it is clear what he lacks, love, empathy and community, and that is exactly what he finds when he meets the Harga people.

Although she spends the first half of the film extremely cautious and afraid of them, she is eventually seduced by the warmth of her community plus the drugs, the harga even seem to move together as if they are all dancing the same choreography, they behave like different parts of the same organism, the idea of ​​a shared catharsis in both pain and pleasure is present throughout the In the film, when this old man survives his jump from a cliff, the rest of the tribe groans in unison as if experiencing pain Collectively, this is repeated in the final ritual sacrifice and similarly, during Christian's hot tryst, we see the women moan in unison with Maya as if sharing their pleasure, every feeling experienced is shared by the community, as Astor says, her language is empathy at first, Dany is intimidated by her sense of unity, she feels too scared to join the ritual dance, you guys should join in, oh no, I'm too scared, however she does it.

She seems surprised by the connection of the people watching closely during the ceremonies after the horrible sacrifice. Dany is visibly stunned and devastated, but she listens attentively as the older woman explains that we see life as a circle and recycle like someone who has recently lost her entire family. The idea of ​​life being a circle of rebirth has to be appealing. We see Dany becoming more immersed in harga culture as she begins to find the cult, a community she most longed for. Basically, this is shown in her costume, which transforms from the dark real world of her. from clothing to an apron and finally a full dress and a flower crown before the may dance.

Here she takes more hallucinogens, but this time in a ritualized move, she shares the experience first with a harga girl and then with the entire circle of them, although she is a little off the pace. She can't help but be taken to the dance, and her whirlwind experience is the first time we see her truly smile. She eventually moves as part of the singular harga organism, but the most important moment of the film occurs after she sees Christian having sex with Rando Swedish. Girl, she bursts into uncontrollable tears, echoing the way she cried after learning of her family's death, except this time she is surrounded by a group of hargo women who cry along with her as if they share her emotional burden and empathize. completely with his pain.

Curiously, Dany's biggest inculcation. in the cult it is reflected in his greater immersion in nature, this begins in a psychedelic way when he hallucinates that his hands grow grass and then his feet become grass over the course of his reign, he covers himself with more and more flowers to the point of the absurd. By the end, she has almost completely disappeared into a dress and a crown of bright flowers that symbolize her surrender to nature and this agrarian society. We see this new fidelity to harga society when she chooses Christian instead of a harga to be the ninth sacrifice as she watches the burning, she experiences pain but, like the harga, she also experiences joy.

She is watching the vestiges of her former life crumble and she can't help but smile, as she is free to start over in a community to which she canbelong and be seen. It's creepy but it makes for pretty good cinema, but if you're not interested in joining a community of happy, inbred blonde people, there's another option: enter Christian and friends, they approach the harga people with the condescending distance of the anthropology students working on a thesis who hide in temples to take photos of secret religious texts or observe rituals as if they were watching animals in a zoo, the crazier the animals act, the better the peer-reviewed article they will be.

They will, meanwhile, mark that the shameless fool is more concerned with fucking Swedish chicks and doesn't care about their beliefs as demonstrated when he urinates on a sacred tree and can't understand their reactions. I just had to pee They generally approach harga culture with the same surprise and intrigue as we do, an audience so alienated from the value of ancient rituals that they were willing to accept the idea that they could be as horrible or at least accept what they were. enough to effectively scare us, so what is Aster doing here, as we see it? The film constantly plays with and subverts our modern secular aversion to mystical traditions.

Religious worship has become increasingly foreign to many of us, leading theologian David Bentley Heart to write that our religion is one of very comfortable nihilism, we tend to see ritual acts as primitive and potentially barbaric, that man The particular bag of this film takes the form of very religious Swedes rather than a sadistic serial killer or a shape-shifting clown says a lot about our society's fear and aversion to ritual, at the same time that Astor describes the Harga Clan as the precise answer to everything that's wrong in Dany's life. It offered total acceptance, genuine reciprocity, and total empathy, so mid-summer is a shocking reaffirmation of the value of ritual, no matter how irrational they may be.

These acts seem to have a very rational purpose in building community and a sense of belonging, we would go ahead and say That's a certified joke, but what do you think Midsummer is, a compelling horror show that comments on our society every more secular or are they simply pagan people?