Midsommar thoughts

[beer_good_foamy]

OK, so movie review time. I watched Ari Aster's (alleged) horror movie Midsommar yesterday, in which a bunch of American college students have a really bad time at a Swedish midsummer celebration, and as an actual Swede, I have to say...

...that was really fucking funny. I mean, as in, the whole audience were laughing out loud for the entire last hour or so. I've watched a ton of exploitational horror movies in which the (usually white, and therefore supposedly relatable) idiot protagonists go to a part of the world they're not familiar with and get their comeuppance. That's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that's Cannibal Holocaust, that's Hostel, etc etc. But being the target of that, and being expected to react with confusion and dawning horror at something as normal and innocuous as midsummer ("They're wearing (not very accurate) folk dress! It never gets dark! They EAT HERRING!") just doesn't work for me.

Which is a pity, really, because there's certainly something to be said for Ye Olde Traditions being scary, especially in the current political climate. Early on in the movie, Our Heroes pass under an anti-immigration banner hung over the highway, and the movie comes out just a week after the leader of the Christian Democrat party (who are surging in the polls) declared that Swedish Jews shouldn't be forced to celebrate Christmas, by all means, but they should think long and hard about whether they want to be accepted in their "new" country. And there are bits of actual Swedish myth - not just the Old Gods Of Recent Marvel Fame - in there; I love that they named the village Hårga, after this folk song describing how the Devil takes over a dance and plays the fiddle so well that everyone dances until only their skulls remain.

"Horgalåten" (Watch on YouTube)

But as a horror movie? Well, I guess. There are certainly scenes that work as such. But where Hereditary built up some unbelievable tension only to squander it at the end, this movie never really does that for me (might be the numerous gut laughs that ruin that). As a remake of The Wicker Man it's certainly a lot better than the remake of The Wicker Man. And as in Hereditary, Aster gives the characters more than one level to work on, making it a movie about a dysfunctional relationship within a horror movie. Also, kudos on getting actual Swedish actors to play all Swedes, even if it's filmed in Hungary. But it just puts all its eggs in the basket of building tension by going "aren't foreigners weird?" which... we're not? But I hope at least one or two viewers, after wiping away the tears of laughter, went home thinking about exactly what it is they want to preserve and how silly any traditions look when viewed from outside.

So: not very successful as a horror movie, some nice gore notwithstanding, but as a black comedy I loved it.

I now really want a Swedish film maker (say, Ali Abbasi who made the excellent Border) to make Thanksgiving: A horror movie in which European college students visit a friend's family in Wisconsin, are forced to observe a violent ritual in which so-called "football players" are torn limb from limb while fighting over a dead pig, and slowly realise that they will be the stuffing in a giant bird.

Comments

[shadowkat]

So the point is, a commune like the one in the movie wouldn't have had an unbroken tradition going back to the Olden Days with festivals every 90 years. Having it be a community of hippies who just reintroduced their approximation of the Old Faith (much like Lord Summerisle in Wicker Man) both makes more sense, and gives the villains here more agency as opposed to making them curious foreign cultures that must be accepted for what they are.

I'm trying to think if that would be true over here? Yeah, there could be a 100-200 year backwoods cult, it's possible. After all we had the bloody Pilgrims...and their witch burnings. We have some weird stuff, like the town that sort of disappeared. Also it could be true in the British Isles, which did practice the Wicker Man or a relatively less brutal version of it. They filled it with various crops and a cow and burned it.

Here's the 1970s film Dark Secrets of Harvest Home based on the Tom Tyrone best seller. (The book is better, and I saw it in the 1970s, I found it scary then, I don't now. It's sort of cheesy.)

Tyrone apparently based his story on an English religious sect that came over in the 1600s and practiced the pagan rituals. And I know from my own myth studies in Britain that they combined a lot of the Christian rituals with their own. Some really lend themselves to it. I don't think they did ritual sacrifice though -- the early Christians had a tendency to exaggerate and state this was the case. But I'm uncertain. We have some unreliable narrators when it comes to the historical record.

[beer_good_foamy]

Again, all that depends on where you draw the line between religion and just ordinary folk tradition.

and their witch burnings

You had, what, one witch trial? We had hundreds. Normally, if there was anything at all to the accusations, it wasn't that they'd prayed to the old Gods (which were long gone by the 17th century) but that they were Christian heretics (hence the accusations of communing with Satan) or that they used folk medicine or the like. It was Christians burning Christians, as much as present-day neopagans like to claim them for their own. Same with the wicker man and similar traditions, inasmuch as they existed before the 20th century brought them back; those are rituals that may at some point have had pagan roots, but I'd be very surprised if they were part of consciously pagan celebrations post-Christianity. I mean, Europeans spent most of the time between 600AD and 1800 or so killing each other in millions over slight disagreements on exactly how Jesus said "do unto others", anyone caught praying to Odin or Minerva or Toutatis would quickly have been, um, persuaded to stop doing that. That said, history is never a clean slate, and part of the reason Christianity became the most successful franchise in history is because it easily adapts to include some non-Christian overtones as long as you didn't overdo it - the Mexican Catholics till celebrate the Day of the Dead, we still venerate Santa Claus whose look is borrowed from creatures who started out as Germanic house gods, became house and forest spirits in the middle ages and fairytale creatures after that...



Which is all to say that modern-day religion and tradition and ritual is an incredibly rich and complex weave of a lot of stuff that has come before, and we don't typically know the reason we do half the things we do. :)

I think that's, like, the tenth time you've recommended Harvest Home to me, I'll really have to find it one of these days. It sounds like something I'd like. It doesn't seem to be easily available, though.

[shadowkat]

No, we had more than one. ;-)

See, someone actually did a historical chart. Historical Witches and Witch Trails in the US. They are harder to track because we don't have some of the record keeping. But keep in mind the pesky European Christians doing it in Europe, came over here -- and did the same thing for the same reasons. Also a lot of them were refugees from Europe for practicing harsh religions. The US was partially founded on Christian Religious Freedom for crazy Christian religious sects. (Puritans a prime example).

It's just we only had one famous one -- that Arthur Miller chose to write about. But there were 100s. Some recorded, some not.

Granted people had more room to run and hide -- so it was harder to catch witches.

[shadowkat]

I think that's, like, the tenth time you've recommended Harvest Home to me, I'll really have to find it one of these days. It sounds like something I'd like. It doesn't seem to be easily available, though.

I have? Damn. Sorry. It's just it's the best pagan horror flick that I've seen. (Not that I've seen that many. I couldn't get through Wicker Man (the Chris Lee version) and haven't tried Nick Cage's.) And whenever anyone brings folk/pagan horror-- my mind goes to it. It's probably not as good as I remember. The critics hated it. Keep in mind for my cultural anthropology minor -- I studied British pagan rituals, specifically in the area of Wales. This was however back in the 1980s. And was rather fascinated by the whole Goddess traditions and horror novels situated around it -- even tried to write one. I read Donna Tartt's Secret History (which I liked the best), Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand (the least) and Tom Tyron's Harvest Home, along with more romantic novels not worth mentioning. It's not easy to find. Tends to be more cult.

[shadowkat]

Oh this is fascinating -- I spoke with co-worker who saw the film, and he said when he saw it -- the theater was very quiet during the last part, and it was intense, and no one found it funny, outside of the intentional bits early on. Also that it was beautifully filmed in sections. (Co-worker looks like Chidi from the Good Place with his glasses on.)

[beer_good_foamy]

Just like all non-US watchers will at the end of Thanksgiving: The Stuffening! :)

[shadowkat]

LOL! I told him your story about "Thanksgiving: The Stuffening", which I thought was a really good analogy.

He didn't get it at all. He did find it interesting though.

Personality wise? He's a bit like Chidi in the Good Place.