Solar Power tour is gonna be like that end scene in Midsommar where everyone is just freaking out and yelling. please tell me this reference is landing
Sketch I did on my early morning lunch (3:40am, lol)at work. Idea I had rolling around all shift of what to dress my Muse of Bone in. I settled on a pastoral theme, heavy with flowers and white and little embroidered skeletons very much inspired by the juxtaposition of death and the beauty/pastoral setting of Midsommar.
danimidsommar is so sweet and kind and really trying to stay positive and polite to others in literally unimaginable circumstances and nobody in the whole movie is even a little bit nice to her except to manipulate her. kms
they’reso mean to her. i hate them and i’m glad they die. not just christian, literally every guy in the movie is so rude to her or is trying to get her to join their white supremacy sex death cult
i had trouble putting this together or like verbalizing this when i’ve watched this before but i think a big part of dani’s narrative, separate from themes involving race and gender, is that if you continually, not compromise, but entirely submit to others at your own expense, voluntarily or voluntarily-but-under-pressure, to avoid conflict or being seen as a burden or whatever, and continually withdraw your own boundaries, other people will push your boundaries again and again until you have none left and you are entirely at the will of anyone with an opinion. because the conflict is not just between her relationship with christian vs inclusion in the cult! it’s not isolation (bad) vs community (good) as some people read it, or toxic relationship (solitary, bad) vs toxic community (social, but still bad) either. it’s christian and his friends as narrative parallel to pele and the cult. it’s social, bad vs social, bad. dani is punished by christian and his friends for having any kind of feelings or needs, for wanting a reciprocal relationship with actual communication, for being perceived as a burden, and for asking for her personal boundaries to be respected. the cult is the same exact social dynamic but amplified. in some ways, it does reflect her toxic relationship with christian, in some ways it is the antithesis to him as well as his friends in general in order to manipulate her, but i feel like the film identifies ways in which, on both a familiar every day level (especially for women) and on a horror movie level, the withholding of affection and communication as well as the facade of providing intimacy and support are used to coerce people to behave how they want. obviously there are themes other than this throughout the film, but in terms of the power dynamics of the film, especially with regards to gender, i think it is working on these levels to achieve thematic coherency that is a bit difficult imo to pinpoint on the first viewing — it’s a movie better analyzed in retrospect or rewatching imo.
oh and i also think that there’s not really a good alternative tbh unless you are already in the “in” group — it makes a point to recognize that people who are othered who do not, for lack of a better word, compromise are in danger of retaliation. people who are in power will either push boundaries into nonexistence or punish people who have boundaries. boundaries don’t matter. on the micro, everyday level of the narrative, christian and his friends continually undermine dani and pressure her into uncomfortable situations several times. then when christian tries to steal josh’s thesis topic, he expects him to be a pushover and go along with it, and when he doesn’t, christian becomes hostile to him, he gets boxed out by both christian and pele, his access to the same research is highly limited (to christian’s benefit), and he has to do some slightly sketchy shit that ultimately gets him killed (though he probably would’ve been killed anyway) for the same access that christian is afforded (paralleled in the cult plot line by connie and simon’s objection of the suicide ritual and their swift “departure”). i think that both dani and josh, in different ways, face ostracization and hostility based on their difference of gender and race respectively and the movie does not offer a satisfying alternative and like. shit. right? anyway i feel like recognizing these power dynamics in the relationships between the people in their group of friends as well as between members of the cult, and the cult and their “guests,” might be necessary for a more intersectional reading of some of the main themes, since i don’t think it’s as simple as saying well dani’s white and therefore is accepted by the cult and suffers no negative consequences because she’s a woman, in fact i think that’s actively bad media literacy and a poor faith interpretation of her character and the script, so i think this framework serves to encourage a more nuanced conversation about these topics. not when it comes to mark though, he’s the epitome of white heterosexual male entitlement and cultural insensitivity and he gets everything coming to him and i’m not interested in affording him nuance at all lmao
also i just found this from the original script and it just. completely epitomizes so much about the movie to me
the elder in this scene tries to convince connie and simon that relationships are about sacrifice and proof of love — something that’s appealing to dani, because she gets no indication whatsoever from christian that he even likes her as a person, much less that he’s committed to being in a relationship with him. the question “do you feel held by him? does he feel like home to you?” evokes a desire of hers to fill the void of the family she just lost and the unfulfilling relationship she’s in. but this becomes defined by the people who are manipulating her through this desire as the need for sacrifice as proof — the “if you loved me, you would” logic, especially as she continually withdraws her own boundaries for christian’s comfort. but she’s not actually looking for sacrifice, just reciprocal communication and expression of care, which was also lacking in her relationship with her family, at least her sister (the tension before the murder-suicide hinges on the way her sister, even before this, continually sends cryptic messages and fails to effectively communicate with her while also requiring a lot of attentional and emotional stress from dani, from what she says). so at the end, after brainwashing etc, the literal sacrifice is “proof” of dani’s commitment to, or at least inability to leave, the cult (since all of her connections to the outside world are dead) and the voluntary sacrifices’ love for their community — but to what end? how does it actually serve their community other than providing others a sense of catharsis through their pain and upholding the strict traditions and power hierarchies within their community? which is ultimately what they achieve through both the suicide ritual at the beginning and the human sacrifice at the end. i think the audience is supposed to see through this model of love and community to a more balanced model in which information and expressions of care aren’t withheld, people aren’t being manipulated or hurt, people don’t have to give up their entire personhood, agency, boundaries, to be in an healthy and satisfying relationship or community. because the demand for personal sacrifice hinges upon the power dynamics being explored in this film — only the person with less power has to give things up. when dani wants to have a normal conversation with christian and get a normal amount of emotional support, not just from a boyfriend, but from anyone who she has a fairly close interpersonal relationship with, mark literally tells him it’s “abuse” and he shouldn’t have to do it. at the end, really only dani is losing someone she cares about, only she has a stake in the lives being lost, where the members of the cult who lured in outsiders brought people they didn’t like or had grudges against, and they’re completely desensitized to members of their own community being sacrificed (and it only hurts those volunteers, who are similarly deceived into volunteering, being told moments before they’re burned alive that it won’t hurt. uh. it fucking does lol). sacrifice = proof of love always ends up being one sided too. but a lot of viewers took “do you feel held by him?” to heart! which is understandable! but there’s a difference between being held vs being held captive, either by force or by emotional manipulation, and the cult doesn’t model an alternative, but an amplification of the exact same behavior. and now i’m just repeating myself ad nauseum and will conclude but idk maybe the film itself needed to be more clear with its messaging but i don’t really get how people came to the opposite conclusion after seeing this movie, even if they came to a different conclusion than i did. because simon’s reaction at the end of this scene is, i think, a stand-in for the intended (?) audience reaction of “yeah, what the fuck…. that doesn’t seem right lol that’s pretty fucked up.” but people took it at face value! where’s the media literacy
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