Despite the movie’s title and month-of-June time period, Midsommar has lots of clear Thanksgiving vibes. The most obvious, of course, being the whole, violent white people acting friendly while planning to kill you thing. Plus, Midsommar features a VERY BIG TABLE. Prominently! And filming took place from July through October. So, if you’re a highly sensitive person who asked yourself, Why am I being overtaken by FALL ENERGY in this alleged summer scene?!?!? My good, good witch, it’s because you are seeing a fall day on screen!
Both Midsommar and Thanksgiving use the concept of a holiday celebration to distract from murder. Thanksgiving appropriates elements of truly wonderful traditions from other cultures: a pause from labor, sharing food with loved ones, post-meal napping…outside the context of colonial genocide, these are great things. Just like outside the context of being a murder cult, the Hågra community in Midsommar has many appealing elements. And in my opinion, its appealing elements are extremely sapphic.
To me, Midsommar is a sapphic Thanksgiving horror movie. Thanksgiving because it masks evil beneath a friendly veneer of celebration, and sapphic for the following reasons:
1. It’s a daytime horror movie. Culture writer Rachel Handler pointed out to me that daytime horror is inherently sapphic, because at night, sapphics get “too sleepy” to kill people. This did resonate; it is hard to get a sapphic out of bed. Yes, there are P.M. murders in Midsommar, but that’s henchmen doing sapphic bidding. When I think of horror movies where sapphics kill at night, it usually involves supernatural possession or vampirism, which is what it would take to get me out of bed after dark.
2. Girl pubes in food. Seems very sapphic to sneak your pubes into your crush’s dinner as part of a love spell? If two sapphic couples stood before me America’s Next Top Model-style and one couple was willing to eat each other’s pubes in food and the other was not, I would crown the pube-eaters to be more in love. I’m sorry; I just would.
3. The main character spends 95% of the film longing for her partner to love her back. Unrequited yearning immediately followed by a thirst for revenge = sapphic.
4. Hierarchy is decided through an elimination dance-off, which falls under the sapphic umbrella through its intersections with queerness, as does performing for the one person in the audience who’s ignoring you. But this competition in particular is very sapphic due to containing the following: dizziness (sapphic), circles (sapphic), wanting to verbally communicate so badly you magically transcend a language barrier (sapphic), hand-holding (sapphic), falling down onto grass (sapphic) not understanding you’ve won until other people tell you (sapphic).
5. Matriarchy whose leader has BTSE: Big Tilda Swinton Energy. I have a very sapphic disease where I often re-cast characters in movies with Tilda Swinton, to the point that when I remember those scenes, it’s Tilda Swinton playing that role. This is no way shade to actor Gunnel Fred, who did a phenomenal job playing Siv. In fact, it’s hard to think of a higher compliment than, You make me think of Tilda Swinton. And while I don’t want to join the cult in Midsommar, I do want to join a cult led by Tilda, and it’s because of sapphic.
6. No femme suffers alone. When Dani cries and screams, all the other femme characters gather around to scream and cry with her, and it’s effective: She feels heard in her pain. This is the complete opposite of her relationship with Cristian, who dismisses Dani’s intuition time and time again, to disastrous result. This femme emotional collectivity of the Hårga is very sapphic. And while there are a lot of thorny elements surrounding the “impregnation ritual” scene with Maja’s character, one thing that’s objective is that Maja is certainly not alone during it! She’s surrounded by also-naked femmes who moan and gasp alongside her, giving it the feel of a group action. When she reaches out a hand (presumably to her mother) for comfort and support, her mother not only takes her hand and kneels to embrace her, she also starts serenading her!
Sure, my own consent-issues red flags were wildly flapping on both Maja and Christian’s behalf (though for very different reasons). But since it’s entirely fictional, I have to admit I enjoyed the reversal of priority in this scene. Christian’s cishet male’s experience wasn’t privileged above all else; his pleasure wasn’t the goal, and the community was there to support Maja, not Christian. Maybe elements of it felt almost comforting to me because of projection: If I personally ever had to have sex with a cishet man again (like if for some reason aliens were going to blow up the world if I didn’t?), I’d want a village of naked femmes there to help me get through it!
Plus, this scene seemed to be about fertilization rather than fun. Which made me decide (with absolutely no evidence from the film) that all the sex that happens for pleasure in this cult is sapphic. Maybe sapphic orgies are what they really use the big table for.
