Este artigo propõe uma interpretação do filme Midsommar, do diretor estadunidense Ari Aster, que supostamente recria no seu enredo rituais arcaicos nórdicos (Hårga), com cenas de sacrifício, magia e cópula sagrada. Entendemos que o filme, ao contrário da crítica que o considera como pertencendo ao gênero terror, propõe uma ficção arcaizante para questionar o vazio e ausência de sentido das relações contemporâneas. Recorremos aos conceitos de Georges Bataille, _continuidade_ e _descontinuidade_, para provocar uma reflexão sobre essa relação do ser (...) humano com as forças primitivas da morte e de eros. Desta forma, buscamos promover uma reflexão sobre diferentes aspectos da narrativa do filme em relação a essa experiência radical de suspensão do eu e de união às potências vitais fundamentais, no contexto do individualismo e da solidão do mundo pós-industrial. (shrink)

Ari Aster’s 2019 folk horror film Midsommar, which enjoyed both critical and popular success, features a bright colour palette and an eerily playful tone alongside a dark narrative exploring complexities of grief, depression, and bad relationships. The remote Swedish community to which protagonist Dani, her boyfriend, and his friends travel for a mid-summer festival is designed around beautiful objects, collective experiences, and rituals that foreground communal emotions, all of which contrast the technologically mediated communications foregrounded at the film’s outset. (...) In fact, this community offers meticulously constructed antidotes to the loneliness of the modern world, and to Western ideals of masculine emotional distance…but at a cost. This paper examines the intersection of emotion, community, and gender in Midsommar, using the concept of affective design – usually associated with technology design – as well as work on group-based emotions, to interrogate the film’s vision of a community that challenges gender norms and the boundaries of emotional experience. Through the depiction of ingroup boundary-policing, stark contrasts between visions of masculinity, and lush visions of aesthetic experience and emotional release, Midsommar offers a series of convincing compensatory mechanisms that invite viewers, along with the main character, to temporarily compromise morality for the sake of belonging. (shrink)