{"title":"The Horror/Beauty of the Harga: Midsommar as Western Imaginary of a Screen-Free Life","authors":"D. Sutton","doi":"10.1080/08949468.2022.2129256","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The “highbrow horror” film Midsommar was released in 2019 to an engaged critical and popular reception Featuring several anthropologists as main characters, this film explores the culture of the fictive Harga and their midsummer festival in Sweden. While critics have focused on the genre-bending aspects, the exploration of a cult, and the racial politics of the film, in this article I argue that they ignored a central tension in it: the relation between technologically-mediated communication and face-to-face, intense social interactions. I suggest that these oppositions are part of an ongoing debate about the relationship between technology and sociability in contemporary life, and that the exploration of this tension might explain some of the strong reactions provoked by the film.","PeriodicalId":44055,"journal":{"name":"Visual Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":"448 - 468"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Visual Anthropology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2022.2129256","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
The “highbrow horror” film Midsommar was released in 2019 to an engaged critical and popular reception Featuring several anthropologists as main characters, this film explores the culture of the fictive Harga and their midsummer festival in Sweden. While critics have focused on the genre-bending aspects, the exploration of a cult, and the racial politics of the film, in this article I argue that they ignored a central tension in it: the relation between technologically-mediated communication and face-to-face, intense social interactions. I suggest that these oppositions are part of an ongoing debate about the relationship between technology and sociability in contemporary life, and that the exploration of this tension might explain some of the strong reactions provoked by the film.
期刊介绍：
Visual Anthropology is a scholarly journal presenting original articles, commentary, discussions, film reviews, and book reviews on anthropological and ethnographic topics. The journal focuses on the study of human behavior through visual means. Experts in the field also examine visual symbolic forms from a cultural-historical framework and provide a cross-cultural study of art and artifacts. Visual Anthropology also promotes the study, use, and production of anthropological and ethnographic films, videos, and photographs for research and teaching.
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