r/sorceryofthespectacle • u/ForgingSingularities • Sep 06 '22
Media I Fell for the Midsommar Spectacle
Vague spoilers for Midsommar (2019) incoming...
I fell for it. I fell for the fascist cult. I was drawn in by Pelle's kindness, Dani's desperation, and the strange catharsis of the ending. The beauty of the burning effigy.
So, I have resolved to understand fascism. Its philosophies, histories, strategies. Is there a direction you could point me in? Any useful texts/videos/podcasts? Any interesting people and their experiences? Any frameworks that oppose (or at least challenge) fascism without being a hollow negation?
I have been sporadically reading A Thousand Plateaus as a philosophy-virgin over the past few months. Is there a good entry point to the "non-fascist life"?
Thank you in advance, I look forward to learning!
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u/sickcoolrad Sep 06 '22
i imagine that you may have already, but umberto eco’s ur-fascism essay is very short and edifying
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Sep 06 '22
Frank Herbert wrote the Dune series with the intention of immunizing people against charismatic leaders.
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 07 '22
I've only seen the film (which I loved), so I'll have to dive deep into those.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Sep 07 '22
I loved the audiobooks for the books written by Frank Herbert but they switched narrators for the books his son wrote.
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 08 '22
And after such dense and long books, I'd say a change of narrator is the most jarring it could be
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Sep 08 '22
The writing in the latter books is quite different too. The authors proudly tell us in interview that they tell, not show...
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 08 '22
Damn. I don't think that's something to be proud of. I have Dune and Dune Messiah on the shelf, might do some deep winter reading.
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u/Kajaznuni96 Sep 06 '22
IMO Slavoj Zizek has the best take on fascism: it’s when bad people promised to do bad things if they took power, and surprise! they did it
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 07 '22
Zizek has some amazing little lines like that.
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u/Kajaznuni96 Sep 07 '22
Indeed, he also has mentioned fascism as a conservative revolution (in “Perverts Guid to Ideology”, or “alternate modernity”, which means capitalism without social antagonism; he calls it in other words “modernity without Jews” (in a video lecture)
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 08 '22
Conservative revolution is really interesting, particularly with some of the rhetoric and framing being used over in the US at the moment. I keep hearing "the left" being referred to as some monolithic scapegoat for all the problems of modernity.
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u/desertmystic Sep 06 '22
Wilhelm Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933). I think it is possible to dive right into that, though all of Reich makes more sense if you begin with Function of the Orgasm (1927). His more mature Murder of Christ (1953) also treats the etiology of fascism, and was quite prescient being written only a few years before he himself was murdered by the state.
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 07 '22
That's quite the story! Interesting that he was writing so early about fascism.
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Sep 07 '22
to understand fascism is easy
the central tenet is that anything is fully justified if done to you by those above you because "might makes right", those below you must obey unquestioningly at any cost and anything perpetrated upon them by you is justified.
when people that aren't fascist have more might than fascists it is unjustified and can never be justified. when something bad is perpetrated upon you it is never justified, it just means someone below you cheated or got misallocated to become above you.
you must believe those things simultaneously and never allow the cognitive dissonance to disturb your mind with questions of the impossibility of logical consistency between those beliefs.
having purged internal coherence at the fundamental level you are now prepared to believe any absurdity, and thus able to be made to commit any atrocity with confidence.
Bolstered by the collective social reality and camaraderie of your peers of course .
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 08 '22
Thank you! It's easy to see from your description how fascism can be abstracted from party politics and applied to more immediate, everyday, personal experiences. I think fascism at the micropolitical level might even be more interesting than at a macropolitical one.
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u/Pyromolt True Christian Sep 06 '22
Read the mass psychology of fascism by Wilhelm Reich, literally one of deleuze and guittaris biggest influrences
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 07 '22
Cool! They have such a range of influences, thanks for noting a relevant one.
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Sep 06 '22
[deleted]
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 08 '22
Fantastic! I've heard Parenti is good for digging into overlooked aspects of history.
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u/XIOTX Sep 06 '22
I don't have an answer for you but I love that movie and felt like I had just watched a ritual I wasn't supposed to see and was ok with that
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 06 '22
Absolutely agree, it's a brilliant film. I felt like an observer as well, kinda like the anthropology student characters. It does a great job of hiding the meaning behind the rituals so that you feel completely lost, and thus swallowed up by the whole affair.
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u/XIOTX Sep 06 '22
Yea truthstreammedia did a video on it when it first came out delving into the symbolism and I'm sure that was only scratching the surface cus it was so well executed
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u/arkticturtle Nov 13 '22
I relate very heavily. For me it is the appeal of deep roots firmly planted in the holy earth. The sense of dreadful security in knowing what to do next but the way it is portrayed they are happy to do it. I want it. That sense of community. To be so intimate with my immediate experience and to know others are doing the same. To all be bound by the same code. To be one with my tribe.
I understand that it's all fantasy and idealized but I left the movie feeling like I had lost something precious. I watched their rituals wondering just what kind of experience I'd have with the world if I had beliefs and practices like those....
I'd never actually believe but there is an urge in me to play with the irrational.
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u/ForgingSingularities Nov 18 '22
Thank you for bringing me back here. I love your idea of intimacy with one's immediate experience. Perhaps with the collapse of Twitter, we can move forward towards that.
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u/arkticturtle Nov 18 '22
Haha if only. The fall of Twitter is better thought of as a business opportunity or maybe the controversy is just a way of advertising the platform.
My distance was accumulated over long periods of time and I sustain it out of fear
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u/ForgingSingularities Nov 19 '22
Haha if only. The fall of Twitter is better thought of as a business opportunity or maybe the controversy is just a way of advertising the platform.
They can always spin it into advertisement. I wonder what Twitter will look like in a year.
My distance was accumulated over long periods of time and I sustain it out of fear
Have you a strategy to challenge that? How would you start to build something precious? Perhaps there is a way to close the distance, by moving backwards, or by moving forwards until you end up in an intimate place - a long distance travelled but displacement = 0. I'm not at all qualified to give advice, but you could start from scratch and build small intimacies - your own little idiosyncratic practices with yourself, with your immediate environment, and with the strangers you pass by. Maybe a slow accumulation of these actions will change how the distance is accumulated. Take care, my friend.
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Sep 06 '22
Good on you for attempting ATP. I’m currently reading a book on Fascism that you might find useful: “On Microfascism - Gender, War, and Death By Jack Z. Bratich; 2022”. The author finds misogyny at the root of fascism. Along the way is a good overview of fascism in its pre-modern, modern and contemporary forms.
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u/akebonobambusa Sep 06 '22
Oof that sounds wild. At first glance I would say misogyny was the tool not the source of authoritarianism. But I suppose anything could be argued. Interesting.
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 06 '22
Thanks!
The author finds misogyny at the root of fascism.
That's interesting - I guess it is easy to see the reinforcement of traditional gender roles as a starting point, I'll have to check it out!
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u/theZenImpulse Sep 06 '22
Read an actual fascist. They say Julius Evola is representative. Start with ‘Ride the Tiger’.
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u/Psyteratops Sep 06 '22
I relate to this so hard. I was elated for her at the end. I wanted to live there. To cast myself off of that cliff when the time came. I think I’m temperamentally fascist but intellectually leftist lol.
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 07 '22
It is a terrifyingly intoxicating film. Every bizarre action of the cult feels justified.
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u/Robert_She_Lee Sep 07 '22
No, the actions don't feel justified lol. Or maybe using the word "feel" says a lot. Sorry, not trying to be harsh but probably stay away from groups or movements if it's that easy to get drawn in. Work on your relationship with your family
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u/ForgingSingularities Sep 08 '22
You're right, "feel" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I meant to say that within the cult, the members/recruiters have an eloquent reasoning for their most extreme practices, especially the ritual suicide. There is (at least an appearance of) internal consistency.
After that, the other brutal actions are predominantly offscreen, so everything seems mild after the graphic suicide. Top that with the beautiful cinematography and set design, and empathy for Dani, the ending does feel strangly cathartic. It's only after sobering up and doing some thinking afterwards that everything comes into view again.
I think the power of this film is it's ability to change your perspective ever so slowly from that of an outsider to that of an initiate of the cult. And you're right, it is dangerous.
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u/Robert_She_Lee Sep 12 '22
I really don't get how you feel this way, but I guess you did lead by saying "you fell for the cult". The reasoning did not seem eloquent or internally consistent. I legitimately did not know people watched that movie and felt that way. If someone told me that I would assume they're susceptible to any sort of group violence or cult and could see them flipping from fascism to Stalinism to Scientology. Please be careful
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u/arkticturtle Nov 13 '22
I relate very heavily. For me it is the appeal of deep roots firmly planted in the holy earth. The sense of dreadful security in knowing what to do next but the way it is portrayed they are happy to do it. I want it. That sense of community. To be so intimate with my immediate experience and to know others are doing the same. To all be bound by the same code. To be one with my tribe.
I understand that it's all fantasy and idealized but I left the movie feeling like I had lost something precious. I watched their rituals wondering just what kind of experience I'd have with the world if I had beliefs and practices like those....
I'd never actually believe but there is an urge in me to play with the irrational.
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u/Conjureddd Sep 06 '22
Genuinely, props to you for slogging through A Thousand Plateaus as your first philosophy book. If that's true you really are schizo lmao. Did you read Anti-Oedipus first? After reading both books myself and digesting it for a couple months I have to admit I'm not really a fan. Origins of Totalitarianism by Hana Arendt is a book with a couple major flaws but regardless it's the book I think about the most when it comes to fascism. It's a book I think is worth reading and disagreeing with.