Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure” and Ari Aster’s ‘Midsommar’
In her iconic and oft-cited essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of the cinematic “male gaze,” that is, the notion that on a formal and technical level, cinema has been historically driven by the eyes of its male characters, and the corresponding sexualization of female characters. To explicate her argument, Mulvey utilizes Freud’s psychoanalytic ideas on the nature of sexual desire, deeply honing in on the nature of the phallus and the lack thereof as a framework for the cinematic male gaze.
Ari Aster’s sophomore film ‘Midsommar’, a horror picture which he described as “‘Wizard of Oz’ for perverts” and as a “breakup movie,” provides a fascinating case study for Mulvey’s thesis in that it both abides by and inverts the concepts presented by Mulvey in her essay. In the film, Dani (Florence Pugh), after suffering the catastrophic loss of her entire family, joins her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and his friends on a trip to Halsingland for a traditional midsummer festival, to disastrous consequences. Both on a formal and narrative level, its explorations of sexual perversion and the collapse of a heterosexual relationship act almost as a culmination of the Freudian outline Mulvey constructed, even if it does not consistently abide by the pervasiveness of the male gaze as a construct for identification.
It is perhaps pertinent to address from the outset the fact that ‘Midsommar’ is told from a predominantly feminine point of view (Dani, the film’s central character), and as such does not fit in squarely with Mulvey’s primacy of the masculine point of view. Although this is by no means a hard and fast rule in cinema, as there are numerous female-led films in which the female protagonist’s gaze is secondary to that of the surrounding male characters, it is true enough here: nearly all of Dani’s scenes with her boyfriend Christian in the first act of the film are constructed from her point of view. In one brief scene, as he knocks at her door, the camera stays in place, only shifting focus from her face as she rises from bed to his face, nevertheless retaining her physical perspective. Elsewhere, the camera is trained on Dani in a wide shot as she looks at him on the opposite side of the frame, where Christian only appears as a reflection much smaller in the frame in comparison to her dominant position.
Although Mulvey’s formal definitions of fear of the feminine only loosely apply in ‘Midsommar’, versions of it are very present on a narrative level. Mulvey states in her essay in Freudian terms that the woman’s “lack of a penis… [implies] a threat of castration, and hence displeasure,” going on to state that “the woman…always threatens to evoke the anxiety [she] originally signified.” Just before Dani suffers the loss of her family, the film introduces its male cast, assembled at a diner discussing Christian’s relationship with Dani. Most of them, primarily Mark (Will Poulter), are adamant that he break up with her, as she is too needy and “doesn’t enjoy sex.” (The mise-en-scene here emphasizes the sexual mindset of these men, as they are all seated under an infamous photograph of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield, the former’s cleavage well-defined.) Sex looms over their conversation, to the point that Christian steals a glance at their waitress’s posterior, acting as the film’s most pure instance of the male gaze, as the waitress serves no other function than to fulfill the sexual pleasure of looking. Throughout this scene, it becomes clear that Dani is, in fact, a great source of displeasure and anxiety for Christian, illustrating Mulvey’s assertion that this is produced both by his inability to view her as a “fetish object,” thus perpetuating the fear of castration. He is unable to derive pleasure from her, and pathetically grapples with his desire to leave her. Directly after this scene, Dani calls with the news of her family, trapping him within the relationship for the rest of the film.
Feminine Control of the Male Gaze
When the characters arrive in Harga, an inverted form of Mulvey’s male gaze is properly introduced, as the more sexually-driven male characters (Mark and Christian) make the female citizens of Harga the objects of their desire. One could easily make the case that this illustrates cinema’s scopophilic desire, raised by Mulvey. In one scene, Aster utilizes a particularly effective framing for this gaze, comprised of the male character (here, Christian) in the foreground, the female (Maja) in the background, with a shallow depth of field. As Christian steals a glance, the focus shifts from Christian to the Maja; however, this reveals that the woman being gazed at is already looking at them. As the focus shifts back, he wears a look of discomfort, as the gaze is not entirely in his control: when the looked-at looks back, it undermines his sexualization of her, and as with Dani, she loses the ability to be a fetish-object for the gazer, thus returning the viewer, identifying with the male character, to a state of fear of castration. This idea becomes even more potent as the film progresses, as Christian’s sexual attraction to Maja e is manipulated by way of mind-altering substances with apparent magical properties, including a pie made from the woman’s pubic hairs, making him incredibly susceptible to her sexual advances (insofar as that term is wholly accurate). Here, the fear of castration becomes almost a literal fear, as death looms over everything in this village, and the mystifying nature of the castrated and foreign woman deepens this fear, as her very unknowability drives it.
This control of his gaze culminates in Christian’s affair with this woman, a strange, disturbingly comedic sex scene in which he ritualistically copulates with her to the chants of women hovering above them. The mingling of Christian’s fear and desire become murky here, as he seems to be acting less on his own desire as much as he is acting on her desire for him (a return to the fear of the return of the gaze), but now, her desire/gaze overpowers his, and he is helpless to do anything about it. (It is worth noting here that in the extended director’s cut of his conversation with Siv before this, she suggests that his mating with her will offer more insight into the community for his thesis, an idea which he seems to take somewhat seriously, at least subconsciously.) His expression is wide-eyed to the point of petrification, where hers is resolved but otherwise nondescript. In a particularly strange moment, one of the women standing above them leaves her position to “aid” Christian by pushing him from his posterior into the woman he’s fornicating with, which in effect cements his lack of power. (Additionally, the women surrounding them sway forwards and backwards with his movements, signifying yet again their control over his desire.) Even though he is “on top,” as it were, any leverage he may have had is gone when even his thrusts are not his own.
After he climaxes, he is almost immediately ignored by these women, as Maja celebrates her impregnation and they all flock to her side to join her. (While it is entirely debatable as to whether it would be remotely possible to know this, it fits in well with the peculiarity of everything beforehand.) Subtextually, this even further subjugates Christian’s former desire and strips him of his sexual autonomy entirely, as his only essential function in the context of this intercourse was to satisfy her and impregnate her. As this occurs, Christian comes to his senses, and realizes either the aforementioned, the perversion of the scene that unfolded, or his infidelity to Dani (or any combination of the three.) He bolts for the door, running amok naked until he is apprehended.
Castration as Punishment
Here, Aster’s framing of the film as a cathartic breakup movie intersects with the framing of Freudian castration, and both reach their natural end in the finale of the film. After he is apprehended, Christian is, for all intents and purposes, an invalid, mute and immobile (perhaps an extension of his loss of sexual autonomy). Dani, who has since ascended to the position of May Queen and taken on the powers associated with it, is assigned the duty of choosing the last sacrifice for the final rituals of the festival. As she tearfully looks upon him, it is clear that he shall be the last sacrifice, even though it is never said on screen. He is prepared for the ritual by being inserted into the emptied carcass of a bear, and then placed into a yellow structure with the other eight sacrifices. The structure is then set alight, burning the sacrifices with it as Dani and the rest of the Harga look on, all weeping and gnashing their teeth.
The obvious reading of this scene, the reading Aster intended, is that of catharsis for Dani, as she dealt with his emotional incapability, dishonesty, and eventually infidelity throughout the film and is finally able to release herself from her dependence on him, albeit in a dramatically horrifying way. As she looks on, her expression turns from one of grief to one of joy as she wears a sadistic grin on her face, the final shot of the film before a cut to black. (On a certain level, her perversion here matches his perversion by way of infidelity.) Read through Mulvey, though, the scene acts as a transcendence of the passive female gaze, and Christian’s death operates as Dani’s active fantasy, especially considering the fact that he is literally on display. Christian, on the other hand, suffers his castration, punishment for the investigation and fetishization of the castrated woman, loosely analogous to the deaths of screen stars like Humphrey Bogart to the femme fatales in the film noirs of classical Hollywood. In short, he has succumbed to the very thing he ultimately feared, acting as a note-perfect exemplar of Mulvey’s “paradox” of the look: “pleasurable in form, [but] threatening in content”.
Problems of Identification
In her essay, Mulvey posits that the audience’s identification in film is manifested in one of two ways: the scopophilic, which “arises from pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight” and the second, the “identification with the image seen,” is “developed through narcissism and the constitution of the ego.” Given Aster’s frequent inversion of Mulvey’s male gaze, it becomes difficult to properly analyze the formal identification of the audience in regards to the former, as Mulvey’s outline only applies to it to a certain extent (that is, the removal of pleasure after the gaze undercuts the principal identification with said pleasure). As such, the second form of identification is much more useful here, although it unfortunately relies more on narrative than on form. Taking this route, it is pertinent to address the fact that as a break-up film, the audience has two primary “choices” in secondary identification (that is, the conscious sight of the self in a film’s characters): Dani or Christian. As her gaze is not particularly informed by any ideas in Mulvey’s essay, it is worthwhile further examine it on its own accord before answering larger questions of audience identification.
As in the scenes described earlier, nearly all of Dani’s scenes in the film are sexless, to the point sex is never had, discussed or alluded to in her interactions with Christian (save for the scene in which she sees his affair with the Harga woman). As such, applications of previously discussed iterations of a female gaze do not apply, as her gaze never betrays any sort of sexual desire. Rather, her gaze is primarily that of an emotional desire: in most scenes driven by her relationship with Christian, especially those in which her point of view is primary, her expressions bear that of frustration at his emotional distance (something portrayed very literally in the mirror shot described earlier) and at his ever wandering eyes (the shifting-focus gaze shots described earlier is addended with a shot of Dani recognizing his gaze at Maja). This idea becomes especially potent when considering the loss of her family in the beginning of the film; because she has lost so much, there is an emotional suture which demands to be filled (which stands in stark contrast to Christian’s sexual suture).
Here, Dani’s interactions with Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), the Halsingland native who took them to his home village, take on a certain importance. Unlike her conversations with Christian, the two conversations she has with Pelle are on equal terms in regards to framing, both instances presented in a relatively simple shot-reverse-shot structure. In the first of these scenes, Pelle extends his regards to Dani for her loss, to which Dani, tears welling, excuses herself from the conversation. (It is worth noting that the very next shot transitions her from that room to the plane to Sweden, insinuating that her grief follows her there.) In their second conversation, which takes place after the ritual suicide (euthanasia, perhaps, in the views of the Harga) of an elderly couple, Pelle more directly appeals to this emotional suture by way of two seemingly disparate threads, trying to convince her to stay in Halsingland: He first appeals to her grief, saying that after he, like her, lost his family, the Harga then became his family. He then makes a searing criticism of Christian, asking “Do you feel held by him? Does he feel like home to you?” In regards to the former, she is adamant that her loss has nothing to do with it, and perhaps it doesn’t, but he has still struck a chord with her. His synthesis of her grief and her emotional frustration with Christian seem to comprise the better part of her character, especially as both are explicitly resolved by the end of the film: in the climax, she is fully integrated into the Harga, and she is free of Christian.
Having now addressed both characters, the question remains of how Mulvey’s concepts of identification comports with the film. Does the audience primarily identify with Christian’s male gaze, that of sexual desire, simply because of its supposed primacy in the cinematic form? Considering a) his gaze is ultimately that of the gazed-at and b) no pleasure is ultimately derived as it traditionally is, this does not seem to apply in the case of ‘Midsommar’. So, then, we are left again with secondary identification with either Christian, the masculine sexual suture (I’m of the mind that concept can be retained from Mulvey, even if the rest is inapplicable) or Dani, the feminine emotional suture. Seeing as this is incredibly subjective to each audience member, no concrete academic answer can be given. By the end of the film, though, it seems as though Aster wants his audience to identify with, or at the very least engage with, both gazes, as both are explored in great depth throughout, and both reach their natural culmination. It is a breakup film after all. – Trey McCabe
‘Midsommar’ is now available to rent and purchase on VOD and other forms of home video.