Midsommar and the Production of White Fantasy

This chapter takes the ‘folk horror’ film Midsommar (2019) as a case study against which to analyse cultural manifestations of whiteness in terms of their global and historical interconnections and in relation to the worldwide resurgence of white supremacy. American director Ari Aster’s film adopts the folk horror sub-formula of clueless Anglo-American travellers descending on exotic foreign locations, only to be brutally punished for their exploitative attitude in a symbolic gesture of postcolonial justice. Instead of sending its protagonists to Asia or Africa, however, the film’s group of visitors, including two young anthropology scholars, arrive in the symbolic heart of European whiteness, Hälsingland, to participate in the Swedish folk-mythic rituals of Midsommar. The film’s aesthetic and representational dimensions offer plentiful commentary on whiteness as an inherently violent but also nostalgically mourned European concept that is operationalised through seemingly innocuous folk-cultural traditions.