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<p>This article explores Ari Aster’s 2019 film <i>Midsommar</i> from the perspective of contemporary horror and ultimately argues that the movie offers ideological commentary on how the everyday horror of trauma and grief are handled in twenty-first century society. Through reversals of genre, narrative, and myth, Aster deconstructs the binary systems that reinforce the negation and avoidance of the painful mourning that is necessary for working-through. When viewed from the perspective of Aster’s inversions of Freud’s myth of the primal horde from <i>Totem and Taboo</i> and Lacan’s revision of Freud’s dream of the burning child in Seminar XI, it becomes clear that the film’s representation of catharsis is Aster’s penultimate statement on the audience’s inability to integrate traumatic loss into reality.</p>

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“A special meeting only for the Queens”: reversing psychoanalytic myth in Midsommar’s contemporary horror

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月10日

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  • Erica D. Galioto

摘要

This article explores Ari Aster’s 2019 film Midsommar from the perspective of contemporary horror and ultimately argues that the movie offers ideological commentary on how the everyday horror of trauma and grief are handled in twenty-first century society. Through reversals of genre, narrative, and myth, Aster deconstructs the binary systems that reinforce the negation and avoidance of the painful mourning that is necessary for working-through. When viewed from the perspective of Aster’s inversions of Freud’s myth of the primal horde from Totem and Taboo and Lacan’s revision of Freud’s dream of the burning child in Seminar XI, it becomes clear that the film’s representation of catharsis is Aster’s penultimate statement on the audience’s inability to integrate traumatic loss into reality.