The Department of English will host Robert Spadoni, associate professor of English, for a lecture titled “Midsommar: Thing Theory” Friday, Jan. 17, from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. in the Guilford Hall parlor.
About the lecture
The fate of the visitors to the remote Hårga commune in Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019) might seem aimed to criticize Swedish intolerance and xenophobia, but the film’s deeper sentiments in relation to that ideology are unreflectively American. The film presents a cautionary tale about what can happen when Americans go too far and recklessly abroad. Midsommar articulates this warning by exploiting certain innate qualities of the cinematic image to blur the line between its main characters and things.