Anjali Mehta Midsommar: Cults, Conformity, and Obedience

Midsommar: Cults, Conformity, and Obedience

Anjali Mehta

Told against the backdrop of a trip to a secluded Swedish town, Ari Aster’s film Midsommar is a twisted tale of grief, belonging, and community centered around a tragically orphaned woman’s pain and desire for acceptance. A group of anthropology students visit a remote commune in Hälsingland, which quickly turns sinister as each student is murdered in gruesome, ritualistic killings (Andersson & Knudsen, 2019). Midsommar is a film centered around a cult (i..e, a group with a shared commitment to an extreme ideology; Aster, 2019), known as the Hårga. The main character, Dani, finds a surrogate family and an empathic community within the Hårga. While the Hårga is a fictional cult, real cults exist worldwide, and their practices are not dissimilar to those of the Hårga. Cults exercise extreme social influence on individuals by systematically exploiting their basic human tendencies (e.g., making vulnerable people feel loved), in order to induce thought reform and behavior change, which can corrupt even the most ordinary of individuals (Hassan, 2000). Through the lens of a horror film, Midsommar terrifyingly depicts the rituals as a product of cults’ extreme social influence and psychological manipulation.

The Cult Experience: Susceptibility

In order for cults to carry out their plans and spread their beliefs, they must recruit new members. Midsommar highlights how the basic human need of belonging can make ordinary people susceptible to cults. Due to a horrific incident resulting in the death of her entire family, Dani is launched into a state of despair driving her to seek comfort. Emotionally vulnerable, trapped in a codependent relationship with her partner without a reliable support system, Dani is susceptible to falling prey to the illusion of family. Given the uniquely vulnerable position Dani is in, which the Hårga honed in on to exert their influence, Dani is especially susceptible to the fall into the arms of somebody who could provide empathy and community (Curtis & Curtis, 1993).

In addition to her vulnerability, another major factor making Dani a person of interest to the Hårga is her gender (Rousselet et al., 2017). Women seem to be at the center of the Hårga’s mission and rituals. The May Queen, for example, is perhaps the most honorable position and is given specifically to a woman. The May Queen ritual is an annual rite for fertility to welcome the new harvesting season, as The May Queen symbolizes rebirth, the new season, and the beginning of the new cycle. In this highly respected position, the essence of the Hårga and its cult community is continued via the May Queen, who is taken to bless the harvest and animals for the continuation of the Hårga life cycle and the cult itself. Given that cults rely on reproduction as a means of growing their population, women in the Hårga are symbols of sex, fertility, and continuation (Boeri, 2002). In Midsommar, reproduction is an emphasized practice that has its own rituals and its own method of practice, which is typical cult behavior, as they tend to be gendered and controlling (Boeri, 2002). For example, a female cult member, Maja, uses a “love spell” and performs a typical Hårga mating ritual with one of the male archeology students to impregnate herself and continue to populate the cult society. Real-life cults, such as the Children of God, forbid birth control, while others, such as the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints, marry young girls to older men to have children (Stein, 2016). Cults will often “groom” their women and prepare them for sexual intercourse with their leaders (Boeri, 2002). In a cult, such as in the Hårga, women lose their bodily autonomy and are often used just as a method of maintaining fidelity.

The Cult Experience: Maintaining Membership

Cults influence thoughts and behaviors as a way of manipulating people to remain in cults. Human behavior can be influenced in two ways: informational social influence (i.e., when people look to others for information on how to behave acceptably) and normative social influence (i.e., when people get along with others for the sake of social approval; Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). This type of social influence is a function of private acceptance of (i.e., a change in opinion) and public conformity (i.e., a change in behavior without a mental acceptance) to a group’s norms and beliefs (Cath, 2009). Specifically, since group norms of the Hårga deviate from widely accepted societal norms, when members are together their behavior is influenced via informational social influence, and they become more likely to act according to the Hårga’s group norms through successful deindividuation (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). Contributing to both conformity and obedience is the concept of deindividuation (i.e., the loss of personal responsibility); thus, deindividuation reinforces a person’s adherence to group behavior, as their behaviors are affected by social influence (Postmes & Spears, 1998). In other words, when individuals no longer feel like individual entities but like a small part of a larger group, they feel less accountable and, thus, increasingly adhere to local group norms. When an individual is “following orders” of the cult, the individual does not feel responsible to carry the blame. It becomes easier to do unpleasant things when people no longer need to take full responsibility (Prentice-Dunn & Rogers, 1982). Even though horrific acts were carried out by individual members throughout the film, they did not feel the blame individually; this is typical in the deindividuation practices of

cults. Further, the Hårga extract their beliefs from the natural world, and leaders of the cult use these beliefs to justify their control over cult members’ lives. For instance, their concept of life is divided into a rigid cycle of life: birth, death, rebirth, and so on. The cult leaders use this knowledge to sacrifice members and entice members to take their own lives. In order to continue this belief, the Hårga relies on forms of social influence within the cult to maintain membership and carry out practices. Due to the Hårga’s efforts to maintain this cyclical balance, they live in isolation, cut off from the law, with their own rigid hierarchy and rules.

Another factor keeping people trapped in cults is the need to behave consistently with beliefs and commitments in order to avoid cognitive dissonance (i.e., internal conflict experienced when certain beliefs are not reflected in reality; Cialdini & Trost, 1998). In Midsommar, Dani makes the monumental decision to kill her boyfriend. During the last scene, when Dani is shown smiling, she has convinced herself that it was a good decision. A study by Festinger et al. (1956) investigating cognitive dissonance and cult formation found that members developed a stronger belief when the cult’s prophecy failed, revealing how people had to find a way to cope psychologically with the failure. Each compromise makes it more painful to admit the deception, keeping people trapped in cults (Lifton, 1989). In other words, the human tendency to justify actions and commitments protects self-perception. If cult members did question their cult practices, it would hurt their self-perception, essentially leading people to experience the psychological distress that results from cognitive dissonance. Justification for self-protection acts as a maladaptive way of coping that leads to illogical thinking, which is why perfectly rational people find themselves unable to rationally make decisions about a cult they are involved in, as it would create cognitive dissonance and thus damage their selfperception (Stein, 2016).

In addition, Social Impact Theory, which discusses the likelihood of responding to social influence, cites three key variables for social influence: strength (i.e., the importance of the group), immediacy (i.e., the physical proximity of the group), and number (i.e., how many people are in the cult versus on the side of the individual; Mullen, 1985). In Midsommar, Dani was constantly surrounded by many cult members (i.e., immediacy and number), and further the saliency of the Hårga into Dani’s life is significant (i.e., strength). The Hårga acted as an important aspect of Dani’s life from the psychedelic tea to her dressing in the same clothes as the cult members, ultimately the Hårga provided not only a community, but also a place Dani felt she belonged.

The Cult Experience: Comformity, Obedience, & Belonging

A crucial factor contributing to the social influence of cult members is the concept of obedience to authority. Obedience to authority is closely connected to the principle of conformity (i.e., when faced with group norms, the majority of people match attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors; Cath, 2009). Further, when people are uncertain in new surroundings, as was the case with Dani and her peers when they first arrived, they look to others (i.e., the existing cult members) for cues on how to behave (Zimbardo, 1997). Evidently, the existing cult members act according to their leader’s commands, and so Dani and her colleagues also obey the authority of the cult. Obeying authority figures is an essential factor of human nature, especially when the other people around are obeying authority figures as well, thus reinforcing the norm to obey authority (Cath, 2009). In Midsommar, obedience to authority is displayed at the very beginning of the film, where immediately upon their arrival, existing cult members feed Dani and her fellow travelers a psychedelic tea, which they do not know the contents of but consume without any questioning. Throughout the movie, Dani is seen obeying the norms of the cult and doing as she is directed: eating what they eat, dressing a certain way, and ultimately performing the May Queen rituals. Social influence in the form of obedience, conformity, and compliance are present in the cult experience. Specifically, Dani in the Hårga displays conformity to group social norms and compliance to cult behavior, and, thus, obedience to authority.

Compliance can be normative (i.e., without private acceptance and purely for social approval), leading normative social influence to be subtle, indirect, and outside of awareness (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). In Midsommar, compliance can be seen when Dani is selected as the May Queen after which she simply follows orders and performs whatever rituals cult members tell her to without fully understanding what she is doing. Another example of the establishment of a social group and conformity in Midsommar is the Hårga’s belief to maintain the cycle of seasons in order to ensure their own survival. Social groups (e.g., the Hårga) provide a lens through which individuals can view and understand the world (e.g., the cycle of seasons). Groups establish social norms, both implicit and explicit, to define acceptable behavior. Cults are, ultimately, another type of social group, and many times, people succumb due to the innate human need to belong. In other words, people conform to the group’s expectations in order to be accepted. Under strong social pressure, individuals will give in and conform, even if this means doing something unethical (Nord, 1969). Cults exploit peoples’ natural human tendencies to belong and conform, with the ultimate goal of carrying out the cult’s plans and spreading their beliefs. Given human beings’ strong and perhaps innate need to join social groups, coupled with Dani’s vulnerable state and situation, joining the Hårga provided both a sense of belonging and a sense of self. In being crowned May Queen, Dani finally found a sense of belonging and catharsis for her grief. Furthermore, giving Dani the role of May Queen reinforces her place in their community, as she found herself in the most powerful position. Dani managed to rise through the ranks and find both a support system and an identity within the cult community. In this way, Dani found a sense of identity and belonging with the Hårga through successfully fulfilling her

need to belong through conforming with the cult.

Conclusion

Midsommar’s portrayal of the Hårga showcases the power of extreme social influence, as cults exploit individuals’ natural inclinations to follow orders, mimic others, and protect self-esteem.Ultimately, Midsommar’s Hårga represents a very accurate depiction of cults in the real world. Many times, individuals, such as Dani, find themselves in a vulnerable position, struggling to comprehend the circumstances they are in (O’Reilly & Chatman, 1996). This can make an individual susceptible to fall prey to the psychological manipulation and social influence cults use to maintain membership. Through Dani’s uniquely vulnerable and susceptible position, she falls victim to becoming a member of the Hårga and comes to realize the power of empathy. She experiences how emotions are collectively felt by every member of the cult and is slowly shown what a real support system looks like as the community helps her express her emotions. By catering to humans’ innate need to belong, cults offer a sense of community and identity. When Dani blissfully smiles at the end of the movie, she has found the feeling of home and belongingness in the Hårga. Ultimately, Midsommar perfectly displays the enticing and believable illusion of warmth and community cults offer people.

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