At the end of Midsommar, seemingly genuine happy, Dani smiles.
But all I feel is sadness. Many classify it as an horror piece, which is totally justifiable with the amount of disturbing elements in the movie. But to me, this is a tragedy. Going through the trauma of losing all her entire family, it is just sad that it ends up the way it ends, engulfed, consumed, and she has become agreeable to the shady shits done by the cult.
"What if she had a proper moral support?" I asked. "What if there is someone to comfort her by her side when she is the most vulnerable?"
"What couldn't have been done differently so that the cult doesn't win?"
Sigh...
To me, the movie epitomizes the tragedy of our increasingly secular world. At the start of the movie, when shits hit the fan for Dani, she needed a community to embrace her, a proper moral support system, all of which religion could have very well provided. But in a secular world, she was left alone to process the grief. This is where the cult had its way to fill in the void and stood in for what she lacked of when she was the most vulnerable. When nothing else could provide a source of consolation, the cult would.
To quote Alain de Botton in the TED talk Atheism 2.0: "We have secularized badly." This is a point that I stand by whole-heartedly. I have always hated those proud atheists who feel entitled to ridicule theists, but forget to look at what religion can bring to us, how it can benefit us. To deny the existence of god, that's the easy part, at least to me it is. What's difficult is what's now, what comes after that denial. What is proposed by Alain is very interesting. We should not discard religion entirely. We should not look down upon religion. Instead we should learn the methods from religion and we steal what works. Tradition and ritual are words strongly associated with religion. And thus in our modern secular world, these are the terms many are very skeptical to. But Alain argues that the power of ritual cannot be overlooked.
I still remember vividly my experience attending my godfather's funeral when I was like 10. To be honest, I was not that close with my godfather. So his passing didn't really affect me. But I remember the funeral, the gathering, the song singing, the setting of the church, the ambience. All of these combined, successfully created a place of empathy, an environment to encourage one to grieve, to share the pain of lost, together. I said successful, because I remember that tears did start to swell up in my eyes. This is first time that I feel the power of ritual.
All of this is not to say that atheists must always revert back to rely on religion for emotional support through hard times. But like Alain proposes, we should employ certain methods of religion to replace scripture with culture. The reason why I am a strong proponent of this idea is that I had a very personal experience with it. During a series of depressive episodes, it was not the church events nor the visits to the psychiatrist, it was the book "The Catcher in the Rye'' that saved me from plunging into the abyss of dangerous thoughts. It was a book that I'd noted down verses and memorized, a book that I'd carried with me all the time. Although my view of the book has changed and I now think Holden is a shitty whinny teenager, it was the right book for me at that time.
The story of Dani also makes me reflect on the nightmarish situation in Malaysia right now. With high number of Covid cases, seemingly endless lockdown, political turmoil, economic downturn, and high suicide rate, there is no lacking of tragedy everyday. Everyday, cases like Dani where the all the family members had died are no longer news worthy. At the same time, there are many MLMs on the rise, using cult tactics, exploiting people's insecurities, such as the loss of loved ones, the lack of meaningful human connections, lack of financial security, or the general hopelessness, to prey on the vulnerable. I know it is hard to stay unshaken in turbulent times. But
"...if we can't be there for each other when we're alone, angry, and in need of guidance, the cult will be. But if you always felt held, what a cult could ever offer you?"
#kitajagakita
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