Bear Suit Behavior

It’s funny to me that when people talk about the horror movie Midsommar, their focus is usually on the cult— the torture, psychedelics, blood and murder.

But when I think of the horror in Midsommar, I think of something way more boring: Christian, the world’s worst boyfriend — the face he makes every time he talks to Dani onscreen.

Christian, we know through body language if not words, is no longer romantically interested in Dani.

He feels obligated, cringing, to stay with her: horrific acts that killed her entire family have left her traumatized, clinging to him.

His reactions to the emotional wreckage and trauma of her experience is a fucking horror movie all on its own.

He stammers, shrugs, “if you want”s through every single scene, never answering a direct question. He never makes eye contact with her. He radiates ambivalence from every pore.

If you’ve seen Midsommar, you know this does not end well for Christian.

“Do you feel held by these people, Dany? Do you?” Asks a sympathetic cult member at one point.

The answer, we know without Dani having to say anything, is “absolutely not.” These people — Christian — do not care about her. Not just her grief and pain, but Dani, Dani as a person

And at the end of the movie, all of these people are dead, especially Christian.

Dani chooses to allow Christian to be burned alive in a bear suit, and — even for a horror movie about cults, her choice is relatively sympathetic.

Cults are bad, don’t burn people alive to make sure that spring will come again, etc.

And yet — within the confines of this movie, Christian demonstrates nothing but behavior worthy of being put in a bear suit.

Bear suit behavior.

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Ari Aster is pretty straightforward about his intentions with Midsommar:

“It’s a break up film,” he told countless reviewers, “I wrote it in the middle of a horrible break up."

He said this so many times in interviews that you start to wonder if “it’s a breakup movie” is how he started all of his interviews about the film.

Hi, hello, I’m Ari Aster, Midsommar is a breakup movie. 

Knowing that Midsommar is a breakup movie begs the question of which member of the breaking up couple Ari most identifies with: the plot and framing suggest it’s Dani, since she’s the protagonist. She’s the one getting broken up with, the wronged one, even if she ends up joining a cult at the end.

We’ve all been the Dany. In some ways, it’s cathartic to be the Dani: there’s a reason that break up music is the best kind of music.

But just as often as we are the Dany we are the Christian: deeply ambivalent, cringing, not wanting to look ourselves or the other person in the eye.

Just break up with her already, Jesus Christ you want to shout at him 30 seconds in.

But he doesn’t.

What Christian should do is so clear, but instead he does exactly the opposite.

Just like a horror movie.

Just like real life.

—

This email assumes that you can relate to Christian.

It assumes that anyone reading this has experienced the kind of break up that is shown in Midsommar:

The kind of cringing, drawn out indifference to a romantic (or platonic) partner, another human being, that makes it hard to even look at them, even if they’re Internet Darling Florence Pugh.

If you can’t relate to Christian — well, I’m happy for you.

But for everyone else, I want to know: what makes us so ambivalent, so willing to cringe?

Why do you engage in bear suit behavior, when you know full well that’s the kind of shit that gets you locked in a burning pyramid?

Christian’s in a LOT of pain long before he ends up burning alive.

So why does he keep doing it?

—

Culturally, right now we are in kind of a “live authentically” culturally moment. I mean, we are also in a “escalating global crises nuclear war moment” but those things are related, of course.

The pain of the pandemic, maybe the introspection the pandemic provided for many, has led to a certain kind of “rise from the ashes and live your truth,” story gaining traction, feeling more ubiquitous than it used to be.

The first example that springs to mind is Glennon Doyle, whose work I have so many thoughts about I simply can’t say anymore here without my head exploding.

But a more obvious example is the internet’s embrace of Dani’s herself: after Midsommar came out people posted memes hailing Dani as a girlboss, taking back her story.

We love to live authentically, even if that means joining a cult.

And yet: so many of us still live inauthentically: we dissociate and mumble our way through relationships, jobs, lives that aren’t working.

Why?

The Glennon Doyle reading part of me says immediately that it’s fear. “We don’t trust ourselves,” that voice says, “and we waste our lives.

Trust your gut, trust your instinct, and follow it no matter how much it hurts.

Seeing Christian dissociate and mumble his way through life until he dies fairly pitifully is a pretty good argument against not living authentically.

Avoiding how you feel takes so much energy, even when it’s the only thing that feels possible: Christian is exhausted from all the mental running around like he’s doing, walks right into a trap he doesn’t even notice until he’s — well, you know, I keep saying it — trapped in a beer suit in a pyramid on fire.

Christian probably never engaged with the work of Glennon Doyle, as much because the emotional wellness podcast industrial complex was just beginning when Midsommar came out as because he is fictional. So it is safe to say that Bear Suit Christian probably does not trust that he is worthy no matter what.

—

After I finished watching Midsommar for the first time, I called Micah, someone I once behaved very bear suit at. It was long ago enough ago that talking to them about that bear suit behavior feels a little easier to look directly in the eye.

To my relief, or maybe my disappointment, Micah had not seen Midsommar.

“I’m actually really into Hereditary right now, have you seen that?” Micah asked, which made sense.

Eventually I divulged the reason Midsommar haunted me so much: the disassociated resentment breakup party, not the Swedish cult.

“I think you were just scared,” Micah said as we talked about that time in our lives. They are more forgiving than I am, especially of myself.

“Scared of what?” I asked. “We were already both suffering.”

Micah shrugged, clearly anxious to move on to Toni Collette.

—

So — that’s one theory. Fear.

Fear creates atrocious acts both in horror movies and our mundane day to day with each other.

Fear is the thing that keeps us from acting as Untamed as flower covered scream crying Dani.

The fear of the unknown, what’s out there, is far more terrifying than the fear of more pain, especially when they’ve already lit the pyramid on fire.

After all: we know what happens to Christian by the time the credits roll, but we never find out what happens to Dani.