Today (the day this essay is being written, but not necessarily the day this newsletter will be published) is Earth Day. Two days after 4/20, a holiday the offers reason for people who are already getting high to continue getting high, & the beginning of Taurus season - a time of cosmically gifted art, sensual pleasure, & beauty. If you believe in any of that.
Photo Credit: Ashley J.
I believe that travel related mishaps, an interview recording you will not be hearing here, & a couple of recent & well timed podcast listens are a part of an amplified synchronicity that I can credit (or blame) on the natural wonders of Vilcabamba. It’s a place where I’ve spent way too much & just enough time. A place where you’ll admire the woman who turned the post office that the government refused to keep open into a private business (until she steals your package probably), & a place where if you shut out the noise of various & internationally sourced locals - you can get in touch with the sort of appreciation of & responsibility to nature that inspires people to spend decades living in the tops of the redwoods in protest of increased logging (their extremely moving journal entries used to be so widely available on the internet that you could stumble upon them. Now you have to word your Google searches like a wish on a monkey’s paw just to find cursory articles like this one from NBC.)
Such are the perils of self-publishing I suppose. (More on that in the next newsletter?)
Still, the independently produced, while & where available, can yield amazing things. Like the source material for this very essay. That source material is the podcasts American Hysteria, & Cult or Just Weird?. Both of which provide insight into the phenomena of so-called ‘mind control’ or ‘brainwashing’ - an idea with roots that trace back to Maoist thought reform camps in China, the belief that WWII POWs were successfully brainwashed (instead of just tortured into compliance, a methodology similar to that used by so-called ‘cult deprogrammers), & eventually to MK Ultra (an experiment in mind control by the US government), as well as to the Human Potential Movement & individuals involved in cults like Heaven’s Gate.
Taking a deeper look reveals mind control, or the belief in it, as more of a security blanket; a coping strategy for people who don’t understand why their loved ones make choices that (from their own point of view & understanding of reality) don’t make sense.
In American Hysteria’s Mind Control episode, host Chelsey Weber Smith calls on examples including the story of Patty Hearst, in which the heiress to the Hearst publishing fortune blamed brainwashing on her involvement with the Symbionese Liberation Army (an organization that committed acts such as armed robbery in their quest for redistribution of wealth), as well as the infamous actions of the Manson family, to draw a clearer picture of the ways that belief in mind control helps us to keep our understanding of the capacity to do good or bad in neat categorizations. The good do good things. The bad do bad things. & when the good do bad things, it’s a result of mental coercion. Simple.
Nevermind the potential for circumstances to affect all of our actions.
No room for nuance where ethics are involved. The grey area does not exist.
Weber Smith also talks about the ways we control our own minds - to both negative & positive ends. I related this self induced mind control to the universal (according to me) quest for altered states of mind through methods ranging from meditation, to melatonin, to marijuanna. As well as our engagement with the arts.
Which brings me to an episode of Cult or Just Weird? titled the Keening (Midsommar), where TV writer & data scientist hosts Chris & Kayla present what may be some of their best work. An episode that almost feels supplementary to the Mind Control episode of American Hysteria
What is, for hosts Chris & Kayla, an episode about a cult film about cults, & also grief (they briefly discuss the sudden loss of their infant son in the episode), is for me a continuous exploration of mind control &, perhaps, transcendence.
In Cult or Just Weird’s exploration of Ari Aster’s Midsommar, examination of grief as essential to the plot allow Chris & Kayla to hone in on things often missed in uninformed & surface level discussions about the premise of the film that often fail to recognize the context in which main character Dani’s malleability is formed. Without this context, nothing worthwhile can really be said about why the events leading up to the end of the film make the community she finds feel like the community she needs.
In case you haven’t seen it, Midsommar is one of the best A24 films to date. It stars Florence Pough as Dani, & Jack Reynor as Christian - a grad school aged couple who probably should not be together. When Dani suffers the tragic loss of her family at the outset of the film, Christian’s friends behave as if the tragedy of his life is continuing to date Dani.
Dani finding community among the Hårga is a spoiler that really isn’t one.
There are countless examples of piss poor online takes (mostly from men who seemingly lack the range for introspection beyond predetermined conclusions) that portray viewers of the film, as well as Dani, as victims of of brainwashing. One even asserts that she remains under the threat of death (despite the earlier declaration that outside people must be invited into the community in order to continue the population & curb incest) &, more perplexing, paints Chris as a victim of coercion.
This pedestrian assertion ignores the blatant visual & more subtle contrasts presented throughout the film that explain why, in the end, Western values & what makes sense according to them no longer make sense for Dani. Why good & bad are no longer so clear cut.
These visual contrasts represent cultural differences such as lack of support in the grieving process vs. the Keening, an act of crying out in shared pain or grief.
As Dani releases primal screams on a snowy night, held by a silent & barely there Chris, she is primed to be affected by collective expressions of pain, grief, & pleasure in the almost supernatural sunlight of summer in Sweden.
The subtle contrasts that are presented through dialogue include but are not limited to Pelle (the Hårga native who invites Dani, Chris, & his friends to experience Midsommar together) & his active engagement of Dani vs. the rest of the friend group’s open contempt for her.
There is also the foreshadowing element of Dani’s ability (& the Hårga necessity) to stare horrors, specifically death, in the face - an experiential contrast & also a cultural difference juxtaposed with the normalization of private grieving in the Western world & the visualization of Dani’s parents being immediately zipped into body bags while the Hårga’s dead are witnessed in the act of dying.
Subtle contrasts are presented through dialogue that shows how familial & spiritual promises come into play.
After witnessing an Ättestupa, a one for one sort of sacrificial act completed to make space for new life in the community, the shocked Western visitors are told “it does no good… lashing out at the inevitable. It corrupts the spirit.”
Later, Pelle discusses the death of his parents with Dani, saying that he “…was raised by a family that doesn’t bicker over what’s theirs & what’s not theirs.” Emphasizing to Dani that this sort of individualism is “what you were given, but [he has] always felt held by a family… which everyone deserves.”
Aesthetic subtleties include an experience of Dani’s feeling of being out of place being underscored through wardrobe. Her black t-shirt against a row of Hårga women in traditional white clothing create an almost subconsciously perceived visual & emotional contrast.
In a more general sense, where talk of aesthetics & mind control do merge, it is typically related to conspiracies about programming & rarely about how what we know about the mind can be used in visual mediums in order to strengthen stories or connections. A great example of this approach to visual storytelling is Stanley Kubrick’s use of the book Subliminal Seduction by William Keys (a text about subliminal messaging in advertising) in his creation of The Shining, according to the documentary Room 237.
Outside of the landscape of film, there are examples of the use of art throughout history to spread anti-factual sentiment about groups or individuals. Some examples of this can be found in the stories of people like Marie Antoinette & Catherine the Great (a muse of Ffion of Fine Bone - the subject of the interview mentioned above, who you can read more about in the closing notes.)
Both women fell at out of favor due to cultural & political shifts. You may have heard the great propoganda that is “Let them eat cake” as Marie’s dismissal of Paris’ starving population. But you may not have seen the illustrations of Marie Antoinette’s gigantic vagina, or the visuals that accompanied the rumor that Catherine the Great died after being squished by a horse - which was the only sort of living being with a penis large enough to satisfy her after all that whoring around.
Learn more about the maligning of both women from Sarah Marshall, one of my favorite podcasters, here & here.
While it is history & tradition (as opposed to propaganda & myth) that are presented through paintings & tapestries in Midsommar (works we have artist Ragnar Persson to thank for) these visuals serve the same purpose as the sorts of works referenced above.
We base histories, facts & perceptions on what is seen. As well as what is unseen, & what is heard.
Was this newsletter a debunking or defense of mind control? A rant about a movie set off by a couple of podcasts? An exploration of art as a way toward altering our own minds & the minds of others?
I’m not sure.
But this is the end of it. & a promised continuation of weird little explorations of art for the year.
Welcome back,
Photo Credit: Ashley J.
CLOSING NOTES
So about that interview.
You never know what you don’t know, & I didn’t know that I couldn’t voice record someone I was talking to on my iPhone with my iPhone. So my interview with Ffion, creator of fine China influenced sculptural brand Fine Bone was lost to a rare instance of tech companies actually caring about privacy.
Whatever. I hope you’ll listen to the Catherine the Great episode of You’re Wrong About linked above. & maybe check out the brand? It’s functional & decorative, & makes me think of the work Vanessa Cuccia of Chakrubs (or as she’s been dubbed by a friend who had no idea that I’d interviewed her, “some heady bitch”) is doing.
Vanessa is making & releasing music through ELIJAH Records, an independent label based in Philly, these days. Her sister Rachel is the founder of Cuccia, a Vogue featured lingerie line with vintage design leanings.
Fionn & I also discussed amorphous form. Which made me think of the less functional sculptures of Dan Lam, whose work I discovered while living in Dallas during one of many very weird times in my life.
Check out her work. Check out my own Dani’s new series Chuchi & Adaliz.
The forthcoming comedy recently debuted at SXSW & is getting tons of press.
& if you’re looking for a legalized altered mind state, support this newsletter by grabbing a box of the new Magnesi-om packets (or any of the adaptogen products) from affiliate Moon Juice.