Mindspacing, Mental Health Discourse, and Midsommar (2019)

Numerous cultural analyses of mental health representation in visual media examine the discursive codes through which mind, mental health, and mental illness become intelligible. However, critical concepts for analyzing the spatialization of these phenomena in visual narratives remain underdeveloped. Building on the conceptual lenses of mindscapes and mindspaces from literature, film, and game studies, the present essay develops the conceptual tool of mindspacing. Where previous perspectives read the folding dreamscapes of Nolan’s Inception or the mythical fantasy world of Pan’s Labyrinth as visual externalizations of inner states, the praxeological perspective developed in this essay reads them as instances of mindspacing, the ongoing discursive accomplishment of relating and co-constituting the elements of mind and space. Exemplifying the new perspective, the folk horror film Midsommar (2019) is analyzed as a self-aware instance of mindspacing that critically engages Western mental health discourse.