I'm serious you could do a whole study on "white people first time reacting to Heilung on YouTube" that would completely expose everything about how whiteness works... and use these lessons to find the secret antidote.
A couple of notable moments today.
Two incredibly stereotypical middle class liberal white women watched Krigsgaldr, and the first words out of her mouth was: "Can you imagine if they work in an office during the day? Like 'hey Helga, what are you doing after work?' 'Oh I'm in a band, want to come see us?'"
She went immediately to the most familiar thing she knew and how harshly it contrasted with what she saw on screen. She had no other symbols or language to describe what she experienced. (Whereas I'd at least had some Wicca and Celtic lore under my belt for my first watching.)
Notably also is how they talked about the ancestral music of the "people of Norway and Europe," and I'm like THEY'RE YOUR ANCESTRAL PEOPLE TOO!!! (I left a comment to that effect, with fewer caps.)
It's like white Americans, we just sprung from nothing. No sense of connection to anything prior to 1776. That's part of the myth of whiteness. Yet still they *felt* their connection, even if they couldn't own it yet.
