A Call to Go Within - A Resonant Reminder from 'Bird Box'
Yes, that viral Netflix film what has Instagram and twitter exploding with memes.
I'm getting older which means I am frugal with my time and energy by necessity. I generally take pride in my ability to avoid pop culture, especially things in the horror genre. "Real life is scary enough, why retreat to twisted images as a distraction from making it better?" is my usual retort when invited to view a scary movie. I'm that person.
Somehow this one got my attention. What the heck are people seeing that makes them decide to take their lives? What's more, how can a woman legit survive with two children blindfolded? Teach me, sensei. What captured my attention most was that gaze of the actress in the trailer as she drove toward one of these entities. Her despair was so quietly and hauntingly complete that the raw image settled to the base of my consciousness.
Before watching, I checked around with my more urbane friends. "What's the deal, is the threat twisted and horrible?" I asked. "Are the deaths disgusting and not worth allowing space in my min?"
"No, it's not that kind of thing, Zuri. It's more a concept thriller, shouldn't give you any problems" they said. So, I sent my kids to school and sat with a bowl of noodles in front of my first horror movie since 'The Ring' (I know, I know).
Here is what I have gathered from what I have just seen.
As my friends promised, there was no visually disturbing foe to battle. What was disturbing were the choices people made when faced with an entity who remains shrouded in mystery. People "see" it, struggle with pain internally, then resolutely decide to end their pain through death. Point blank. I take this powerful scenario as a stark commentary on the mechanisms we use to survive the internal struggles we face daily.
It's not really the external issues that can floor us, like rampant poverty all over the globe and the theatrics of politics. No. It's the deep painful emotional scars and fears they trigger within us. Those nightmarish generational woes that many of us drink and smoke away as did our parents and grandparents before us.
Here's the thing, the external triggers are not going to let up. Eventually the drink and the herb won't be strong enough to carry us away from the image of our mother looking away while our father beat us too hard as "punishment" or any other absolute injustice we carry in our bodies subconsciously day in and out.
There are global entities that are invested in knowing everything about how you move and think. It provides profit for interested parties, sure. But Bird Box reminds us that the human mind can be vulnerable to the whispers of those who know us too well, whether it be that sharp tongued, below the belt fighting relative who targets your shame or google who shifts all your apps to your every need. Those with backdoor access to our minds - our history and patterns - have the potential to help us or to break us.
Unless you create a system of belief, an understanding of self and reality outside of what the internet tells you or religious doctrine or even your own five senses, you could be utterly stranded when life confronts you with something that shakes your core beyond the truth you have been given.
As our world continues to grow in its complexity, some will cling to habits, belief systems and external systems of security that simply will not sustain them as shifts buffet their lives. They will not have put the structures in place for inner balance and self acceptance when parts of society fail them or confronts them with reminders of their darkest selves.
In the film the threat remains a whisper, some strange extension of each person's facade. "Let go of your protective truth" the whisper says. "You know and are nothing, so take off the blind fold, stop hiding. Succumb the full force of your deepest pain". Be honest with yourself, if all you have ever done in life is run from your scariest questions and rawest pain, how do you expect to survive them when they are thrust before you, whispered in the night ...or more likely, triggered by what you see on tv?