BIRD BOX:A Mental Health Perspective
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There are a lot of opinions and thoughts about this controversial but entertaining movie released recently on Netflix. I watched this when it dropped, and had no outside feedback or reviews before being drawn into one of the most interesting and creative movies in some time. There was no way I was prepared for the absolute magic that appeared on my screen. I am a movie purist, meaning I believe in suspension of disbelief and can enjoy the art I am seeing without picking it apart for unrealistic qualities. It is a movie, a piece of art; it is not real life. If you want real life, don’t watch a movie. Now that you have a better understanding of how I view this medium of art, let’s get to the good stuff.
Bird Box from the start is visually and mentally entertaining, but also meta and thought provoking. There have been a slew of movies portraying the end of the world as we currently understand it, but few that propose such a wild premise. It feels at times that there is a religious undertone to the movie-- but according to every religion I am aware of, this would not be considered to be tied to religion as most of us understand it. It reminds me of the angel of death during Passover, but there is no way to escape. You see it, you die. It doesn't matter if you are religious or not. The only people spared are those who either do not look at all or those who are severely mentally ill. I have heard a few different thoughts on mental illness in relation to this movie, and I have my own theories. |
Mental illness is very real, and portrayed poorly in this movie since we are only given a very small slice of the mental illness pie. Bird Box puts out there that only those with mental illness can see the "thing” and survive, which is never fully explained in the movie. The emphasis really needed to focus on the fact that those who see and survive are specifically the CRIMINALLY insane and represent a statistically low percentage of the mentally ill population. Even when prison populations were screened for mental illness only about 33% had mental illness, and violence was found most frequently in those with substance abuse or personality disorders. What does this mean? It means that most people with mental illness do not commit violent crimes, and the rates of violence between those who have mental illness and those who do not are statistically insignificant, except for prior to and right after a hospitalization. The fact that the movie portrays those who are criminally insane as those who can “see” and live can be perceived from several different perspectives, and one of the reasons that this movie is so controversial.
The most important point is that mentally ill people are mostly not harmful or aggressive, but this movie would have you believe otherwise. Those who do “see” whatever the "thing” is commit suicide. While suicide is most often related to mental illness, there are many other reasons beyond mental illness for which people choose to end their lives. In addition to mental illness, people commit suicide at higher rates if they are LGBTQI, have had one or more TBI (traumatic brain injury), terminal illness, chronic pain, financial problems, sudden loss of some sort of social status, academic failure, and being age 60 or above. One of my co-workers said the movie stigmatized mental illness because everyone committed suicide but I disagree. The only way I can describe how I viewed the entity causing people to commit suicide is by viewing the seeing as possession. It appears the entity “enters” people through their eyes. Due to the indiscriminate nature of this “thing”, the possession is not framed in a religious way; more it seems a force of pure evil. There is a lot of debate around what the “thing” or “things” are and the not knowing is a great way to really make a person uncomfortable, because we the audience share this experience with the characters who survive; we have no idea what the “thing” is that drives people to commit suicide.
Bird Box can be said to focus on, and even highlight, mental health in both good and bad ways. To go deeper, the main character Malorie (played by Sandra Bullock) is, in my opinion, mentally ill. When we meet Malorie, she is extremely stern and has almost no warmth or humanity that I can discern. She calls the children, one of whom she gave birth to, only by their assigned gender at birth: boy and girl. Her complete lack of ability to really connect to other humans is at a base level problematic, and at an emotional level severely disordered and abusive in relation to the children she is caring for and trying to keep alive. Here is the trickiest part of the movie for me: why does she even care about these children and why did she even have one when her character is portrayed as someone almost completely detached from humanity? Why bother to have a child? Why even bother to save them? In the way I understand the character, I am not even sure why she had a child at all. She appears to have no religious affiliation, has almost no connections to other humans at all except her sister, who dies almost immediately, and is quick to want to shoot first and ask questions later. At best, her mental stability is questionable. While I love a good anti-hero, she has almost no redeeming qualities at all until we see her connection to the other pregnant woman in the movie, and later her lover/partner to some degree. If I were to meet Malorie in real life as someone coming in for psychotherapy, I would be deeply concerned about her mental status. Based on what little information we have about her in the movie, I would guess that she survived some type of trauma that was so severe it affected and ultimately altered her personality. So, what does all this mean in terms of mental health? To me, it means unless you are mentally ill, incredibly smart, or blind, you will not survive the apocalypse. While the “see no evil” theme is predominate in the movie, it gives little to no hope to the average person being able to survive the end of the world. Ultimately, as much as this movie stigmatizes mental illness, it conversely and perversely also glorifies it. The juxtaposition of this creative work of art and its endless interpretations may ultimately raise the bar on how mental health is viewed, if the viewer chooses to see it that way.
The most important point is that mentally ill people are mostly not harmful or aggressive, but this movie would have you believe otherwise. Those who do “see” whatever the "thing” is commit suicide. While suicide is most often related to mental illness, there are many other reasons beyond mental illness for which people choose to end their lives. In addition to mental illness, people commit suicide at higher rates if they are LGBTQI, have had one or more TBI (traumatic brain injury), terminal illness, chronic pain, financial problems, sudden loss of some sort of social status, academic failure, and being age 60 or above. One of my co-workers said the movie stigmatized mental illness because everyone committed suicide but I disagree. The only way I can describe how I viewed the entity causing people to commit suicide is by viewing the seeing as possession. It appears the entity “enters” people through their eyes. Due to the indiscriminate nature of this “thing”, the possession is not framed in a religious way; more it seems a force of pure evil. There is a lot of debate around what the “thing” or “things” are and the not knowing is a great way to really make a person uncomfortable, because we the audience share this experience with the characters who survive; we have no idea what the “thing” is that drives people to commit suicide.
Bird Box can be said to focus on, and even highlight, mental health in both good and bad ways. To go deeper, the main character Malorie (played by Sandra Bullock) is, in my opinion, mentally ill. When we meet Malorie, she is extremely stern and has almost no warmth or humanity that I can discern. She calls the children, one of whom she gave birth to, only by their assigned gender at birth: boy and girl. Her complete lack of ability to really connect to other humans is at a base level problematic, and at an emotional level severely disordered and abusive in relation to the children she is caring for and trying to keep alive. Here is the trickiest part of the movie for me: why does she even care about these children and why did she even have one when her character is portrayed as someone almost completely detached from humanity? Why bother to have a child? Why even bother to save them? In the way I understand the character, I am not even sure why she had a child at all. She appears to have no religious affiliation, has almost no connections to other humans at all except her sister, who dies almost immediately, and is quick to want to shoot first and ask questions later. At best, her mental stability is questionable. While I love a good anti-hero, she has almost no redeeming qualities at all until we see her connection to the other pregnant woman in the movie, and later her lover/partner to some degree. If I were to meet Malorie in real life as someone coming in for psychotherapy, I would be deeply concerned about her mental status. Based on what little information we have about her in the movie, I would guess that she survived some type of trauma that was so severe it affected and ultimately altered her personality. So, what does all this mean in terms of mental health? To me, it means unless you are mentally ill, incredibly smart, or blind, you will not survive the apocalypse. While the “see no evil” theme is predominate in the movie, it gives little to no hope to the average person being able to survive the end of the world. Ultimately, as much as this movie stigmatizes mental illness, it conversely and perversely also glorifies it. The juxtaposition of this creative work of art and its endless interpretations may ultimately raise the bar on how mental health is viewed, if the viewer chooses to see it that way.
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