Horror Films and the Inversion of the Normal Body: Life in the Bird Box by Wilfredo Gomez

Horror Films and the Inversion of the Normal Body: Life in the Bird Box by Wilfredo Gomez | @BazookaGomez84 | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Spoiler alert: If you have yet to see this film, some major plot points will be revealed in this article.
By now I’ve been bombarded with news coverage, social media musings, and conversations that have attempted to make sense of the film Bird Box. A mysterious force has made its way from Russia to the United States and people are committing mass suicide. What we do know is the storyline does not provide rationale or context for the force, but it leaves an indelible mark on a society that plays a hand in its own demise. Look upon the light, the outside world...and inevitably impending death will appear.
There is something compelling about the film that I have extrapolated upon my initial viewing, and subsequent views, have further illuminated thoughts that demand some attention and critical  reflection. The film inverts the paradigm of the normal body. In his contributions to an edited reader, disability studies scholar Tom Shakespeare addresses the emotional connections that ties viewership, visual representation, and the expectation of reinforced normalcy, a characterization he identifies as the ideology of ability, or an inherent assumption that society and its representation through a variety of mediums automatically assumes the presencing and privileging of an able body.
As part of the horror genre, films like Bird Box, A Quiet Place, and the reboot to The Predator (an action film), asks viewers to subvert their understanding of how we naturally acquiesce to the representation of able bodied narratives spearheaded by able-bodied actors who “play” able bodied protagonists. What a film like Bird Box does is situate the seemingly arbitrary nature of representation and representational politics that Hollywood at its best unpacks through the escapism of popular culture and entertainment. As Meryl Streep contextualizes through her speech at the 2017 Golden Globes, “an actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel, what that feels like” (as she points to the camera and audience). Therein lies the hook to the film. Amidst the chaos and uncertainty of survival, being able-bodied becomes a liability, and it is the presence of the disabled body that is empowered in its ability to decide the fate of society. Disabled people are either going to represent your salvation or your untimely demise.
One of our first encounters with the presence of the disabled body centers around a group run to a local convenience store in search of supplies and food. Once there, John Malkovich’s character (“Douglas”) suggests that the band of misfits (forced to live in harmony and humanize one another) who ventured out into the scary world, car windows covered or blacked out, need not return back to the house (to provide for the well being of others). Almost immediately, the convenience store becomes a site of instability, as the presence of an unknown threatens to disrupt the ecology they ideally seek to cultivate. A knock on the door introduces viewers to the character of “Fish Finger,” whom Lil Rel Howery’s character, “Charlie” points out, “he’s been to prison, and he’s a bit crazy, but he’s always nice to me.” The invocation of crazy signifies upon discourses of mental illness, but the qualifier of individual experiences/interactions with the mentally ill suggests that they possess the ability to maneuver in an able bodied world, where one can act with compassion and have their humanity be recognized as such. However, there is no such redemptive quality in this particular interaction as “Fish Finger”(played by Matt Leonard) is exposed as a mentally ill person capable of great harm, not excluding murder (the penultimate act of violence). Thus, he must be further “institutionalized” by being shut out from incorporation into the group.
The dialogue preceding this trip not only provides insights into the presence of disability, it further reinforces the primacy that disability will come to play in establishing the parameters of a future that depends upon impairment as a technological innovation that allows the newly disabled to effectively navigate and negotiate a post-able bodied America. Thus we might riff on the forthcoming work by scholar Ruha Benjamin (Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code) to think through how society functions in its legal, ethical, and political contours, characterizing disability after technology. The exchange in the film proceeds as follows, “alright...so the idea is that we can blackout all the windows, its efficient and its safe.” To which the reply is, “wait, is anybody else hearing this, how is driving blind safe?” And finally we have, “we’re not we got the GPS.” This exchange solidifies the nexus linking disability to technology in a world where all the rules of normalcy and the functioning body are disrupted by the pervasive specter of disability.
A similar narrative appears later in the film as a stranger seeks entry into the home of the film’s protagonists, a home that operates as a paragon of an archaic and obsolete society that dares to continue its resistance movement in a world that no longer shares the same belief system. Upon entering the home, this “stranger,” (“Gary” played by Tom Hollander) is bombarded with the questions, “who are you and how did you get here?” John Malkovich’s character proceeds to demean the well-intentioned “Olympia,” (played by Danielle Macdonald) questioning her humanity (in letting “Gary” enter) by asking, “are you a simpleton?” “Gary’s” initial characterization of his narrative highlights the presence of “things,” which quickly evolve to become “they,” “creatures,” and ultimately, “psychos.” 
The mental institution (which none of the characters can place) known as “Northwood” is the space that effectively becomes transmogrified, equipping the “criminally insane” with “hall passes” that allow them to “roam the halls,” without policing, supervision, or the aid/help of the able-bodied. The arc of the story collapses identities, whereby those who force others’ eyes open (to gaze upon the “truth”) become synonymous with the creatures whose origins story or place of birth is unknown. Mental illness represents one spectrum of the newly enabled disabled who become able-bodied in part because of the assumption that they are already trapped within a hell of their own making. Their mental illness makes them immune to the forces governing the outside world. Those who are not mentally ill do in fact become the newly disabled, impaired in their ability to get around the societal barriers that give rise new institutions and structures of power and surveillance.
In stark contrast to the presence of mental illness lies, the “Janet Tucker School for the Blind,” the arrival of the unexpected deus ex machina, a structure symbolizing safety, hope, and the restored humanity to “Malorie,” (Sandra Bullock’s character) “boy” (played by Julian Edwards) and “girl” (played by Vivien Lyra Blair). Thus, the blind become the pillars of salvation which offers up emotional attachment, affect, individuality, and the neatly demarcated roles that continue to reinforce gender norms. What was once (in a previously able-bodied/disabled divide) an institution dedicated to the training and educational enrichment of the visually impaired becomes a site of new possibilities, whereby the privileging of differentiated bodies is translated and transcribed amid a new communicative medium, the language of necessity, survival, hope, and most importantly, the erasure of boundedness that characterizes “other” vis-a-vis some previously agreed upon norm. Prior to their arrival at the Janet Tucker School for the Blind, it is the voice of “Rick” (played by Pruitt Taylor Vince) that becomes the calming voice of reason, rationale, and democracy. Without that stabilizing presence, the characters of Malorie, boy, and girl remain detached from humanity, disabled in their collective misunderstanding of how to maneuver in a world where everyone is blind. As such, traditional titles, roles, and names become severed from individual and collective engagements of each other, serving as a reminder of outdated paradigms. The only way Malorie, boy, and girl could be redeemed is to embrace the vulnerability of disability.
Agreeing to that social contract, Malorie becomes dissuaded from designating girl as the chosen figure who will look out for the boat at its most dangerous points. Motherhood suggests an intimacy and emotional attachment that is equal parts biological as it is social, cultural, and political. By negating motherhood, Malorie preserves the barriers of societal impairment as evidenced in the blindfold. Moreover, social barriers bleed over into a politics of hope, as stories of triumph and sight become contested grounds upon which survival is predicated. Rick and the School for the Blind, allow Malorie and company to morph their relationship and identities, affording viewers agency in establishing parameters for Malorie’s motherhood, her children, and her newly reconciled ability to feel and empathize with the world around her.
Tellingly, the ideology of ability does not afford viewers the translation services to enable this particular reading of Bird Box. In doing so, it ensures that those of us viewers, both disabled and able bodied alike resume our (unquestioned) daily roles as birds boxed in the horrors of the ideology of ability. If you question the validity of such an analytical lens, ask yourself whether the ideology of ability gives rise to the “Bird Box Blindfold Challenge.”
+++
Wilfredo Gomez is an independent scholar and researcher. He can be reached at gomez.wilfredo@gmail.com or via twitter at @BazookaGomez84.