O monstro que não se vê e a cultura da participação em Bird Box

Abstract

Bird Box, a horror film and one of Netflix’s greatest hits, has among its protagonists a monster that is not imagetically revealed. Such narrative strategy results in broad audience engagement, which seeks to fill this gap left in the creative process of the film. In this article, we analyze how the construction of the monster idea is also based in non-visual resources, especially sound, and is complemented by an imaginary that explores the theme of apocalypse, the metaphor of blindness and the archetypal opposition between light and darkness. The investigation is based on the image-sound relations proposed by Altman and Iazzetta, and in the theory of the imaginary by Durand. The results show how these elements foster audience engagement, converging on Jenkins’ idea of participatory culture.