https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=zQTMhuQVYaU
Hello everybody. I would like to wish everybody a happy new year and there’s a lot of things going on as many of you know the Patreon situation the Patreon debacle I guess we’ll call it is continuing on. I am working very hard on a solution for this problem. The person who is programming my website Matthew Raymer and his team is working to find a way to get payment going and so in the spirit of deep platforming and censorship I thought that it would be a good idea to look at a recent movie called Bird Box. A lot of you have written me and asked me to interpret this movie and so in watching it I had a very strange vibe. As many of you know I’ve been working with Thomas Weisantz von Reisantz. I’ve been working very hard to pronounce his name so I hope I got it right. Thomas is a one of the partners on the storytellers channel that is interpreting movies with a symbolic flair with a lot of depth and for a few months now we’ve been working together we’ve done some partnerships but he’s also editing my movie videos and I really respect his his perception and his views and so he wrote me a little note and said did you you know what did you think of Bird Box and and I noticed that we had some similar vision and so I thought we’d do something new this time and we just do it as a conversation and interpret this movie for you. This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. And so Thomas please maybe you can start us off and give us a few details maybe you can maybe do a little bit of synopsis for people to understand or a bit of the premise then we can go into some of the perception that we had in this movie. Right okay so I think the best way to start this off is that we need to divide the story in the film and into the two stories that are that are really in the film so there’s like the macro story which is basically this this apocalypse story of an invisible force or some sort of spirit that erupts somewhere in Romania or Russia and it rapidly spreads over the world and the thing it does is that this sort of like an evil evil spirit or demon and it makes people go crazy and if they look at it so it’s like invisible but if people look at it and see it then they go crazy and they commit suicide on the one hand so most people commit suicide but on the other hand there’s a small group of people who are evil or have some sort of twisted mind who actually align themselves with the demon or become possessed by it and then sort of express the will of the demon with their body and so there we have this this protagonist I think her name is Marjorie and she’s a woman and she needs to basically survive and the main arc of the story is her going down this river to a sort of safe haven where she needs to encamp so that’s that’s the macro story but then there’s a second story going on which is on the micro level which is basically which focuses on Mallory or Marjorie I think Mallory and it’s basically about she is pregnant and she doesn’t want to be a mother or she she’s basically setting herself up to be a terrible mother so her arc is basically to to change or transform from being a terrible mother into someone who embraces motherhood and who transforms from being a nihilist and becomes sort of hopeful towards the end so that those are the two stories are that are sort of playing and intertwining throughout so I think that that’s sort of like we need to keep those apart and see how they work together so yeah in terms of the main the basic arc of the story like you said you know some of the imagery is quite potent this notion of this this river ride down a dangerous river moving towards what’s hopefully for her a safe haven that also be part of her arc as being an a mother who doesn’t want to be a mother and then finally the whole movie ends you know there’s gonna be many spoilers so you know hopefully you’re not worried about that and towards at the end where she actually names her children and so this whole time it’s kind of showing her you know coming into her role as a mother so that’s that arc itself is quite is quite good and it’s quite yeah and a symbolically accurate for sure I think we need to add as well of this movie is based on a book with I think it has a similar name I’m not sure but I hear that the book is is quite different from the story from from the movie but that it does have this same sort of arc about motherhood and I think that they in the movie they add some things on and change some things but I haven’t read the book so I can’t really comment on it but for people who have that’s something to take a note of and so the thing that is strange I think that we both noticed about the movie and the thing that is also strange in in the political situation in which we are is this idea that if you look at certain thing like if there’s some there’s this horrible thing in the world and if you look at it it’s it’s a horrible that it will make you kill yourself or that it will make you or it will let’s say make you become evil and and want to align yourself with this evil thing so during the whole movie people the people are hiding themselves in houses not wanting to look outside they’re wearing things over their eyes so that they don’t have the outside world and so they’re based so the whole premise of the story is to create this space around you where you actually don’t have to or you can’t you don’t interact with the outside world which is too dangerous and will cause you to become crazy yeah and the interesting thing is that it’s not just like with your eyes and going actually going outside and and you know observing with your eyes but it’s also they they show that it’s also dangerous to look through cameras or like through digital images and then there’s this very short segment where they’re watching TV the news and on the news to say you can go on social media because social media is dangerous as well so it’s all these sort of these levels of perception everything is dangerous like your eyes are basically useless so what I found interesting about this as well as that so you start off the story very rapidly introduces this this apocalypse and it quite literally flips the world upside down in sense that Mallory is sitting in a car of her sister and then the car actually you know flips upside down and then the world becomes inverted right so all the agents of order to put you see the police and people who work the hospital and the army like very quick very quickly break down and then in their place come like the criminals and crazy people are like the very small contingent of people who are somehow immune to this new spirit or actually embrace this new spirit and try to express what it wants and what it’s trying to do in the world right and then I think what’s what you’re saying is like this blindness seems to be the main sort of visual metaphor for this inversion whereas normally you would say like you know like our eyes are our modes of observation how we category categorize the world and so it’s like by shedding light on something or by by looking at it we can integrate it or dissolve it or we can make sense out of it but now instead it’s it’s turned upside down and and by looking at it it actually kills us or we actually help it spread its chaos or or death itself so that’s what I found like very like a strange notion was interesting but the way it plays out in the story towards its conclusion seems to be aligned to what’s happening right now yeah exactly because I think the biggest kind of reveal at the end which makes you think that this is very disturbing is that the the movie doesn’t end with a confrontation of the monster doesn’t end with the destruction of the monstrous force it doesn’t end with with the end of this threat which you would imagine you know a story like this would do but rather it ends in this kind of this safe this we can only say a safe space where there’s no more heaven everything is kind of under like under the tree let’s say there’s this kind of this tree world and everybody and and the world is ruled by blind people basically the blind are the ones who are immune and so they become kind of the the kings of this this world where they don’t have to see or they can’t see the the the the outside world and so it’s very it’s a very strange ending for for a movie to end that way yeah right it seems to sort of regress in the state to a state of not seeing or like not being conscious and where it’s like literally it’s the the trees or the plants just covered a whole like this sort of bubble in which they let they now live it’s really strange but then but what I found interesting is that quite a bit of my a couple of my friends actually compared the movie to Annihilation so I guess for those who haven’t seen Annihilation is also a Netflix movie starring Natalie Corbin and it’s has a sort of a similar theme and that it’s also with an apocalyptic event and she’s in ways also blind and she has to go into this strange world where things intertwine and nothing is is sort of as it seems and then but the conclusion is quite different from what Birdwalks is whereas I thought it would be going in the same direction it doesn’t actually so where Birdwalks where there is at the end no confrontation but rather sort of a isolation and like sort of moving away from not confronting the world at all because it’s too dangerous and there it’s like no there’s this sort of confrontation integration which is the I think the most powerful scene in the movie and it moves back into the whole world and the whole world is changed by this sort of event of confronting this this this force this external force this alien force whereas this is quite the opposite and so the funny thing is that I think many people enjoyed Birdwalks but a lot of my friends as well were quite underwhelmed by its ending they it’s something that didn’t seem quite right with it so I only really resonates with a certain certain people on like the political spectrum for who for whom it might resonate with their views of that’s what I think personally yeah I when I was watching it I remember because so many people I think it’s one of the movies that the most people in a very short amount of time said you should watch this movie you should watch this movie and do a review on it and as I was watching I think about 30 40 minutes in I wrote on the social media this movie is basically about Russian like first of all the the the source of the problem originates in Russia or Romania in the Middle East and in Middle East in in Eastern Europe and and then it becomes this thing that you that will destroy you that will you know that will make you become evil and the people that they show I mean it’s it’s it’s so hard it’s so frustrating you know you we want to not have to see these things you know you want to look at watch the movie and you want to have to not to notice that you know in a world that’s very multicultural you think okay that’s fine but then you don’t want to have to notice that every single bad person in the movie every person that aligns with this evil force is a stereotype of a kind of Midwestern you know white guy or Midwestern white person and so it’s it’s it’s very frustrating to have to kind of to have to sit there and go come on like why why is it that now you know that the Hick in the river and then the the the kind of gun toting skinhead Trump supporter you know the John Malkovich character and then you know it’s like this constant every single character that gets infected by the thing and doesn’t kill himself is yeah right well yeah that’s like you can not see it for I think like sometimes people see it through their own ideological lens and like they you know they see racism everywhere or like some sort of intent but here it is very clear that it’s been that has been done intentionally because you have literally have the John Malkovich character say like very strange line that’s completely out of place movie says something like we make let’s make the end of the world great again and then there’s like a two or three second pause where they sort of zoom in and everyone’s facing her sort of like cringing and it’s like it’s it’s it takes the flow out of the movie completely and it’s completely out of place but I mean it’s you can see here that it’s very intentional by the people who made the film that they very intentionally thought about this and they placed in a movie and even you know John Malkovich his character he doesn’t actually in the end turn into sort of one of these people who comes possessed spirit but he still is portrayed as sort of an antagonist in his own right just not like the main antagonist like he’s he’s definitely a force of conflict within this sort of safe bubble that that they exist in in the first half of the film and all the other sort of white male characters in the film are portrayed in a sort of similar negative light so you have there’s one sort of minor character who I think is like a drug addict and he’s like sort of criminal then as in type character we don’t really know much about it we just see and he steal the car he steals the key steals the car that guy yeah but I thought what I noticed about him was that he runs away with the girl who is going to be a cop who is like in the Academy to become a cop and she the first interaction that or the first time we see him actually we see him take drugs or medicine or some of some kind and and the woman says you know I’m a cop right and so then their relationship starts to develop from there but it’s basically about him possessing her into leaving the house you can see like a couple times they show up it’s like sort of he actually tells her right in the beginning that they should leave the place when one of the characters I think commit suicide and then he’s like we should leave and so sort of foreshadows what’s going to happen but it’s it’s the way it’s done it seems like he is sort of a microcosm for that spirit that’s out there and sort of possessing people and you see that happen within their relationship it’s a bit of I don’t know if it’s if it’s right but it seems to me that that that’s what the intent was but maybe I’m wrong but at least it seems to align with the broader narrative at the very least he’s shown in a very negative light yeah and all the other then there’s the John Malkovich character there’s the Hick in the river which is the most kind of the most obvious you know he’s he looks like he’s right out of deliverance and then there yeah there’s the guy who comes in and at first you think he’s fine and then finally you realize that he’s like a servant of this evil force and then he basically causes the whole place to to break down because he starts opening the windows and starts showing people you know this this beautiful evil thing and so and so yeah so it’s it’s it’s kind of and I think that it’s one of those things where you while you’re watching it you’re like oh come on like why why are you forcing me to notice this I wish I didn’t have to watch a movie and think about these things but yes that’s what that’s what that’s what seems to have been the message of the or the use of symbolism in the movie seems to be way more propagandistic than than anything else in the case of this story yeah I agree yeah definitely agree it’s yeah but even without taking that into account just the story itself and and the story of motherhood and how she transforms into like someone who doesn’t want to have a kid and you sort of hate kids into someone who embraces motherhood it’s still the conclusion that that doesn’t make any sense to me because so in the end she’s like okay I need to be less protective and sort of embrace having kids and she gives them their names and their identities but then it’s still it’s not like she you know let’s them confront the outside world it’s like no they can they can play around but as long as it is in this enclosed space where it’s like it’s just like this artificial space and they don’t have to confront really anything so nothing really changes it’s like it’s we’re still at the start of the movie where she sort of isolated in her own space and then the end we’re in the same position really so I don’t that doesn’t make much sense to me I don’t know if I’m missing pieces of puzzle there but it’s just yeah very strange yeah it doesn’t seem for sure it doesn’t seem like there’s much of a future there at least not yeah it seems like there’s it doesn’t end with much it seems to want to end with hope for the future because it shows us these birds that go up you know but then they go up and they hit you know this wall of trees like that side that scene where she let the birds go you think like obviously I know what that is like you’ve seen this yeah that kind of scene in all kinds of stories but then it’s like they go up and then there’s this tree under the canopy of the forest you know living under under the canopy so it’s a it’s I mean in a certain way I guess I guess then the whole theme of the whole movie ends up being about this kind of this kind of covering or this protecting you know and so the mother let’s say the the positive and the negative aspect of the of the mother ends up coming out in the movie where you know it’s like the mother that covers but then you know covers to really protects you from the the evil outside world but then there isn’t this trend there isn’t a transcendence of that of that moment where it’s just about protecting people from the outside yeah I thought about it a little bit more so so besides that she that Mallory does not want to have kids she also seems to be quite nihilistic and she becomes like really nihilistic once you know the apocalypse happens so it’s and and towards the end when she when they’re almost at the safe safe haven she falls down and then the kids run away and she’s like no I need to give them hope he needs to give him the sort of the story that her boyfriend Tom tried to tell them he’s like the story of the tree and like this this garden setting that he’s and then like that they can climb up the tree and they and they see like a family or something I don’t know it’s it’s it’s a story of like of a hope and she doesn’t want to give it to them because she she thinks that there is no hope so perhaps it is more it resonates to degree that some people perhaps see today’s society as like that we’re in a position where there is very little hope and it is so so nihilistic but she the only thing that she can do is not be as not let them grow up in a similar manner and that they become nihilistic as well that they at least need to have some hope even though that maybe the world will never be okay again but that they get this dream even though it might not be a real dream that that there is still hope for a better world I don’t know it I’m trying to figure out why it didn’t have a more hopeful and it didn’t make sense like I felt like it was sort of setting it up for the sort of confrontation with with the spirit but it just doesn’t happen and they just sort of seclude themselves and then they’re happy but it’s kind of weird because because you would you would expect like you would have movies like this that could end badly like it could have ended in an on an ominous tone where for example it ends where you know the windows all open and everybody kind of looks up and then the movie ends that way like you could have had a dark ending for the movie but the movie wants to end with a hopeful tone but yeah that’s the problem it’s like it’s supposed to be a happy ending but it’s a very disturbing happy ending because it’s basically just living in a bubble it’s basically just living in a safe space and and and and not being able to confront this outside this outer evil thing that’s that’s there so it’s that’s a very strange thing yeah yeah I don’t it’s it’s it’s and also it seems to like the whole thing about them not being able to look or not being allowed to to look at this thing is like it seems to be representative of of this idea or this notion in the real world where it’s where ideas or like deviant ideas or things are dangerous like things that aren’t accepted can be dangerous and can like brainwash you or present so if you so that’s why I think the whole thing about that social media is unsafe as well like people who who are susceptible to this like which seems to be a lot of people will eventually die from it or like it will be it will be negative I have some negative consequences or or maybe they’ll become depressed or like and don’t want to commit suicide because of how terrible it is but then only the people who are already sort of aligned with that that strain of thought can look at it and be like oh this is this is amazing and they even they have like I felt like they had more sort of Trump lines in it because they keep they there’s like a point when at the very end when this this group of pubs finally find Mallory and her boyfriend and and they’re trying to make her Tom look at thing and they’re like and they’re saying oh it’s it’s a beautiful thing and that’s also something that Trump says a lot so I don’t know if that one was was yeah so anyways it seems to be for sure they had for sure they had that they had those those intentions that’s for sure I the whole time I kept thinking that in a way this movie is if this movie was the Matrix it’s basically taking the blue pill that’s what it is because in the matrix it’s exactly that point where it’s like it’s he’s saying you know you if you take this it’s gonna be dangerous for you and and when he takes the the pill then you see him he almost goes crazy like this he’s gonna lose it he’s gonna lose it he’s gonna go crazy but then he’s able to master the difficult truth of the difficult reality whereas in this movie it’s like it really is a praise of the blue pills like stay inside this box they inside this box and and you’ll be fine you know don’t confront the difficult things don’t confront the difficult situation okay yeah so if you ever watch the Matrix and you want to explore what the blue pill is then just stop watching the Matrix and turn on bird box that’s hilarious but for sure I mean the whole this whole culture that we have right now of deplatforming everything that it’s been happening on patreon on YouTube on Twitter there there has been massive deplatforming some of the people we don’t hear about because they’re not so famous they don’t have a voice but there has been a lot more deplatforming than what people think and so this this idea and that’s why I kept bringing it back to this notion of the Russian bots this idea that somehow because some people you know saw Russian propaganda that that’s why you know Donald Trump won the election or the idea that if you’re that you’re exposed to certain ideas that they’ll infect you so much that that you’ll become an evil you know an evil person I think that that’s something that underlies the whole philosophy of deplatforming whether it’s in the universities whether it’s on social media now and and so it’s it just fits very nicely into that whole narrative and no wonder that it’s received so much praise from you know just the Hollywood I just saw I just saw a lot of praise from from certain circles let’s say oh my god yeah it’s it was I mean it was entertaining to watch but it was it was just very it was entertaining for the wrong reasons at least for me because it was so so strange that’s why but yeah maybe so here’s a question so the film obviously is called Bird Box and birds play quite a significant role in it and and they’re sort of you know as they tell when the spirit is near but like I I wasn’t quite sure how to how to look at the birds and what they sort of represent in in the film like obviously the birds it seems logical to me that they’re more spiritually attuned to to to like feeling when the spirit is around as they’re more like a spiritual yeah animal in the symbolic sense but besides that it also more in the human skill it seems to be that they represent this sort of like whistle blowing or or like the people who tweet when there’s someone or something around yeah so like that’s the first thing that’s that I thought about but then I was like now well it makes more sense just in the symbolic sense that they are more spiritually attuned and obviously they’ve been used in mind so that that connection seems seems logical but yeah still like they named the the whole thing bird box and it’s about like I guess it’s coming out if you’re out of this sort of shell but it’s in just another shell like it doesn’t make sense to me at all that the whole motion of birds so I don’t know what your thoughts on yeah I mean I think you’re right I think that the whole movie is about birds in a box and that’s what it is that’s the whole premise of the story and it ends it ends it make what makes us want to believe that the birds leave the box at the end but they don’t they’re still in the box and so I basically what the whole story is about is is really about is about you know and and there’s something not totally false about it in the sense that this sense of of this something spiritual which is precious and needs to be protected you know and needs to be held like we have these stories about we have this image of the pearl in a in a in a shell you know we have these different images of something which is precious and needs to be protected that’s not it’s not a totally wrong story but you know there’s also the the story like Christ would also there’ll be balance of the story of the talents for example where Christ the story of someone who gives his servants talents of gold and you know and and he expects them not to bury that in the ground and and protect it at all cost but rather to to to break take them out in the world and to make them be fruitful and so in that sense the story just shows one side of the whole dilemma which is that it is true that something that’s precious something that’s meaningful our identities all this thing they need to be protected but not only protected they also need to be need to be able to rise up and to face you know whatever challenges them and whatever is is facing them so so I think that for sure this movie veers almost completely on one side yeah yeah all right guys so I think you know I this was a lot of fun for me like I don’t know maybe Thomas and I will do this again I really think that he’s got it he’s got a good symbolic intuition and it’s rare that I find people that have that and so look forward to more videos obviously edited by Thomas but but maybe we’ll have them back on the channel to to have these kinds of discussions again and so I will wish you guys all once again a happy new year and hopefully we’ll have more pleasant things to talk about talk about during the year besides bird box so Thomas want to say a last word well thank you for having me on I enjoyed ranting about this movie a lot I hope and as you said I hope we can talk about more positive things as well because I think there’s a lot of deconstructing and people ranting on YouTube already so but I know usually we do things about movies that we actually like so I think maybe next time we can do that so all right yeah all right guys we’ll see you later you