Navigating Blind the Globalized Ruin : the Ustopian Vision of Josh Malerman's Bird Box (2014)

Abstract

This paper purports to read Josh Malerman’s novel Bird Box (2014) as a response to French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s “ecstasy of communication,” or the metaphoric state of schizophrenia characteristic of postmodern societies, in which the cacophony of media messages and the proliferation of images permeate through human subjects as if they were transparent. The theoretical framework for this analysis is completed by the distinction between dystopia and post-apocalyptic tale established by Heather Hicks, for whom at the heart of dystopia lies “the oppressiveness of uniformity” linked to the presence of a single metanarrative (Hicks 8). By contrast, what characterizes the post-apocalyptic is the diametrically opposed socioscape “punctuated by small communities adhering to various micronarratives” (Hicks 8), in which there is no glimpse of a consensus for social exchange. The category of ustopia, a term coined by Margaret Atwood, complements and sheds light upon the concept of dystopia in a strict relationship with its counterpart utopia, in a conceptual amalgamation which is compatible with James Berger’s post-apocalyptic paradox: “a radically antihumanistic rhetoric [which] masks a radical and frustrated humanism” (9). This interpretation of the novel dissociates it from the popular genre of horror fiction and problematizes its meanings on the basis of the ambiguity of its ustopic vision.