Sandra Bullock was known for her roles as a bubbly and funny rom-com lead (with a few exceptions) in the ‘90s and 2000s before she had a turn in films like Bird Box and The Unforgivable. The former, especially, created a huge impact on Netflix at the time of release and became the most-watched film on the platform in 28 days.
In many ways, Bullock played against type in the horror-survival film. Directed by Academy Award-winning Dutch filmmaker Susanne Bier, Bird Box subverted several tropes in terms of action-horror films and also the way a female protagonist was often depicted. One specific scene broke a taboo that Hollywood was more accepting of with male action stars.
Sandra Bullock’s scene with a younger male co-star in Bird Box broke a Hollywood taboo
While films like May December, The Idea of You, and the recent Babygirl depicted the romance between an older woman and a younger man, back in 2018, it was still not as popular. One of the few mainstream films that portrayed such a relationship was Jennifer Lopez’s The Boy Next Door and Kate Winslet’s Oscar-winner The Reader.
These films still focused on the taboo topic, treating it as an exotic and whirlwind romance instead of just being a normal occurrence, which is what is usually done when the roles are reversed. However, Sandra Bullock’s Bird Box had a scene where her character hooks up with a younger Trevante Rhodes, and no excessive attention is given to it.
Director Susanne Bier mentioned that the purpose of the scene was to subtly remove some prejudices away in the mainstream setting. She said to Polygon,
It is totally natural. It’s just not depicted very often. I have to say that I do think, if we can do a movie like that and we can have a big audience where they are engaging and we can sort of seamlessly, positively move a few prejudices away. I think a lot is achieved.
Bullock had previously performed in a similar dynamic in the romantic comedy The Proposal, where her co-star Ryan Reynolds was twelve years younger than her. However, the age gap was not addressed in the film.
Bird Box tried to subvert several common tropes in Hollywood films
The mainstream space almost always has some tropes that films of a genre follow. While the core concept may vary depending on the movie, some character archetypes or plot structures remain the same. Some filmmakers, however, subvert these very tropes while making a film of the same genre to give a new experience.
Director Susanne Bier, who won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film for her Dutch movie In A Better World, tried to do the same with Bird Box. Sandra Bullock’s character is a mother tasked with safeguarding her two young children in a post-apocalyptic world where entities attack people who look at them.
Bier mentioned that she tried to portray a mother from a female lens and traditionally male gaze depictions of the mother were more pure and loving. She said,
I think it’s just describing a woman describing a mother from a different point of view than the conventional male point of view. For hundreds of years, we have seen mothers described by men and I think there’s a kind of passiveness to that image; it’s sort of gentle, it’s kind, it’s automatically loving, but it’s not really when it comes down to it, it’s not really forceful and or really capable of protecting the kids.
Bier mentioned that though the character was still feminine, she was a survivor and was not traditionally feminine.
Bird Box is available to stream on Netflix.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
