In full disclosure, I have yet to see the Bird Box Netflix original film with Sandra Bullock. From what I can tell over the last few days on social media, I may be the ONLY one who hasn’t seen it. The memes; Sandra Bullock – eyes completely covered by a blindfold, clutching her children while running, driving, rowing a boat, illicit a visceral reaction in me. I eventually had to ‘ask’ Facebook to ‘stop’ showing me the images.
From what I can tell via Twitter and even People Magazine, many have been touched. Touched enough to take time and energy to borrow or re-make the image and color it in humor. I poked around – there have been memes of Malorie, Sandra’s character, flanked by Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael (no, I am not talking about the dudes from the Renaissance); to women using their own bangs (hair) as blindfolds; to sarcastic responses such as: “Me trying to understand Bird Box references when I haven’t seen the movie” with the now, seen everywhere, photo below:
Even Netflix has gotten in on the #birdboxmeme wagon:
Took off my blindfold this morning to discover that 45,037,125 Netflix accounts have already watched Bird Box — best first 7 days ever for a Netflix film! pic.twitter.com/uorU3cSzHR
— Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) December 28, 2018
So, why has the concept, of being blind, resonated with so many? Like I said above, I haven’t seen the movie but apparently it doesn’t matter because every time I see the images, I have a closed-off, can’t breathe, response. It seems to have hit a universal chord for us all. We have all experienced ‘blindness’ at some point or points in our lives. And, that is incredibly frightening.
Personally, I’ve had moments in life where it has felt as if I’m running around visionless…. missing important cues, running into things, unable to defend myself. At the crux of vulnerability. I started Kuel Life for this very reason. I wanted to build a safe haven where women can come together in community – even if only virtually – to support; encourage and defend one another. Partly inspired by Brené Brown’s TEDx Houston talk from 2010 with over 37 million views and rising…. attached here, if for some reason you have not invested the time, I decided to stop living small and unnoticed. I decided NO more blindfolds. We are wrapping up 2018 and my pledge to all of you KUEL women, is that Kuel Life promises to keep our preverbal eyes wide open and moving forward, in community, with all KUEL women.
