Despite being a sly rip-off of A Quiet Place (even though it’s based on a book which came out before A Quiet Place ), Netflix’s Bird Box has been successful in staying in the news, albeit for less-than-honourable reasons.
The #BirdBoxChallenge had ‘sheeple’ putting their best foot forward while blindfolded, with the whole thing leading to embarrassing and obviously dangerous incidents of crashing about, food spills and oh-so-wrong navigation.
But now, the psychological-horror post-apocalyptic film is making news for its use of stock footage from a 2013 crude oil train wreck, implying the incident is linked to the apocalypse. Said train wreck is the Lac-Mégantic tragedy in Quebec, Canada in which 47 people died. Funnily enough, this wasn’t picked up until just last week.
ADVERTISEMENT
In case you’re wondering about the licensing of such sensitive footage, Netflix acquired the footage from Pond5, a licensing stock media supplier. Canadian-American science-fiction series Travelers also used the same footage from Pond5, but shared they will be removing it... but Netflix won’t be.
In such a dilemma, best to go straight to the source. In this case, the totally rational thing is an online forum. In sub-Reddit r/Canada, the conversation among users delves more into the resulting outrage than the footage itself. User Gamesdunker states, “As someone who lived in the region and lives relatively close to it, I gotta say I don’t see the outcry. Something terrible happened, there’s no making it better. The footage isn’t going to make things worst to anyone. I bet you almost no one noticed it until someone pointed it out.”
User Backtothereality responds to Gamesdunker, “It’s because it’s a fake outrage drummed up by competitors, these types of news articles that are anti-Netflix happen a lot.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Twitter, however, birthed a fair amount of anger. Canadian Barbara M (@chckndnce) says, “This is reprehensible. @netflix Real people losing their lives and livelihoods should not be turned around and used as stock footage for popcorn entertainment. If there is anyone who thinks that it is ok because a stock footage company has the rights to it, imagine a fictional show or movie needing a video of a random building being demolished and deciding that the World Trade Center on 9/11 is perfect.”
Montreal-based Catherine Stace sums her view up, “An example of a corporation placing profits over #humandecency.” No room for debate here.
Out of the (bird) box
Before you get into a rant of ‘how dare they do such an abhorrent thing!’, artists and filmmakers have long been recycling tragedy-footage to enrich their own stories, across the scale of relevancy.
Beyoncé’s 2013 track XO starts off with a recording of NASA’s former-public affairs officer Steve Nesbitt referring to “a major malfunction” on the day of the 1986 Challenger shuttle explosion. The usage of the audio wasn’t received well, with victims’ families and NASA employees publicly calling the move “simply insensitive”.
The backlash didn’t harm the musician much, obviously, because her rabid fans are stronger than any force out there. She issued a statement, adding XO “was recorded with the sincerest intention to help heal those who have lost loved ones... to remind us that unexpected things happen, so love and appreciate every minute you have with those who mean the most to you. The songwriters included the audio in tribute to the unselfish work of the Challenger crew with hope that they will never be forgotten.”
Evergreen favourite rockers Led Zeppelin’s 1969 eponymous début album features a black-and-white picture of the 1937 German airship Hindenburg fire photographed by Sam Shere. It’s worth remarking that the image was morphed slightly to suit the band’s ethos. Of course, the 70s didn’t have the outrage culture the 2010s infamously do, so while contemporaries didn’t say much, recent critics of the album art itself imply it was done in poor taste.
It seriously begs the question: animation is a skill widely sought-after and readily available to these large production houses; so what’s the need to use something so real to depict something circumstantial? Do we, as audiences, like to point out visually recollectible events? Do the filmmakers and artistes imply the apocalypse is well underway with these sporadic, yet more frequent tragedies?
It invites new thought around the Big Data debates as well. Licensing for all these images, audio files and videos is an easy game, and when these various media are purchased, it’s hard to regulate how they’re used.
Rants and ramblings across cyberspace