Psychonavigating the (Sub)Urban Idyll – pervasive filmmaking in Andrea Arnold’s Bird (2024)

Rogers, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9935-2879 (2025) Psychonavigating the (Sub)Urban Idyll – pervasive filmmaking in Andrea Arnold’s Bird (2024). In: British Popular Culture(s) 2025, 5th-7th June 2025, Falmouth University.

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Abstract / Summary

This paper seeks to introduce a nascent research interest that explores how some UK filmmakers employ on-screen (or implied) depictions of psychoactive drugs use as a plot device that both establishes and destabilises a nationally specific logic within the storyworld of their films through the deliberate development of an expanded cinematic syntax, which positions the audience within an indeterminate, corporeally-inflected, spectatorial position. More specifically, this paper situates the broader research interests within the framework of British Popular Culture through unpacking some of the place-based ways that writer/director Andrea Arnold offers the conditions of a nationally-specific, class-based, alterity within her film Bird (2024). Bird is situated within an identifiable, contemporary British suburban landscape, however the central character Bailey appears to psychologically navigate and broaden the conditions of their existence beyond materiality through developing and deploying shamanic insight. The audience is invited to join Bailey on their revelatory journey via a miasma of pervasive filmmaking techniques that engender a ‘contact-high’ within the corporeal framework of a range of (necessarily) embodied spectatorial pleasures.

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