Agency in Contemporary Interactive Film

Abstract

Streaming service Netflix launched the interactive film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch in 2018. The film is a much-discussed production on Reddit where fans assemble to engage with the film and demonstrate agency through co-created content such as maps, theories, and game engines. This thesis analyses how engagement is established through a textual and a nethnographic analysis. During the nethnographic analysis are only unobtrusive methods used. The focus lays on intertextual references, Easter eggs, and filling in gaps to construct and understand multiple story lines which are questioning reality. These textual and technological features in Bandersnatch trigger co-creation, in combination with the theme of a mindgame film. The mind-game is the foundation of narrative complexity of the interactive digital narrative. Fans are triggered by the psychological science-fiction theme to construct maps to give closure to the narrative and create other extensions on the story line to fill in gaps and engage. Various studies show that fans take those features to co-create their own content with an archival function. This is an important fulfilment on the existence of archontic production. Creating an archive usually belongs to museums, libraries, and institutions, but since the digital age is everyone able to contribute. Archontic production shows that in the digital era fans can create their own archive. The thesis focuses on the adult-only interactive digital film from a fan’s perspective and creates an outlook to stimulate a research on the producer’s opinion on archontic production and agency. Throughout the film, reality and self-control is questioned by both protagonist and antagonist, as by the viewer him or herself.