Magical Realism In Beasts Of The Southern Wild

Through childish optimism and untamed imagination, Beasts of the Southern Wild offers a fresh perspective on the art of survival, the force of nature, and the human experience. It is an extraordinary film perceived through the lens of a fearlessly strong six year old, Hushpuppy, learning to make sense of the damaged, yet beautiful world in which she inhabits. Hushpuppy’s unrelenting resourcefulness and buoyancy are portrayed by magical realism through the auroch beasts of Hushpuppy’s imagination to allow the audience to better understand the extent to which humans will go in order to survive despite nature’s often destructive, unanticipated, and uncontrollable tendencies that humans will never surpass. Behn Zeitlin’s utilization of magical

realism and symbolism influence the narrative element in which verisimilitude is plausible. As a result, the audience is able to connect and gain an understanding of the human experience through a different, semi-realistic lens.

The technical and narrational elements help to emphasize the meaning and importance of this film in relation to one’s personal experiences and the means through which the film was created.

Magical realism is established early on within the film as Hushpuppy’s schoolteacher discusses the life of the universe through the beasts. She introduces the beasts by means of a tattoo apparent on her upper right thigh. The tattoo is an auroch, described as “a fierce, mean creature that walked the earth back when we all lived in the caves”. With this being the first introduction of the beasts, Hushpuppy’s childlike imagination is revealed as she begins to wonder about the ways of the universe and her purpose to live within the all of it. Throughout the entire film, the aurochs are presented through a multitude of close-angle shots as they travel from the melted ice caps to the “bathtub”, Hushpuppy’s home. As the aurochs become more frequent, the feeling of childlike wonder is reemphasized and carried out for the remainder of the film. The audience is able to better understand Hushpuppy’s character and her circumstantial conflicts in relation to

the beasts journey, as they seem to symbolize the impending doom that will consume Hushpuppy’s life, regarding her father’s illness and the storm. As Hushpuppy struggles to understand the universe surrounding her, she begins to internalize the world around her and recognizes the problems her community is facing. She takes everything her father taught her to be tough and makes it her responsibility to do what she can to comfort her father while he’s ill: “when you’re small, you gotta fix what you can”. This represents her determination to try and restore the peace and order of things within her community while she still has time. The first step she takes is traveling to a nearby island where she meets a woman that quite possibly could have been her mother. This allows her to connect emotionally and realize the importance of human emotion in relation to the human experience. She makes her way back to the “bathtub” and encounters one of the beasts in a face-to-face confrontation that portrays them as huge, disproportioned creatures compared to Hushpuppy’s tiny stature. Her ability to face them proves her strength and fearlessness in the midst of hardship. It also signifies her full understanding of the connection of humans to nature itself, which is depicted through the freeze frames of nature within the film. She states that she is merely “a little piece of a big, big universe”. Her awareness of the world around her and positive embrace towards making it a better one is remarkable, as she sees things the way they are with the universe’s survival dependent upon fitting together just right. She acknowledges that she is tiny, yet still takes it upon herself to repair the damage and make peace with the world.
Ultimately, this idea of everything needing to fit together just right appears to be Behn Zeitlin’s overarching message throughout the film. It is hard enough to survive life in the “bathtub” being an outside society, but through their optimism and vitality they continue to make it through another day. It is an inspiring and powerful journey that is entirely Hushpuppy’s story. Despite being a small and young child to the outside world, she evolves into the confident poweress king of the world that the aurochs once were.