Audience Participation, Catharsis, and Character Identification in Interactive Films: A Film Review of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

This study investigates how interactive cinema creates aesthetic experiences through audience participation, focusing on the tension between viewer agency and predetermined narrative structures. The rise of participatory and interactive art, especially after the World War II, encouraged similar experimental initiatives in cinema. Released in 1967, Kinoautomat was the first interactive film, allowing viewers to intervene in the plot, making it essential in cinema history. Following this film, which introduced a radically new cinematic experience, the development of interactive cinema entered a prolonged period of silence. This silence, which we posit emerged primarily due to economic constraints, was partially disrupted by isolated attempts in the early 2000s. However, the genuine renaissance of interactive cinema materialized with the advent of streaming platforms, notably Netflix. Beyond the changes digital platforms have created in movie-watching practices, the introduction of interactive cinema into homes in this process has been considered exciting by many viewers. Traditional cinema positions audiences as passive participants within predetermined narratives. Interactive films, conversely, introduce a paradigm shift in which viewers actively determine character actions and narrative trajectories. In this sense, interactive films go beyond classical movie-watching practices for the audience and create a distinct aesthetic experience. On the other hand, interactive films have the potential to generate many aesthetic strategies for film designers who create aesthetic experiences. In this study, the interactive film experience designed for aesthetic subjects will be examined from the producer's perspective on the axis of the concepts of participatory art, catharsis, and identification. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, a prominent early example of interactive films, was chosen for the review. The phenomenological film analysis method was used in the study. This study demonstrates how interactive films construct a minimalist participatory framework by design. Despite the apparent agency offered through choice mechanisms, these selections ultimately function within a carefully orchestrated system that subjectifies the audience. Character identification and the phenomenon of catharsis, which are extremely important, especially in terms of the cinematic experience of the aesthetic subject, also have the potential to be produced at a high level in interactive films. The selected sample film was used to examine the relationship between catharsis, identification, and participation.