Late Night wanky thoughts on Black Mirror
After reading people’s thoughts about the new Black Mirror episodes, I’ve realised that almost no one has the same view on what this show is. It’s the most malleable “author is dead” series I’ve ever seen.
(Slight and vague spoilers ahead)
Black Mirror is at its heart is about radical empathy and it’s position as an antidote to hate and violence, but instead of showing us the positives that can come out of it, it shows what happens in a void. Technology enables us to keep others at a distance, and to disconnect us from others real thoughts and feelings, making it easier to dismiss them as wrong and other. Black Mirror doesn’t purport an empty and hopeless world, but rather offers a parable about empathy, and how we can let our own biases and enjoyment of criticising others take over our empathy and love for others.
Almost every episode of the show deals with this empathy gap, with patterns emerging in every episode. The only episode that actually shows this radical empathy in action is San Junipero, and even then instead of both understanding each other, one ignores their beliefs to embrace pleasure (let’s keep it vague.)
Most disappointing to me are readings of the third episode of the new season, Shut Up and Dance, which is a hard to watch dark nightmare of an episode. The guy punch twist at the end of the episode has been dismissed by so many as a meaningless cruel twist to make the world seem that much darker, but that twist brings the episode it’s entire meaning. How can we expect people to not act like monsters when we act like monsters ourselves? How can we help this guilt-ridden child escape the dark tendencies that are destroying him if we are too concerned with our own moral cleanliness to even try to empathise with his plight? So many people have said that the ending is there to destroy any sympathy you may have placed on him - but why should it? His anguish over what he’s done what he’s going through is the same. The same things were said about White Bear, the episodes companion piece in many ways, but again, to me at least, they’re missing the point. By saying that you have lost sympathy for the troubled boy that has done evil, you condone and accept the actions of the troll-faced perpetrators, or the camera holding public constantly filming for any moment of weakness that can be exploited for enjoyment.
We enable evil by thinking we are above it. Anyone could do wrong or right, but we are not defined entirely by one part of ourselves. We must imagine others complexly, no matter how hard it is to ignore our compulsion to spew hate, or we threaten to expand the divide between us and them.
And yes, I am so very, very pretentious.
