White Christmas: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Black Mirror season finale
The anthology series Black Mirror by Charlie Brooker proposes that the incredible advances in technology and science over the last few decades have been the worst thing to happen in human history. Now, this may seem a bit melodramatic. But consider this:
While speeding down a northern California highway in 2017, Obdulia Sanchez was live streaming to her followers on Instagram. She was distracted with her phone and lost control of the vehicle, crashing and ultimately killing her 14-year-old sister. To the horror of the thousands watching , she kept the camera rolling. For several minutes after the crash, in the wake of approaching police, she continued to film the body and yell obscenities, including “My sister is dead. I don’t give a f — -.”
More recently, a man is being sentenced to five years in state prison for owning a website devoted to “Revenge Porn.” Joseph Iorio moderated a space where spurned lovers could post embarrassing photos and videos of their exes, along with their contact information. He would then use those images as leverage to force women to do “horrific” and “degrading” things. It’s almost stranger than fiction.
The USA Netflix exclusive program Black Mirror, originally available only in the UK, wants to persuade the viewer to pause and consider the vast and mostly terrible outcomes of letting technology completely dominate our lives. The second season finale attempts to answer a question many have asked before: Will artificial intelligence ever become sentient? And if so, what will be its role alongside the human race? Excellent cinematography, the easy to follow logic of the advances in science, and powerful character development work together are some of the strategies to convince the audience of Brooker’s point: Just because we are getting better and better at our technology, that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.
The narrative of the finale is told through the two main characters as they share the respective stories that have lead them to where they are at now: alone inside a snow-covered cabin, on Christmas Day, with some unspecified type of work to be done. Three separate memories piece together the real reason both men are there, to extract a confession of murder from the tortured and digitized Joe Potter (Rafe Spell).
The viewer is expertly guided along the episode with masterful camera work and lighting, each memory logically advancing the ideas needed to understand the finale. White Christmas director Carl Tibbets is clearly fluent in the cinematic tongue. The color red is used as a plot device to foretell the death of a persona and is present in almost every sequence, nearly becoming its own character. The audience can be comfortable knowing that they are in the hands of a master, and we are happy to immerse ourselves into his world and be convinced by his argument. Many of the scenes are shot from a someone’s point of view so that we become familiar with how technology shapes the world in which these people abide and in the way it forms each character’s experience. We are given the sense that Potter is a tortured soul from the very beginning sequence as the light from the window shines down onto only half of his face. He continues to be portrayed as such, and rarely is his face seen straight on. It’s clear that with whatever Tibbets wants to say, he knows exactly how to say it.
The plot of White Christmas, besides nearly every episode of Black Mirror, is driven by the kind of manipulation that genies in storybooks have been classically known to do. The familiar and helpful piece of technology is twisted for a destructive purpose and ruins the lives of the people using it. It’s not hard for us to imagine that someday, Google Glass will migrate from in front of our eyes to inside them, and the “Z-Eye” in White Christmas is a possible example of how that will be. Introduced in the first story as the means by which Matt can watch Harry’s perspective, they become a key device for the finale. Imagine being blocked by a dear friend or lover on Facebook, and the pain it would cause. Now instead of being blocked on only one medium, imagine being blocked in every possible way from ever seeing or interacting with that person again. The “Z-Eye” allows for a total and irreversible separation from another person at the click of a button, reducing them to a blob without sound or form. The familiarity of the technology seen makes the audience even more disgusted with its use. It takes almost no imagination to think of the myriad of ways the Z-Eye could be used for, and so convinces us even further of the point Brooker is making.
A most pessimistic perspective on human nature is the lense through which we see this world. Nearly every character is selfish and willing to do whatever is needed to get what they want, with little regard for life, artificial or otherwise. Matt does all he can to hide the murder of Harry and is unapologetic when his involvement is discovered. The only thing he mourns is the loss of his wife and children, although we can even question if he really misses them too much, what with his blasé explanation to Potter of what happened. Matt, again, shows no sympathy for another being, and after recounting his experience with creating digital copies of clients to be their own slaves (called “cookies”), summarizes the opinion of most of the people in this reality: “It wasn’t really real, so it wasn’t really barbaric”. Even Greta (Oona Chaplin), one of Matt’s wealthy customers, albeit likely unaware of what she has really paid for, simply accepts her new assistant happily and with few questions. Surprisingly, Potter is the only character in the entire episode who shows any remorse for his own actions or any empathy for Greta’s cookie. Perhaps the most chilling example of pure unadulterated cruelty though, is the ending moments when the cookie-version of Potter is forced to live 1000 years per second inside a snowglobe while his captors leave for the Christmas break with smirks on their faces. The acting we see is convincing. We think, “That is exactly how I would act if I were in that situation.” The characters are written with depth and complexity, there is no black and white, and the argument by Brooker is made complete.
The season finale of Black Mirror: White Christmas, like many other episodes before, has the clear goal of admonishing the audience against letting technology completely take over their lives. The arguably weakest and therefore most unbelievable point in the episode is the second sequence with the introduction of the cookie. Some could say that it doesn’t make sense for a cookie to be so powerful and yet so helpless, or that something so self aware and intelligent would even be practical as a digital housekeeper. In the end, however, the point is still excellently made: the misuse and abuse of sentient, albeit invented, beings is very possible and cruel. Charlie Brooker indeed succeeded in making us take a moment to reflect on our own electronic habits.