Black Mirror S3E3: Shut Up and Dance
As the Netflix vague summary states, this episode is about a teen boy uses laptop is hacked and then must obey said tasks to keep his secrets from being exposed. Watching the episode once, leaves one with many questions and fears of the government spying on humanity through technology, which is why this episode is relevant. Not only does the episode address the topics of spying, but also memes and pornography. After watching for a second time with an analytical eye, many connections were made, but still few questions remain.
The director, James Watkins, includes multiple brilliant scenes that could easily be overlooked at first. Within the first two minutes of the episode Kenny (played by Alex Lawther) is bussing tables and returns a forgotten toy to a little girl. The action seems unimportant, until the realization that Kenny viewed child’s pornography, “What did you do Kenny? They’re saying it’s kids! That you’ve been looking at kids!” (50:12 minutes). Another scene that provides foreshadowing or ‘hidden meaning’ is when Kenny is downloading a program (04:00) called “Shrive.” Shrive, according to Google, means to presents oneself to a priest, confess sin, inflict self-punishment, and be forgiven.
Kenny’s first sin is viewing the pornography, but after being recorded, Kenny commits more sins by going to the extremes of robbing a bank and murdering a man just to keep his original secret unexposed. Throughout the episode Kenny is characterized as an average teen who get picked by his coworkers. Even in the scenes of crimes Kenny has mental breakdowns, emotional outbursts, visible trembles, pees his pants, and attempts suicide. But is this enough for viewers to feel sympathetic towards the character or is sympathy nonexistent regardless of the character struggling to conform to the tasks given?
Is Kenny complying to the anonymous demands, so they simply are not exposed or because they want to protect whatever pride and dignity they still have? Other characters risk losing their families, children, and jobs, so what is Kenny risking besides having his mom see the videos, “Your mum’s gonna love that on Facebook, Twitter, Insta-fucking-whatever” (35:13). But regardless of what the characters are willing to do, their secrets are still exposed with the unknown peoples sending a Troll meme invoking the question of what did the anonymous people truly want? They had no interest for the stolen money and used it as bait instead, “You got the prize money?” (45:45). Are the unknown “they” only testing to see how far people will go and create chaos to protect their-self?
