Black Mirror season 3 rundown
From the very first episode of Black Mirror, aptly titled The National Anthem, it promised something very clear. It was gonna be a punch in the gut, and would serve its stories in their raw, ugly yet pure state. Like a portion of bean sprouts on your plate which you despise but happens to be more real than the cheeseburger you fantasise about. At some stages it does it is guilty of amplifying the feeling of paranoia, fear and anxiety that the shifting paradigm of technology brings along. And that is where the viewership is neatly cleaved between the people who love and hate the show.
The show, named after what a screen looks like when switched off, is at times an essay and critique of the dehumanising effects of the tech revolution that we have been at the cusp of. While there’s no denying the inevitability of technology taking over, the show can lead people to the misleading interpretation of embracing our inner luddite selves. And at the same time treat any new technological change with utmost caution.
Apps and products in our current future are created and made obsolete at breakneck speeds and have managed to surpass what was earlier known as Moore’s Law (a theory the states the computing speeds to double every two years). We hence have slowly arrived at a stage where the inception of a new product requires our cognitive capacity to catch up to its own creation. Meanwhile our moral compass retrofitted only as an afterthought.
This void between the creation and moral consequence is what Charlie Brooker, the creator of the show, banks on while painting a glum dystopian portrait of the future not too ideologically distant. At times praised to be a new age resurrection of the anthology series, The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror does also tend to tilt towards questioning moral nature of humanity present in the show Night Visions (for those who remember).
Unlike the previous seasons, Season 3 was initially met with some criticism for being ‘Americanised’ after being added to the Netflix roster. Fortunately this hasn’t affected the tonality and quality of the episodes.
1. Nosedive
Set in a not so distant future that encapsulates society to exist in a faux transparent model through a rating app, the episode does come close the David Eggers 2013 novel The Circle. The episode in its essence answers the question ‘What if our life was ruled by Instagram?’, which a majority of us subconsciously do accept as a reflection of reality. The rating app as featured in the episode in fact turned out to be reality when it was announced in September 2015, the launch of Peeple — “Yelp for people”. Although failing due to its controversial nature, the implicit workings of that app are the foundations of most social media platforms — Fanning our desire to be elite.
In the wake of 18 year old Instagram star Essena O’Neil quitting social media and talking about how it is not real life, Nosedive does capture and bring out our lives propelled by the economy of likes. Due to the presence of a tangible number as an index of validation rather than relying on subtle cues in social dynamics, people spiral into a constant state of scurrying for social approval. Ultimately leaving them to be hollow shells of their own digital representations.
The protagonist towards the end gradually embraces the futility of the exercise and in an moment of climax when the audience expects her to throw a monologue, doesn’t. Which I do appreciate cause it throws you off balance as a viewer.
Although the satirical take on the whole issue of an app taking over our lives was executed well enough, I still somehow believe the Community episode “App Development and Condiments” does a really great job of conveying the exact same thing using humour.
2. Playtest
Being one of the weaker episodes of the season, ‘Playtest’ does have its moments of anticipatory panic and jump scares that blends sci-fi and horror pretty well.
Taking the rising trend of VR gaming as its foundation, the episode extrapolates the possibilities to its inevitable point. Questioning reality in the face of failure to distinguish its from a game. Yes, the matrix might start off as an immersive open sandbox console game.
Now computer graphics have come all the way from 8 bit pixel representations to the state of constantly hitting the uncanny valley. At each iteration a level of realism is added in these virtual experiences, making the involvement much more intense. Currently since VR is also used in therapy for PTSD and anxiety, it’s clear about its ability to reorient the brain.
In the episode, an american backpacker Cooper (Wyatt Russell, Kurt Russell’s son btw) signs up for a experimental gaming tech that leads him to slowly lose grip on reality. An AI system assesses the players brain to provide its player the optimum scare. This leads to his experiences being incrementally threatening.
The beauty of the episode is the constant feeling of threat that looms over the protagonist, although the end turned out to be a bit of a bummer.
3. Shut up and Dance
The most bleak out of all the six, Shut up and Dance is a story that leaves you feeling listless and lost. A narrative about the fragility of privacy in the digital world, and how the exposure of which can cause extreme damage.
In the current age a users personality can be reconstructed just out of their browser history. An algorithm which Google and Facebook utilise in hoarding data about you and bombarding you with “relevant” ads. We do voluntarily give up most of our information as a means of being social, but there is still a seemingly private online world we exist in with various identities. And it rests on thin ice.
When a group of malicious hackers threaten to expose people of their misdeeds online, Kenny (Alex Lawther) and Hector (Jerome Flynn) are forced to team up and jump through hoops in order to go back to their lives. This leads them on a series of tasks that exponentially ramp up, ultimately leading to a fight to the death for Kenny.
Throughout the episode, there is a question which hangs in the air regarding Kenny’s motives to carry out these insane tasks. The extent to which he goes to not let the truth out seems a bit unreal at first. This is where the final reveal sums it all up to showcase the twisted side of people along with the threat that technology brings to expose our innermost selves.
4. San Junipero
Probably my favourite episode this season, ironically because it stands out amidst the dark hues which everything else from the show follows. Set mostly in the neon lit - synth pop era of the 80s, this episode also like ‘Playtest’ relies on the theme of questioning reality. But instead of debating on the difference between real and virtual, it is more self aware and hence goes deeper into questions about consciousness, happiness and immortality.
Though a major part of the episode is focused on the story of the relationship between the two main characters, it is the third act that poses the real questions that hide behind the curtain. And this is where the heavy philosophical thought weighs down — Are we all but our minds?
I personally felt the story had a certain parallel that could be drawn with 2001’s Vanilla Sky (since i’ve not seen Abres los ojos yet). The meaning of death, the state of virtual suspension and the choices to be made seemed to awfully familiar between the two. Nonetheless both have their own distinct identities when it comes to the final conclusion.
This is where it slinks back to the shows original tonality of being grim. Even though the ending creates a landscape of a happy couple driving into the sunset, there is something seemingly off about the consequence. The threat of immortality becomes suffused with boredom and inability to savour a moment. That’s the poignant yet profound thought it leaves you with…
“The experience of something is only made meaningful by its state of finity.”
The song “Heaven is a place on earth” by Belinda Carlisle used heavily in the episode actually intertwines with the plot beautifully and probably manages to generate the best ending to an episode i’ve seen in a while.
5. Men Against Fire
Personally I found this to be the weakest episode of the series yet. It had all the promises of a build up to a greater truth but falls flat on what seems to be a bit cliched turn of events. It could also be because of a tough follow up to the glory of the previous episode, but Anthology shows always need their episodes to be viewed in isolation. Hence I’ve made it a point not to watch two Black Mirror episodes in a day. To leave some part of the episode to ponder on.
Men Against Fire is a take on issues regarding military tech for wars and democide. By painting the enemy as vicious zombies called ‘roaches’ using a product called Mass, the government is able to desensitise its soldiers to create optimum killing machines. When one soldier finds out the truth about the roaches actually being human, he threatens to go against the system to expose this lie. Fairly straightforward.
What’s disturbing about the episode although are the villagers who seek military help to weed out what they feel are inferior humans. This at first might have seemed a bit of a stretch, but we are gravely reminded about it even now with the current events happening in Aleppo.
The usual format of Black Mirror episodes leave you with a thought to mull over regarding the morality of technology. This episode somehow did not have that lasting effect like the others and turned out to be just a usual conspiracy led sci-fi action film.
6. Hated in the Nation
The 90 minute finale to this season was what seemed like Hitchcock’s The Birds in the twitter age. Shot and made like a cable feature film than the rest, Hated in the Nation is probably the most direct when it comes to preaching its moral message.
At a time replete with cases of cyber bullying by body shaming and name calling, twitter has been the breeding grounds for a lot of such activity. In a large number of cases the general public tends to follow a hashtag in efforts to be noticed rather than giving a thought about the actual consequences for the people at the receiving end. The episode takes this as a thematic context and fits it into a buddy cop thriller.
Although at the same time there is also a critique on the looming threat of total government surveillance. This gets a bit confusing since the focus keeps shifting by clubbing together a bunch of issues in an attempt to kill all birds with one stone.
There are several loopholes that exist in the episode which are promptly distracted by Kelly Macdonald’s accent. The threat level keeps increasing with each murder which ultimately leads to a shocking catastrophic consequence.
Even though its ends on a relatively positive note of finding the killer, the ultimate takeaway it sends you is a very strong ‘humans inherently suck’ vibe.
Capping the season with a cataclysmic event might not have been entirely necessary in attempt to bump up the scale of the show, the season does try to cover a lot of facets and succeeds to an extent in being that diverse.
My favourite episode still remains ‘The Entire History of You’ though!
