Black Mirror

                                                                               
The National Anthem

Today for the blog, I’m watching a few episodes of Black Mirror on Netflix. The first dealt with the UK’s Prime Minister and his team trying to find their princess, kidnapped and held against her will unless he fucks a pig! Yes, a real oinker! They try to find her while media—both in news and social the—cover it and comment. Polls dictate the mood of the people, sympathizing with the PM at first until an attempt to formulate a mock pig fucking is uncovered, with the captor presenting a severed finger to the public from wherever he’s holding the princess as she squirms. This cools the sympathy towards the PM and when a signal discovered in an abandoned building leads the PM’s special forces to it, what they find is not the princess but a dummy. Every step this captor is ahead of them all. With time running out and few options left to find her, the PM’s entourage inform him that he must fuck the pig or else his reputation, safety, and family’s safety are no longer guaranteed. Meanwhile the PM’s wife continues to study social media’s harsh and debilitating criticism and mockery, certain to fracture the marriage and forever turn him into a long-standing joke. The princess’ well-being is to be considered above all. Although hinted instead of elaborated, the direction and acting get the point across: the embarrassment and act itself leave an audience watching. Many of them, eyes open even if uncomfortable and cringing, while others are captivated at what they see. And what about the princess and her captor: those on the PM’s team realize that this was all a statement. The captor actually released the princess early and hung himself thirty minutes before the pig fucking! Sufficed to say, the PM was kept from that bit of information! The desire for the story and coverage of it are documented in all their intensity and rush, as a public looks elsewhere (YouTube, Facebook, etc.) if CNN, Fox, BBC don’t put it all on the air. Meanwhile the PM is certainly on edge and desperate to escape his inevitable fate while those around him try and fail to rescue him from the pig fucking. Moral of the story: don’t run for Prime Minister!

Fifteen Million Merits

The second episode, Fifteen Million Merits presents a world in the future where virtual reality is the boring, monotonous everyday, as operating systems function off of computer generated orders…the catch is that in order to have anything, from washing/drying your hands after you urinate, getting a soft drink or fruit from vending, and ordering entertainment from a selection always forced upon them, “customers” must get up every morning, hop on an exercise bike, and pedal onward, earning merits with speed or length. Bing is introduced to us as robotic, emotionless, and dull-eyed. It is a repeat cycle that Bing sleepwalks through until he hears a sweet voice in the restroom (a restroom the men and women seem to share), turning out to be a pretty young woman named Abi. He is smitten with Abi and has the 15,000,000 merits needed to help her get on an American Idol type show hosted by three corporate powerhouses who can pick and choose from the “underlings” to be on their “team” and move of the bikes and onto the brand. To give up his merits after working to earn them, it points out that Bing certainly is fond of Abi. So Abi takes Bing’s gift and squanders it, selecting the path of porn star instead! In order to bypass the commercials of the entertainments which bike riders seemingly strive to become part of, merits are sacrificed. Well, Bing sacrifices a lot. With almost all his merits gone, when Abi arrives on the screens inside his “monitor domicile” (the riders live with monitor screens all around them, and these commercials come on periodically to remind them of the content available to them; in order to get rid of them it takes giving up merits earned) as a “Wraith girl”, he is unable to request it off, enduring her image and the sex committed to her, breaking glass as his fists pummel the screens. One shard of glass will serve as Bing’s salvation…who would have thought it?


The Entire History of You

I have a Reddit friend who turned me onto Black Mirror, and the third episode, The Entire History of You, knocked me for a loop. I was dazzled by its use of “memory tech of the future” where a chip inserted under the skin near your ear could record and playback memories from any point and time. An attorney named Liam returns from a less than satisfactory meeting with a potential profitable opportunity he feels he might have squandered, and he realizes that his wife is in love with another man, a man from her past. The episode is about reaching into the mind, pulling up the memories as if snippets of data, and playing them on a screen, the privacy of what exists in the head and away from others now accessible. It destroys a marriage as adultery can pulled up and viewed as if a data file. A face making an expression for the lover and then be completely different for the spouse is used as a weapon with footage available to prove the argument’s validity. It has us questioning whether such technology would be a good thing. it sure doesn’t seem to serve Liam well by the end as the wife, even if not altogether happy in the marriage was wanting to remain and make it work, is unable to dismiss possibility that a tryst with a former lover resulted in a child. That is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. When accessing the memories, there’s a visual trick with the eyes that makes them glow. Making new memories the eyes aren’t. So it allows us to see Liam when he is and isn’t accessing his memories. Cool premise and sad conclusion. Liam’s “barging in” on the dinner party his wife put together had the appropriate awkwardness, furthered by his tone and mood.