Black Mirror (Netflix, Season 3)
Nov. 8th, 2017 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroContinuing the theme of near-future, tech-based Twilight Zone shenanigans.
"Nosedive" – A world where every interaction deserves a Yelp review and those reviews, aggregated, form a caste system. A) It ignores how easily gamed this system would be (you don't have to be popular, you just have to be rich and powerful—everyone can see who downvotes them, so once you have or buy followers, you have a horde that can strike down anyone who dares downvote you. The Rush Limbaughs of the world could sit happily at 5 forever). B) It focuses on a very particular subset of “popularity” where apparently using profanity earns you auto-downvotes. If the ratings are user-defined, there would be dozens of “clusters” of popularity, each with their own implicit behavioral rules—and stepping out of your bubble could knock down your overall rating easily. C) Like several other episodes, ignores the purpose of the vote system (funneling money to advertisers) by having it exist for its own sake. D) Ignores the real-life privacy and safety issues of such a system: If someone cuts you off in traffic and you downvote them, they can see who you are. Apparently any action you take within the system auto-doxxes you. Which means that the most dangerous people would simply end up with no votes at all, except from their friends and flunkies, who'd give them 5s. E) The overall moral they seem to be going for is “the only way to win the fake-people popularity game is not to play; log off and start being real.” Which is perfectly good, though it also gets lost in the “fuck politeness, it's all fake!” tirade.
“Playtest” - One of many variants of the “nightmare you can't wake up from” / “fake out the audience as to what's real” scenario. Given the setup about catharsis via horror, I can't help but feel this could have ended on a happier note.
“Shut Up and Dance” - Boy caught on camera having a wank is sent on a blackmailed misery parade by unseen assailants. While the lesson is clearly “don't negotiate with terrorists,” this also turns around and tries to spin it as “horrible people get what they deserve,” with the series' usual take that “just” punishment can be unlimited in its cruelty. Actually, all of the episodes in this season so far have a “you brought this on yourself” ending, where regardless of how culpable the system might be, the immediate cause of the character's misery is their own actions, so therefore, we should believe they're deserved.
"San Junipero" – Probably the most upbeat and hopeful episode of the series thus far, this takes place in a world where the elderly and disabled can be plugged into a VR network, and can remain there after their deaths. And the sci-fi elements are almost entirely secondary to the adorable lesbian love story. I suspect there’s a lot more tragedy to be mined from this—the idea that you can only go to “heaven” if you die an expected death in a hospital; the problem of eternity when nothing you do matters; the question of continuous consciousness—but the episode happily ignores the majority of that in favor of two characters finding each other and living happily ever after.
"Men Against Fire" – Soldiers who appear to be hunting some sort of alien monster things are, because of implants, actually committing genocide against other humans. (I’m 99% certain I’m seen this plotline somewhere else.) Just to make it clear that this is terrible, what they’re doing is specifically ethnic cleansing (against a non-specific Eastern European group, but you can just assume it’s Jews and/or Roma), so you can be certain that using technology to encourage easy murder is bad, because its proponents are actual Nazis.
"Hated in the Nation" – Robo-bees (which are lovely concept that I hope we keep developing because it's likely we'll end up needing them) get used by a vengeful geek to murder people that Twitter doesn't like. And then murder everyone who's mean on Twitter. I think the only thing I found surprising is that the government—who apparently had files on everyone in the UK and was using the bees for spying—didn't figure out they could be used for covert assassination before the hacker did. Hell, it's amazing they were deployed as bees at all, given that as soon as the US government can make a tiny, self-replicating robot that can kill someone on command, we're going to drown the Middle East in the things.
Overall: I'd argue this season was mildly stronger than the first two, but still full of not-quite-targeted anvil-dropping and a very tunnel-vision view of human nature.
"Nosedive" – A world where every interaction deserves a Yelp review and those reviews, aggregated, form a caste system. A) It ignores how easily gamed this system would be (you don't have to be popular, you just have to be rich and powerful—everyone can see who downvotes them, so once you have or buy followers, you have a horde that can strike down anyone who dares downvote you. The Rush Limbaughs of the world could sit happily at 5 forever). B) It focuses on a very particular subset of “popularity” where apparently using profanity earns you auto-downvotes. If the ratings are user-defined, there would be dozens of “clusters” of popularity, each with their own implicit behavioral rules—and stepping out of your bubble could knock down your overall rating easily. C) Like several other episodes, ignores the purpose of the vote system (funneling money to advertisers) by having it exist for its own sake. D) Ignores the real-life privacy and safety issues of such a system: If someone cuts you off in traffic and you downvote them, they can see who you are. Apparently any action you take within the system auto-doxxes you. Which means that the most dangerous people would simply end up with no votes at all, except from their friends and flunkies, who'd give them 5s. E) The overall moral they seem to be going for is “the only way to win the fake-people popularity game is not to play; log off and start being real.” Which is perfectly good, though it also gets lost in the “fuck politeness, it's all fake!” tirade.
“Playtest” - One of many variants of the “nightmare you can't wake up from” / “fake out the audience as to what's real” scenario. Given the setup about catharsis via horror, I can't help but feel this could have ended on a happier note.
“Shut Up and Dance” - Boy caught on camera having a wank is sent on a blackmailed misery parade by unseen assailants. While the lesson is clearly “don't negotiate with terrorists,” this also turns around and tries to spin it as “horrible people get what they deserve,” with the series' usual take that “just” punishment can be unlimited in its cruelty. Actually, all of the episodes in this season so far have a “you brought this on yourself” ending, where regardless of how culpable the system might be, the immediate cause of the character's misery is their own actions, so therefore, we should believe they're deserved.
"San Junipero" – Probably the most upbeat and hopeful episode of the series thus far, this takes place in a world where the elderly and disabled can be plugged into a VR network, and can remain there after their deaths. And the sci-fi elements are almost entirely secondary to the adorable lesbian love story. I suspect there’s a lot more tragedy to be mined from this—the idea that you can only go to “heaven” if you die an expected death in a hospital; the problem of eternity when nothing you do matters; the question of continuous consciousness—but the episode happily ignores the majority of that in favor of two characters finding each other and living happily ever after.
"Men Against Fire" – Soldiers who appear to be hunting some sort of alien monster things are, because of implants, actually committing genocide against other humans. (I’m 99% certain I’m seen this plotline somewhere else.) Just to make it clear that this is terrible, what they’re doing is specifically ethnic cleansing (against a non-specific Eastern European group, but you can just assume it’s Jews and/or Roma), so you can be certain that using technology to encourage easy murder is bad, because its proponents are actual Nazis.
"Hated in the Nation" – Robo-bees (which are lovely concept that I hope we keep developing because it's likely we'll end up needing them) get used by a vengeful geek to murder people that Twitter doesn't like. And then murder everyone who's mean on Twitter. I think the only thing I found surprising is that the government—who apparently had files on everyone in the UK and was using the bees for spying—didn't figure out they could be used for covert assassination before the hacker did. Hell, it's amazing they were deployed as bees at all, given that as soon as the US government can make a tiny, self-replicating robot that can kill someone on command, we're going to drown the Middle East in the things.
Overall: I'd argue this season was mildly stronger than the first two, but still full of not-quite-targeted anvil-dropping and a very tunnel-vision view of human nature.
