Black Mirror for Experts

In late December of last year, the fourth season of Black Mirror was released on Netflix, which is why many fans (myself included) had been hoping to see the much-anticipated fifth season released over the holidays. As 2018 draws to a close, though, no official release date has been announced and we still haven’t seen any Season 5 trailers. Mum’s been the word from both Charlie Brooker and Netflix. And so, alas, it’s become very clear that– barring some unprecedented surprise– we’re not getting a new slate of episodes for this holiday season. Sad trombone.

But there’s reason to hope! Earlier this month, one of the official Netflix accounts tweeted– then quickly deleted–  a schedule (pictured left) of new sci-fi releases for December, which curiously included a single Black Mirror episode entitled “Bandersnatch.” As fans of Sherlock and Downton Abbey already know, one-off “holiday” episodes are not at all unusual in British television series and, before being bought by Netflix, Black Mirror was a UK Channel 4 series. In fact, Black Mirror‘s Season 2 included one of these holiday specials, “White Christmas,” which was released separate from the regular season, so it isn’t outside the realm of possibility to expect another late-December episode like it. Moreover, rumors of a “Bandersnatch” episode have been circulating on Twitter since at least April of this year, when Black Mirror crews reportedly retro-fitted the Croydon area of London to its 1980’s glory. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that that the now-deleted tweet announcing “Bandersnatch” was part of a cruel and elaborate hoax, but the news was released yesterday that not only is “Bandersnatch” definitely being released on December 28 but also that it is feature film and not an episode! Ninety whole minutes!

(total geek out)
The “Bandersnatch” plot remains tightly under wraps, but we know from Twitter that the episode (like San Junipero) takes place in the 80’s. We also know that there actually was a Bandersnatch video game developed in 1984 (hey there, Orwell!) by a company called Imagine Software, about which there exists a documentary on YouTube, though the Bandersnatch game was never released because its creators went bankrupt. Aaaaand, Charlie Brooker– who is known to drop hints from time to time about the series– recently changed his Twitter profile pic to the keyboard for which Bandersnatch was made. Brooker and his fellow Black Mirror creators have been promising an “interactive” episode for the last year or so, and many people who know more about the Bandersnatch video game than I do believe that this might be the one. SQUEEEE!
(/total geek out)


Back in January of this year, after holiday-binge-watching Season 4, I offered up a post titled “Black Mirror for Beginners” on this blog, which included a little explaining of (and a lot of proselytizing for) Black Mirror along with my ranking of the 19 episodes so far. Since then, I’ve posted reviews/analyses of almost half the episodes– “Nosedive” (S3E1), “Playtest” (S3E2), “Fifteen Million Merits” (S1E2), “Shut Up and Dance” (S3E3), “Be Right Back” (S2E1), “USS Callister” (S4E1), “White Christmas” (S2E4), and “White Bear” (S2E2). There are several more in the chute that I hope to post before the end of the year. (Stay tuned!) I also had the very good fortune of being able to include a two excellent guest-posts by my fellow BM fan, Dr. Shannon M. Mussett, who very smartly parsed “Fifteen Million Merits” (S1E2) and “Arkangel” (S4E2). I’ll just take this moment to re-extend to my friends the opportunity to submit a Black Mirror guest-post, which I am always happy to include in the series.

All of that re-watching and re-thinking Black Mirror over the course of the last year has given me plenty of opportunity to reconsider what I think of the series in whole and in its parts, including the order in which I originally ranked Black Mirror‘s nineteen episodes. So, as 2018 winds down, I figured this is the perfect time to offer up a more advanced version of my original “Black Mirror for Beginners,” only this time for my fellow expert devotees. In what follows, I want to first revise my January 2017 episode rankings, but also to offer up some new observations and predictions about the series.

1. The National Anthem (S1E1) and Nosedive (S3E1)
   I still think that “The National Anthem” is the best episode. In my previous list, I had it tied with “White Bear,” but all the news about China’s Sesame ranking system this year really proved just how prophetic Black Mirror is. For that reason, “Nosedive” slid up in the rankings to overtake “White Bear,” but only by a hair.
2. White Bear (S2E2)
3. Be Right Back (S2E1)
4. Shut Up and Dance (S3E3) and White Christmas (S2E4)
   As I said before, I grossly underestimated “White Christmas,” so it appears on this new list for the first time at #4. I switched the rankings of “Shut Up and Dance” and “Be Right Back” because, well, the androids are coming.
5. USS Callister (S4E1)
6. The Entire History of You (S1E3)
   Funny story: one night a few months ago, I was sick and feeling terrible and just wanted to cozy up on the couch and watch a stupid movie. I found the 2018 film Hurricane Heist on Netflix and it seemed to perfectly suit my needs. (The plot of Hurricane Heist is– get this– a HEIST that happens during a HURRICANE!) Now, I’m not saying that Hurricane Heist  belongs in the AFI Top 100 or anything, but it was a really enjoyable film. (I’ve since become somewhat of a proselyte for HH.) Anyway, the star of HH is Toby Kebbell, who I immediately recognized from Black Mirror‘s “The Entire History of You.” So, I went back and re-watched S1E3 and was shocked– shocked, I say!– at how absolutely brilliant his performance in that episode was. More importantly, I realized that TEHoY gives us the most truly human glimpse into humans’ reactions to emerging technology. 
7. Playtest (S3E2)
8. The Waldo Moment (S2E3)
   I think I originally ranked “The Waldo Moment” higher because it seemed to predict Trump so accurately, but now I just think we all should have seen Trump coming. Still a great episode, though.
9. Men Against Fire (S3E5)
10. Hated in the Nation (S3E6)
11. Crocodile (S4E3)
12. San Junipero (S3E4) and Hang the DJ (S4E4)
    Sorry, y’all, I still don’t love “San Junipero.”
13. Black Museum (S4E6)
14. Fifteen Million Merits (S1E2)
    Thanks to Shannon Mussett’s post on “Fifteen Million Merits,” I moved it up one slot. Just one.
15. Arkangel (S4E2)
16. Metalhead (S4E5)

There remain some ties, I know. And some episodes made not-insignificant moves up or down the list. I think we can all agree that “Metalhead” still sucks, though. 

Here are some of my random, but expert, observations about the series after having watched, and re-watched, every episode at least 4 times.

DID YOU KNOW?:

1. In the timeline of the Black Mirror universe, there are six episodes that are roughly contemporaneous, i.e., they all occur within the frame of a single lifetime.

One of the things that stood out to me upon re-watching the series this year is how brilliantly and subtly the show’s creators nestle references to other storylines in each episode. From these breadcrumbs, I’ve managed to reconstruct the following timeline: “Shut Up and Dance” (S3E3) takes place slightly after both “The Waldo Moment” (S2E3) and “The National Anthem” (S1E1), and slightly prior to “White Christmas” (S2E4), “White Bear” (S2E2), and “Fifteen Million Merits” (S1E2).

Here’s my evidence: The young protagonist of “Shut Up and Dance” has a Waldo sticker on his laptop, so we know that what occurs in that episode is happening after “The Waldo Moment.” In one of the final scenes of “Shut Up and Dance,” we’re able to see over the shoulder of a CEO as she looks at her office desktop computer screen to see that one of the headlines reads “PM Callow ‘No Divorce,” an obvious reference to “The National Anthem,” so we know that the PM/pig debacle has already been televised. On the same screen, the headline that reads “Victoria Skillane trial latest” is a reference to “White Bear,” which means that the White Bear Justice Park hasn’t been built yet, but will be soon. There’s also a pop-up ad that reads “ONE SMART COOKIE! Click to witness the kitchen tech of tomorrow!,” a reference to “White Christmas,” apparently coming soon. Finally, and it’s hard to see, but the social media horizontal bar on the CEO’s screen includes a headline that reads “15 MIllion Merits launches next week” which is, obviously, a reference to “15 Million Merits,”  Now give me my Nerd Trophy.

2. “Be Right Back” includes a hanging storyline.

Okay, keep in mind that I screen “Be Right Back” in my classes every semester, so I’ve probably watched this episode close to 40 times. This semester, though, I noticed something I had completely missed so far. In the very first scene of “Be Right Back,” before we are introduced to either of the protagonists– really, before anything at all happens– we see Ash sitting in a van, playing on his phone. In the background, on the van’s radio, we can hear the following report: “Georgian rebels have formally claimed responsibility for the Narwahl virus that brought Russia’s financial infrastructure to the brink of collapse.” As far as I know, there hasn’t been another reference to the Narwahl virus in any other episode, but we know that Black Mirror doesn’t just drop hints like that willy-nilly.

3. “Nosedive” predicts that Sesame is coming to America.

This is a bit of a long-shot interpretation, but consider: “Nosedive” accurately anticipated the Sesame/Zhima credit system AND it’s the only episode with an all-American case. (Nary a British accent!) I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to conclude that “Nosedive” is showing us how likely it is that Americans will (automatically and mindlessly) consent to Sesame, how much more effed-up Sesama will be in the U.S., and how it is far better-suited for us than it is for China, after all.

[3.b.} Ever noticed how super black-and-white Black Mirror is? Where the Asians at?

4. Black Mirror‘s Theory of Mind is absolutely NOT “brainy.”

We’re given a lot of insight into writers’ room speculations about the human mind in episodes like “White Christmas,” “Be Right Back,” “Black Museum,” “San Junipero,” “Playtest,” and “USS Callister.” Those speculations seem, on the whole, to take the human mind to be largely (even if so-far mysteriously) mechanistic and therefore (potentially) reproducible. Their stories cast the human mind as (somewhat regrettably) socially-constructed, easily manipulated, but empowered with whatever it is that we call “free will.” Ergo, also idiosyncratic, stubborn, impulsive, difficult to mathematize, inclined to irrational fits of resistance (a la Dostoevsky’s “Underground Man”), and more than a bit of kluge. Most importantly, though, Black Mirror seems confident that the human “mind” is separable from the human “brain,” which means that Black Mirror takes “human” consciousness to be, first and foremost, severable from whatever particular human body happens to be holding it in custody. 

I’m largely sympathetic with this view, because I think consciousness is mostly epiphenomenal. So, I’m both endlessly fascinated and confused by the fact that people find episodes like “White Christmas,” “White Bear,” and “USS Callister” so horrifying, while at the same time finding comfort in “San Junipero.” (I doubt I’m the first to despair over the lack of nuance or reflection in popular considerations of human consciousness.) I sometimes say that there are basically two types of Philosophers of Mind: (a) those who do Philosophy of Mind, and (b) those who like to look at colorful fMRI pictures of brains and commit naturalistic fallacies. I think I would now add a third category: (c) those who have subscriptions to Wired, i.e., those who give even the tiniest amount of shit about emerging technology.

5. At least 9 (of 19) Black Mirror episodes are already possible.

By my count, these are the episodes that have already happened (more or less) as they were written: “The National Anthem,” “The Waldo Moment,” and “Metalhead.” These are the episodes that could happen (more or less) exactly as they were written with already-existing technologies: “Nosedive,” “Fifteen Million Merits,” “Shut Up and Dance,” “Men Against Fire,” “Hated in the Nation,” and “Arkangel.”

Of the remaining episodes, at least part of almost all of them are currently possible: augmented reality in “Playtest,” 3-D printing and CRISPR in “USS Callister,” for-profit incarceration in “White Bear,”  comprehensive surveillance in “The Entire History of You,” extremely lifelike humanoids in “Be Right Back,” and super-predictive dating algorithms in “Hang the DJ.”

For those keeping score at home, the Singularity is here.