There follow mild spoilers for Black Mirror Season 4. Seriously, haven’t you finished it by now?
Here’s a Black Mirror script idea: A 21st century comedy writer in the UK comes up with a series of stories with technological twists. They are, to him, darkly amusing, no more a serious prediction than a SNL sketch would be in the US. Still, it amuses the writer to see his comedy confections play out on screen in a dramatic, rather unsettling manner.
Then comes the twist: the rest of the world loses its goddamn mind.
With hindsight they suddenly see a prediction about a shocking cartoon character who becomes leader of the world, fulfilled. They see a prediction about a prime minster and a pig, fulfilled. They saw Apple iPhone software predicted, and even a Pizza Hut concept vehicle. They critique the show as if it were dispatches from a profoundly dystopian, profoundly real future.
The writer protests he didn’t mean to foretell anything. In interviews he frames the series as wry amusements, no more. But does his audience listen? The anthology show becomes way more popular than anyone expected. It migrates from Britain’s Channel 4 to the world’s Netflix. In short order, it becomes one of the most iconic TV shows of the internet age.
By the time the comedy writer’s show enters its fourth season, in the darkly dystopian year of 2018, the internet seems to burst with arguments over whether the comedy writer is some kind of dark prophet — or worse, a dangerous idiot who thinks he’s a prophet but doesn’t actually understand how tech works.
This of course is the actual tale of Charlie Brooker, creator of Black Mirror. Unusually prolific by American standards of show running, Brooker has written nearly every episode of the show by himself. (Season 4’s final episode, “Black Museum”, contains its only hint of writerly collaboration; one third of it was based on a story of self-harm by Penn Jillette that was too darkly humorous for his own short story collection.)
Following in the wake of the show’s popularity, of course: takes, of all temperatures. “U.S.S. Callister,” a show about a gamer who traps simulations of his co-workers in a video game is held up as serious social commentary on the Gamergate crowd. “Hang the DJ,” a story about online dating, is compared unfavorably to the real-life Tinder experience. “Black Museum” now carries the weighty importance of being a “horrifying critique of American racism.”
But if you step back, take a breath and clear your mind of preconceptions, it’s just as easy (and I would argue, more rewarding) to see “U.S.S. Callister” as a Star Trek parody in which a socially inept guy becomes a bully and gets his comeuppance. “Hang the DJ” is just a sweet and sexy little tale about (spoiler alert!) more virtual reality people, this time playing out dating scenarios inside an app.
“Black Museum” is an anthology within an anthology — three scary ghost stories, one about actual ghosts inside people’s heads, that end with the one character who connects the stories getting his comeuppance.
Scary Ghost Stories
Ghost stories is another appropriate frame to place around Black Mirror. Brooker likes to give good scare. As I’ve noted previously, his hour-long episodes succeed when they spend at least a half hour on the slow, subtle build-up.
As such, his scary stories are somewhat formulaic. I don’t say that like it’s a bad thing; the scare works every time, and there’s an endless variety of genres and dark techno-comic twists to be layered atop the basic formula.
The point is, these are highly suspenseful tales for the digital campfire, not high literature designed to be picked apart for layers of meaning.
As with any bedtime ghost story, the logic of the plot and the motivations of the main characters can fall apart when considered the morning after. (Didn’t you think the protagonists of “Arkangel” and “Crocodile” were just a little too hasty in resorting to deadly violence?)
This is a show governed by nightmare logic. That’s the whole idea, a spooky comic nightmare fueled by tech that only has to be plausible enough to suspend our disbelief. The fact that most of the tech the show mentions plays on our human vanity is what makes it seem more real than anything in the actual design.
A Brief History of Brooker
To fully understand Black Mirror, you have to be familiar with the oeuvre of Charlie Brooker. This is a man whose writing career began when he created a comic strip for a gaming magazine called PC Zone. The strip was called “Cybertwats.” Nuff said.
And then he came up with this surprisingly disturbing page intended to parody people who thought video games were too violent. It caused PC Zone to be pulled from newsagents’ shelves. Black Mirror episode idea ahoy!
The Cruelty Zoo. Coming soon to a Netflix near you.
Image: PC Zone
Shocking sketch comedy soon became Brooker’s stock in trade. He wrote for The 11 O’Clock Show, the same late-night satire that gave birth to Ali G. In 2005 he penned a sitcom called Nathan Barley; the title character was the most sneering hipster parody imaginable. (If Brooker predicted anything, it’s how off-the-charts-annoying hipsters would become in the 2010s.)
Earlier on he had written for a special final episode of Brass Eye, an already envelope-pushing news parody show. This particular episode pranked real politicians and celebs into recording dumb-sounding PSAs for a fake anti-paedophelia campaign. A government minister called it “unspeakably sick.” It became the most complained-about British TV show to date.
That familiar feeling of silly yet harrowing dread you get when watching Black Mirror — this is what this comedy writer has been trying to do to us for years.
That sense of reality being sickeningly inverted, and you’re not sure whether you should be laughing at the joke any more — this is the soul of Charlie Brooker.
The little knife twist of (occasional) joy or (mostly) pain at the end — this is the final flourish of the guy around the campfire, flashlight beneath his face.
Beyond that, when it comes to a deeper meaning or a high-tech prediction … knock yourself out. Go nuts. Plot out the rest of the 21st century using only Black Mirror technology.
Just know you’re bringing all that to the campfire yourself. It’s all you. The jester who told the tale has long since moved on to crafting his next shocking confection.
