SO, approximately three years too late, I finally caught the first episode of Black Mirror now that it’s on Netflix. I’ve been hearing about the show for years, especially that first episode – “National Anthem” – and was very interested in it. I’m too lazy to chase things down, so I just thought of it every now and then and finally my weak magical field worked its wonders and the show popped up on Netflix.
And it’s good – very well done, creepy, and the premise of “National Anthem” – a hugely popular member of the royal family is kidnapped, and the sole demand for her release is that the Prime Minister fuck a pig on live television – is inspired in both its creepiness and hilarity. I enjoyed it as a piece of black comedy and theater. It does, however, fail in a big way that often hurts supposedly audacious satires like this – it revels far too much in a cynicism about the world that’s supposed to feel edgy but is actually just really, really lazy writing.
And yes, I know: Me carping about lazy writing is like Charlie Sheen carping about drug addicts. Let it drift.
In “National Anthem,” the Cynicism Fail occurs when the story suddenly needs to give us a reason why any reasonable man, a Prime Minister no less, would actually agree to fuck a pig on live television. Yes, yes it’s satire and thus not beholden to normal rules of storytelling, but plot mechanics are plot mechanics. And Black Mirror falls back on the rickety old structure of “public opinion has shifted,” which is possibly the laziest writing crutch in the universe. In the story, at first the public is reasonably shocked by this ridiculous demand and supports the Prime Minister against it. Then the government makes the mistake of trying to fake a pig-fucking via CGI, and a raid on a spot where the princess might be held goes haywire and a reporter is shot. When the public finds out about these debacles, polling shifts, and suddenly the whole country insists the Prime Minister fuck the pig already. His party informs him that not only can they not longer support him if he doesn’t fuck the pig, they cannot even guarantee his or his family’s safety.
In other words, we are to believe that in the space of an hour or so the country goes from mild shock at this turn of events to rabid, primitive grunting.
And I call bullshit. The trope of “people are really the worst and will show their true colors when pushed” has been done. And people are the worst, I’ll stipulate. But bad polling as a reason you cannot possibly avoid fucking a pig on live television is perhaps some of the worst plot mechanics I’ve ever seen. I enjoyed the episode in spite of this bullshit, trust me. This is the sort of stuff a writer who has become completely divorced from real people trots out, imagining that everyone who is not him or people directly in his line of sight must be awful, ignorant, evil people.
I haven’t watched the other episodes, but likely will, and likely will also have drunken, belligerent things to say about them, as well. In the meantime it’s nice to know that even highly-paid folks with shows on TV can screw up their stories this badly. There’s hope for us all yet!
I just watched this last night, and I agree that the use of “public opinion has shifted” was a lazy and predictable talking-bout-the-webs-and-politics plot point, but for me it was not the greatest failure of the show.
I found myself engaged and enjoying the show, with an overall positive opinion right up to the very last scene. SPOILER WARNING: the Prime Minister fucks the pig, and his wife can’t look at him. I interpreted this to mean that the event has forever changed her connection to him, and for me that was the bullshit moment. He screwed the pig not because he suddenly was an animal fetishist, but because he was trying to save a human life. And her entire role in the show was to wring her hands and then turn on him at the end, to judge him for being in a dilemma, and say (without actually saying it) “won’t somebody think of our children.” That was, for me, the bullshit moment, and it changed my feeling about the entire show.
Judgment time is over. Back to coffee.
That’s a good point, actually – I agree that the wife’s reaction was artificial just to drum up some consequences for the Prime Minister. On the other hand, I’m not sure The Duchess would ever be able to wrap her head around me fucking a pig on live television. There’s only one way to find out.
Sooooooo funny