Last night’s edition of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror was one of the most powerful and thoroughly depressing things I have seen on television in a long while. Subtitled ’15 Million Merits’ it depicted a bleak future where humans peddled on exercise bikes – seemingly to no real purpose – to earn ‘merits’ which were then used to pay for things, mostly virtual things for they spent all the time they were not peddling cooped up in box rooms and forced to watch TV or play video games.
The only way out of this was the X-Factor, sorry, Hot Shot – a 15 million merit gamble promising a life free from the drudgery and virtual reality. Our hero, Bing, overhears new girl Abi singing and encourages her to enter, paying for her entry himself. The judges, however, while impressed with her voice, have no need of more singers. What they need are porn stars and Abi is essentially peer-pressured into agreeing to the judges terms – one of them suggesting that if she doesn’t, maybe she really does belong back on her exercise bike.
Naturally, Bing is fairly cut up about this and on seeing a trail for Abi’s upcoming porn debut smashes up his box room in a fit of guilt. Then he resolves to take his revenge, or so it seems. Having made his way onto the stage, he threatens suicide with a shard of glass from his smashed-up room and thus forces them to listen to his tirade against the futility of it all and the falseness of the things they are forced to watch. So naturally they sign him up and Bing gets to deliver his tirades in two half-hour slots every week, watched by some, but, it appears, not many. And he gets a penthouse, but no Abi, it seems.
The moral of this story is not particularly subtle. Indeed, it is laid on with an exceptionally large trowel – possibly one wielded by Goliath or similar – but it is perhaps worth thinking about. For those who read his columns and watch his shows, Brooker’s misanthropy and utter lack of faith in humanity and the modern world will come as absolutely no surprise. It is what he has made a living on, as Bing goes on to do at the end, and this just about encapsulated his theories on modern TV and the culture it has spawned.
First, the drive to be famous. For most, life is drudgery, the only path to a worthwhile life is to become famous through television, and it almost does not matter how. Sure, Abi wants to be a singer, but ends up getting famous through porn (anyone think of another Abi who got famous in a similar manner?). It certainly looks like she is reluctant, but it is made clear that many others would kill to be in her position – it is better than the bike. Of course, there is another angle which is fame as prostitution – once you are up on that stage, every detail of your life is wide open (perhaps literally in Abi’s case).
Second, the utter lack of sensitivity towards people on television from the viewing public. This has come up a number of times on Brooker’s shows – the idea that many consider it perfectly acceptable to mock or hound famous people just because they are famous. Abi is eventually forced into her fate by peer pressure, the virtual audience (each representing a real viewer in their box) chanting at her. It is clear that few if any of them really care about Abi as a person, they just want to be entertained by her, and if that means she has to degrade herself on TV, so be it.
And finally, there is Brooker’s own role in all this. Bing is clearly Brooker – angry at the world and given a podium because of it. But in gaining his podium, he is neutered. For half an hour he is free to say what he wants, to rail at the system, to mock the sheepish stupidity of the masses. The masses, or those that watch, nod and laugh in agreement (as most of us will have done at Brooker’s own stuff) and then go back to doing exactly what Bing/Brooker was complaining about. This is not so much Brooker’s apology for himself but a cry of rage that he is not taken seriously, that most of us find ourselves agreeing with him and then do nothing about it. This particular machine does not kill its enemies, it assimilates them.
If more proof were needed, just think how many times you have seen or heard people make these observations, whether people you know personally or those in the media, within the very thing peddling the object of their ire. This is nothing new and the absolute believability of Bing’s fate somehow makes the whole thing more depressing than it already was. In Black Mirror there is no real life and fame and money are everything. It was so powerful, and so dispiriting, because rather than being some far-fetched futuristic world, it was all too recognisable as our own.
Perhaps Brooker, so far gone in his misanthropy, believes that nothing will ever change, that the media machine is simply too strong, or that we are too stupid. All I can say is that I do not wish to live in such a world, there is more to human existence than this and this must not only be understood, but acted upon. This is not the first time the deficiencies of celebrity culture have been pointed out, and it will not be the last. The real point behind all this, I feel, is that we are not listening. And until we do, Brooker’s misanthropic beliefs may prove tragically accurate.
Still, at least this week didn’t involve bestiality. A definite improvement.
[...] man finding that even his rage can be repackaged for sale by the medium he deplores.” As Left Turn explains: “Bing is clearly Brooker – angry at the world and given a podium because of it. [...]