By Lizzy Lyons-Beal
Introduction
“You know nothing good will come, but the ride it takes you on proves fascinating” (Liz Shannon Miller). This is one IndieWire television critic’s take on the first episode of Black Mirror’s third season, yet the sentiment rings true across the series as a whole. As an anthologized television serial, each episode of Black Mirror explores a distinct, often dystopian vision of our world’s not-so-distant future—the conflict of which is often the direct result of unchecked technological advancement. Every episode employs different, self-contained characters, settings, and narratives, but the style is nonetheless recognizable. This paper seeks to explore the common themes within this televised serial, focusing primarily on the 2014 winter special, “White Christmas,” as well as the fourth episode of season three, “San Junipero.”
“White Christmas” explores how nonconventional, technologically-induced punishments affect a person’s sense of humanity, painting a picture of a dystopian world where both private citizens and the legal system alike can forcibly manipulate how people perceive others, and even how they perceive time. With the push of a button, individuals can manipulate others’ sense of sight to either protect their privacy, or to provide an alternative form of legal punishment. This service is called “blocking” because it literally blocks certain people from others’ sensory perception—it selectively muffles the voices of each party and causes them to resemble flat, gray silhouettes to one another. Blocking is one of two forms of punishment on display in this special; the second is the manipulation of a person’s sense of time—through a similarly futuristic technology, one man is sentenced to endure one thousand years for every minute that passes in his solitary prison, exacerbating his descent into madness.
While “White Christmas” shows the manipulation of time and social relationships as potentially inhumane and daunting, these narrative devices work toward a much more positive end in the episode “San Junipero.” “San Junipero” opens with two young women, Yorkie and Kelly, meeting at a dance club for the first time, seemingly in the 1980s. Yet, as is so often the case in Black Mirror, things are not as they appear. The audience comes to learn that these young women gallivanting around the city of San Junipero are actually digital projections of two elderly women’s consciousnesses; in fact, the real Yorkie and Kelly live hours away from each other and would have otherwise never met. Visitors of the San Junipero simulation experience time in a way that is all their own, as they have the power to manipulate the era in which they boogie based on their preferred aesthetic—the fluorescent 1980s, alternative 1990s, glittery early aughts, etc. Similarly, San Junipero subverts conventional notions of time by providing a space in which inhabitants may choose to experience an infinite, digital afterlife, thereby forcing them to grapple with the vexing notion of eternity. Characters in their twilight years must choose to either pass on to a quiet, dreamless death, or spend the rest of time together in a virtual paradise.
Ultimately, this paper explores the common themes within this televised serial, arguing that one of the most prominent themes throughout Black Mirror is the use of digital technology to highlight the nuances of the human experience, primarily as it relates to our perception of time and interpersonal relationships. I will begin by noting the different ways both episodes present temporal manipulation as a narrative device, and conclude by analyzing how characters’ respective communities—or lack thereof—affect their ability to endure incomprehensible infinities.
Part I: Finite vs. Infinite Temporality and the Human Experience
As I delve into how these episodes employ technology to showcase the cornerstones of human experience, I feel it is first necessary to establish that the simulated persons within these episodes are human, in the first place—a fact that is not even universally acknowledged by the primary characters themselves. I will first provide more context as to how humanity may be quantified in both “White Christmas” and “San Junipero,” and conclude with an exploration of how each episode presents their own daunting version of forever.
“White Christmas” opens with two men, Joe and Matt, who have spent the last five years together at a remote cabin in an icy tundra—or so the audience is led to believe. As the narrative progresses, the viewer learns that Matt is actually a programming professional who has manufactured a cabin simulation as a means to help draw a confession from Joe, a man who was the recipient of a longtime “block” following a bitter altercation with his partner, Beth. After Beth’s accidental death, Joe is finally able to meet the child who was conceived while the two were still together—pre-block—and is distraught to learn that Beth’s daughter is the product of an affair. This realization stuns Joe and, in a quick fit of rage, he strikes and kills Beth’s elderly father—the crime to which he eventually confesses. To draw this confession from Joe, Matt taps into his past as a technology consultant and creates a simulation with highly specialized parameters: he programs Joe’s simulated self to believe that he has been stationed at an isolated cabin for five years with one other person (Matt) and no outside contact whatsoever. While the “real” Joe sits alone in a cell, the simulated Joe shares the intimate details of his life with Matt, completely oblivious to the fact they are both merely digital duplicates of physical people.
However, there is some disagreement within the episode as to whether or not such simulations are technically “human.” When Matt recounts his past as a representative for a tech company called “Smartelligence,” he paints a vivid picture of the psychological torture he inflicted upon simulated minds—minds that he explains are made up of code and stored in a small device called a “cookie.” These devices are installed into digital home assistants, which are then responsible for performing the physical person’s most tedious daily tasks—tasks like setting appointments, ordering groceries, and toasting bread—all to the physical person’s exact specifications. In a flashback of one of his past jobs, Matt speaks to a simulation of a woman and explains that it is his responsibility to help her transition to her new reality as a home assistant for her physical self. After she begins to recover from shock, she vehemently refuses to be “some sort of push-button toaster monkey” (00:36:24-00:36:27). In response to her insubordination, Matt manipulates her perception of time to show her how unbearably mind-numbing and monotonous her life would be if she refuses to do chores for the person after whom she is modeled; he first accelerates time within the cookie by three weeks, and then, because her spirit is not yet sufficiently broken, he tacks on an additional six months of isolation. It is clear that this time lapse causes her intense psychological trauma as she pleads, “Please. Give me something to do . . . Please, I’ll do anything, just give me something to do, please” (00:38:12-00:38:34).
Moving on from the flashback and into the present-day cabin simulation, Matt and Joe meditate on this outcome and share the following exchange:
JOE. That’s slavery.
MATT. That’s a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?
JOE. But she thought she was real.
MATT. But she wasn’t.
JOE. It’s barbaric.
MATT. It wasn’t really real, so it wasn’t really barbaric. (00:41:10-00:41:18)
Viewers are likely to side with Joe in this debate, but why? Which particular quality of the simulated persons makes them appear “real” to us? Certain twentieth-century existential philosophies suggest that it may be these characters’ apparent awareness of time that makes them human. One theorist by the name of Gabriel Marcel explores the relationship between human experience and temporality in narrative, deeming human experience itself a “temporal character” (Tattum 86). Philosopher Martin Heidegger expresses a similar idea in his work Being in Time, which writer Paul Gorner explains in his helpful introduction to the former’s oeuvre:
The activity of human beings takes place in time. The existence of an individual human being begins at a certain moment in time and ends at a certain moment in time . . . other things – animals, plants, stones and planets – are “temporal” in precisely the same way. But what makes the temporality of human beings special, one might say, is that . . . human beings are also conscious of time and take account of time. (155)
If we accept this idea that to be human is to have a fundamental awareness of the passage of time, the simulations in “White Christmas” definitely qualify; the woman in the cookie is noticeably disturbed after she is forced to suffer through six months in isolation, and Joe’s simulated self appears to experience significant trauma as he lives through one thousand years per minute at the episode’s end. That their respective temporal manipulations can bring them such anguish supports the idea that they are, in fact, able to conceive of time in this distinctly human way.
The two primary characters in the episode “San Junipero” also display a definitive awareness of time, and such awareness is even the root of the episode’s main conflict. Yorkie and Kelly both elect to “upload” their minds to the San Junipero database as a means to virtually inhabit the bodies of their youth, thus enabling them to live unencumbered by their advanced age, failing health, and real-world circumstances. However, they are not entirely on the same page regarding their long-term plans—at least not at first. At the start of the episode, they are both essentially taking a “trial run” of San Junipero; once Yorkie’s real-world self passes away, she plans to keep her mind in the simulation forever. Kelly, on the other hand, has her reservations. Yorkie tries to get her on board with eternity when she says, “You could have forever,” to which Kelly replies, “Forever. Who can even make sense of forever?” (00:50:22-00:50:26). This inability to comprehend eternity betrays a distinctly human perception of temporality—the concept of forever does not coalesce with how we as mortal beings understand time. In Time, Death, and Eternity: Reflecting on Augustine’s “Confessions” in Light of Heidegger’s “Being and Time,” philosophy scholar Richard Severson explores Heidegger’s ruminations on humanity, which state that “death is the ultimate futural possibility for authentic human existence” (8). Because the San Junipero simulation seemingly allows characters to sidestep death, it denies them the one definitive futural possibility that humans take for granted. In this moment, Kelly’s simulated self cannot begin to fathom life without death, and it is precisely her inability to do so that cements her character’s authentic humanity.
It is later revealed that Kelly’s loyalty to her family is holding her back from committing to this digital afterlife—her real-world daughter passed away before San Junipero existed, and her late husband chose not to use San Junipero because their daughter never had the chance. This scene presents an explicit juxtaposition between this character’s perception of mortal time and infinity. Despite her youthful appearance in the San Junipero simulation, Kelly has lived a full life, the length of which makes it all the more difficult for her to reckon with eternity. Through gritted teeth, she tries to explain her long-standing devotion to her husband: “Forty-nine years. I was with him for forty-nine years. You can’t begin to imagine . . . the years I gave him, the years he gave me . . . You want to spend forever somewhere nothing matters?” (00:51:59-00:53:58). Kelly’s ability to reflect upon the length of her marriage reveals that she can engage in the very human activity of taking account of time; however, the way in which her character emphasizes just how many years the couple spent together adds more nuance to the discourse. Although forty-nine years is a considerable amount of time within the span of an average person’s life, it is still quantifiable. Kelly knows exactly how long forty-nine years is because she lived it. Yorkie, on the other hand, did not have the same chance to experience all that forty-nine years can bring in her physical life, let alone a love that lasts as long. Still hurting from the loss of her family, Kelly lashes out at Yorkie: “You can’t know the bond, the commitment, the boredom, the yearning, the laughter, the love of [our marriage]” (00:52:05-00:52:20). Alongside the many arguably positive qualities she lists, “commitment” and “boredom” stand out as particularly mundane; their place among the more romantic aspects of long-term love shows that forty-nine years is too long a time to be without struggle. When Kelly is asked to consider what eternity could offer, she can only reflect upon her real-world, quantifiably temporal experiences—she knows first-hand that forty-nine years is a long time. Forever is inconceivable.
[2] The “real” Yorkie uses the San Junipero simulation because, in her early twenties, a horrific car accident left her completely paralyzed. She got into the wreck immediately after her ultra conservative family reacted negatively to her coming out. Thus, she did not have the same opportunity to experience love, or any other sort of romantic relationship on her terms in her physical life.
The impossibility of forever is similarly on display in “White Christmas,” when Joe suffers an especially cruel temporal manipulation in the final scene; after confessing to his crimes, he is victimized by the detectives who have been supervising Matt’s undercover interrogation. Once Matt is released and the investigators prepare to leave for the night, one of them remarks, “[I] changed the time settings [on Joe’s simulation]. Cracked him up to a thousand years a minute. There’s a proper sentence” (01:10:19-01:10:32). Although one thousand years per minute over the course of one night is technically quantifiable in a way that infinity is not, the monotony of so vast a sentence puts immeasurable strain on Joe’s consciousness in much the same way conceptualizing and experiencing eternity might. If we return to Heidegger’s idea that an authentic human experience necessitates a final death, we can begin to understand why Joe’s fate rings so inhumane: to be human is to exist definitely, within a conventional temporal timeline. Thus, we may conclude that Joe’s infinite sentence is inhumane because he is a temporal being who is forced to live outside of the realm of temporality.
Part Two: Community and Eternity
But what is it about the San Junipero simulation that makes that version of eternity so attractive to most? What is so heavenly about this digital eternity as compared to the hellish simulation in “White Christmas”? In the next portion of my paper, I will examine how the passage of time affects these characters’ sense of community and, conversely, how community impacts their willingness and ability to confront infinity.
When Matt initially manipulates Joe’s sense of time in “White Christmas,” he does so to create an implicit rapport between the two—as well as a sense of entitlement. It is Christmas Day when Joe walks out of his bunk and into the kitchen; Matt is apparently in the Christmas spirit as he tells Joe that he wants the two of them to eat, drink, and—most importantly for Matt’s purposes—talk with one another, exclaiming lightheartedly, “Come on, what’s it been, five years? How many sentences have you said to me? Three? I mean, I’m exaggerating . . . a little. Come on, there’s a little bit of a conversational drought happening here. My ears need water” (00:02:41-00:02:55). In this scene, the artificially produced time allows Matt to act as though he is owed Joe’s engagement; the illusion of having spent five years in complete isolation with one other person creates an intimacy that Matt exploits to draw the confession from Joe. Joe’s belief that he has spent a significant amount of time with another person creates space for vulnerability, reflection, and, ultimately, confession. He listens attentively as Matt confesses the past wrongs that he claims brought him to the cabin, explaining that he used to have a side job as a sort of digital pickup artist and that, in addition to massively and illegally violating others’ privacy, he was found indirectly responsible for one of his client’s deaths. The illusion of a previously established rapport works in conjunction with Matt’s openness to inspire reciprocity, as Joe feels compelled to share his own wrongdoings with Matt in return.
This false sense of intimacy is the closest thing we get to community in this episode; once Matt and Joe’s crimes are out in the open, both of these characters are made to endure punishments that forcefully limit their social interactions. When Joe lives through a thousand years per minute at the end of the episode, he does so in complete isolation. Modern research indicates that such solitude is physically and psychologically taxing, even without the threat of eternity. In their review of selected evidence on the nature of social isolation as a facet of the human “connection continuum,” psychologists John T. and Stephanie Cacioppo suggest that loneliness has the potential to “impair executive functioning, sleep, and mental and physical well‐being . . . contribut[ing] to higher rates of morbidity and mortality” (57). However, Joe is not a physical person, but a simulated one; his mental health does not affect him physically because he lacks any sort of physicality. Thus, without the promise of relief that sleep or death might normally bring, Joe must forever dwell within his painfully isolated, impaired mental state.
Joe’s cruel social condemnation is presented side-by-side with that of Matt, whose deal with the detectives turns sour once he succeeds in prompting Joe’s confession. After Matt returns to the physical world, he shares the following exchange with the investigators at the police station:
MATT. So, the deal? I break a confession from him and I go free, right?
DETECTIVE 1. We’ll make good on the offer. You’re free to go, Mr. Trent . . . with some caveats.
MATT. Caveats?
DETECTIVE 1. You’ll be on the register.
MATT. What register?
DETECTIVE 2. The one for peeping Tom pervs. (. . .)
MATT. What does it mean, this register?
DETECTIVE 1. It means you’re blocked
MATT. By who?
DETECTIVE 1. By everyone. (01:07:53-01:08:40)
Rather than receive jail time for his crimes, Matt was led to believe that he would be released after his job with Joe was done. Instead, the legal system offers him “freedom” with one glaring limitation: he is universally blocked. He leaves the police station and slowly walks through a Christmas market, hesitant and disoriented. Every single person in his line of sight is now a gray silhouette. He cannot hear the chatter of the market-goers—singing carolers and loud men peddling roasted chestnuts sounds only like a droning, muffled hum. This block goes both ways; as a newly registered criminal offender, others see him as a bright red silhouette, a warning to all that he could be a danger to society. This scene calls into question what it means to truly be “free.” Yes, Matt has successfully evaded jail time, but this universal block will impose upon him a sort of solitary confinement that is difficult to imagine. He is free to roam the city, but he will never again be able to verbally communicate with another living person, severely diminishing his ability to develop meaningful social relationships. In this sense, both Joe’s simulation and Matt’s physical self face similar degrees of social isolation—the difference being that Matt still exists within a mortal timeline, and thus has the freedom to yield to sleep, death, and any other manner of physical release.
While much of Joe and Matt’s suffering in the final act of “White Christmas” seems to stem from their inability to form interpersonal relationships, it is Yorkie and Kelly’s ability to control their social environments in the San Junipero simulation that affords them the opportunity to find love and achieve self-actualization—both of which make the concept of eternity infinitely more bearable. When Kelly is initially against San Junipero, it is because she is only thinking about her mortal loved ones and cannot conceive of an eternity without her family by her side. By the episode’s end, however, she is content with her choice to stay in San Junipero because she has found a new family in Yorkie, and, with this new-found love, she is ready to face all that eternity has to offer. In Yorkie’s case, San Junipero grants her the social and romantic freedom that she never knew in her physical life; whereas in the physical world she was denied the chance to fall in love, she is able to be her most authentic self and love without fear of persecution in San Junipero. These two women ultimately overcome any fear there may be of an infinite unknown so that they may choose each other, and that is not where the choices end.
There is no dearth of social choices in San Junipero, a fact that ultimately plays a hand in making this version of eternity more palatable. Both residents and visitors of San Junipero have the freedom to change their physical appearance and aesthetic time period at the drop of the hat. Yorkie and Kelly first meet in the 1980s simulation, and later, when Kelly gets frightened by the feelings she develops for Yorkie, the former is able to “hide” from the latter in the early aughts simulation. This era-hopping works like a sort of harmless time travel; there are none of the consequences usually associated with time traveling because nothing they do in the “past” could ever affect the “future”—every time period occurs simultaneously, in different components of the San Junipero database. Their limitless ability to time-hop promises a healthy mix of variety in their eternity, thus adding extra insurance against the menacing monotony that forever might ordinarily bring. Yet I feel it is important to note that even “forever” is a choice in San Junipero. During the scene where Yorkie tries to convince Kelly to stay, the former explains that they can spend “however long they want” in the simulation. Yorkie says, “You can remove yourself like that” with a snap of her fingers, and asserts, “It’s not a trap” (00:50:26-00:50:33). Because San Junipero only promises the potential for forever, eternity is not a condemnation, but a reward—not something they’re forced to experience, but something they have the freedom to choose for themselves.
Conclusion
Although both “White Christmas” and “San Junipero” employ temporal manipulation and interpersonal connection in ways that inspire the viewer to question the nuances of the human experience, they use nearly opposite methods to do so—such differences may be categorized under the terms “subhuman” and “superhuman,” respectively. In “White Christmas,” human characters are repeatedly forced to live through subhuman conditions; their temporality is constantly in flux owing to external manipulation, and their ability to interact with others is severely inhibited, if not completely snuffed. “San Junipero,” on the other hand, presents ways in which temporal manipulation and social relationships may be harnessed to produce an ideal vision of human existence—a superhuman reality. The primary characters never lose their autonomy within the simulation as they remain in complete control of their own timelines and social interactions. They are free to be themselves, fall in love, and socialize as part of the San Junipero community; they have the option of eternity, but they are not stifled by eternity in the way that Joe is.
With this reasoning in mind, I contend that “White Christmas” and “San Junipero” are thought experiments that emblematize two sides of the same coin: the first, a subhuman nightmare in which temporal manipulation and forceful social limitations are used as means of exploitation and punishment, and the second, a superhuman dream where characters are empowered to define their time and relationships on their own terms, even outside the realm of mortal temporality.
Works Cited
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Interpretations: Journal of the Graduate Literature Association 