This week I watched an episode of Black Mirror called Shut Up and Dance. We follow the main character Kenny, a seemingly innocent, harmless young guy. Kenny, and several others are being watched and are told to perform a series of tasks or else some unknown people, only referred to as "they" in the episode, will leak information that they cannot afford to let out to the public.
We are not sure of the full stories surrounding the other characters. We get the picture that Kenny was wrongly caught masturbating on camera, and that they would leak the video to everyone. We as viewers sympathies for Kenny, as it seems he has been unfairly targeted. He is made to do awful things such as robbing a bank at gunpoint and fighting a man to the death.
I cannot help but relate this to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. A group of people spend their entire lives chained in a cave only ever seeing shadows and noises unaware of the entire situation. To them the shadows are the reality. They do not realize that those shadows and noises come from something else, because they've never been shown anything else except of what is right in front of them. Well it turns out, we are the people in the cave. Towards the end of the Black Mirror episode we are hit with revelations that completely change our outlook. It turns out that these people were purposely targeted by a group of somewhat vigilantes who wanted to punish Kenny and the others for what they've done. Kenny it turns out was watching child pornography, so had the man he had to fight. We were given small hints to it during the episode such as him being drawn to the child at the restaurant, and the fact he was so scared of the video leaking. It all at the time just added to the perception that he was a nice and completely innocent guy.
Because we were only shown certain aspects of the story, we believed that to be the reality. At the end you are dragged out of that cave and are shown the light. Just like the acts of the characters in the story. Even though they believed that if they performed certain tasks, their secrets wouldn't get out, the reality is very different. Once you are shown what is outside the cave, your view of reality completely changes.
P.S. I now have a sticker over my laptop camera.
So, I have to say, the last paragraph hit me pretty hard. I briefly debated on doing Shut Up and Dance for my blog post. However, I could help but wonder, what if WE were part of the Allegory of the Cave as an audience. I mean, like you said, we had a certain reality that we believed the whole time. Of course, there was elements of the truth (e.g., the few snippets of Kenny shown with a kid, which is similar to the voices of the puppets). As an audience, we're only shown a side, until the very end. I wholeheartedly agree with that. This Black Mirror episode made me so skeptical over everything involved. In the end, I felt more like the Allegory of the Cave applied to me! It was a twisting episode that led to such a brilliant ending. The troll face meme had me laughing despite how cruel they were. Anyways, I'm really glad you got that feeling, too, and mentioned how the audience was also involved in our readings.
ReplyDeleteP.S., I, too, have a sticker over my laptop camera now.
I think in some ways all persons involved in this episode play a role as prisoners in the cave, both audience and characters. You have done a good job pointing out the ways in which the audience become prisoners and the same can be said for the characters in the episode. Kenny and the others are doing the bidding of the anonymous (seemingly) antagonists because they trust the fact that their secrets will not be revealed if they go through the extreme measures placed before them. After reflecting on the episode, I think about how shocked I was to see that troll meme pop up on all of their phones. I, like the characters in the episode, trusted this reality presented to me. Now that I think of it, why should this reality have been so believable? After all, these are people that have hacked into their lives to exploit their deepest secrets. Definitely not people to be trusted. think what makes it so easy to believe is how difficult the alternative is to cope with. Like Plato's prisoners returning to the cave, doing whatever it takes to keep your secrets hidden seems like the best option to cope with when the alternative is that they will certainly be revealed.
ReplyDelete