If asked to describe what Netflix’sBlack Mirroris about, most people would certainly say it’s a show that focuses on how technological advancement can take humanity to dark and horrible places. And, if asked if this assertion is correct, most people would certainly say that it is. However, is it really fair to reduceBlack Mirrorto a show about the dangers of technology? More than once,Black Mirrorhas proved that it can also be sweet, even if it doesn’t quite abandon its pessimistic streak. Furthermore, when looking into the show’s most disturbing episodes, we are forced to admit that one of its darkest moments has less to do with technology than with humanity itself.
There is no doubt thatthe big and small hyper-technological horrors ofBlack Mirrorstories like “The Entire History of You”, “White Christmas”, and “Black Museum” live rent-free in the minds of the show’s fans. These episodes ask us hard and highly speculative questions, such as, is it ethical to torture an AI or what would we do if we had access to a significant other’s entire memories? But theBlack Mirrorepisode that by far asks us the hardest questions of all has nothing to do with technology whatsoever, at least not in a speculative sense. Instead, Season 3’s “Shut Up and Dance” introduces us to a world exactly like our own and forces us through a hard journey of empathy and hatred. In the end, we are left wondering what are the limits of our respect for human life and what kind of society do we truly want? All of this without a single significant change to our social fabric or technological state.
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‘Black Mirror’s “Shut Up and Dance” Is Disturbing Precisely for Its Lack of Speculative Elements
Unlikemost episodes ofBlack Mirror, “Shut Up and Dance” is not a work of sci-fi or speculative fiction. Though its story is heavily reliant on technological devices, from phones to drones, there is nothing about it that suggests a world in any way different from our own. Instead, “Shut Up and Dance” seems as if it could happen anytime now, anywhere in the world, and, most importantly, to anyone. Written byCharlie BrookerandWilliam Bridges, and directed byJames Watkins, the story focuses on a young man blackmailed by a group of hackers that have images of him masturbating in front of his computer. In order to keep said images from going public, Kenny (Alex Lawther) is forced to do a number of things, from robbing a bank to fighting another man to the death. Throughout his ordeal, he comes across others that are facing the same challenges as him, albeit for different reasons. The most important of these secondary characters is Hector (Jerome Flynn), a married man who is afraid of losing his wife and kids if his conversation with a call girl goes public.
For the most part of “Shut Up and Dance”, we are led to empathize with Kenny, to feel his pain as he cries in despair or wets his pants out of sheer panic. It is clearly not fair what is happening to him: he was merely masturbating in front of his allegedly deactivated webcam, he shouldn’t be subjected to these kinds of horrors. And, yet, as the episode reaches its end, we learn that Kenny isn’t as innocent as the story had so far made us believe. Kenny is, in fact, a pedophile, and the images that the hackers have aren’t just of him masturbating, but of the pictures of children he had been looking at while doing so. The same goes for the man that Kenny is forced to kill with his own fists.“Shut Up and Dance” ends with all the hackers’ victims receiving a troll face on their phonesas the information they fought so hard to keep private are made public. Injured and afraid, Kenny receives a phone call from his very upset mother and is taken in by the police. At home, Hector finds his children sleeping soundly in their beds only to subsequently discover that his wife is all caught up on his chats with “Mindy”.
As “Shut Up and Dance” flips the table on its main character, we are left to ask ourselves a series of questions. The first one is, of course, how did we ever empathize with someone that is guilty of such an awful crime? Then, we are asked if our empathy for the character changes now that we know the full truth about him. Do we now think he deserves to be tortured in such a way? Do we believe him to be less than a human being? These are not easy questions to answer. Instead, they put us in the very delicate position of taking a good, hard look at some of our ugliest feelings and the limits of our respect for human life. Yet, even after we are done answering them, “Shut Up and Dance” doesn’t stop the interrogation. As Kenny is turned in to the cops and Hector has his life destroyed, the episode asks us if we’re okay with vigilantism as long as it punishes those that we deem deserving of it like Kenny, even if this also means ruining the lives of people that have committed no crime nor a serious violation of our basic social contract like Hector.
“Shut Up and Dance” Has a Lot in Common With Other ‘Black Mirror’ Episodes - But There’s a Twist
In a way, “Shut Up and Dance” is a very similar episode to Season 2’s “White Bear”, in which a woman convicted for the murder of a child is repeatedly hunted down for fun in a theme park. Much like its Season 3 counterpart, “White Bear” asks us if we’re fine with torture as long as the people subjected to it are guilty of horrible things. However, “White Bear” adds a speculative layer to its line of questioning: what if there was a theme park dedicated to punishing those who are guilty of heinous crimes? A theme park dedicated not to justice, but to vengeance. In “Shut Up and Dance”, this speculative element is completely absent. There is no cover of fantasy for us to hide under. The question is not, “What if this improbable thing happened”, but, “What if this happened right now”. We are left to face not societal or technological change, but ourselves.
In that sense, we can also draw a parallel between “Shut Up and Dance” and another popularBlack Mirrorstory:Season 1’s very first episode, “The National Anthem”. In the series debut, a beloved princess is kidnapped by an artist and threatened with death unless the prime minister has unstimulated sexual intercourse with a pig on live TV. The episode goes over this terrifying day in the life of prime-minister Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear) as he faces an impossible choice. It also shows us the news cycle surrounding the story and the changes in popular opinion. One of the questions that the episode asks of us is whether we would participate in this public spectacle by watching a man being forced to do the unthinkable. Much like in “Shut Up and Dance”, there’s no technological novelty to distract us from the reality of it all.
However, by showing us millions of people all over the UK turned on their TVs to watch prime minister Callow have sex with a pig, “The National Anthem” answers its own question: it tells us that yes, we would participate in this show of horrors, just like everyone else. “Shut Up and Dance”, on the other hand, gives us no easy way out. It forces us to look deep within our souls, to parts of ourselves that we prefer not to stare very long at. For this, it deserves its position as the most disturbingBlack Mirrorepisode so far.
