The confluence of Black Mirror’s newest season and the OceanGate catastrophe is apt, if unmelodious, as there are so many parallels between the two. Granted, I only got the chance to watch the first two episodes of the new season before my Netflix subscription expired, but I really only care about the first one.
“Joan is Awful” provides a bizarre yet magnificent meta-commentary on the state of modern visual media. For those who are unfamiliar (spoiler alert!), the episode charts out several days in the life of modern mediocrity as the protagonist’s life falls apart when “Streamberry” utilises her worst moments to create a new TV series about her life in (almost) real time. The thing is, “Streamberry” is Netflix in the most obvious and naked way possible—the same landing page, the style of logo, and its self-referential interface that suggests “Loch Henry” to Joan (the second episode in the season). And I’m still chewing on what this supposed self-awareness is meant to communicate to people like you and me.
Humans are selfish and tend to be obsessed with the misfortune of others. This is what drives the reasoning behind Streamberry’s “Joan is Awful” show, and it is this same foible that has driven the world’s morbid fascination with the calamitous events of OceanGate. It was inescapable, seemingly the only thing that my coworkers wanted to talk about and repeatedly splashed across headlines of every kind. And I assure you that the irony was not lost on me.
Ought we feel sympathy for the demise of people who seem to have enthusiastically paved the way with their own hubris and arrogance? People certainly don’t like the idea because we want the world to be fair and people should reap what they sow…. as long as it isn’t us. We’d rather gossip about the downfall of a few rich men than do something about the homeless on our streets or gun violence. It’s honestly insane and it boggles my mind how people have become so singularly obsessed with the downfall of a rather not-righteous man. But I digress…
I don’t remember the source precisely—somewhere in some sort of class—but the idea of satire used to mean something about invoking change: it should move us to some kind of action. People love to talk about the meta messages of Black Mirror (and, now, OceanGate), most of which boil down to “technology bad, no technology good” and other aphorisms about the dangers of smartphones, virtual reality, social media, and so on. But we don’t do anything about it as we seem perfectly contented to continue paving the inexorable path to some sort of collapse of humanity and self. I don’t mean to be some sort of fatalistic alarmist (though I do), but it is bitterly disappointing how complacent people are when we’re abundantly cognisant of the dangers and follies of many technological pursuits.
If Streamberry is Netflix, does that mean Netflix anticipates creating jarring portrayals of mediocre lives because we all skip reading the “Terms and Conditions” fine print, and, if so, is this just some sort of ingeniously twisted meta commentary to boil us like frogs in a pot? (A “here’s your future, but we know you won’t do shit about it” kind of way?) Our screens warn us about how we’re all just little Dorian Grays and apocryphal Emperor Neros, but we can’t tear our eyes away because it’s simply not in our nature to stare at anything other than our reflection.
