I just started watching this actually, and have only seen 1 and 2 so far. I'm already interested enough to watch some more, and this makes that sound more rewarding than I would have thought.
I didn't like 2 that much actually. I feel like there wasn't enough of a background explanation of the world that the episode was set in to really relate to the characters or their situation. Where did all of these people come from, why are they riding bikes all the time, and why are they living in this crazy merits-based world? Exactly who is building and maintaining all of this high-tech gear for them? What are the rules, who is enforcing them, and why? What is the point of making people ride bikes all day? Etc, etc etc.
I felt fascinated by the first episode, though. Yeah, the subject is crude, but I think it serves well to illustrate a number of trends of the modern world - just how much power there can be in mass media, and how impotent traditional authority structures can be against it when organized well. It's striking that, absurd as the situation is, no individual part of it is really impossible even today.
Well, I will say that, while the individual pieces are not impossible, they would each take a lot of expertise in the appropriate field to set up. I don't think it's possible for all of that experience to exist in one person, or to find people with experience in the appropriate fields, bring them together, and get them all working towards a shared goal of something as absurd as getting the PM to fuck a pig, without the authorities finding out somehow.
'15 Million Merits' (S1E2) is my favorite. I see it as an intentionally abstract and allegorical world, more like a cartoon or fairy-tale. Yet even not knowing a realistic origin-story, its major characteristics are recognizable, as reductio ad absurdum extrapolations from our world.
And in our world, aren't there an awful lot of arbitrary demands and limits we just accept, or are supported by thin just-so rationalizations? And why? Simply because it's all we've ever known, and everyone else is accepting them, and all the little rewards and penalties and media-messages from our engineered environment combine to just make us play our role.
I think of this episode as "THX1138 for the American Idol/Candy Crush generation".
Yet it's also separately interesting to wonder: could this be a literally-depicted location, somewhere in our future? A synthetic subsistence environment offered to surplus people? It's not blatantly cruel, and it offers plenty of entertainment and status-competition and food and exercise – even though we recognize it as a very small and manipulative sandbox.
I think it's even possible, as an exercise, to imagine all the Black Mirror episodes as being different parts of the same continuity. 'The National Anthem' (S1E1) and 'The Waldo Moment' (S2E3) are both set any-day-now, with essentially no technology that doesn't already exist. 'White Bear' (S2E2) comes sometime not too far off, with only a smidge of new tech. 'Entire History of You' (S1E3) and 'Be Right Back' (S2E1) arrive a decade or few from now, then 'White Christmas' (S3EX?) another decade or few after that.
And '15 Million Merits' (S1E2) occurs sometime indeterminate... but potentially as early as 'White Bear', as a engagement-optimized, 'compassionate' poor-house or prison or nursing-home for those with no prospects outside. (Compare to the synthetic Dutch 'village' for dementia patients: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/the-dutch-...)
I didn't like 2 that much actually. I feel like there wasn't enough of a background explanation of the world that the episode was set in to really relate to the characters or their situation. Where did all of these people come from, why are they riding bikes all the time, and why are they living in this crazy merits-based world? Exactly who is building and maintaining all of this high-tech gear for them? What are the rules, who is enforcing them, and why? What is the point of making people ride bikes all day? Etc, etc etc.
I felt fascinated by the first episode, though. Yeah, the subject is crude, but I think it serves well to illustrate a number of trends of the modern world - just how much power there can be in mass media, and how impotent traditional authority structures can be against it when organized well. It's striking that, absurd as the situation is, no individual part of it is really impossible even today.
Well, I will say that, while the individual pieces are not impossible, they would each take a lot of expertise in the appropriate field to set up. I don't think it's possible for all of that experience to exist in one person, or to find people with experience in the appropriate fields, bring them together, and get them all working towards a shared goal of something as absurd as getting the PM to fuck a pig, without the authorities finding out somehow.