So, I watched Black Mirrorâs âShut up and danceâ yesterday. An episode discussion.
Now Iâm thinking about, you know, how much do we need to respect everybodyâs privacy, the weight of justice and the way itâs applied. And who has the right to serve it.
I saw the first minutes of an Screen Prism video about Black Mirrorâs plot twist. I was interested because I have predicted some of them in the past, like the endings for The Entire History of You and  Be Right Back, while some in the likes of  White Bear had surprised me completely. There has been some that are 50/50, like White Christmas and  The Waldo Moment.
The first plot twist revealed was that, in Shut up and dance, Kenny, our teenage protagonist, was doing the things he was forced to by blackmailers who had a video of him masturbating because Kenny was watching child pornografy. I immediatly stoped the video and decided to watch the episode that moment. Allow me to say, the episode is way more tense, and like every Black Mirror, worse for the viewer once that you know what Kenny was doing.
Kenny in the episode is a teenager, so he is not legaly a pedophile yet, but he knows that what he is doing is wrong, and takes some precautions for his family not to discover it. He downloads his porn online after searching it in a browser, and while we donât know if he pays for it or not, we know that his process was quick. This makes me ponder the next questions:
Is someone who knows that he is doing something wrong and is ashamed of it, and may or may not be contributing to the sickness (in Kennyâs case, by paying for it), who is not techincaly punished by law yet, and has the oportunity to change (because of the knowledge of the wrongness of it) deserves the punishment that Kenny is subjected to?
Kenny works at a familiar restaurant, and in the beggining of the episode we see him being kind with a child (his toughts are unkown) and being fascinated with a drawing that one left behind. (I interpret this as the writers and director showing us that he, in fact, has tendencies for it and wasnât or wouldnât be the first time that he has been aroused with the idea of childhood or what he percieves as âinnocenceâ. Now, every country has its own rules, and most of the time each state has its owns, so your perception of what constitudes a pedophile may vary for each of you. If someone has amoral thoughts and commits amoral actions while not hurting anyone personaly (we donât know if Kenny has molested someone before or if he wil), is her or him entitled to their own privacy? Death in Venice has a man falling in love with a teenager, not having sexual thoughts for a child, but still someone who is way more inexperienced than him. Thomas Mann writes that if he doesnât act on his impulses, he should be left alone. The point of Lolita by Nabokov is that no thought of an ammoral crime can be excused, especialy if you are making believe the affected that your intentions are good (because the younger you are does not mean youâre stupid, but you can be taken advantage of in any aspect by someone whoâs waiting for the oportunity. And the movies Nymphomaniac and American Beauty make two point regarding paedophilia: the first one has the main character say that those who think of something they now is wrong and refrain of it (ommition that is portraid as a struggle) should be respected; the second has the main character realize that said impulses should refrain from it because itâs common sense, therefore, it would be stupid just desiring for it. What do you think is the correct opinion reagarding thoughtcrime? (Yes, thoughtcrime. The Newspeak word. I will explain my choice of word later).
Kenny is forced to kill a man by people who think of themselves as moraly superior to them. The killed man watched child pornografy too. Is this an addecuate punishment for either of them, or is it as despicable as their crimes? (Keep in mind that the fight was transmited and watched by others online).
The blackmailers hacked multiple peopleâs devices and forced them to do their bidding, (including a bank robbery). One is a CEO who sent a racist e-mail, and the other a married man who wanted to hire a prostitute. How amoral are their crimes? Do you think the blackmailers are doing this for justice or their own enjoyment?
Everybody has their information linked in the end. CEO is featured in new websites, married man will be divorced and lose custody of his kids (and probably commit suicide), a peadophile is killed, bot Kenny and the delivery man have their families informed of their actions and Kenny is arrested for the bank robbery he was forced to do. Did they deserved it?
And lastly, the blackmailers posed as a free anti virus software to decieve their victims. They probably spy on anyone until they find out which one of them has broken the law, and take extreme actions to punish them. Is the invation of someoneâs privacy worth the security of others? Can common people decide the punishment for those who had commited crimes, thought about it or have done so when they thought they were safe? (Racist CEO reminds me of a footbal player who by all acounts is an douchebag, but had said some things in his private home that others were trying to turn into evidence for his judgement at court. I do not remember if it was his lawyer, a periodist or the judge himself who said that there should not be presented the private coments of others as legal procedures*).
And finally, what the blackmailers did is, in my opinion comparable to the Thought Police in the George Orwellâs novel Nineteen Eighty Four (one of my favourite books and probably an inspiration for Black Mirror, I believe): they observe people at all times, play with them as puppets by what could be called cyber terrorism and, eventualy, destroy them regardless of what they do just because they believe they have a higher moral ground. So, does the punishment of the criminals measured by the belief that said people are subhuman and said belief make the punishers subhuman too?
Thank you for reading my post. I am already thinking a lot about it since yesterday, because, while is not illegal, I do things that could be used against me in blackmail, like any of us: the fetishes we have, our political opinions, the things we have done when drunk⊠All of them in different levels in the moral scale, which is, in turned, molded by all of us and the times we live in. All of them can be used against us. Iâm wondering now what truly makes someone reprihensible, and if itâs okay for some of us to invade others privacy in order to âmantain orderâ, like regimens of the past and present have done.
I know that this post may not be expressing my questions as well as I would like, but I really want to be able to talk about it with others, for I believe introspection is the purpose of art, and the intention of Black Mirror is not to tell us whatâs correct, but rather have us think about it and engage in dialogue.
Thanks again. I canât wait to read your opinnions.
*While I am very well versed in english, it is not my first language. I canât remember the exact frasing used, but in spanish itâs worded this way: Si bien los comentarios hechos por Ă©l estĂĄn mal, no debemos sentar el precedente en el que lo que alguien dice en la privacidad de su hogar pueda ser llevado a la corte.
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