Bandersnatched: infrastructure and acquiescence in Black Mirror

ABSTRACT

We argue that Black Mirror delivers an amplified experiential analog to the structured excesses of digital techno-culture, affectively “inoculating” viewers with the poison of dark futurity. Through critical examinations of “The National Anthem,” “Hated in the Nation,” “The Waldo Moment,” and ||Bandersnatch|| we track how Black Mirror actualizes the entanglements of digital agency and mediated acquiescence in its viewing experience. Bandersnatch, in particular, offers performative infrastructurality as a mode of experiential critique, thus exemplifying Black Mirror’s tendency of prodding audiences into contemplating the terms and conditions of their own digitized interpassivity. Ultimately, we argue, Black Mirror delivers its viewers to a position of virtualized agency engendered by the vague power of mediated acquiescence.

KEYWORDS:

• Black Mirror
• ||Bandersnatch||
• Netflix
• algorithmic acquiescence
• interpassivity
• infrastructure

Notes

1 The choice of this symbol is deliberate. In computer programming the usage of “|| ||” can mean and/or, and likewise, Bandersnatch as a mediated artefact is part movie, television episode, video game, and/or digital text.

2 Garret Hardin, however, was a nativist who followed his own scientific conclusions to ugly anti-immigrant political ends. While certainly troubling, we see this is an example of what Burke, in his “Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle” essay, calls the bad filling of a “good”—or at least, in this case, unavoidable—need.