15 million Merits & postmodernism essay

Black Mirror's '15 Million Merits' - A Postmodern Masterpiece?

Recently a Channel 4 mini-series called ‘Black Mirror’ aired. From the mind of analytic moaner (and possible hero) Charlie Brooker, it presented three standalone dramas exploring our ‘collective unease about our modern world’. I will be focusing on the second episode ’15 Million Merits’ which has this synopsis on the Channel 4 website:

‘The second episode is a satire on entertainment shows and our insatiable thirst for distraction set in a sarcastic version of a future reality.

In this world, everyone is confined to a life of strange physical drudgery.

The only way to escape this life is to enter the ‘Hot Shot’ talent show and pray you can impress the judges.’

(Source: channel4.com)

’15 Million Merits’ is a brilliant example of postmodernism in action and is definitely the greatest thing on TV this year. If you have not watched it, I urge you to as I’m probably going to spoil it. Here, I will discuss the elements of postmodernism that 15 Million Merits exhibits and why it is important to postmodernism.

The Postmodern(ness) of 15 Million Merits

The Black Mirror and Advertising

The Black Mirror of the series title refers to the mirror created when a television set is turned off. In ‘15 Millions Merits’ the story is set in a future where every surface is a screen that you can not get away from. Advertisements play on the screens and if you look away, they stop until you look back. This unsettling premise taps into the constant advertising that we are bombarded with today.(MEDIA SATURATION) We can not turn on the television without adverts. Now adverts can be placed within programmes, like ‘This Morning’ and ‘Coronation Street’. This advertising is made to subconsciously affect us as well as consciously. 15 Million Merits exaggerates this into a possible future where you literally cannot escape. Postmodernism is regularly about assessing where we are and where we could be. It predicts the future and warns us of what could happen. (DISTOPIAN FUTURES & CYNICISM/QUESTIONING)

Hot Shot

(Source:metro.co.uk)

The only way to escape your horribly tedious life of cycling in ‘15 Million Merits’ is to audition for Hot Shot, a pastiche of The X Factor. If you are successful, you get to have a better life. In the episode, Bing (the main character) convinces Abby to audition as a singer. She sings well in front of the judges but they convince her to become an adult entertainment star instead. (COMMODITY SHE CAN SELL HER PHYSICAL BEAUTY BODY/APPEARANCE/VIRGINITY SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS BUT NOT INTERESTED IN AUTHENTIC ART OR BEAUTY) This scene is one of the most uncomfortable to watch, if only because it is not totally implausible that this wouldn’t happen in the real world.

Black Mirror’s version of The X Factor taps into our growing reliance on reality shows as entertainment. We are watching people’s hopes and dreams, people’s lives get ruined. ‘15 Million Merits’ comments that these shows are extremely exploitative and morally wrong. The show aired just after The X Factor final which was extremely important in showing this message. Pastiche is used here not just for comic effect but also to prove a point. (JAMESON) It is important in the theory of postmodernism that there are strong opinions on our future. This is shown brilliantly in the emotional highs of ‘15 Million Merits.’

The Emotional Core

  

(Source: channel4.com/4od)

At the end of ‘15 Million Merits’, Bing gets onto Hot Shot to confront the judges himself. What follows is the speech he gives:

‘I haven’t got a speech. I didn’t plan words. I didn’t even try to. I just knew I had to get here. To stand here. And I knew I wanted you to listen. to really listen, not just pull a face like you’re listening like you do the rest of the time. A face like you’re feeling instead of processing. You pull a face and poke it towards the stage and we la-di-dah, we sing and dance and tumble around and all you see up here is not people, you don’t see people up here, it’s all fodder. And the faker the fodder is the more you love it. Because fake fodder is the only thing that works anymore. Fake fodder is all that we can stomach. Actually not quite all. Real pain, real viciousness, that we can take. Stick a fat man up a pole and we’ll laugh ourselves feral because we’ve earned the right. We’re so out of our minds with desperation we don’t know any better. All we know is fake fodder and buying shit! That’s how we speak to each other, that’s how we express ourselves is buying SHIT! (DEBORD) You know what, I have a dream? The peak of our dreams is a new app for our dopple, an app doesn’t exist! It’s not even there! (BAUDRILLARD) We buy shit that aint even there, you want something real and free and beautiful, you couldn’t… it’d break us. We’re too numb for it, we might as well choke. It’s a wonder we can bare it, it’s any wonder you can dole it out in meagre portions and only then when its augmented and packaged and pumped through ten thousand pre-assigned filters, till there’s nothing more than a meaningless series of lies while we ride day in, day out, (BAUDRILLARD) going where! Powering what!?! All tiny cells and tiny screens and bigger cells and bigger screens and FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! 

(Source: Black Mirror:15 Million Merits)

This speech is what the episode is really all about, the epicentre of all the unease and fake fame. It ceases to be about what is happening in the episode and it talks to us, the audience, more directly. Postmodernism is not necessarily about the future, even though a lot of postmodern films, television and literature is set in the future, it is very much about the present, commenting on current society and it’s problems. Black Mirror comments on our tendency towards looking to television and technology. OUr growing reliance.

The end of 15 Million Merits is very poignant on many different levels. Bing essentially sells out, becoming a man on television who gives an impassioned speech for thirty minutes two times a week. This works on many levels. On the base level, Bing becomes one of the men he hates the most and gets rewarded for it. Brooker is saying that there is no way to win against these people. On another level, he is commenting on himself. He has written a postmodern story about the harmfulness of television and the media, and he has put it on television. Does this just make the problem worse? He is saying that he himself has sold out. But was there really any other way to put his point across?

The entire series of Black Mirror was a fine example of postmodernism, and was also, in my opinion, the best thing on television this year. At times it was uncomfortable to watch, but that was because it was so rooted in reality. This is very important for postmodernism. It is all about us assessing ourselves and what our futures hold if we carry on down the path we are on.

CRM