Black Mirror - épisode "15 million merits"

- Write your analysis of the episode "15 million merits" -

It is the second episode of the first serie of Black Mirror. It take places in a very futuristic world, which is a satire of entertainment shows and human's insatiable thirst for distraction set in a sarcastic version of a future reality. In this world, we only see all along the episode, people living in a building fool of electronic stuff and screens everywhere. Bingham "Bing" Madsen a black man, the principal actor, has inherited 12,000,000 merits from his dead brother. He lives in a tiny box room where every wall is a screen and everything is paid with “merits,” from his toothpaste to the power to skip annoying ads.

Bing earns merits, like everyone else, by paddleling on exercise bike all day, passing the time watching an animation of his “double,” cycling down a road. Others watch porn, or gameshows. Obese people are considered to be second-class citizens, and work as cleaners in yellow uniforms or are humiliated on those game shows, they are treated like second-class citizens.

Everyday activities are constantly interrupted by advertisements that cannot be skipped or ignored without a penalty, which is giving back some merits.

Most importantly, there’s an “X Factor type show” called “Hot Shots” hosted by three horrible judges, the most respected being Judge Hope, a nasty Simon Cowell type. This is the only ticket to get out of the slave-like world around them.

After some incidents, Bing hides a piece of glass and earns another 15,000,000 merits that he gave to the girl that he loves, to buy another ticket, to enter the competition. On stage he interrupts his performance, draws the shard of glass and threatens to kill himself. Then he gives a little speech about their system. The judges, instead of taking his words with consideration, are impressed by his 'performance' and offer him his own show, where he can rant about the system all he likes. Bing accepts and is later shown finishing one of his streams. He pours himself a fresh orange juice and stands staring out of a big window showing a view of a vast green forest stretching to the horizon in a cell much larger than his original. But we don't know if it's real or not.

I think we can first say that this serie isn't the kind of series that we usually watch. It's impactive, satiric and true. The fact that Bing' speech is'nt being taking seriously, that he tearfully rants about how unfair the system is and how heartless people have become, and expresses his anger for how the judges took away, corrupted, and sold the only thing he found that felt was real; is relative to our society of consuming and our inegalitary society. We assume that the earth is undergoing some sort of energy crisis, and the population is needed to power our lights instead. Such an existence is pretty miserable to contemplate, so much of the energy is used to distract the citizen as they perform their tasks. It’s like Matrix, but without all the epic cyberpunk design and scale. Instead of being harvested as batteries by robots, we’re used as drones by an unseen bureaucracy.  That’s what’s so brilliant about the final part: the audience’s silence. The ending is devastating and smart and we want to see more.

The part when we watch Bing trying to skip an ad for porn with Abi, but he doesn’t have enough merits to do it so that’s when we realized: he’s stuck inside a cellphone. It's a terrifying thought. And it’s what Black Mirror specializes in, tries to give us a quick look of our society, our world and our futur.

- How can you link it with one or more notions ? Justify your choices and your opinions -

So I think it feets in many notions we have seen. First the Notion of places and forms of power, because the power is a crucial element of the serie. The energy power, the jurys' power and the unseen bureaucracy's power take place in all the environnement of where Bing and those people live and as we see there are so many differents types of power, also the power of love or music.

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