Introduction
Charlie Brooker is the creator of one of the most successful British sci-fi television series Black Mirror. The show is highly acclaimed, yet controversy surrounds how it depicts the modern and potential realities of human societies in Western countries. Despite having specific differences, they are all dystopias that emerged due to people’s innovations. These depictions present the audience with dystopian communities resulting from the current use of modern technologies in a grim, negative, and mechanically focused way. Rashida Jones and Mike Schur’s Nosedive, the opening episode of the show’s third season, was aired worldwide in October 2016.
Lacie Pound, a young lady, living in a society where online friends evaluate every encounter, is the story’s main character. Everyone rates themselves and gets rated in the future scenario; each opinion affects other people’s lives. The society portrayed in Nosedive uses our advanced technologies and consumer behavior, including product evaluation, brand recognition, and self-branding.
However, the ideas and concepts depicted in the episode are not newly developed. The constant fear of unknown consequences of the modern development of humankind has been the topic of debate for decades. The essay Definition of a Man, written by Burke () in 1966, accurately includes the themes presented in the Nosedive. His concepts of a person as an inventor of the negative, rotten with perfection, and separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making play an essential role in the plot of the episode to convey the idea of unexpected consequences of technological progress.
Rotten with Perfection
The analysis of an episode is better to begin by investigating the theme of perfection as a central image of the story. Then it is appropriate to proceed to the supporting elements of the technology and their invention as a potential reason for the conflict. This component of Burk’s definition particularly impacts philosophical conceptions of a man reflected in the Nosedive. People being rotten with perfection refer to the distinct human motives, which are a fundamental component of Burke’s dramatism and help to separate action from motion. Burke refers to Aristotle’s idea of entelechy, which holds that people try to achieve the ideal of our species.
A rock and a tree, according to Burke (17), are perfectly acceptable for what they are, but not a man since he constantly strives to be better than he is. It is evident and hyperbolized in the episode through the constant depiction of the desire for perfection through ratings. While the main character has a rating of 4.2, she constantly feels the need to improve, and the whole social arrangement rationalizes it. High ratings open doors to almost everything and everyone, including top positions, the finest salaries, and leading medical care.
On the other hand, poor ratings prevent people from accessing new medical therapies and result in longer lines and more affordable rental store offerings. Lacie, for instance, can access the final seats on an upcoming trip with a needed 4.2 and maintain her job status as long as she remains above 2.5. Such a system implies that perfection is the ultimate goal of an individual’s life because it defines who one is. The goal of the constant race for the rating for Lacie revolves around the chasing of the feeling of “to be content” (Nosedive 42:25), “Like, to look around and think, well, I guess I’m okay” (Nosedive 42:34). The notion of the purpose of such development is abstract in the series because the main character cannot comprehend the need for perfection. After all, it will not bring any particular advantages to mind and spirit, only material goods accessible as a result.
It contradicts Burke’s beliefs that man’s pursuit of perfection can help a person to advance and achieve noble aims, but this pursuit is fraught with risk. He draws attention to how people define perfection in other terms as fanatics and obsession formed through perfection, which in a way is presented in the story of Black Mirror. Lacie is perceived as a crazy person when she rejects the idea of a fake ideal image. At the same time the audience sees the real problem in society in the obsession with the perfect picture, the lost natural order of things, and human character.
In Nosedive, self-presentation theory draws parallels between theatre and social life, and the marketing idea of personal branding is intertwined. In this concept, each person approaches their conduct as an actor in a play where each performs a variety of roles. The people who watch and respond to the scene make up the audience. From there, developing a personal brand on social media takes one more step by adopting a stage character. Additionally, this innovative method of assessing individuals and connections presents a dual procedure specific to social media.
On the one hand, viewers see a logic of planned and motivated social interactions, where people look for new acquaintances and use personal branding to project an idealized version of themselves. However, this reputational and grading logic exacerbates social disparities and produces a uniform visual social environment. As a consequence, following Burke’s essay, one can see that his approach states that there does not appear to be any inherent control principle in maintaining such a set of choices to its flawless results.
While various people are encouraged to find their own unique sets of guided goals, at least the schemes obstruct one another, being checked by competition. However, the image of perfection and competition in a unique way is flawed in the Nosedive through the concept of the fakeness of this constant development. People do not try to be better or more polite; they pretend to maintain their social status and contribute to the worldwide notion of perfection and righteousness in the social context.
Separated from Natural Condition by Instruments of His Own Making
The idea of rotten perfectionism in the episode is closely connected with the other subcategory in Burke’s essay, which is the issue of separation from the natural condition by instruments of human making. It is evident from the analysis of development only in the social media context. Burke refers to man’s natural condition as being one of basic needs and desires in this part of his definition. However, he has developed a wholly different nature from his previous state due to his instruments and language. He used the example of a day when New York City’s electricity went out and how it appeared odd for the streets to be completely dark, despite darkness being a part of man’s natural state (Burke 13).
However, the presence of lit streets is already commonplace due to human inventions. Technology is a perfect illustration of man’s tools in action. People and nature have been successfully separated by technology. This idea, depicted in the show and presented by Burke, is interconnected with the theory of techno liberalism described by Pfister and Yang (257). Within technoliberalism, subjectivity and, by extension, personal understanding of agency is heavily being grammatized using digital technology. Traumatized individuals are outlined as a digital image of rates, favorites, and interactions; media fragments, status updates, and tweets that appeal to interest, favor, and contempt; social networks that express relationships and belonging. It also includes images and videos that reveal progressively intimate details about daily life and consumer preferences.
Additionally, the foundation of the marketing strategies for most modern technology companies is the existence of distinct, identifiable, algorithmically analyzable components of subjectivity, similar to the Nosedive order of things. The social bubble is derived from people understanding natural interactions, truth, and life without devices. When the main character is looking for a house, the estate agent shows the hologram picture of Lacie and emphasizes that the neighborhood has “unparalleled metrics of romantic genesis” (Nosedive 9:25), showing the sifted perception of the idea of feelings and their meaning in society.
A similar alteration of social ties is evident in the concept of weeding in the plot of Nosedive, where the main character should have been a maid of honor. The importance of individual self-branding is evident in the Nosedive society that has been created. Just as brands similarly construct their image, do people. They highlight the characteristics they want others to notice while concealing the minor details of their existence. The event itself is very prestige, and the bride points out that the purpose of the celebration is to promote the products and lifestyle of the social circle and to maintain the created image. Speaking with Lacie, she states that the “authenticity of a vintage bond with a low four at a gathering of this caliber played fantastically on all the simulations we ran. The forecast was a prestige bounce of 0.2 minimum” (Nosedive 46:54-47:00).
This speech reflects the materialized interpersonal relationships that became mediated through the devices and social media, depriving people of senses of natural interactions. Consequently, the audience sees Lacie’s struggles when she first experiences difficulties losing her rates and exposing her authentic feelings and emotions. A symbolic representation of such rejection of technology is the episode ending, where she takes off her clothes in the jail cell, similarly to abandoning her fake personality.
Goaded by the Spirit of Hierarchy
The final aspect of Burke’s essay, which corresponds to the ideas in The Nosedive, which should be discussed, is the concept of hierarchy. Burke describes humanity as being drawn to organization and status throughout this chapter of his definition. He cites social positions that suggest this fact (Burke 15). The labor division that occurs in society is one example he uses. Others include noble and commoner titles in ancient and medieval civilizations. The hierarchical organization is evident in the Black Mirror episode, even though it does not correspond to the traditional frames of social classes. It is necessary to achieve the basic needs of human life, such as work occupation, housing, personal interactions, and even perception of the environment. There are various examples of how the hierarchy in society influences the life of various people, from the additional bonuses in the real estate purchase to the value of a person’s life.
The first case is explained as “hit 4.5, and there’s a 20% discount” (Nosedive 10:11), meaning that the people with higher ratings can have benefits for their status, called the ‘Prime Influencers Programme.’ To become a “premier influencer,” someone like Lacie’s former friend Naomi must create an image of herself that features her in the most beautiful locations, such as mansions and tropical beaches. Lacie cannot help but attempt to resemble Naomie, despite being aware of these tactics and diligently striving to enhance her photographs for maximum rating. Identity is still a method to stand out in contemporary culture. Still, in Lacie’s world, it has evolved into a crucial need, a physiological need akin to those mentioned in the hierarchy of needs. A self-moderating system doubles the impact of the peer-rating one.
The premise of Lacie’s universe is that the neighborhood policies itself. Viewers do not see anyone overseeing the grades given on the show. Rating is used by the episode’s lone representative of the law, a security guard at the airport, to put pressure on Lacie. This self-moderating society causes displacements: some individuals, like Lacie’s coworker, end up serving as an outcast for the rest of the group, which feels free to criticize his personal life and punish him by degrading him socially. Low ratings also result in even lower ratings because grades serve as customer reviews of individuals. People grow skeptical of someone with low ratings and evaluate them lower themselves.
Conclusion
Thus, the show reflects the ideas of Burke’s essay and the typical patterns of social arrangements that can be influenced by digital progress. The issues with hierarchical organization and the danger it presents to both psychology of a person and the arrangement of the community as a whole. The idea of perfection is to appear only visually and is not genuine in the context of the characters. Finally, technology changed the perception of the natural order of things, such as emotions and feelings, shifting them to the new reality.
Works Cited
“Nosedive.” Black Mirror, season 3, episode 1, Netflix, 2016.
Burke, Kenneth. “Definition of Man.” The Hudson Review, vol. 16, no. 4, 1963-1964, pp. 491–514.
Pfister, S. Damien, and Misti Yang. “Five theses on technoliberalism and the networked public sphere.” Communication and the Public, vol. 3 no. 3, 2018, 247–262. Web.