I should have started blogging about various Black Mirror episodes back when I first started watching, so that's what I get for being lazy. I will start with the season four premiere, and then at some point this year go back and muse over the likes of "Fifteen Million Merits," "White Christmas," "Men Against Fire," etc. As always, there are spoilers.
Season four starts with "USS Callister," about a tech genius, Robert Daly, who created the code for a massive online multiplayer game platform called Infinity. The episode begins with Robert as captain of the Callister, guiding his small crew through an easy engagement with a known villain; we then see that it is his own personal version of the game, which he gets to go home and 'play' every evening. Aww, sweet.
In real life Robert is quite socially awkward, with none of the bravado he can display on the Callister (nor anyone fawning over his more mild accomplishments, as the ship's crew does). It's easy to see that he can be the confident hero in the game that he cannot be in life, something that we are perhaps too familiar with in this contemporary world. However, the true Black Mirror hitch comes to the fore soon enough: Captain Daly's crew are digital copies of people he knows from work at Infinity. Digital copies who are aware of their existence and retain memories of their life outside of the game.
Overall the episode is already one of my favorites, not just because of but due in part to its homage to the original Star Trek series, and it hits just the right notes without being hammy or heavy-handed. There's a Khan-like enemy, southern California-cum-alien planet locales, and a climax that includes every element necessary to be the average climax (trickery, a race against the clock, a closing wormhole, a dangerous shortcut). The switch to the new, J.J. Abrams style at the end, with the giant lens flares, high-key palette and swooping camera movements was absolutely spot-on.
By virtue of the, for all intents and purposes, sentience of the digital copies, "USS Callister" also features one of my favorite plot conventions, which is showing how characters behave in two vastly different situations (much like the before-and-after lives of Walking Dead characters). Most of the ship's crew come off as upbeat, carefree, shallow people at their jobs at Infinity, but placed inside of the game (due to crossing Robert in some truly minor way), the shallow become deep; the carefree, sacrificial; the meek, brave. They become versions of themselves they would otherwise never know, face fears they would never contemplate, the irony being that back in the real world, they are none the wiser.
The episode also deals with one of my favorite quandries, the 'dying to escape' option. It is an echo of the general idea that life is a prison we can only escape through death; for the digital copies, the Callister is that very real prison, and with Captain Daly ruling as an 'asshole god' their only hope to be free is to ultimately delete themselves. They know this is an action, like death, they cannot undo; furthermore, even if there were an afterlife, it does not exist in the realm of artificial intelligence. There is no hope, and yet the crew chooses to abide by the old Klingon maxim: "It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."
But there is yet much more to this episode, much to ponder, so it's time to go down the rabbit hole.
The digital copies are consistent in concept with previous episode "White Christmas," in which a copy of someone's consciousness (and memories) could be made and placed inside the Egg technology. (All Black Mirror episodes are supposed to exist in the same universe - more on that later!) And these copies are what the episode, and its ethics, hinge on. Captain Daly ensures his crew's compliance by torturing them into submission - again, much like the 'breaking in' of a new Egg. Since Robert is in complete control of this video game universe, the crew are stranded on the ship, prey to the whims of someone who placed them there as an act of revenge. When Nanette Cole, the new coder at Infinity, is forced to join the crew as science officer, she refuses to accept her - their - fate as slaves to Captain Daly's ego.
(Note: Robert must steal a swipe of a person's DNA in order to upload their digital copy to his game. Many thousands of viewers have already noted that DNA does not contain a person's memories, personality, etc. Ok. Thanks.)
Is Robert's treatment of the crew in order to gain their compliance unethical? In a word: yes.
The only difference between the digital copies and the humans from which they are created is that they only exist in digital form; inorganic; artificial; unable to ambulate in the 'real' world. That's a big difference, I know. But there is a reason the show stresses that these copies believe they are the 'real' person - so that we will identify and empathize with them as real beings. When we do so, we ascribe to them the rights of a person, and then questions of ethics become legitimate.
"But," you interject, calmly and reasonably, "that does not change the fact that they are not human beings."
Glad you noticed! So what makes a thing human? Being made of flesh and blood? That's obvious, but we of course usually distinguish between human and animal. Alright then - humans can speak and play instruments and create civilizations. That's great, but some humans of flesh and blood are unable to speak or demonstrate basic skills; we still consider them human and any negative treatment of them to be unethical, inhumane.
What about at least having two arms and two legs? Some people don't clear that mark. And then of course, we take great care to distinguish between the unborn and the born with legal terms, and the living from the dead. So to legally be a person you must at least be a flesh-and-blood homo sapien alive outside of a womb. But what if you are outside of the womb but a machine is the only thing keeping you breathing? Are you still human even though you need a machine in order to survive? (Survey says yes, for now.)
So what is the difference, then, between a 'vegetable' being kept alive by machinery, and clusters of code that know language, have personality and memory, and can manipulate the movement of an avatar in digital space?
I'm not saying there is no difference. I'm saying what is it?
Is the current definition of 'life' or 'personhood' or 'human' the only one we need? Or should it evolve as we continue to create new experiences, discover new limits, as our idea of what is possible expands? This is not supposed to be easy to answer, and it certainly won't be when the time comes for us to confront it. But there's no harm in beginning to think about it now, which is what Black Mirror is urging us to do.
Another thing to understand is that the digital copies are essentially human because they believe they are. When they wake up in the Egg, or on the Callister, they insist that they are the real person and they want to know what the hell is going on. There is no part of them that has ever experienced life on the digital plane before now; they cannot define themselves digitally, only personally.
Again, you could note that this does not mean that they actually are human, and I would agree on technical grounds. However, I think Black Mirror expects that many of its viewers are the type willing to muse, 'Perhaps we only believe we exist too. How do we prove it?' If you are not willing to watch the series with a mind toward the philosophical, you'll only end up misunderstanding what it is trying to say.
Having said all that, I go back to my original point: Robert/Captain Daly's behavior toward the ship's crew is unethical because they believe they are human and cannot know otherwise. So the techno-quandry of 'why should we care, if they are only digital people?' is answered (and really it's answered by the way these kinds of episodes play out). However, there are still those who will take a stand that the digital is not human and that's that. Why shouldn't Robert be able to create copies of people in order to act out his frustrations safely if the technology allows for it? And why shouldn't we find a way to adapt and structure that for anyone to use?
There's an old saying that character is who you are when no one is watching. We can rephrase that for the Black Mirror world and say ethics is how you treat digital personas. Strictly ethically speaking, it is saying something about you. Are you unable to empathize with objectified or dehumanized entities who nonetheless demonstrate emotion and pain sensitivity? Do violent or sadistic fantasies immediately bob to the surface when you're assured it's not a 'real' person? Against the assumedly blank slate of a non-person, the parts of ourselves that we keep hidden, maybe even subconscious, can be drawn out. In a society capable of creating digital copies, I believe its main concern would be what people will do when consequences are removed, when considerations of 'real' pain and humiliation are removed.
This is not to say that every single person harbors a little murderer inside, but psychological studies have long studied the circumstances under which the id will roam more freely, and moreover, this episode itself shows us just how far Robert/Captain Daly is willing to flex his sadism.
Additionally, from certain perspectives you may reassert that it's impossible to actually harm a digital copy and Robert is dealing with real-life frustrations without hurting the actual person. But why do we stop there, believing that Robert will also? Quite often in society we believe, when it's convenient (often politically), that a person will be content with fantasy, that somehow human nature - the very need to be and to act in the real world with real people - is magically subverted by a two-dimensional or non-corporeal version of something. That is a willful abandonment of both reality and reason.
***
One thing that is in danger of being lost when considering this episode is the passing commentary on the increasing prevalence of just the kind of social awkwardness Robert displays in our current society. People who do not have 'acceptable' degrees of social intelligence retreat to the worldwide web, where they can craft usernames, profiles, whole personalities that purportedly are much truer to who they are, much easier to project and to wield. This is where the audience's initial acceptance of Robert's Callister hobby comes from - our easy understanding of, if not identification with, how quite a lot of people are 'getting along' in today's world, via the lifeline of an online persona.
Additionally Robert is sexually awkward, and again this points to what I feel is a massive trend today, and probably the most disturbing and heartbreaking of them all. I'll speak more to this when I blog about the recent "Cat Person" short story phenomenon, but this retreat into online living has, among other forces, created an entire subset of men and women, and young men and young women, who are content to attempt to fulfill their need for intimacy through digital means. I'll stop there for now, but Robert is that person - and he may even be an extreme case, since he does not allow the digital copies to have genitalia, and when Cole invites him into the water on Skillane 4, he is wholly unprepared for such a thing.
There has been mention of Robert being 'bullied,' which I reject. Social awkwardness does not automatically equate to being bullied; as with most things, we've turned a nuanced societal issue into a flat, one-dimensional, discrete packet of data that serves no greater function that a slogan. There was no evidence through the entire episode of Robert being bullied. There was evidence of him being weird. Of being a 'starer.' Of not being able to speak up for himself. But just to assume that he was bullied is incorrect, and to use bullying as an excuse for Robert to in return torture his co-workers during the after-hours is actually kind of...frightening.
***
Although "USS Callister" revisits several philosophical questions and plot devices from past seasons, I think ultimately it serves to help cement the full picture of this future society Charlie Brooker and his fellow scriptwriters have brought so wondrously to the screen. It is a society that looks just enough like our own to be 'the near future' and thus a cautionary tale, and it passively posits a creator-less universe in which we can exist in ways completely unconnected and un-sprung from dust and a man's rib, in which the very essence we believe makes us who we are - our consciousness - what primitive people called the soul - can be pinpointed, bottled and shunted into the afterlife of our own choosing (see: "San Junipero").
Black Mirror is most definitely the Twilight Zone of our time, and I have a lot more to say (yes, that's a threat). More to come!
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