So I am rewatching Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch on Netflix to explore the unexplored options. The first question about the cereal seems a meaningless choice but it does draw attention to the emphasis on branding and how brands logos are used to signpost within our contemporary collective consciousness. For instance, Coca-Cola and Pepsi were once accessories of the American dream of ‘freedom’ used as propaganda for their foreign policy. Now both brands are recognised as global icons within their own respective corporations.
The option of the choice to accept Tuckersoft’s offer is a valuable gift from Black Mirror, illustrating the need to stay true to artistic integrity and retain creative authority in projects. Sadly, any non-conformist ideology is ridiculed from here on in.
The second choice between listening to Thompsons Twins or ‘Now, that’s what I call music- 1980s’ compilation in the Walkman is equally inconsequential but probably emphasises the bland choice of musical diversity commercially available at the time. Incidentally, I have restarted several times with both options …. Colin is still not impressed by either choice.
“The concept of taste is outmoded” because “the subject who could verify such taste has become as questionable as has the right to a freedom of choice which empirically, in any case, no one any longer exercises.”
Adorno’s argument that repetitive music acts as a form of enforcement for collective consciousness, serving the socio-cultural-economic agenda of mainstream society is alive in Colin’s non-conformity. Basically, taste is irrelevant as conforming to generic music serves the capitalist purpose of the industry.
The 80s decades itself has been of fascination to recent TV programmes and sitcoms; anything from cheesy sitcoms The Goldbergs and camp films like American Pie to numerous rehashed sci-fi epics like the new Star Wars and Terminator sequels. All these things leave pop-cultural footprints and at the very least, establish consumer brands and franchises. Such action strengthens the power of cultural hegemony that serves the commodity fetish agenda.
I think what Black Mirror successfully identifies in Bandersnatch is the birth of computer coding and the parallel relationship between its effect on contemporary culture and making life choices based on the distribution of artificial reasons.
The reference to coded computer games like Pacman during Colin’s acid rant isn’t as far-fetched a metaphor as you might think. If you consider it calmly without drugs, even though Colin’s refusal of reality is entirely erratic and his confusion of complex spirituality misguided. The idea of rejecting mass consumption as a guiding moral compass still has merit. The idea of making life choices outside of consumption .. outside of brands and business guided narrative is inspiring and obtainable. Even now in 2018, the ‘grow your own’ trend has been adopted by neo-yuppies and hipsters as a rejection of mainstream commercialisation. In 2018 it is everywhere you look from craft fayres to micro-breweries.
1980s era entertainment also had something else as a major ingredient of its legacy: Patience and Potential.
I can remember having an Amstrad CPC computer and loading video games on cassette tape, waiting for ages for what would be the most minimalist graphics but the overall experience was so original and advanced at the time. The combination of anticipation and imagination probably held more artistic merit and reward than the final result of the gaming product. Such anticipation naturally stimulated imagination and thus creativity, a whole decade before instantaneous Sega/Nintendo 8 bit action and soon the extravagance of 16-bit graphics consoles smothered these qualities.
Was there a relationship between the passivity of consciousness created from beautiful and mesmerising graphics and a lack of patience for imagination? In that era, there was (arguably) also the popularity of dynamic comics and magazines over traditional literature. The use of Disneyfication in video gaming. Has this led into our contemporary lethargic dependence on consumer comfort over real progression of cultural change? All of this slowly unrolled before the arrival of global dominance of instantaneous internet connectivity.
The part in the film where they play the demo in the Tuckersoft office, they met the demon Pax in the Bandersnatch demo and Colin says ‘Worship him’.. Stefan replies; ‘No, don’t do that he’s the thief of destiny….”
Is this actually a coded signpost? Storytelling narrative designed to prompt the viewer, hinting at them to make the appropriate choice? Implying that worshipping the thief of destiny, is the same as accepting the Tuckersoft business mogul, Tucker’ s offer: Worshipping a metaphorical demon in the form of corporate conformity against the freedom of creative integrity?
Too farfetched? Well, remember the entire film is a fictional narrative.
A lot of the new Star Wars films purposely used ‘seeding’ techniques as subconscious prompt for fans to speculate where the storyline is headed? Do we need such propaganda, long before actual final products are released. Is it no longer enough to wait and see, or enjoy the anticipation?
Well, anyone who has read the most basic reading on structuralism can see a somewhat minimal alignment with Guy Debord’s arguments in the Society of the Spectacle [1967].
Yet, how far from everyday cultural reality are the relative truths of the Bandersnatch storyline? Hint: Postmodernity. Marc Auge’s claim that in (post/super) modernity, as consumers we are likes passenger in our own lives failing to retain enough consciousness to make choices ( 1995: 103). The extreme escalation of Colin’s demise is erratic but probably known to most as the ultimate 80’s drugs fuelled urban myth. The result of ‘protagonist’ Stefan murdering his father is to be disregarded as a climax of a dramatic narrative (or even distraction). But this climax presented as a metaphor rings true with consequence of nihilism due partially from the ‘schizophrenia of postmodernity’ in capitalism. (This was well documented – See Frederic Jameson). There are numerous Baudrillardrian hyperreal/simulation references embedded throughout the entire concept also. There is some excellent fourth wall breaking later on keeping within the true spirit of postmodern tv comedy shows like Family Guy and Red Dwarf to name but a few.
However, the main postmodern feature of Bandersnatch, in a commercial, commodity-driven non-academic sense ..is the interactivity.
Anyways.
The point is that the 1980s was a time when imagination and vision proceed technology. It was decades before the internet and years before the arrival of instantaneous entertainment and escapism found in Nintendo/Sega games consoles. Even back then, boredom existed and society looked to enter the sanctity of virtual ethernet to be entertained.
The Star Wars trilogy and other likewise films took us into further into escapism and far away space battles for adventure but the boring and scientific reality is that Nasa’s Voyager 2 Probe launched in 1977 failed to reach ‘outer space’ until 2012. During its 35 yr voyage, no even remotely exciting discoveries were declared that could even scratch the exciting surface of sci-fi entertainment. Even well into the lifespan of web 2.0 internet. That era from 1977 up until the late 90s was a bland world of vision and imagination where cultural myths preceded the distraction of the internet. An era where we still had the mental capacity for social change. Gaps in our collective inevitably bridged and by Advertising.
Try not to think about what the western world would’ve been like without Advertising though.
One would hope Black Mirror have devised a way to claw some of the self-identity back for the individual, as a means for the passenger of supermodernity to regain the ground lost by Auge’s argument of passivity. Auge’s idea that lack of community meant a loss of facilities for civic interaction and then hence traditional, non-capitalist fuelled collective identity. Thus the postmodern world aided with heightened digital technology sponsored by a social infrastructure that follows the capitalist agenda has inevitably created non-places of civic interaction..” in transit sites where people are suspended between other activities but in a way certain of its own reality” (Delanty, 142). The uninspired consumer without imagination or vision becomes the ‘passenger’ of our own subconsciousness without individualised thought or consciousness would naturally follow this order. (Auge 1995: 103). According to Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida; with no opposition to the “centrality of subjectivity”.. “postmodern community being beyond unity” (Delanty, 142).
In a more scientific, less theological sense, research has in fact concluded that 95% of all cognition is adaptive unconsciousness. Is this the way society is heading? No thinking, no criticising, just spectating, without action or even objection. The ultimate passive Consumers.
“Fuck you I won’t do what you told me”.- Rage Against the Machine
Rant &Rave 