An Analysis Of Dystopia In Black Mirror's Season 3

Black Mirror’s season three opens with a dystopian science fiction episode ‘Nosedive’. From (“Critical Essays”), I learned that in a dystopian setting, the focus of the film is usually not on the technology itself but rather on the psychology and emotions of the characters that live under such conditions and circumstances. My evaluation of the episode is on how the dystopian genre, colors, and soundtrack of the episode were able to relay the message of the story to the audience.

Here’s a brief overview of the episode. Lacie, the protagonist, is living in a town where technology is integrated in almost every aspect of their lives. The people use a kind of social media app, which is a hybrid of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter; however, the most defining feature of the app is the ability to rate people’s lives from one to five and this makes up their ranking. People with higher ranking

According to (Milner, 2012), dystopian science fiction’s purpose is to warn us about undesirable future developments. The episode shows, how in the near future, social media will greatly influence the lives of the people. An example is the cafe, where Lacie buys a cookie, takes a bite of it and carefully places, the rest next to the cup of coffee, takes a picture of it, uploads it to her feed and spits the cookie out of her mouth just to garner likes and attention from other people. This shows how Lacie is inclined to do things that she’s not fond of just to get rated five stars to maintain or improve her ranking. This shows how the people are cautious of their actions. This scene related how to where are as of the current. People nowadays prefer to picture the moment and upload it online to gain attention, rather than enjoying the moment and telling it to their friends. The episode effectively warns us that if we continue to let social media influence us greatly there’s a possibility that what happened in the episode will happen to