In the first episode of “Black Mirror’s” recently debuted seventh season, Amanda and Mike, played by Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd, are an enviably in love couple with a simple, happy life. But when Amanda passes out while teaching her elementary-aged students a lesson on solar panels, we learn she has an inoperable brain tumor. Later, in a hospital waiting room, an immutably serene saleswoman played by Tracee Ellis Ross meets with Mike and offers to “give him time” with a new product by a company called RiverMind. The technology is simple, she explains, gesturing to an iPad: We “take an imprint of the affected part of [Amanda’s] neural structure and we clone it onto our mainframe […] a backup of part of her brain onto our computer.”
The bait-and-switch freemium model underscores the narrative’s real concern: America’s deeply flawed and profit-driven health care system.
I remember watching the first season of “Black Mirror” in 2011 when it debuted with just three episodes. The stories were thought-provoking and alarming, the sort of speculative dystopian fiction that generates good conversation and makes you hope desperately for a different kind of future. Six seasons and well over a decade later, this episode, called “Common Place,” is a salient indication that we are now squarely in the future we hoped would never come.
Like all techno-dystopic episodes of “Black Mirror,” the narrative takes aim at how technology exposes and exploits our society’s ills, starting with the constantly moving goal post that is paying for streaming services. First, Amanda and Mike are promised a free surgery and the “less than you think” monthly fee of $300. For Amanda and Mike, very intentionally depicted as industrious members of the working class, that $300 is just nearly too much. And of course, expensive and necessary upgrades are coming. Soon, the couple must pay more, much more, to prevent Amanda from verbalizing “contextually relevant” advertisements. We watch as she enters something of a fugue state and begins shilling products in the middle of teaching a lesson, morning coffee and sex. A baby, they learn to their horror, will be an additional $90 a month. It’s interesting that "Black Mirror" would so conspicuously critique the payment model used by Netflix, the streaming giant that pays the show creator’s bills (and it feels worth noting that in January Netflix raised the cost of its streaming plans and added an ad-supported, cheaper tier.)
But the bait-and-switch freemium model underscores the narrative’s real concern: America’s deeply flawed and profit-driven health care system.
There are thousands, probably tens of thousands, of active GoFundMe campaigns raising money for medical emergencies right now. Media coverage of these fundraising efforts is often positive: highlighting the kindness and altruism people so often rely on as the only way to get a lifesaving surgery or medication. And viral appeal is critical. If your story is heart-wrenching, if your blurb is funny or poignant, and if your family is beautiful, chances are you’ll get a little bit more. Of course, GoFundMe is for-profit and charges a transaction fee of 2.9% and $0.30 per donation.
In “Common People,” Mike doesn’t turn to crowdsourcing to raise money for Amanda’s RiverMind subscription, but to a fictional social media platform called Dum Dummies. Dum Dummies allows users to pay so-called creators to complete certain tasks live onscreen. The tasks, as you can imagine, are dark, degrading and often physical. We watch Mike earn just $90 on Dum Dummies by closing his tongue in a mousetrap. It gets worse from there.
“Common People” watches like a vintage "Black Mirror" episode. It is thought-provoking, well acted, entertaining and, frankly, laborious. Yet, if you believe, like I do, that the critical role of dystopian storytelling is preparation for the worst-case scenario, then this episode has failed. There is nothing to prepare for, nothing to examine, nothing to stop, because that reality is already here.