The whole thing is a lie. - Stripes, the episode's protagonist.
Black Mirror has many great episodes, nearly all of them filled with allegory and themes. One of my many favorites (all of them are so great) is Season 3 Episode 5: Men Against Fire. So many parts of this episode sent chills down my spine.
Spoilers will be happening - consider that your warning.
This episode is dripping with themes including: violent video games as tools for military recruitment (and violence desensitization - though I disagree with that concept), genocide and eugenics, rise of global tyranny, PTSD and mental health of combat veterans, and many many more. However, I am going to be focusing on the one aspect that I felt was so obvious yet so overlooked by everyone else and every article I have seen on it. It is Perception Control.
I know I am a little late to this party, and plenty other clickbait news organizations from Vice to VanityFair have written about this episode, though they missed the mark and focused on Trump - swinging the pendulum too far and creating their own propaganda piece. (Don’t get me wrong - their articles are true and have great insights, but I am not dumb enough to not see them using it for their own agenda and purposes. Tyranny is tyranny whether or not it comes from the left or right.) This episode has been out for well over a year now, but I have the confidence to try and bring this to light.
When we think or hear the term “mind-control” images of Manchurian Candidate or marionettes come to mind. We like to imagine the most extreme occurrences of what it would be like to be an empty husk controlled by what ever programing we had been given. This is unfortunately not the case. Real mind control is far more sinister, because it is very much in our control to accept or reject. We have all been under mind control at one time in our lives or another. Most, if not all of us, probably are now.
The true mind control is perception control. Our perception is how we engage and understand our reality, and it determines the actions we take to create the reality we want to live in. We form our perceptions on the things we see, hear, and believe. From the time we are born and throughout our lives, we are taking in and integrating data.
Mass
In the episode the military implements a brain chip technology to aid soldiers on the battlefield by both increasing their combat effectiveness and reducing PTSD.
Many years ago, I'm talking early 20th century, most soldiers didn't even fire their weapons. Or if they did, they would just aim over the heads of the enemies. They did it on purpose. British Army. World War I. The brigadier, he'd walk the line with a stick and he'd whack his men in order to get them to shoot. Even in World War II, in a firefight, only 15%, 20% of the men would pull the trigger. The fate of the world at stake and only 15% of them fired. Now, what does that tell you? It tells me that that war would have been over a whole lot quicker had the military got its shit together. So we adapted. Better training. Better conditioning. Then comes the Vietnam War, and the shooting percentage goes up to 85. Lot of bullets flying. The kills were still low. Plus the guys who did get a kill, well, most of them came back all messed up in the head. And that's pretty much how things stayed until Mass came along. You see, Mass Well, that's the ultimate military weapon. It helps you with your intel. Your targeting. Your comms. Your conditioning. It's a lot easier to pull the trigger when you're aiming at the bogeyman, hmm? It's not just your eyes, though. Takes care of your other senses, too. You don't hear the shrieks. You don't smell the blood and the shit. - Arquette’s monologue (the Mass psychologist)
In the episode the implant mask the faces of the enemy “Roaches” making them appear non-human, zombie like. It also masks their voices turning them into animalistic howls and screeches so that the soldiers can’t hear their cries for help.
Of course it would be understandable to dismiss this as “just the technology” thinking that without it this wouldn’t possible. Luckily the episode also explains why the Civs (civilians) are afraid and report the roaches. See, the civilians don’t have Mass.
Well, what the fuck do they see? Huh? The fucking civs, when they look at a roach, what do they see? - Stripes after his Mass implant malfunctions and he sees the truth
What you see now. They hate all the same because it's what they've been told. Ten years ago, it began. Post-war. First, the screening program, the DNA checks, then the register, the emergency measures. And soon everyone calls us creatures. Filthy creatures. Every voice. The TV. The computer. Say we have we have sickness in us. We have weakness. It's in our blood. They say that our blood cannot go on. That we cannot go on. My name was Catarina. He was Alec. Now we're just roach. But now... Now you see me. Now you see me. - Catarina’s response (a “roach”)
Every totalitarian regime uses the language of disgust to otherize the “enemy.” Nazi’s and Communist (Soviets/Maoist if you want to play semantics) both used it against their enemies. To Nazi’s jews and gypsies were associated with plagues and disease that infected the pure bloodline of the master race and german peoples. Communist label the bourgeoisie as parasites that leeched off the production of the proletariat. In the world of Black Mirror, they are simply called Roaches.
While the producers and show runners could have taken the simple tried and true route of ethnonationalism, they instead offer a more realistic neo-liberal approach. The true future of tyranny is not in ethnic superiority (in the modern world this is just a divide and conquer technique - which isn’t to say that it should be ignored), but in collectivism. Tyranny in any form is collectivism; for the good of the human species.We are inundated daily, beset upon by information overload. It has become nearly impossible to distinguish facts from indoctrination and half-truisms. Our cultures, our news, our upbringing, click-baiting and fear mongering headlines, #yesall(fill in the blank: men, jews, blacks, whites, cis, etc.), the list goes on and it all serves to blind us from reality. To give us a false sense of truth: that the world is far more ugly than it is beautiful.
Every roach you save today, you condemn God knows how many people to despair and misery tomorrow. You can't still see them as human. Understandable sentiment, granted, but it's misguided. We gotta take them out if humankind is gonna carry on in this world. That's just the hard truth. - Medina justifying murder and genocide
Do you have any idea the amount of shit that's in their DNA? Higher rates of cancer. Muscular dystrophy. MS. SLS. Substandard IQ. Criminal tendencies. Sexual deviances. It's all there. The screening shows it. Is that what you want for the next generation? Don't feel bad about doing your job. The villagers won't do it. The folks back home won't do it. They don't have Mass. Mass lets you do it. You. You're protecting the bloodline. And that, my friend, is an honour. - Arquette
It doesn’t matter which cult is in power, left or right. There will always be an enemy. There will always be a fear. In the end of the episode Stripes decides to have his memory wiped and his Mass implant turned back on. It is easier to join the group think, to allow the propaganda of your society to take over. It is painful to recognize the evil you have aided in, even more painful to try and correct it and turn against it. Stripes is discharged and returned to a beautiful home, but The whole thing is a lie. His house is rundown and dilapidated. There is graffiti on it and he is all alone.
Is this the future you want for the next generation?
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I would love your thoughts on the episode as well as this article. Any feedback, tips and pointers, or criticism is always welcome. What did you think of it, or Black Mirror in general? Am I wrong? Let me know. I want all my post to open up a dialogue in the comments section. And as a general rule of thumb: “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you need to know. Listen to them hard enough so that they will share it with you.” - Jordan Peterson
Some afterthoughts:
I wanted to break down this episode in more depth; however, it was getting to long and I am a wee minnow. I decided that I should focus solely on the intention of this article, Perception Control and how tyrannical forces manipulate us daily.
The episode is titled after a book of the same name written to try and determine how to increase the combat effectiveness of soldiers. It is noted that the book's data is highly disputed due to the nature of how the data was collected.
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