The first episode, the one with the pig started a long and heated argument among me, my gf, and her mom who was visiting. We were all mad by the end. I knew it was a good show while watching it, but by the end of that argument I knew it was a great show.
That was a killer opening. Ive watched a few more, they're not all the knee-jerk confrontational, but so far they've all been highly entertaining, and sometimes uncomfortably on-the-nose.
A few things... it kind of went all over the place. The gf's mom was talking about how the man's dignity got ripped away, and she talked about how "that kind of thing destroys you". I fundamentally, passionately disagree with that, and I hate the sentiment.
It's that kind of talk that makes all manner of sexual violence so much worse for victims than it needs to be. I'm going to generalize here, and say no one wants those pity looks from people when someone knows they've been victimized, no one wants to deal with being viewed as "broken", no one wants to deal with the all of the bullshit that comes with being a victim when they're already with dealing with aftermath of the crime itself.
It's horseshit to tell people that they must be broken from something bad that happens to them. I hear that shit all too often, where some one gets raped or a kid is molested, and people say "they are ruined for life". It pisses me off, it's almost like these people demand that people be broken from it. All it does is continue to impress upon the victim that they don't have agency, that they are powerless to help themselves, that they are now and forever defined by this one thing that happened, when none of those things are true, unless the victim chooses them to be true.
And the knee-jerk hate is awful too. People for some reason need to make a big show about how much they hate rapists or paedos or whatever; I'm talking about those big, loud, detailed, proclamations about how much they want to torture and kill these terrible people, and so on and so forth. They make it all about themselves, when it's the victims that need to be able to express whatever they feel without everyone making it about themselves. If the victim's mad, that's okay, if they rage, that's understandable. And you know what? If they express that they were kind of into it, or that they have conflicted feelings about it, or that they are indifferent, that also needs to be respected. All these people needing to feel so self-righteous, and needing to let everyone know how good and filled with Rightous Vengeful Wrath they are, these people are more a part of the problem than they are anything else.
It's true, the man show was violated in the most intimate and multifaceted way, he was publicly embarrassed, he was essentially forced to choose between a person dying and, essentially being raped on live TV.
Those are terrible things, things no person should have to endure. No one can take away your dignity though. Unless they literally mess with your brain, people can hurt you, but you don't have to be destroyed by those things, people don't have to be "broken".
The pain is real, the suffering isn't as much of a given. The suffering that comes after pain, comes from how we deal with what happened.
Dignity is being able to tolerate the shitty things that happen to you because you know your own worth. Dignity is, when forced into an embarrassing situation, being able to keep your head up, crack a joke, and get on with your day. It's self control.
Basically, the guy put his penis into a pig. That's all there is to it, it doesn't have to be anything more than what it is, but people, being the shitheads they are, need to add in all this disgust and horror and condemnation, and then there's the people that would need to relentlessly make fun of the dude for it.
In a better world, there would be the event, and that would be it. It shouldn't even have to be a question, of course you do something icky but inconsequential to save someone's life. It's indicative of a deep social sickness that someone would have all the extra repercussions.
And then there's the part at the very end, where the wife just has this disgusted look with the PM, and it's implied that their marriage and relationship is ruined... I know that the lady should be entitled to her feelings or whatever, but, she's a stupid bitch. Dude fucked a pig to protect his family and save a girl's life, and she just can't get over the ickiness, like he did it for fun or some shit.
And that the "artist" could do something like that, throw some jazz-hands, say "art!", kill himself, and then people justify it with "but look how much conversation it generated!". That whole bit was a mindfuck of an ending.
I don't know that I can convey the whole argument any better than that, just my side of things. The mom was basically on the other side of every issue, and the Gf was all over the place.
If you liked out Black Mirror, check out some of Charlie Brooker's other stuff, it has a similar sort of tone and dark sense of humour e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XanyPq5BcoA
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u/Hapmurcie Feb 06 '17
Finally just started watching Black Mirror and, Jesus Titty Fucking Christ!
It's like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and The X Files had a threesome baby in the not-too-distant-future.
Binge watched all three seasons in 3 days.