Actually, the first episode of Black Mirror Season 7 is the one that left the deepest impression on me. After watching it, I felt so sad and powerless!
This is the story of Amanda and Mike. They are a deeply loving couple with stable jobs and a well-planned happy life. Amanda is an elementary school biology teacher, and Mike is an experienced blue-collar worker. They plan to get pregnant and have a child to start the next stage of their lives.
The director uses many visual cues to make it clear that the couple has an excellent relationship. Mike would kiss Amanda in the morning and even playfully tickle the soles of her feet. No matter how long they’ve been together, Mike always remembers their wedding anniversary and makes arrangements for it. Amanda is the same way—she would decline colleagues’ invitations to spend the anniversary with Mike, unconsciously lean close to him when answering the phone, and hold him tightly while sleeping. It’s almost like the director is forcing the audience to accept how loving they are.
But all their happy life vanished when Amanda fell into a coma. To save Amanda, Mike had no choice but to opt for the treatment plan offered by Heshi Technology, which involves cloning Amanda’s brain, uploading it to a cloud server, and then transmitting the consciousness back to her body to sustain her life. The key point is that the surgery is completely free; they only need to pay a monthly subscription fee of 300tousetheservice.Inotherwords,forjust300 a month, Mike could have his wife Amanda back. This sounds like an incredible deal, and Mike was definitely tempted.
At first, everything went well. Amanda "came back to life," Mike regained his love and happiness, and their lives briefly returned to normal.
But when they were about to drive somewhere, Amanda fell into a coma again. This terrified Mike—he had no idea what was happening and had to rush Amanda to Heshi Technology. That’s when they found out the reason: Amanda was only a regular user paying 300amonth,notanenhanceduserpaying800, so she could only move within a restricted area. Once she went beyond that, she would fall into a coma. For Amanda’s sake and to restore their normal life, Mike chose to upgrade the monthly subscription.
But this was just the beginning.
They thought upgrading the subscription would allow them to live a normal life, but Amanda started showing many strange symptoms. She would often insert advertisements unconsciously, even spouting promotional content during intimate moments with Mike. Moreover, Amanda became increasingly sleepy and listless. All of this disrupted their normal life. For Amanda, her constant unconscious recitation of advertising slogans began to affect her work. In particular, she unconsciously gave a student some religious advice, which hit a nerve with the parents, putting her at risk of being reported and losing her job. For Mike, he couldn’t deal with his wife being asleep all the time, nor could he accept Amanda suddenly blurting out advertising slogans during intimate moments.
They went back to Heshi Technology to find the salesperson they’d dealt with before, and what the salesperson said plunged them into despair. The premium version only removed basic advertisements but wasn’t a VIP subscription. So Amanda’s "host" needed to process other background data tasks during idle time (while she was asleep) as a form of 回馈 for the technology. But above the VIP version, there’s the PLUS premium version, which allows her senses and everything about her to be shared with others—somewhat similar to the multi-person sharing in the TV series Sense8. In this state, a person becomes extremely sharp and sensitive, with rapidly enhanced perception of everything around them. That’s why Amanda made exaggerated sounds and movements when experiencing the super VIP version. She wasn’t being dramatic; she was just maximizing her senses! If Amanda wanted to get pregnant, they’d have to pay extra because the server would need to process more complex data.
Time and time again, they chose to upgrade the subscription. But their income was insufficient to cover the skyrocketing monthly fees. The extra money actually came from Mike’s self-harm livestreams on the underground platform "Benben Network" to get tips. To afford the more premium services, Mike’s livestreams became more and more extreme. He once injured his tongue with a mousetrap, knocked out his own teeth, and finally, for money, he took off his mask and exposed himself completely on screen. This exposed his secret to his colleagues and people around him, leaving no room for redemption. He lost his job, and they became even more unable to afford the high fees.
So Amanda had to switch to a relatively low-tier service. She fell into comas repeatedly and was in a very poor mental state. Living this way became a painful ordeal for both Amanda and Mike. She was still alive, but she was like a dead person. She hadn’t died, but every day she lived felt like dying. What’s more, it imposed a huge financial burden on Mike and the entire family.
In the end, Amanda could no longer endure this life and begged Mike to end her life while she was in a coma. The director gave Mike an open-ended conclusion, with the camera lingering on Mike entering the livestream room with a tool and closing the door. Maybe he chose to continue the dark livestreams to earn more money. Or maybe he chose to kill himself during the livestream, putting an end to this hopeless life once and for all.
I tend to think the second ending is the one Mike chose for himself. It fits better with their image as a deeply loving couple.
It seems that no matter what, ordinary people can’t live a good life. Whether in the real world or a future world with highly advanced digital technology, it’s the same. In the real world, ordinary people face pressures like mortgages and car loans, suffer separation from loved ones early due to car accidents or illnesses, and fall into depression because of work stress. In a future world with advanced digital technology, nothing will fundamentally change. Ordinary people will face the same problems as Mike—whether it’s for their wife’s illness, their child’s life, or something else, there will always be a compelling reason that allows capitalists to exploit them completely.
To be honest, this episode always reminds me of the American TV series Upload. In Upload, people can choose to upload their memories after death to exist in another form. Friends and relatives can interact with the uploaded version through special means, even having intimate contact, making everything feel almost the same as when they were alive. Essentially, both Upload and Black Mirror S7E1 explore applications of digital technology, just in different ways. But they share the same issue: while digital technology does improve people’s well-being, this well-being is clearly characterized by class division for poor ordinary people. In Upload, the rich can send people to hunt the last remaining rhinoceros in the real world just for a bite of meat, while the poor can’t even afford the data for a snack or to read a complete book. The class division brought by digital technology is obviously more terrifying than in the real world.
Digital society will definitely have many companies like Heshi Technology. Heshi Technology used some sales tactics to promote its medical plan to people who couldn’t afford it, then used this plan to extract more profits. Whether customers can afford the high monthly fees or their satisfaction is irrelevant to the company. Once customers fall into this trap, they can only keep consuming, keep upgrading, and keep creating more surplus value for the company. Heshi Technology and its female salesperson gain what they want from consumers like Mike and Amanda—they move into larger offices, wear more beautiful and comfortable wool coats, and have money to advertise their products. As for customers choosing death, well, that’s their own choice, unrelated to the company or the salesperson.
But there must also be caring young entrepreneurs like Nathan in Upload. Nathan is a genius programmer dedicated to equal upload technology, allowing ordinary people to upload their consciousness for free and enjoy the breakthroughs brought by technology. If his developed software "Beyond" enters the market, it will break the digital world monopolized by the service provider "Lake View Company." "Lake View Company" achieves full control over users through data metering, memory deletion permissions, and monitoring systems, even planning to implant privacy-invading programs. The key is that these services are expensive, making it impossible for ordinary people to enjoy the changes brought by this technology. This is Nathan’s starting point: to allow ordinary people to share in the changes brought by digital technology.
So when watching "common people," I once again felt the class divide brought by digital technology! If there were no people like Nathan in the world, only those like the unscrupulous female salesperson, the world would completely become a playground for the wealthy, and poor and vulnerable ordinary people would never be able to enjoy the benefits of digital technology. Perhaps this is why the world needs people like Pope Francis and Nathan.