Black Mirror (Men against Fire)

Men against Fire is another episode in the Black Mirror series destined to become classic.  Black Mirror prospects a deep and persistent vein of cybernetic dread, the fear that reality is being manipulated by robots and virtual reality to a point of no return.  Men against Fire refers to a book that my father urged me to read, a study of how soldiers react to combat.  (My father was a Operations Analyst with a military-industrial contractor; his job was to apply statistical and other mathematical models to the battlefield).  In the book, we learn that in World War I only 15% of the combatants could bring themselves to pull the trigger against another human being -- 85% of the men panicked and couldn't remember how to shoot their guns, or, in the alternative, couldn't bring themselves to fire at the enemy.  This statistic remained constant in World War II.  Updating the book, published in the fifties, the show asserts that most young soldiers in combat in Vietnam fired their weapons, but, then, came back badly damaged by guilt and post-traumatic stress.)  From this unlikely source material, the show spins a simple plot, but one with three significant turnings -- that is, points where the viewer suffers a vertiginous shift in perspective.  The writers of most programs of this sort would consider themselves successful if they contrived one radical change of perspective -- but this show shifts the audiences' point of view three times.  For my money, Black Mirror in episodes like this and San Junipero is a far better, more concise, and more disturbing show than the grossly inflated Westworld, a series that trafficks in the same anxieties.

In Men against Fire, we are thrown into nasty theater of war involving ethnic cleansing.  Our side is doing the cleansing, rousting out and slaughtering zombie-like creatures called Roaches.  (At first, the show, featuring a gender-integrated Marine Corps engaged in what seems to be a "bug hunt" seems to be reprising Starship Troopers, albeit on a much grungier, less Pop Art level.)  The hero, a handsome Black marine, kills a nest of roaches.  One of the dying roaches drops a kind of home-made electrical device.  The marine picks it up and it flashes in his eyes.  This causes him to have strange and unsettling dreams.  We intuit that all is not as it seems and, of course, this is shortly revealed:  the roaches aren't bloodthirsty hideous zombies -- in fact, they're just like ordinary people indistinguishable from the vaguely Baltic or Slavic population that are Marines are supposed to be protecting.  The appearance of the roaches and their distorted bestial cries have been manufactured for the troops by an implant surgically placed in each marines.  This same implant is responsible for a dream that each young marine has each night -- he is being beckoned into his beautiful, well-kept home by his beautiful girlfriend with whom he has passionate sex.  (The plot plays with the idea of the 40 virgins said to be promised to Muslim terrorists -- the girl clones at one point and becomes, at least, six or eight girls, all identical and all offering themselves sexually to the hero.)    I've described the show's first twist.  If you don't want to know the others, which are more surprising, stop reading here.

The revelation that he has been slaughtering enthusiastically people who look just like those bedraggled folks he is supposed to be protecting plunges the young Marine into a state of confusion.  The fire-base's psychiatrist meets with him, discussing the old book Men Against Fire, and, then, makes a surprising observation.  The use of the implant to make the enemy inhuman is a mercy to our soldiers -- it protects them from feelings of guilt and is intended to prevent the occurrence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Confronted by what he has done, the Marine elects to have the implant restored to function -- his memory of the fact that he has murdered many women and helpless children is eradicated.  Mustered out at the end of the show, the weary marine comes home.  It is just as he imagined it in his dreams -- a beautiful suburban home with a broad well-manicured lawn viewed in the golden light of sunset.  The lovely woman seems to be waiting for him inside -- we can see her shadow against the window.  Then, the shot shifts to an objective perspective.  We see the house as it is without the benefit of the implant softening the image -- the house is a ramshackle shed with plywood covering broken windows and a crumbling concrete sidewalk set in unkempt lawn of thistles and weeds.  We are spared the sight of the woman waiting for our hero at the door.  The two radical shifts in point of view in the last twenty minutes of the film are wholly unexpected:  we can't imagine how a persuasive argument could be made for deluding the soldiers into thinking their enemies are brutish inhuman roaches, but, in fact, the argument is frighteningly convincing.  Second, we are shocked by understanding that the same psychic manipulation used on the battlefield is, of course, equally applicable to the home front.  This is an unforgettable episode.