The strength of Black Mirror's dystopian episodes are that they follow their alarming premises to their ultimate, logical conclusions. This is evident in the gruesome first show in Series 7, "Common People" featuring Chris Dowd and Rashida Jones. Although Black Mirror is not entirely satirical dystopia -- some of the episodes are outright horror, action, or whimsy -- the programs that people most admire (or that are most memorable) involve extrapolations as to current technology that unnervingly disclose the dark side to what consumer society assures us is progress. "Common People" explores horrors associated with alleged medical advances that are, in fact, traps and snares for the unwary. This is accomplished by a convincing narrative that welds together the bait and switch aspects of subscription services of various sorts and the internet industry of grotesque videos featuring people induced to inflict all sorts of suffering on themselves for pay or, worse, for a momentary "fix" of fame. Generally speaking, there's nothing particularly innovative about the dystopian parables presented on Black Mirror. They follow ancient tropes. In E. W. Jacob's famous short story, The Monkey's Paw, adapting a parable dating back to Sanskrit texts, someone is granted three wishes -- of course, things work out in an unexpected way so that the third wish has to be used to undo the first two wishes. In The Blue Angel, the pompous hero, Professor Unrat, observes with horror a cabaret act in which a sad clown is humiliated for the titillation of a cruel audience; of course, the viewer understands that by the end of the movie, the Professor himself will be cast in the role of the abused clown. In Nightmare Alley, an arrogant young man professes disdain for a side-show geek. Guess who will be playing the role of the geek before the end of the film (in both the 1947 version starring Tyrone Power and, also, recently Guillermo del Toro's 2021 remake) ? These are the narrative motifs that underlie "Common People".
Chris Dowd and Rashida Jones are Mike and Amanda, a happily married young couple who are trying to have a baby. As with all Black Mirror episodes, the time and place of the story are left vague -- it seems to be the near future, next year or the year after that, perhaps, except that the couple drive an old car that seems a relic of the seventies and the places that they frequent, in some respects, resemble locations in David Lynch's first version of Twin Peaks -- this is particularly true of seedy hotel in the mountains to which Mike and Amanda return each year on their anniversary; it looks like the motel near the waterfall in Twin Peaks. Amanda is a school teacher -- she is teaching her six-year old students about pollination using robot bees since, apparently, all actual pollinating insects have perished. Amanda has some kind of stroke and falls into a coma. She is dying. A sinister saleswoman proposes a bargain too good to be true but necessary to save her life -- this is the motif of the improvident wish that is granted. The compromised part of Amanda's brain can be duplicated and its circuitry stored in a computer that will, then, transmit a radio signal to replicate the functions of the damaged neurons and synapses, restoring her to life. There is only one catch. In order to accomplish Amanda's revival, Mike must sign a contract with a company called Rivermind, purchasing a subscription that keeps his wife alive but for a fee of $300 per month. Although Mike is a blue collar worker -- he does welding at construction sites -- he doesn't hesitate to sign up for the subscription. (Of course, viewers will recognize this kind of monthly fee subscription as being the business model for Netflix, HBO and so on.) All goes well. But there are some constraints on the service, said to be the "basic" version of the subscription -- Amanda has to remain within the county in order that the signal beamed to her brain remains sufficiently strong to keep her alive. (It's like cell-phone service in which a user can venture into areas in which the signal is to weak to support the service.) After a while, Amanda inexplicably begins to spout commercial messages. During sex, she promotes a lube, for instance, or, while preparing breakfast, recites slogans for a brand of coffee. It turns out that Rivermind has decided to broadcast commercials through its customers. Rivermind also requires Amanda to sleep for more than 12 hours a day, slumber that is not restful because the company has rented out parts of her brain for the use of other customers. The inconveniences can be corrected but only if Mike and Amanda buy an enhanced version of the subscription -- one that is another 800 dollars a month. At this point, the second strand in the narrative comes into play. An obnoxious and puerile co-worker subscribes himself to an internet site in which the users can bid to make a performer commit degrading and painful acts on himself -- it's a variant of the bum fight in which shock jocks paid hobos to fight for money or the sort of antics that formed the basis of the Jackass series of movies. This is the geek show that Mike detests. But, of course, now Mike has to find a way to raise lots of money quick. (Amanda has been fired for blurting out advertisements for faith-based Christian counseling to troubled six year olds in her class). So Mike goes on the web site, called Dum Dummies, or something on that order, abasing himself to earn additional funds. Rivermind keeps upping the charges for the service that preserves Amanda's life. (She's now been told that pregnancy is out of the question because having a child would change her brain chemistry and detract from the company's ability to lease parts of her nervous system when she is supposed to be sleeping.) Rivermind offers Mike and Amanda the equivalent of a heroin fix, that is euphoria for Amanda, to counteract her increasing depression and rage. But this service is so expensive that Mike is driven to increasingly desperate acts of self-torture and degradation to fund services that are necessary for Amanda's continued existence. The viewer can see exactly where this calamitous series of events is leading.
"Common People" is genuinely disquieting because it is so thoroughly nasty. When a co-worker taunts, Mike about a sex act that he performed on himself for the delectation of his internet fans, Mike beats up the kid and pitches him to the ground where he is immediately run over by a forklift. Filmed from a low-angle (that keeps us from seeing anything too gory), we watch the kid scream in pain with the big yellow forklift seemingly cutting him in half. It's extremely disturbing. When poor Mike and Amanda, realizing that they can't have a baby, sell a crib that they have purchased, the buyers turn out to be pale Goth girl and an equally pale kid with many facial piercings. Mike, a nice guy, wishes the couple good luck on their upcoming child. The girl says that they aren't planning to have a child. They are buying the crib so they can set it on fire for a nihilistic music video that they intend to film. (An example of the show's anachronisms -- who makes music videos any more?) Near the end, Amanda pleads with Mike to "not do any more teeth" on Dum Dummies. He agrees, grinning at her, and displaying, incidentally, several prominent gaps in his smile.
Some years ago, I wearied of having expensive Cable TV services that provided me with 100 channels of garbage to watch as opposed to a merely 30. When I tried to cancel some of the subscriptions, I was told that my services were bundled and that it was literally impossible (so the crook on the phone told me) to remove any of them without cancelling the whole service. I said that I was willing to cancel the whole service and, then, was told that this was fine but I would have to pay a sizeable "cancellation fee" -- in effect, paying for six months of the services that I was trying to rid myself of. After about forty minutes on the phone, I abandoned the effort to manage these subscriptions. I probably have a couple hundred more services of this sort right now for which I am paying.
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