Black Mirror is, by a significant margin, my favourite TV show. It’s an anthology in the vein of classic sci-fi spookfest The Twilight Zone, with each episode positing a different (usually nightmarish) near future.
In that respect, it’s sci-fi at its finest. The star of each episode isn’t necessarily the characters (although these are often sublime) but the idea. It’s a show of endless what-ifs.
It’s also suffused with sex.
It makes sense that it would be – sex is one of the most elemental parts of being human. As technology and culture change, so too will sex and the ways we relate to each other. Sex in the future is going to look very different from sex today.
Perhaps the way we fuck will become primarily virtual, like the at-first-tremulous relationship which underpins series three episode “San Junipero“?
It’s already common for people to meet the love of their life in a virtual world instead of the real one. When that virtual world feels real, will it matter any more what we look like, what gender we are, what our physical bodies want or do not want?
If “San Junipero” poses these questions, “Striking Vipers” from season five seems to answer them… and the answer is no. It won’t matter, in this virtual-first future, what we look like or what we have between our legs.
It certainly doesn’t matter to the protagonist of “Striking Vipers”, who finds significant pleasure in fucking his straight best friend in the body of a virtual woman.
Other episodes exaggerate current dating trends to an absurd (but frighteningly believable) degree. What if someone more adept at seduction than you could feed you instructions through an invisible earpiece? What if you could mash together a thousand virtual versions of yourself and your prospective partner and see how it all might end before you even begin?
What if you could rate everyone you met on a scale of one to five, boyfriends and girlfriends included?
Even the episodes that aren’t directly “about” sex ask intriguing questions with no easy answer. Does blurring out the things which distress us lead to healthier and happier relationships? Is a robot that fucks like your lover the same as your lover? And what do we owe the virtual versions of ourselves?
Is it okay, for example, to use them to fulfil our fantasies, or service our houses?
I don’t have the answers to these questions. Nobody does. Not even Black Mirror. But getting an answer isn’t the point of good sci-fi. Good sci-fi presents us with a petri dish incubating a single potent idea, and then allows us to decide for ourselves what kind of future we want to be a part of.
Sex is changing, and Black Mirror is a TV show that offers us a multitude of visions of what it might change into. Go watch it.
It’s a great series, (and San Junipero makes me weep everytime!)
I really enjoyed reading your take on the future-sex elements of the series.
Thanks! San Junipero is one of my favourite episodes. It’s such a slow burn before you get to the Black Mirror-esque part, but that just makes it more surreal when it comes.
Damn, I absolutely love Black Mirror. I have not seen San Junipero yet. I really liked Ashley O, not just because I would love to fuck Miley Cyrus, but because it was a good story. Of course then, I have liked every one I’ve seen. On a similar note, have you seen Velvet Buzzsaw?
San Junipero is definitely worth a watch. Loved Ashley O too – although the two episodes are polar opposites in terms of mood. I haven’t seen Velvet Buzzsaw, but it’s now on my list of things to watch!