Black Mir­ror: Ban­der­snatch is a bril­liant, urgent com­ment on men­tal illness

The con­stant inven­tive­ness of Char­lie Brooker’s Black Mir­ror has tak­en it from small-scale Chan­nel 4 anthol­o­gy series to the inter­na­tion­al plat­form of Net­flix. So when the show’s lat­est stand­alone episode, Ban­der­snatch, was released as the first main­stream piece of inter­ac­tive sto­ry­telling, it wasn’t exact­ly a shock to the system.

As we’ve come to expect from Black Mir­ror, its bit­ter­sweet per­spec­tive is brac­ing­ly rel­e­vant to the times we are liv­ing in – where any sense of con­trol is hard won. Yet what is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing about Ban­der­snatch isn’t the inter­ac­tive ele­ment itself but rather how it allows the audi­ence to expe­ri­ence the cen­tral character’s men­tal illness.

One com­mon symp­tom of psy­chosis can be los­ing con­trol of one’s body, expe­ri­enc­ing black outs where you’re unable to recall your behav­iour after the fact. By putting us ​“in con­trol” of Stefan’s (Fionn White­head) actions, we are effec­tive­ly assum­ing the role of his psy­chosis. This is some­thing Ste­fan comes to realise over the course of the episode – in some sto­ry­lines he direct­ly address­es the audi­ence, accus­ing us of com­pound­ing his mania. But can forc­ing view­ers into this posi­tion alter the way we look at men­tal illness?

Ban­der­snatch could be accused of rein­forc­ing cer­tain neg­a­tive stereo­types, as so often in film and tele­vi­sion a char­ac­ter suf­fer­ing from some form of psy­chosis seems to be always on the verge of com­mit­ting mur­der. In this respect, Black Mir­ror is no dif­fer­ent: Ste­fan is depict­ed seen as dan­ger­ous at best; mur­der­ous at worst.

Yet the par­tic­i­pa­to­ry nature of Ban­der­snatch has the poten­tial to expand view­ers’ under­stand­ing of how men­tal ill­ness works, and how it can affect a per­son. In short, it makes you think. And not in a throw­away, empa­thy-dri­ven-tragedy man­ner, but – through the show’s choose-your-own-adven­ture struc­ture – actu­al engage­ment with the real­i­ties of liv­ing with men­tal ill­ness. Being asked to con­sid­er the con­se­quences of Stefan’s actions will bring many view­ers clos­er to men­tal ill­ness than ever before. This lev­el of asso­ci­a­tion alone may pro­voke a change in the audience’s point of view.

The act of tak­ing away Stefan’s auton­o­my, too, shows how men­tal ill­ness often dri­ves peo­ple to act in ways they would not choose to while well. We are not giv­en any specifics regard­ing Stefan’s con­di­tion, only that he los­es con­trol of his body, takes med­ica­tion dai­ly and sees a psy­chother­a­pist. Yet loss of autonomous thought is expe­ri­enced by peo­ple with a wide range of diag­noses, and so by being vague the show actu­al­ly becomes more relat­able to a gen­er­al audience.

The struc­ture of Ban­der­snatch forces the view­er to hasti­ly think up con­nec­tions between dif­fer­ent events, in order to make choic­es which fur­ther the sto­ry. One of the key fea­tures of psy­chosis is see­ing con­nec­tions between events where, in real­i­ty, there are none. This para­noia is exag­ger­at­ed in cer­tain sto­ry­lines, lead­ing Ste­fan and us to a pos­si­ble con­spir­a­cy. We expe­ri­ence this process along­side our increas­ing­ly unsta­ble protagonist.

As some­one who lives with men­tal ill­ness, Ban­der­snatch res­onat­ed on a num­ber of lev­els, and I found myself obses­sive­ly exhaust­ing every sto­ry­line in an attempt to become absorbed in its intri­ca­cies for as long as pos­si­ble. I will be watch­ing it again and again. I hope the things which I found so relat­able will help those who have nev­er expe­ri­enced psy­chosis to under­stand what it is like in an entire­ly new way.