Black Mir­ror ​‘Nose­dive’ review – A dark spin on a mod­ern-day Pleasantville

Con­fi­dence is a fun­ny thing these days. Many of us no longer rely on our own ideas of what con­sti­tutes self-worth and hap­pi­ness because we are too busy try­ing to keep up with the stan­dards set out by a medi­um that has quick­ly spawned a whole new gen­er­a­tion of nar­cis­sists: the inter­net and, most par­tic­u­lar­ly, social media. Our self-worth now seems to be depen­dent on the num­ber of ​“likes” we get on our online gal­leries and storytelling.

We may have had a great night out danc­ing and laugh­ing in the com­pa­ny of friends, but to many, these mem­o­ries lose all mean­ing unless they have been cap­tured, pub­lished and ​“approved” of by the rest of the world. This has led us to lead two sep­a­rate lives; our real lives, with all the good, bad and non-smil­ing ugly days, and our online lives, the staged, flaw­less lives we want every­one to see, admire and envy through hazy Insta­gram-fil­ters. Upload­ing pho­tos to Insta­gram and tak­ing self­ies in gen­er­al has become an art-form which every­one around us is try­ing to per­fect by pos­ing in weird, awk­ward angles in the hope of boost­ing their self-esteem. By get­ting oth­ers to believe in our glam­orous exis­tence, per­haps we can fool our­selves into believ­ing we real­ly are liv­ing the life – at least by social media’s standards.

‘Nose­dive’, the first episode of Black Mirror’s sea­son three, takes this famil­iar approach to life to the next lev­el. Imag­ine a type of mod­ern-day Pleas­antville where every­one greets each oth­er, smiles are bestowed on you in abun­dance and no one ever speaks ill of each oth­er. Every­one moves through life polite­ly and respect­ful­ly and, should a prob­lem ever arise, it is dealt with in a pas­sive-aggres­sive man­ner. Sin­cer­i­ty has become a thing of the past, for an hon­est com­ment or a sar­cas­tic remark may quick­ly lead to your num­bers dwin­dling. Yes, in the world of ​‘Nose­dive’ peo­ple are mere num­bers: the more ​“likes” they score, the high­er their sta­tus in society.

Con­stant­ly con­nect­ed to their mobile phones via reti­nal implants, it only takes one look at anoth­er per­son to see what their rat­ing is. This rat­ing is based on real-life inter­ac­tions and the pic­tures peo­ple post online: the wider your smile, the pret­ti­er your hair and the nicer your pho­to-fil­ters, the high­er you rank. If you’re above a 4.5, you can get into any exclu­sive club or res­i­dence you want; fan­cy cars are yours for the tak­ing and you get dibs on stand-by seats on com­mer­cial flight. Drop any­where below a 3.5 and you’re treat­ed like scum – you’ll be sad­dled with bust­ed-up used cars and will have a hard time con­vinc­ing oth­ers to be seen with you.

Lac­ie (Bryce Dal­las Howard) is an ambi­tious young woman who has set her eyes on an apart­ment in a pres­ti­gious lifestyle com­plex. It’s dis­gust­ing­ly expen­sive and nau­se­at­ing­ly super­fi­cial, but her mind is made up. She must become a res­i­dent here in order to reach the con­tent­ed­ness she has been striv­ing for all along. There’s just one prob­lem: she’s a 4.3 and the com­plex only accepts 4.5 res­i­dents. But Lac­ie is opti­mistic. With the help of an ana­lyt­ic coach who schools her in all the pos­si­ble ways she can reach a 4.5 in a short peri­od of time, she believes she can make it hap­pen. All she needs to do is befriend peo­ple with a high­er rat­ing; once they engage with her, a rat­ing from them can auto­mat­i­cal­ly boost hers.

Hav­ing always held on to a qui­et obses­sion with her for­mer child­hood friend Naomie (Alice Eve) – a shal­low pud­dle with a sol­id 4.7 – whom she fre­quent­ly stalks online, she fig­ures it may not hurt to reach out to her. To Lacie’s delight, Naomie calls her and asks her to be maid of hon­our at her wed­ding. With the wed­ding guest-list being made up of a hoard of exclu­sives, it’s the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty for Lac­ie to get her rat­ing up by impress­ing them with her speech – the con­tent of which doesn’t actu­al­ly come from a place of truth, but des­per­a­tion. But en-route to the wed­ding, her rat­ing con­tin­ues to drop, caus­ing a lot of hic­cups along the way.

Although this episode is on the sur­face of things some­what ​“pleas­ant” com­pared to the oth­er visions of an imper­son­al future await­ing you in Black Mirror’s third sea­son, it is still a hard, emo­tion­al slap in the face. While most of Char­lie Brooker’s work focus­es on futur­is­tic ​“what ifs”, ​‘Nose­dive’ is a pas­tel-coloured con­fir­ma­tion of a ife we are all blind­ly mov­ing towards. We have come to depend on the fact that our online lives are editable – our speech, our appear­ance, our psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being – but it is impos­si­ble to keep up this cha­rade offline, unless your goal in life is to lose all sense of self. The line between ​“keep­ing up appear­ances” and ​“hon­our­ing your true self” is becom­ing increas­ing­ly blurred in this day and age, and ​‘Nose­dive’ aims to warn you of the repercussions.

Whether ​‘Nose­dive’ has a hap­py end­ing or not may be debat­able for some but, this writer would glad­ly spend the rest of my days offline and in a prison cell, if it meant being able to be myself and speak my unfil­tered truths, no mat­ter how un-pret­ty. And Lac­ie feels the same.