A couple of days ago I came across a reference to Black Mirror, a program which channel four broadcast on Saturday evening. I had wanted to watch it when it first aired, but I’d missed it for some reason. However, the next day I saw someone on the all-knowing, all-seeing book of face slagging it off; he gave quite a lengthy account – for Facebook anyway – of why he disliked this program, including sentences like ” It is ultimately a programme that treats the viewer with contempt. Showing a Prime Minister of Britain explicitly having an orgasm with a pig on a national broadcasting channel isn’t avant-garde cinema – it’s disturbing. It’s not clever – it’s grotesque. It’s not reducing my levels of ‘prejudice’ – it’s repulsive. It’s not gritty – it’s immoral.” Reactions like this automatically raise my shackles; they seem narrow-minded and judgemental. They usually come from people on the right of the political spectrum, who, lets face it, aren’t my favourite sort of people at the best of time. There and then I entered into a Facebook argument, but it wasn’t until this evening that I got round to watching the program itself.

And now that I have , the review I read seems infinitely more ridiculous. It is a very interesting program about the relationship between government, traditional media and new online media, and their manipulation. Basically someone kidnaps a princess and posts a video onto youtube stating that she will be killed unless a video I posted showing thee prim minister fucking a pig. Clearly that would never and could never happen in reality, and the film is quite absurd on man levels. But when I heard that, I realised it was deliberately absurd and in fact quite irrelevant because of it. The programme is about media manipulation and how the online world has changed it’s dynamic; in away I could almost call it Lacanian. Charie Brooker, the producer, chose to make the PM fuck a pig because of it’s depravity and absurdity, mirroring the depravity and absurdity of the online world; it was probably the most depraved obscene random act he could think of. Thus it was just a symbol through which he could deliver his message about modern life, so for some people to call the film vulgar strikes me as hilarious. In fact the act itself is not shown, although one of the greatest touches off the film is that the entire country comes to a halt to watch the event, which, as per the kidnappers demand, is being broadcast live on tv on all channels. For someone to damn this film on grounds that is immoral is to greatly miss it’s point. It is about a ‘what if’ scenario, which the audience and director acknowledge would never happen, but which Brooker uses to explore certain issues. That is what art should do, and the conservative prudes should stay away if they don’t understand or have nothing sensible to contribute to the debate.