What's The Work[]
Black Mirror is a netflix series that has the central focus on bringing up potential problems that can come with futuristic technologies. In this episode, it focuses on how virtual technology can faciliate racism.
Who is the Candidate? What They Did?[]
Arquette is a military psychologist and a massive supporter of the MASS system, which at first seems to bee a military technology to advance soldier's skills to protect it's people from parasitic monsters. However, the true intention of the entire operation, and what Arquette supports, is to eradicate people from other ethnicities that Arquette consideres to be inferior. The "Masses", which are basically computer chips planted in the brain, makes the soldiers see them as literal monsters so that they won't hesitate in pulling the trigger.
When our protagonist called Stripe discovers the truth, Arquette claims that the innocent people that they are killing have "so much shit in their DNA" and he has no problem with manipulating soldiers and send them out to massacre them. When Stripe gets angry and tries to attack, Arquette controls his mind with a remote and plays his memory of when he killed several humans for him, but this time the monster-filter is removed and he sees them in their true forms as humans that he was brutally killing, which he cannot ignore. Stripe falls on the floor feeling ill out of guilt, and Arquette tells Stripe that he can either chose between having his memory of the last three days erased from his mind and continue to kill, OR he will be sent to an isolation with his memory of killing innocents being constantly repeated in his mind. Stripe had no choice but to go option one.
Freudian Excuse/Mitigating Factors[]
None. Not that we know of. He has no problem with having a ton of innocents killed because of their ethnicities simply because he thinks of them as inferior, and implanting chips in soldiers brains to think of them as monsters so they will think that they are killing dangerous creatures.
Heinous Standard[]
Black Mirror has indeed a high standard, where the worst kind of villains mind-rapes their victims in some way. Such as Rolo Haynes (imprisoning peoples minds and cloning people just to torture them) and Robert Daly (making digital, yet sentient copies of people that he can enslave and put into an eternal torture if he wants to). Arquette stands out as he makes innocent people look like monsters so soldiers won't feel guilt out of killing them, and he crossed the MEH when he plays stripes memory of killing innocents for him, and threatens to play it on a loop in isolation if he doesn't agree to continue his mission.
Final Verdict[]
Thoughts?