Nosedive (Black Mirror)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Many critics noted the similarity of the Nosedive (2016) episode to real world app Peeple and China's upcoming Social Credit System, along with fictional works about social media with themes of gender and obsession with image."--Sholem Stein |
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"Nosedive" is the first episode of the third series of the British science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. Michael Schur and Rashida Jones wrote the teleplay for the episode, based on a story by series creator and co-showrunner Charlie Brooker, while Joe Wright acted as director. It premiered on Netflix on 21 October 2016, alongside the rest of the third series.
The episode is set in a world where people can rate each other from one to five stars for every interaction they have, and which can impact their socioeconomic status. Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a young woman overly obsessed with her ratings and is chosen by her popular childhood friend (Alice Eve) as the maid of honour for her wedding. On her journey, several mishaps with different people begin a rapid reduction in her ratings.
Since the programme's move to Netflix, the episode was given a much larger budget, with a different style based on pastel aesthetics. Brooker wrote an outline for the episode, then Schur wrote the former half of the episode and Jones wrote the latter. Production was undertaken much similar to a short film; "Nosedive" was filmed in South Africa, with Seamus McGarvey as director of photography and Joel Collins as the production designer. The tone of the episode is less bleak and more comedic than other Black Mirror episodes, with the ending significantly more positive than the programme's prior two series.
The episode has received mainly positive reviews and is middling in critics' lists of Black Mirror episodes, qualitatively. The pastel aesthetics have been widely praised, along with Max Richter's soundtrack and Howard's performance. A criticism for several reviewers was the episode's predictability and ending, though the script and comedic undertones were praised by some. Many critics noted the similarity of the episode to real world app Peeple and China's upcoming Social Credit System, along with fictional works about social media with themes of gender and obsession with image. The episode was nominated for several awards, including a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Howard and a Primetime Emmy Awards nomination for McGarvey.
Plot
Society uses a technology where, through eye implants and mobile devices, everyone shares their daily activities and rates their interactions with others on a one-to-five star scale, which affects that person's overall rating. One's current average can be seen by others and has significant influence on their socioeconomic status.
Lacie Pound (Bryce Dallas Howard) currently has a 4.2 rating, seeking to reach 4.5 for a discount to a luxury apartment; however, her attempts to be an outgoing and pleasant socialite do little to help. She lives with brother Ryan, who is not interested in ratings. Lacie talks to a consultant who suggests gaining favour from very highly-rated people, as they have larger impacts on scores. Lacie takes a photograph of Mr. Rags, a teddy bear that she and childhood friend, the now highly-rated Naomi (Alice Eve), made together. She is pleased when Naomi rates the photo five stars and calls her, saying that she is engaged. Lacie agrees to deliver a speech as the maid of honour, hoping it will boost her rating to above 4.5. Lacie then commits on the luxury apartment.
On the day of her flight, Lacie gets into a disagreement with Ryan, missing her ride, and runs into a passerby who spills their coffee. The two rate her negatively, dropping her below 4.2. At the airport, her flight is cancelled and she cannot buy a seat with her current rating. Lacey causes a scene, where security intervenes and subtracts a full point for a period of 24 hours, as well as doubling the effect of subsequent negative ratings against her. Because of her low rating, Lacie can only rent an older car to drive to the wedding, causing her to miss Naomi's rehearsal dinner. She cannot recharge the car when it runs out of power, and is forced to hitchhike; she rides with Susan (Cherry Jones), a truck driver rated below a 2.0. Susan tells Lacie that she used to care about her rating, once a 4.6, until her late husband was passed over for vital cancer treatment for a person a tenth above his rating; she feels much freer without obsessing over ratings.
The next day, while Lacie is en route to the wedding via RV, Naomi tells her to not come, as her severely reduced rating will negatively impact her own ratings. Enraged, Lacie manages to get to the site of the wedding and sneak in during the celebratory dinner. She grabs the microphone and starts giving the speech she had written but starts becoming dangerously upset, at one point grabbing a knife and threatening to behead Mr. Rags. By this point, the guests have rated Lacie negatively, so her rating has dropped to zero. Security comes and secures Lacie. She is taken to prison, the technology supporting the rating system removed from her eyes, and placed in a cell. She gets into an argument with a man in a separate cell (Sope Dirisu), also stripped of the rating hardware, and both realise how freeing it is to speak without worrying about being rated.
