Ranked as the highest-rated episode of the British series Black Mirror and echoing several preceding episodes of Black Mirror, “San Junipero” carries the theme of generating simulated avatars of actual individuals. While S2E1 and S2E4 carry the motif of a digital afterlife, and S1E3 dwelled on a digitally enhanced memory device that allowed re-creation of the past, with a persistent manifestation of a digital déjà vu, “San Junipero” offers hope for eternal love in a romanticized vision of the 1980s—deposited and replicated in a computer of the future. Taking a departure from the genre of dystopian science fiction of the earlier episodes, “ San Junipero” offers an optimistic foray into the ability of technology to eventuate the postmodern dream of immortality by simulating a synthetic paradise.
Built on a premise that dwells on sexuality (LGBTQ), mortality (euthanasia ) and virtual reality (simulation of Yorkie and Kelly’s afterlife in San Junipero), this episode of Black Mirror, “San Junipero” opens into 1980s party town, where not only the living elderly can visit but the deceased can have a simulated afterlife. The main character, Yorkie, a tall blond girl in her twenties, meets Kelly an African-American party girl who t appears to have been enjoying in abandon. After the plot unfolds, it is revealed that the two protagonists are avatars of two much older women that connect to the simulation of San Junipero every weekend. While Kelly is evasive of forming deeper bonds and romantic involvement, Yorkie happens to be scrutinizing this place if this idyllic locale can be a fitting hereafter for her. This disparity in the two characters’ attitudes to San Junipero suggests the range of aspirations of the visitors and the inhabitants of the city. As this love story further unfurls in the social milieu of the 1980s , it is seen that the town is colonized by two categories of inhabitants: a) the departed who have uploaded their memories to some portal to be consciously aware and present in a virtually simulated reality, and b) the ailing and elderly who stopover for some time every weekend for an ‘immersive nostalgia therapy’ before their death through a neural prosthetic device to see if they like it or not.The rest of the episode focuses on the development of the love story of the two protagonists as they battle the social and personal impediments to be together. The featured song in the beginning and the ending of the episode, “ Heaven is the Place on Earth “ by Belinda Carlisle, determines the time and becomes a promise of a happily ever after in a digitally realized heaven.
Mind uploading or Whole-brain Emulation (WBE) is an idea credited to G.M. Martin, a gerontologist. In his article of 1971, “A brief proposal on immortality: An interim solution” he hypothesized this concept as a remedy against the terminal diseases resulting in death. To Martin and other gerontologists, the prospects of developing the technology of mind-uploading were future tools to fight against dementia, aging, and death. However, for the pop culture and media studies, such discourses afforded by modern-day science fiction link with the very old human desire for immortality.
In one of the assigned readings of the week , Chapter 3 of “Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice.” , Eymen (2015) presents a dichotomy between close reading and distant reading. Reading closely into the multi-modal discourse comprising of linguistic and semiotic features in San Junipero, the nuances of social anachronisms of affordances and acceptability of same-sex marriage could be deciphered even in the featured song and the amalgamation of the skyscapes of California and San Junipero in the final scenes. Applying the understanding of close reading to San Junipero refers to Moretti’s (2000) definition of “distant reading” that looks upon the ” devices, themes, tropes—or genres and systems” of a text would make us deconstruct the similar motifs of simulated avatars of digital persona running through several episodes of Black Mirror.
Furthermore, I found Amazon Prime’s 10-episode first season of Upload ,which was released on May 1, 2020, to be a close cousin of SJ. The protagonist of Upload is a coder, who gets into a car crash and instead of dying , gets uploaded to a suave internet afterlife , called Lake View. However, while in SJ , the dwellers of afterlife have the agency of opting for what avatar they would like to style themselves as, the inhabitants of Lake View don not have fair chances of equal propriety for everyone. This is what, which has been termed as “the Hell of the Digital Heaven” by an article in The Atlantic , sets the two plots apart.
If such a future gets to be materialized and lived, what may be the ethical implications of those who believe in the ideology of an actual life after death which offers a promise of retribution and reward?
References:
Eyman, D. (2015). Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice. ANN ARBOR: University of Michigan Press.
Martin, G.M. (1971). A brief proposal on immortality: An interim solution. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. 14(2): 339
The Half-baked Philosopher 