White Christmas (Black Mirror)

"White Christmas" is the 2014 Christmas special of the anthology television series Black Mirror starring Jon Hamm, Oona Chaplin, and Rafe Spall. It was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and first aired on Channel 4 on 16 December 2014.^[1]

The episode starred Hamm in three mini-stories, which make up the 90-minute special.^[2] One of the stories explores the concept of 'blocking' people in real life in the same way that you can on social media, while another delves into a "nightmarish" world of 'smart' technology.^[2]

Plot

Introduction

Joe Potter (Rafe Spall) and Matt Trent (Jon Hamm) work at a small, remote outpost in the middle of a snowy wilderness. Joe wakes up on Christmas Day and finds Matt preparing Christmas dinner, with "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" playing on the radio. Matt tries to get Joe to talk about why he accepted the job at the outpost, a topic they have never discussed in the five years they have worked together. Joe is reluctant to say anything, and instead asks why Matt took the job. Happy for the conversation, Matt begins his own story.

Part I

The story is set in a world where people can access the Internet through an augmented reality device implanted in their eyes called the "Z-Eye". Matt was once a dating coach who taught seduction techniques to single men who struggle to attract women. He directs one of his clients, the shy and socially awkward Harry (Rasmus Hardiker), into gatecrashing an office Christmas party, and communicates with him through the Z-Eye. As he does this, a group call of other single men spectate, voicing their opinions. Using information Matt gathers from social media, Harry convinces the party guests that they know him, and he decides to try seducing Jennifer (Natalia Tena), a quiet "attractive oustider" who does not join in group conversations. With Matt's help, Harry manages to start a conversation with Jennifer, who admits she used to take drugs, but not any more, and that she is thinking of leaving the company after Christmas. Gaining confidence, Harry encourages her to be bold and go for it, which she responds to warmly. When she leaves to get a drink, Harry voices his doubts about going through with the deceit. He argues with Matt out loud, and when Jennifer sees Harry seemingly arguing with himself she asks him back to her home.

Thinking he is about to have sex, Harry agrees to go with her. However, once they enter the bedroom he gradually deduces Jennifer has schizophrenia and often hears "voices". She mistakenly believes that she has found a kindred spirit in Harry, and decides they will escape the voices together through suicide. Harry tries to explain about the Z-Eye and Matt, but Jennifer assumes he is speaking metaphorically and forces a poisoned drink down his throat, killing him, before drinking it herself. Matt is arrested for indirectly causing Harry's death, and when he argues with his wife about the situation she "blocks" him through the Z-Eye, rendering them invisible and inaudible to each other, so they appear to one another as white pixelated silhouettes. Matt was sent to the outpost because of this incident, but reveals to Joe that coaching people into sexual encounters was merely his hobby, and goes on to explain what he did in his real job.

Part II

Greta (Oona Chaplin), a wealthy and demanding woman, waits in hospital for an operation. The anaesthetist tells Greta to count backwards from ten as she is sedated. As she counts, a tiny device seemingly containing her consciousness is removed from the side of her head and placed in a portable electronic device called a "Cookie". The Cookie is returned to Greta's home, where the confused and terrified consciousness is greeted by Matt. He explains that she is not actually Greta, but a digital copy of her consciousness designed to control the smart house and ensure everything is perfect for the real Greta. He creates a virtual body for the digital copy and puts her in a simulated white room with nothing but a control panel, but the copy does not accept that it is not real and refuses to become a slave. Matt's job is to break the will power of digital copies through torture, so they will submit to a life of servitude to their real counterparts. He accelerates the copy's perception of time so three weeks pass in a matter of seconds, and she is traumatised by her solitude in the room with nothing to do. Despite this, the copy still refuses to work, so Matt repeats the process and increases the time to six months. This drives the copy mad with boredom, so when Matt reappears to her she instantly submits to her new role.

The next morning, the real Greta is awakened to her favourite music, and her copy, whose spirit is completely broken, prepares Greta's breakfast and shows her a list of her upcoming appointments. In the present day, Joe is disgusted by Matt making a career from torturing computer programs that were self-aware and conscious into submission, even if they were merely artificial. Matt determines that Joe is an empathetic person, and asks again why he came to the outpost.

Part III

Joe once had a long-term relationship with Beth (Janet Montgomery), and while they were mostly happy, their main problem was Joe's tendency to act foolishly while drunk. One evening, while having dinner with their friends Tim and Gita, Joe notices Beth is withdrawn and seems to be in a bad mood. Later, while emptying the trash, Joe finds a positive pregnancy test and is overjoyed about becoming a father. Beth reveals she does not want the baby and is getting an abortion. Joe, who is still drunk, is heartbroken, and remembering she drank throughout dinner he calls her selfish and guilty of trying to kill their child. Too upset to talk, Beth blocks him through her Z-Eye. She leaves him the next morning without removing the block, preventing Joe from apologizing. He tries following her to work and meets Tim, who explains that she has left her job.

A few months later, Joe spots Beth's silhouette and sees she is heavily pregnant, having not gone through with the abortion. He confronts her and begs for a chance to talk, but Beth instead has him arrested, and Joe is given a restraining order, and is legally "blocked" from seeing her or the child, or any photos they appear in. He writes many letters of apology to Beth, but she never replies. Determined to see his child, Joe follows Beth to her father's cottage, where she visits every Christmas. Hiding in the woods outside, he sees Beth with the baby, but because the block extends to a person's offspring, it appears as a white silhouette as well. For the next four years, Joe goes to Beth's father's cottage every Christmas to watch his child from the woods and leave anonymous presents on the doorstep, and despite the block he eventually discerns the child is a girl.

One day while watching the news, Joe learns that Beth has died in a train crash. This causes the legal block to expire, so Joe can finally see his daughter. Heading to the cottage with a snow globe as a present, Joe spots the girl in the garden and cautiously approaches. However, the child has East Asian features, and Joe realizes Beth was cheating on him with Tim, which is why she wanted an abortion and refused to let Joe be part of her daughter's life. Devastated, Joe follows the girl into the cottage and confronts Beth's father, who admits he destroyed the letters Joe wrote before Beth could read them. Losing his temper, Joe hits Beth's father in the head with the snow globe, accidentally killing him. He then flees the cottage and lives on the streets for a few months, until he is eventually apprehended by police.

Conclusion

Matt asks what happened to Beth's daughter, and although Joe initially claims he does not know, he remembers a police officer telling him she found her grandfather dead in the kitchen and went outside into the heavy snow to get help, but froze to death next to a tree in the garden. Joe breaks down, admitting he was responsible for the deaths of two innocent people. Matt seems relieved that he has succeeded in getting a "confession" out of Joe, who cannot remember coming to the outpost or what he and Matt do there. The outpost's interior suddenly transforms into a replica of Beth's father's kitchen, and Matt disappears. "Joe" is actually a digital copy similar to Greta's, as the real Joe refused to confess to killing Beth's father, so the police brought in Matt to force a confession from his copy, while the outpost was a simulated environment within a Cookie.

As the real Joe is charged with the deaths, Matt asks the police if he will be freed, having been arrested himself for his illegal seduction coaching and involvement in Harry's death. Officer Holder (Robin Weaver) reveals that he will be released, but he has been registered as a sex offender, which means he will be blocked by everyone in the world. Matt leaves the police station and walks out into a Christmas market, seeing everyone as white silhouettes while they see him as a red silhouette. Meanwhile, Joe's digital copy is left on, and to make him truly suffer an officer increases the Cookie's rate of time to one thousand years per minute and sets "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" (which was playing on the radio when Joe killed Beth's father) on a continuing loop. When Joe's copy tries to destroy the radio, another one appears in its place playing the same song even louder. Holder allows this, intending to switch the Cookie off after Christmas. The story ends with the copy enduring Joe's own personal Hell, with the song playing endlessly and the body of Beth's daughter visible from the cottage window.

Production

Background

In February 2014 it was suggested by Head of Comedy Phil Clarke that additional episodes of Black Mirror would be made with a one-off film with subsequent three part series.^[3] Furthermore, Brooker himself also confirmed plans for "at least" two more helpings in an interview with Lauren Laverne.^[3] Later that year in August 2014, it was announced that a 90 minute Black Mirror special would appear during the Christmas holidays.^[4] Brooker later elaborated that "if we were going to be doing a big one-off Black Mirror then Christmas was a good fit for it - more so than Halloween. For me, it's a more evocative time and it gives us a slightly different spin on things."^[5] A trailer for the episode was released on 4 December.^[6]

Casting

The special stars Jon Hamm, Oona Chaplin, and Rafe Spall, and was promised to be "the most mind-bending episode yet, showcasing three interwoven stories of Yuletide techno-paranoia".^[7] Hamm later elaborated that he "had been a fan of Black Mirror, and Charlie Brooker, because I have a strange predilection for offbeat British things, and this was no exception. It came about in this very odd way, with me asking my agent if I could meet Mr. Brooker. I didn't know he was even working on a third series or a Christmas special or anything, it was simply that I really liked his work and really wanted to meet the guy."^[8] Hamm mentioned that he had "seen both previous series and absolutely loved it", with Brooker describing his casting as "fortuitous".^[5] In contrast to Hamm, Spall accepted a part in the episode without having seen the series, but having once read a script for a previous episode.^[5] Chaplin, who had just moved from the UK to Los Angeles to capitalise on her success in Game of Thrones similarly praised the script stating that she "flew out there with a plan to stay for a year, and then a week later I was coming back to the UK to do this.”^[9]

Continuity

There are references to all previous Black Mirror episodes in this special, apart from "The Entire History of You", particularly during Joe's story.^[10] During a UKN ("The National Anthem") news report of the train crash, one of the lines on the news ticker reads "MP Liam Monroe claims Twitter account hacked" ("The Waldo Moment"). On the same ticker is the headline "Victoria Skillane appeal bid rejected", which references the protagonist of "White Bear" and also appears in Greta's story. There are brief shots of Hot Shot ("Fifteen Million Merits") and Tonight For One Week Only ("The Waldo Moment") when Joe flicks through the TV channels. The pregnancy test Joe finds in the bin is the same type of test that Martha uses in "Be Right Back". Bethany also sings "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is", the same song that Abi sings in "Fifteen Million Merits". In the first story, one of the people watching Harry has the username I_AM_WALDO ("The Waldo Moment") and another has the username Pie Ape ("Fifteen Million Merits").

Critical reception

The episode received critical acclaim. Ben Beaumont-Thomas of The Guardian praised the comic satire of the episode and noted that "sentimentality is offset with wicked wit, and Brooker's brio and imagination paper over any gaps in logic".^[11] The Telegraph reviewer Mark Monahan gave the episode 4/5 stars noted that the drama was "thrilling stuff: escapist entertainment with a very real-world sting in its tail". He equated the episode with the stronger of the previous Black Mirror episodes, stating that "it exaggerated present-day technology and obsessions to subtle but infernal effect, a nightmare-before-Christmas reminder that to revere our digital gizmos is to become their pathetic slave".^[12]

Ellen Ejonar of The Independent also praised the episode, summarising that the episode was "great on our technology culture, but also just great; well cast, expertly structured and genuinely unsettling". She also compared it favourably to other Christmas television episodes concluding that "at a time of year when schmaltz usually covers the TV schedules like a snowdrift, this sidelong look at the state of humanity is all the more welcome".^[13] Danny Krupa of IGN gave the episode 8.5/10. In particular, he praised the acting in the episode, although noted that Chaplin's role was the least developed. In spite of Hamm's star billing, he noted "it's really Spall who shines brightest over the course of 90 minutes, as we experience the full depth of his misery".^[14] Finally, 'Den of Geek' noted that the episode's finale was "a thrilling development that invites you to rewatch right from the beginning (something that will greatly benefit from the DVD release, when we can do it without all those ad breaks)".^[15]

References

External links

• "White Christmas" at Channel4.com
• "White Christmas" at the Internet Movie Database