Black Mirror’s season 3, episode 1, “Nosedive,” eerily reflects our society and the numerous ranking systems we have in place.
This episode follows the main character, Lacie, as she falls victim to the obsession her society has with ranking one another. They live everyday tethered to a number that determines their value and how they can live their life. Through every interaction Lacie or another character has with someone, they would rank them, which would in turn affect their overall rank out of 5. We obviously don’t have this exact system set in place in our society, but it was interesting and scary to see how certain things in this episode can reflect what our society will become.
From the beginning I found a problem with how minorities were being treated and depicted in “Nosedive.” The first Black character that appeared in the episode was ranked low, and also happened to be gay. He was at work trying to get people to rank him higher but no one seemed to care about his predicament. This contrasted with Lacie, whom we got to see how much her rank dropping impacted her life as a white woman. But how was the Black, gay coworker impacted by his rank dropping? We saw how he was socially isolated in his working environment, but that was it.
Something else that I noticed was the next interaction Lacie had with a Black character– a high ranked woman named Tamara. Tamara ranked Lacie low after she accidentally spilled coffee on her when she was rushing to catch her flight. This could be a stretch, but I just feel like the whole interaction played into the “angry black woman” stereotype.
To continue, the episode dramatized the way a person’s value is determined by a number, but it was still very relevant to our society. The first ranking system that came to mind when I was watching this episode was the GPA ranking system I had at my high school. To give y’all some context, at the end of every marking period at my high school, we would get our GPA’s and ranks. The higher your GPA, the higher you were ranked in your class. I graduated with being 5 out of about 600 students in my class, and I can vividly remember how mentally and emotionally draining it was trying to maintain my rank. It added an unnecessary amount of competitiveness and classism that school should not have! I thought my intellect was measured by this number and I had the mindset that if I would drop out of the top 5, I wouldn’t get into a good college.
This pressure to maintain a number so people would view me how I wanted them to view me were the same pressures Lacie felt throughout the episode. She wasn’t living for herself. She was living for the validation and approval of other people. When this was gone, it was like she had nothing else to determine her value, hence is why she had a mental breakdown at the wedding.
This is why I stress self validation and self love so much; because when everything else is gone, how secure your are with yourself will determine if you’ll be able to pull through or not.
Also their value of their ranking system in the episode is a demonstration of how superficial our society can get if we continue to let other people’s opinions guide our lives. When Lacie was video calling her childhood “best friend” it was funny but also interesting to see how everything she did was staged. She was in the middle of doing yoga, when Lacie answered her video call, and Lacie threw a blanket over her shirt to cover up her stain. I also couldn’t tell if Lacie’s day to day interactions with people were genuine or not. She was constantly maintaining a pleasant facade when she was ranked in the 4.0’s. She even went as far as getting a life coach and talking to certain people to try to improve her rank.
How far do you think people will go today for the validation of other people?
I’ve personally seen people go as far as post certain pictures on social media and buy certain materialistic items, so that other people would see them as “well off.” The way Lacie and people in our society try to appear wealthier than they are portrays the mental impact that classim is having on people. We continually strive to look the part and conform so we can fit in.
The final scene in the episode greatly represents the way society treats people who don’t hold the majority view. When Lacie voices her opinion about the ranking system at the wedding, she is taken to prison, and the technology supporting the rating system is removed from her eyes. Just as they did to Lacie, our society ostracizes people who don’t follow the status quo and breaks away from social norms.
Despite her being in prison, it was evident that she gained a new found freedom once the rating system was removed from her eyes. She and the prisoner across from her were yelling random insults at each other because they realized that the rating system no longer dictated their lives.
Think about the type of liberation we could feel if we stopped seeking validation from other people and started living our truth like Lacie.
In Black and Write 