The highly anticipated, recently released full-length interactive film from the makers of the provocative and disturbing British sci-fi television series Black Mirror, Bandersnatch, is a failure in many ways. It’s a confusingly, convolutedly, frustratingly, and unnecessarily complicated plot wrapped up in an innovative but disappointing format, where viewers have to make random and only occasionally influential decisions toward the fate of its pitiful main character and his damn video game, ranging from “what kind of cereal do you want him to eat?” to “do you want him to kill his dad?”. The essence of Black Mirror (and thus, Bandersnatch) wouldn’t exist without a slice of American pop culture from 60 years before, a little something called The Twilight Zone, which, in its heyday, couldn’t ever have dreamed of achieving such a high-tech form of digital entertainment. But unfortunately, for better or, more expectedly, for worse, Jordan Peele of Get Out fame has decided to reboot a series which the rest of television history owes so much to, all too much to my chagrin.
They are two anthology shows from opposite sides of the pond with episodes of far-reaching but similar genre, embracing and defying tropes of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and realism in a kaleidoscope of different emotions and environments. Episodes can be extremely dark and quasi-depressive or lighthearted softcore suffering, and morals are abundant in The Twilight Zone, but often overshadowed by violence and complexity in Black Mirror. The former is narrated, simply and stunningly, and the latter creates independent narratives very, very open to interpretation. Black Mirror ultimately began in 2011 as a contemporary spiritual successor to Rod Serling’s 1960s masterpiece of masterpieces, and would exist today in a wildly different form if not for everything that its predecessor carved out for the future of television, cinema, and literature throughout its five years of unstable – yet remarkable – exploration of Americana.
When The Twilight Zone originally aired in 1959, it became a cultural phenomenon immediately. Always artistically innovative, and almost always politically incorrect, it was canceled several times and faced countless issues regarding copyright lawsuits, product placement woes, and sociopolitical “insensitivity” as it made its way through uncharted territories of visuals, plot twists, pacing, and thrills, paving the way to a brave new world of parable in film and a “forever” iconic status so many decades later. Black Mirror, on the other hand, even with its share of allegory and fable, is much less socially controversial than it is personally disturbing. Serling forced the postwar American public to question their thoughts and values on war and pacifism as Vietnam encroached, realize the bigotry and hatred fueling racism while foreshadowing the tempestuous victory of civil rights in the years to come, and to expose and analyze the evolution of human nature, where we’ve been and where we’re going, giving viewers moments of relatable clarity in between serious warnings of the destruction ahead of them if unheeded.
Charlie Brooker, the creator of Black Mirror, places more emphasis on the bleak future for the individual, honing in on very specific elements of physical harm, technological obsession, and emotional decay within whatever dystopian landscape has been cooked up per episode. Both are valid approaches to shocking the public enough to at least get them questioning the status quo, but Serling was able to develop something that all could consistently find an aspect of to understand or ponder, even, or especially, when offended, whereas Brooker can easily alienate those who do not agree with or have never experienced what his characters and stories represent. I question what Black Mirror’s legacy will be 60 years from now because of this: appropriately famous/infamous for what it could and could not achieve within its medium, definitely, but not necessarily emotionally or sociopolitically resonant or relevant at all. At the very least, the proud, bitter veterans yelling at The Twilight Zone will still have something to yell at, as their deepest, angriest ideologies will continue to flare up at the sight and sound of a Jewish American decrying an institution that he himself participated in. Will the sensitive conservatives arguing about the cultural fetishization of violence, sexuality, and language, and the disruption of straight white supremacy, care enough to do the same with Black Mirror?
The interactive interface of Bandersnatch provides a new experience that, in theory, all should have. It’s like a video game but better, because there’s none of the extreme length and relative pointlessness of “playing” for hours, but all of the same fun creative choices existing for your entertainment within a world you didn’t create. In this way, it’s a kind of extension of our own world and the process of watching a film or playing a game in it, when we look into a fictional universe to help satisfy the craving for newness in our own, to escape our daily lives or something negative within them, or to feel false responsibility for those not in our reality. The understanding that we can control these characters and their worlds because they are fake and we are real is what we all truly believe; that we control our destinies because we are not in someone else’s story, but that those who are in those stories exist only to be manipulated by their creators and viewers, and that that’s the way it should be. This concept of free will vs external control is touched upon in some of Bandersnatch’s fourth-wall-breaking storylines, but is, like the film itself, fleshed out only briefly. There are an obnoxious number of “wrong” or “bad” endings that one can wind up in, engineered to further expose to us that we’re not as in control of the story as we think we are, and several involve the protagonist realizing that the choices he makes are not actually his (in one plot, it’s us, the Netflix watchers of the future; in another, it’s a secret government surveillance program proctored by his evil father; and in the most perplexing, it’s because he’s an actor in a film who’s gone so method he’s forgotten who he really is), but those who praise Brooker for his unique twists and plot development are certainly those who have never seen the episodes of The Twilight Zone or even read the choose your own adventure pulps that he, consciously, unconsciously, or coincidentally, has taken at least inspiration from. One ending, in which the young man dies in his therapist’s office after a dramatic and emotional flashback, is nearly identical to that of the Twilight Zone episode “Perchance to Dream”, the only major difference being the characters’ personal histories and causes of death. Similarly, “A World of Difference” is about a generic businessman who realizes he’s actually a movie star, and goes on a fascinating journey of questioning either identity. So, how can you preach about free will if you’re not even coming up with your own stories?
How can you preach about free will if you’re not even coming up with your own stories?
While I don’t particularly mind these references (which is what I call them instead of “plagiarism”), it is maddening that so few others will be able to recognize them as such, since only some of us have seen the original (and better) versions. This frustrating lack of familiarity leads to none of the finger-pointing we should be aiming at Brooker right now, and brings me to the point of this essay, my optimistic plea: to reintroduce the original Twilight Zone in all its vintage glory, before it’s too damn late.
Reboots are rarely done for reasons outside of making money and the hope of reliability from an audience, since people will always want to watch more of their favorite things, even if they say otherwise. Very often, though, this results in half-hearted but profitable ventures, even if the critical or commercial crowds are unamused (which they usually are, with the exceptions of viewers unacquainted with original incarnations and unconcerned, diehard fans). But more and more shows are revived with more and more money behind them only to face identical fates, and we somehow keep buying into these upsetting cycles of excitement, disappointment, and discontent, willingly or unwillingly. The viciousness continues particularly among newer generations of bored youth being introduced, through differently wrapped packages, to things their parents and grandparents remember from their own eras, and everyone ends up getting some kind of payoff at the end of the day, regardless of their final positive or negative verdict, but I think we can all agree by now that the art of a good reboot lies mainly in the comfort of similarity, whether that means involving original creators or not straying too far from original intent and style.
Unfortunately and regardless, all this means that a 20-something today who chooses to watch Peele’s Twilight Zone may never experience Serling’s original for themselves, or worse, even know of or recognize a connection between the two. Young people don’t tend to like old things, in an understandable but annoying paradox, but the problem is that old things need to be preserved for the young people of the future, and furthermore, for the welfare of society, culture, and humanity throughout history, even if it means showing our kids something they might hate at first.
If you had never seen The Twilight Zone before, but were faced with a decision to watch old black and white episodes written by a dead guy, or the new technicolor version hosted by a massive cultural figure and extremely talented filmmaker you already know and love, you’d probably go with what you’re more familiar with, unless you were someone like me. You’ve seen Get Out because so has everyone, because it’s been so widely distributed and popularized, but you’ve never even heard of Rod Serling, because his work is no longer widely distributed and popularized, and thus, can’t be as well-known as it was in the 20th century. Take a moment to consider an ancestor of yours in 1962; to them, Rod Serling was the most popular and buzzy name in primetime, and Jordan Peele a nothing, not even yet born. You might say I’m being redundant and old-fashioned by telling you to (literally) respect your elders, but it’s important to remember that time does not only exist within your own lifespan, and that even with countless trends and names coming and going in and out of our consciousnesses across centuries, everything is relative. This is precisely the philosophy behind many an original Twilight Zone episode’s plot; how when traveling through time, it is always essential to understand one’s own place in the present before understanding one’s motives for taking the time (pun intended) to travel forward or backward through it in the first place. So, what we do today is impacted by the past, and vice versa, in our personal lives and pop culture, and yet many of us live in complete ignorance of it.
We don’t need to revive classics by reinventing them. We need to revive classics by showing them again.
Advertise reruns and marathons. Have discussions about episodes, about their historical contexts as well as their philosophical, political, and artistic legacies. Give people today the same things to think about as you gave their immediate ancestors, and create more common bonds between generations. Let’s keep Black Mirror for what it is, a unique homage to an influential part of our cultural past, as well as a gritty and provocative program full of gritty and provocative content, in its own right very much a creation of the new generations’ collective consciousness. One vast distinction between it and The Twilight Zone is the way episodes of either usually end. Today, we very often prefer sad, unsettling, and only vaguely Aesopic endings, if only to make ourselves feel better about our own lives and the choices we make within them, but decades ago, it speaks volumes that Serling usually ended his episodes on a hopeful note, even in the face of fictional tragedy. When all hope is lost, we need to search for it again, and sometimes we end up finding it in places we would have never thought to look. When we find ourselves at the crossroads of entertainment new and old and its relationship with yesterday and today, we must consider either road before we choose which one to travel down. So consider Rod Serling before you go back to Jordan Peele, and take note of what has come before you. Because how else will you know when you’ve stepped into the Twilight Zone if you don’t even know what it’s supposed to look like?
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