David Slade
Bandersnatch

Parallel universes, timelines, the pervasiveness of technology, and good old madness, combined with some psychotropic substances: today Netflix released Bandersnatch, a new episode of Black Mirror, announced as the first interactive film launched on the streaming platform and possibly a precursor to a new evolution of Charlie Brooker's dystopian series.

1975. Stefan is a young programmer who, as a child, suffered the loss of his mother, an event he has yet to overcome and for which he undergoes pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatment. He is working on the video game adaptation of a novel by Jerome F Davies, Bandersnatch, whose author is also famous for killing his wife in a hallucinatory frenzy: Davies, in fact, had come to believe that his choices were insignificant because everything had already been decided.

In the same way, in Bandersnatch (film), the viewer is invited by the interface to decide the actions taken by Stefan. Initially, they are minimal, apparently irrelevant choices, like which cereals he will eat for breakfast or which record he will buy, then increasingly important events, choices that radically influence the story's development. Like in a video game, you cannot go back: the classic Netflix timeline has disappeared, so you can't see how many minutes have passed or how many are left until the end because the ending depends on the choices you make during the game.

But in reality, the ending is anything but free or open: there are several possible endings, different combinations, but like in a maze, the exits are only the pre-existing ones. At a certain point, I found myself entangled, eager to finish the game to reach the ending I wanted and thought the choices I made would eventually lead to. At this point, the question arises spontaneously: "Am I making the wrong choices, or will any choice I make still lead to the same result?" I think this is a bit of a generic and universal question about free will, which in the field of technology finds a more persuasive metaphor: the protagonist is manipulated by the player, who in turn is manipulated by those who developed the game, pre-setting the possible decisions or maybe even predicting which would be the most common ones. There is a direct reference to this concept in the fact that Stefan is a video game developer and realizes he is being manipulated as if the choices he is making are guided by someone else. A direct reference is also made to the illusion of free will by Netflix itself, which, in a direct appeal from Stefan to the viewer/manipulator, reveals itself by defining itself as the "streaming platform of the future"; in this case, Netflix overlaps with your choice because whichever of the two options you choose, you will still have to read its brief self-referential spiel, which it could have easily spared you; but as you continue, the metatelevision increases further, further breaking the fourth wall: we are catapulted onto the film set, and everything becomes even more blatantly an open declaration of fiction over which we have the illusion of control.

Several years ago, a television miniseries proposed something like this: towards the end of the episode, one of the actors asked the audience to decide by televote which choice he should make, there was a commercial break, and it resumed by communicating what we had decided for him: based on that, of course, the story evolved one way or another. The film at the time relied on televoting, which today sounds like a form of prime-time Mediaset interactivity – exactly what it is – but the game played by Bandersnatch is similar: it exploits the novelty that the idea of an interactive film evokes and also the now established fame of both Black Mirror and Netflix, reaffirming viewer loyalty but also their curiosity. At the same time, it sets a higher goal, that of awakening the critical consciousness of the viewer, consumer, inhabitant of the society of this century and its contradictions. The interactivity of Bandersnatch aims to be perhaps self-critical, or at least to stimulate reflection, like all other episodes of Black Mirror, on the fine line between real and virtual, but more broadly on the relationship with technologies. It does so through a game, perhaps a little game for some, but one I liked, which conveyed a sense of anxiety, powerlessness, and amusement to me, but at the same time, I realize I am a victim of that very system: Netflix, which, like Google and others, monitors your tastes, interests, research, while at the same time clearly telling you that everything you choose is not a true choice but only an illusion of choice, but this, is "the entertainment of the future," no, of the present.