The One on “The National Anthem”
Thank goodness we watched this episode of Black Mirror first. Seeing “The National Anthem” before anything else may have turned me off from the show due to its bleak and shocking nature.
It starts off feeling like an episode of every other political drama out there. Someone is kidnapped and a demand is made. This demand is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in a show, however. To get the person back unharmed, the British Prime Minister has to have sex with a pig on live television.
As the PM and his team work out what has just happened, they scramble to try and keep things under wraps. That’s where the internet comes in. The video was uploaded to Youtube and immediately started trending on Twitter, showing that nothing is safe once it hits the interwebs.
Despite being out in the wild, they have managed to keep it out of the media channels. They get all the major networks in the UK to not talk about the video until us Americans came in and ruined everything. I thought it was amazingly perfect to have our networks be the one to break the stalemate and get this information out there in major channels. It was such an American thing to do that I couldn’t help but laugh.
As the episode goes on, I just had this feeling of “no way” in terms of the demand actually taking place. You just knew that they would either find the girl or do something at all to stop the PM from having to do this.
They didn’t.
While they didn’t show any details, you see the PM’s face and hear the sounds that he’s making. It’s been a few days and it still bothers me.
As with any episode of this show, you can’t help but put yourself in the person’s shoes. Would I be able to do this? How would I feel? How would my wife feel?
It’s that final question that haunts me the most about this episode.
After the deed is done, he’s unable to speak with his wife and is just hugging the porcelain puking his guts out and crying hysterically. His wife is curled up at home in the fetal position.
Fast forward a year later. The PM’s approval ratings are through the roof following the incident and he looks happier than ever. We see him and his wife making appearances in public and looking completely normal.
Then they go home.
When they walk in the door, his wife immediately goes up the stairs and ignores his pleas to just talk to him. He’s left standing at the bottom of the stairs all alone.
Thinking about that scene in terms of my own relationship kills me. I couldn’t imagine Kayla unable to even talk to me. Especially since it wasn’t as though the PM did anything wrong. Well, having sex with a pig is undeniably “wrong.” But he was doing it to save a life! There has to be a redeeming factor of sorts here that cuts him some slack.
At the same time, I can totally understand how the wife must feel since that is such a heinous act to watch your spouse commit, no matter the reason. Still, it’s heartbreaking to see how this has torn apart this couple.
That’s Black Mirror for you, though. Forcing characters into sticky situations and making them live with the outcomes. While it sometimes works out like in “San Juniper,” more often than not, the characters are left broken like we saw here in “The National Anthem.”
That’s about all I’ve got on this one since I just want to move past it and not think about it anymore.
Don’t worry, though. I’ll be back tomorrow with episode 2, “Fifteen Million Merits.”