Nosedive

For this week’s classes, we had to watch an episode of Black Mirror called “Nosedive”. It takes place in a technologically advanced world, where people are “ranked” by others. Your rank gives you certain privileges and opportunities. The higher your rank, the better. The episode follows Lacie, a woman with an average of 4.2. She’s generally well liked, and she has big plans. She wants to buy a house, and she wants to move to a new place. It’s expensive for her, but if she gets her rank up to a 4.5, she can definitely move in. One of her childhood friends, Naomi, invites her to speak at her wedding as maid of honor. Lacie agrees and she tries to get there as soon as she can. She misses her flight, and her rank goes down continuously over people giving her bad ratings. She hitched a ride and she meets this trucker who’s ranked as 1.4. They get along, and the trucker opens up about herself. She wasn’t always allow ranked, but she stopped caring about rank once her husband died. The woman said that it felt great to just let everything out. In the end, Lacie crashes Naomi’s wedding and gets her rank all the way down to zero. She gets arrested and she meets someone in jail. They insult each other but they look like they’re having fun doing it.

I think this episode can be seen as metaphorical. Lacie tried so hard to become popular and high ranked. It was very draining for her, and she looked like she was faking a lot of her emotions. I think it could apply to real life, too. I think a lot of people hide their feelings and emotions for the sake of popularity and pleasing others. Living genuinely, and staying true to yourself is a lot more important than popularity to me.