The final episode of Charlie Brooker’s second series cult hit, Black Mirror, aired on Monday, and as is standard now of the brilliantly dark and dystopian show, it struck one hell of a chord.
Like every episode of Black Mirror, 'The Waldo Moment forces' the viewer to address a current issue in our society, and look to the future wherein these issues could distort into serious problems. This time, it centered on the apathy and distrust in British politics.
‘Waldo’, it turned out, was a computer animated blue bear that won fame by mocking an unsuspecting Tory party candidate (Tobias Menzies) on a late night TV show. His puerile and childish attack on the MP seemingly resonated with the British Public and soon enough, TV producers had Waldo standing against him in a by-election. It was a dark mockery of the deeply compromised ideals of modern politics. Those angry at the system and at politics in general- could now vote for Waldo, the anti-establishment cartoon, in a sort of two-fingered salute to the real politicians.
Fueled by modern media, the system of ‘liking’ and ‘re-tweeting’ was the democracy that Waldo represented. And in doing so, he closely mirrored our current society in which young people genuinely do express the majority of their feelings through these social media systems. The problem with this – as Brooker showed in his last installment, the chilling and twisted ‘White Bear’ was how human empathy breaks down when individuals are reduced to an image on a screen. Which is why in contrast, a fictional character worked for this version of our society. He wasn’t real, but he was honest about it. In today’s Westminster all we seem to have left is the self-serving, careerist, jargon-bandying moron or the Boris Johnson type, who rises to power on the strength of his gaffes and lack of connection with reality.
And yet, I have seen the trolls of the internet, the worryingly large number of ‘likes’ and ‘notes’ that idiotic and ill-thought out statements can rack up, and it seems that in this particular episode, Brooker was playing on this. A few years ago, this idea of a CGI bear being the face of the people would have been absurd. Yet now, it feels within touching distance. It was summed up rather nicely by the jaded Tory MP - “If that thing is the main opposition then the whole system looks absurd. Which it may well be – but it built these roads.” It seems that what we can really take from The Waldo Moment, and modern politics in general is that we may complain about our politicians but they’re all we’ve got. And If anything, I think that it points out that it may only be the social stalemate produced by these out of touch, impersonal MP's whom we complain about so much, which, ultimately, protect us from ourselves.
