BANDERSNATCH – MIRRORING THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM OF CHOICE

Text topic: Quotidian

Text author: Младен М. Јаковљевић

Bandersnatch, an episode of the science fiction anthology series Black Mirror distributed as an interactive choose-your-own-adventure film, raises the media content consumption to another level with its nonlinear broadcast format by allowing the viewer to seemingly create his or her own version of the film story. Bringing with its name into mind an image of a turned-off display, Black Mirror demonstrates the advantages and dangers of technology, radical technological advancement and its all-pervasiveness and invasiveness in everyday life. Although Bandersnatch is not an adaptation of any of Philip K. Dick’s stories, it is a tribute to his fiction, with its interactive format and its content that both explicitly problematize issues of control, illusion of freedom and freedom of choice within a multi-layered labyrinth of non-authentic realities.