Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) feels the sand of San Junipero beach. (Harris, 2016).
By Nathan Simms
“And the Emmy goes to Black Mirror: ‘San Junipero’,” as these words rang out from the Emmy stage, Netflix made science fiction history. The episode actually won two awards that night, one for outstanding TV movie and another for outstanding writing for a movie. As Netflix’s premiere Sci-Fi anthology show, Black Mirror shows the way that technology can impact society in the future. The vast majority of the episodes are bleak and negative critiques of that future, with dark and thought-provoking themes. It seems only fitting that one of the more positive episodes garnered two Emmy’s. “San Junipero” demonstrates what a LGBTQ+ relationship looks like on a mainstream television show and raises questions about the validity of simulated worlds.
“San Junipero” opens with Yorkie, the twenty-something female protagonist, who goes to a bar in 1987 and meets Kelly, a whirlwind on the dance floor. The two strike up a friendship after Yorkie helps fend off one of Kelly’s ex-boyfriends.
“And the Emmy goes to Black Mirror: ‘San Junipero’,” as these words rang out from the Emmy stage, Netflix made science fiction history. The episode actually won two awards that night, one for outstanding TV movie and another for outstanding writing for a movie. As Netflix’s premiere Sci-Fi anthology show, Black Mirror shows the way that technology can impact society in the future. The vast majority of the episodes are bleak and negative critiques of that future, with dark and thought-provoking themes. It seems only fitting that one of the more positive episodes garnered two Emmy’s. “San Junipero” demonstrates what a LGBTQ+ relationship looks like on a mainstream television show and raises questions about the validity of simulated worlds.
“San Junipero” opens with Yorkie, the twenty-something female protagonist, who goes to a bar in 1987 and meets Kelly, a whirlwind on the dance floor. The two strike up a friendship after Yorkie helps fend off one of Kelly’s ex-boyfriends.
Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) sit in the bar after just meeting.
From there they continue to spend time together, every weekend, until exactly midnight-when the simulation starts over. Both Yorkie and Kelly go to San Junipero via digital uplinks, and our limited by the time the computer allots. Much like a massive online game, they enter the simulated world for just a few hours, and are forced to exit. Outside of the computer, Yorkie and Kelly are actually in their late 60’s and in retirement homes. They use San Junipero to escape from their realities. The city of San Junipero looks like any other coastal town, but it is nothing more than a picturesque digital retirement home. 85% of the residents are deceased, their consciences being uploaded to the computer. Oether elderly people can visit, like Yorkie and Kelly, but they are limited to trail periods. Both the residents and the temporary visitors can choose what year they want to visit, allowing them to recapture their youth in both physical and temporal terms.
Yorkie and Kelly contemplate the nature of their relationship
Although San Junipero is a love story, the science fiction background creates a unique outlook on our future. LGBTQ+ individuals are rarely seen in Sci-fi films, besides the couple in this summer’s Alien: Covenant, I cannot think of a notable character in a Science-Fiction film who is not of a heterosexual orientation. The majority of onscreen couples are heterosexual or single, with a ton of science-fiction films not showing sexuality at all. Seeing a happy homosexual couple in this episode is important because it reflects our reality. Despite the controversy that often surrounds gay rights, there are people of different sexual orientations, and the display of them in the near future allows individuals to identify with characters just like them.
After visiting, Yorkie decides she’s ready to “pass over” and become a permanent resident of San Junipero. Before her body dies, Kelly decides to visit her in the real world. The older Kelly takes a self-driving vehicle to Yorkie’s retirement home, where she finds the 61 year-old, paralyzed Yorkie. A worker at the home tells Kelly that Yorkie has been paralyzed for 40 years, the result of a car accident after Yorkie’s parents rejected her sexual orientation. In the simulation, Yorkie regains her ability to walk and speak as well as freedom to express her sexuality without fear of society. The clear tragedy of San Junipero is that Yorkie is unable to be herself until after she’s already dead. The terms of her societal experience put her into her condition and she waited for 40 years for something better. San Junipero was that something better, but she could not fully experience it until she received what amounts to medically-assisted suicide. “San Junipero” brings a new light to the discussion on gay rights and equality. It is a bluntly stated critique of our society that Yorkie was only able to find freedom in death.
After visiting, Yorkie decides she’s ready to “pass over” and become a permanent resident of San Junipero. Before her body dies, Kelly decides to visit her in the real world. The older Kelly takes a self-driving vehicle to Yorkie’s retirement home, where she finds the 61 year-old, paralyzed Yorkie. A worker at the home tells Kelly that Yorkie has been paralyzed for 40 years, the result of a car accident after Yorkie’s parents rejected her sexual orientation. In the simulation, Yorkie regains her ability to walk and speak as well as freedom to express her sexuality without fear of society. The clear tragedy of San Junipero is that Yorkie is unable to be herself until after she’s already dead. The terms of her societal experience put her into her condition and she waited for 40 years for something better. San Junipero was that something better, but she could not fully experience it until she received what amounts to medically-assisted suicide. “San Junipero” brings a new light to the discussion on gay rights and equality. It is a bluntly stated critique of our society that Yorkie was only able to find freedom in death.
The elderly Yorkie's consciousness uploads to the simulation for the final time
At the end, Yorkie and Kelly reunite as permanent residents and drive off into a literal sunset as Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” plays. This is the happiest ending of any of Black Mirror’s few episodes, but the triumphant montage is intercut with scenes of a giant warehouse. Inside are countless blinking lights, all plugged into stacks of servers, tended to by giant robotic arms. Yorkie and Kelly together transcended their human bodies and are now stored as pulsing electronic signals. Inside the simulation they seem happy, but the filmmakers are asking if their happiness is real. We cannot know if Kelly and Yorkie are legitimately “human” in a simulation, but the optimistic nature of the finale signals that it may not actually matter.
The final shot of the episode: hundreds of thousands of blinking lights, each one a digital consciousness
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