Black Mirror, "Fifteen Million Merits"

The episode "Fifteen Million Merits" from the series Black Mirror exemplifies participatory culture in various different ways. Paraphrasing Henry Jenkins, we can understand participatory culture to mean the interaction of both "producers" and "consumers" to enhance/create new meaning in a given media (Jenkins 3). The society portrayed in the episode of Black Mirror depended heavily, if not entirely, on participatory culture. In order for the society to run, every single person in the society had to contribute or participate, and this was evidenced in various ways throughout the episode.

First, there is the very interactive digital nature of the world. Huge television-like screens were everywhere, and everyone's living quarters were basically walls of TV screens (totally like Fahrenheit 451). The world was advanaced even past touchscreens, as only a simple hand gesture was needed to tell the screen what you wanted it to do. You could even play video games without remote controls; men in the episode could be seen propping up and shooting imaginary guns and actually killing off people in the game. The digital workings of the world required people to physically do something in order to get a task done. Move your hand to select this, pedal your bike, cock your invisible gun. Without you moving your body to participate, nothing would get done.

There was also the nature of the Hot Shot talent show. intending to be a copycat of American Idol, it is a talent show wherein contestants perform on stage for judges and a live audience. Except in this show, the audience wasn't actually real ... per se. The audience was actually digital avatar representations of viewers watching at home. This is participatory culture in probably its most intense form -- the in-studio energy of the show (something that TV viewers like us depend on to get us excited) depended on every single person watching the show at home. Not that any person had a choice, but that was the point. The culture of the episode was participatory because people were encouraged and required to care about the contestants on Hot Shot. One of the judges even asks of Abby while she is on stage, "Who do you think is powering that spotlight?" The answer of course, is the audience. The show's success is literally powered by eyeballs on screens.

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It is also worthwhile to note that towards the beginning of the episode, a preview runs on TV for Hot Spot, reminding viewers that all of the success stories from the show started off just like them, riding their stationary bikes. In Jenkins' chapter on American Idol, Jenkins notes that Idol used the same tactic, reminding viewers that the contestants could be them or someone they know (Jenkins 71). That creates almost a greater incentive to participate, because it's easier to care and vote and cheer about people you see yourself in.

In the case of this episode, I do thin participatory culture necessitates submitting to a higher power. This episode gives an extreme example in the case of Abby, but it still shows the power of participation and, what our grade school teachers warned us about, peer pressure. When Abby first walks on stage, she's encouraged by one of the judges to take her shirt off. She declines, and proceeds to sing. After she's done singing, although she is complimented by the judges, she is still encouraged to become a porn star like so many other girls from the show have. The judges basically bully her into thinking about it, and gets the crowd in on the decision. Once the crowd begins chanting for her to give in, louder and louder, Abby's heart sinks. She knows that it really wasn't her decision; her mind was basically made up for her. She was forced to submit to a higher cultural power -- the power of audience approval -- or else face never-ending torment. Even further, from the audience perspective, Hot Shots was the higher cultural power that brought everyone in that society together. Like followers who unite under one god, people bowed to the awesomeness of Hot Shot.

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