On Twists · 3:20am Sep 20th, 2017
[Spoilers for as much of Black Mirror as I feel like mentioning]
Let's talk about twists a bit. Our culture loves twist endings, and for good reason. A twist recontextualizes everything we've experienced in the story so far, and it can really only be done successfully by the most talented writers. It requires a ton of setup and thought to write stories that must be interpreted two or more different ways.
However, there's a catch. Having a twist is not enough to sustain an interesting story. This comes back to the most fundamental rule of storytelling--no, all of reality: good ideas are a dime a dozen; high-quality execution is one in a million. A twist is only valuable insofar as it serves the strength of the setting, plot, theme, and character.
Black Mirror is a sort of spiritual successor to The Twilight Zone, so naturally most to all of its stories involve twists. After watching only two episodes, I felt like I had discovered a pattern, and the rest of the episodes confirmed it. In stories where the twists were front and center, huge mind-blowing realizations that changed everything you knew about the characters and setting, the stories were boring. In stories where the twist was minor or occurred early in the story, the narrative was much more interesting.
But I may be getting ahead of myself. Let me give a basic definition of "twist" before we move on to Black Mirror. A twist is the moment when a false premise is removed, and the true premise is revealed. For example, maybe the false premise is, "Four heroes must destroy the four towers to save the world," and the true premise is, "The heroes must protect the towers from the villain trying to destroy them all and gain unlimited power." As you can imagine, there is a point in the story where the heroes realize that destroying the towers is bad rather than good, and they change their plans accordingly.
All right, with that out of the way, let's talk Black Mirror. First, let's do a couple good stories. One I just watched last night was called "San Junipero;" I'd describe the premise as so: "Two women fall in love within a virtual heavenscape called San Junipero." The twist, the part that's hidden from us at the start, is that the world the characters live in is virtual. What makes this story so effective? Just look at the premise. The characters and their arcs come first. The story is all about the challenge these characters face in falling in love, and the fact that the world is virtual complements that story. "San Junipero" passes what I'll call the Cipher Test: could this story be told if you replaced the main characters with anyone else? The answer is no; this story only makes sense with these two women. Here's a more drastic example: the season 2 finale "White Christmas." The true premise: "A master persuader shares his personal experiences in a bid to convince the emulated version of a prisoner to confess to his crime." Forgive me if that's confusing, but it's the buildup of the entire episode before we get there. At the start, the false premise is something like: "Two men out in a cabin in the snow swap painful Christmas memories." The big twist, that one character is just a digital copy and the other is secretly interrogating him, only comes together once we have all the pieces. But again, what makes this story so effective is not the fact that the character is an emulation, but that he's an empathetic person with a tragic backstory. Again, the twist supports the character arc, not the other way around.
Ah, but what's the fun in talking about good stories? Let's talk about bad episodes. One that particularly shocked me was called "White Bear." Here's the premise: "A child murderer is repeatedly mindwiped and placed into a fake Purge-esque scenario for the entertainment of crowds of spectators." Perhaps you can see what the false premise was at the start: "An amnesiac woman must escape the killers and unresponsive spectators chasing her around." Do you see how this premise is entirely dependent on the twist? First of all, it fails the Cipher Test: replace the main character with anyone else, and the premise still works. Child murderer, embezzler, shoot, they could be innocent and it wouldn't really matter. (In fact, I think there's an argument to be made for the fact that punishing someone with global amnesia for their past self's crime is the torture of an innocent, but let's save the injustice of it for another time.) On a related note, second, the Main Character has no arc. In the episode, she is entirely passive--she has to be, to maintain the illusion of the whole rigmarole. All that happens is she occasionally has flashes of memories regarding her past life. These say nothing about her character, other than that she is eventually proved to be mistaken. That brings me to my last point, which is that once the twist has been revealed, the story has nothing to say anymore--about the MC, about the setting, about the ideas of a spectator culture and the nature of punishment and justice, nothing. Just, "Man, wouldn't it be messed up if we actually did this?" (There's a point to be made about how it's nigh impossible to guess the twist from the clues given, but that's more the fault of the execution than the premises.)
I could go on, but I think my points would be the same. In "Men Under Fire," the Main Character is exactly like every other soldier, learns about the lie that his superiors have put on him, and willingly goes back to normal because... well, because he basically has no choice. (Characters having no choice is a common theme in bad Black Mirror episodes, but that's a rant for another time. Seriously, the first episode of the series is the worst for precisely this reason.) In "Playtest," it seems like the story is doing something interesting with the main character and his fear of dying the same way as his late father (early-onset Alzheimer's), only for the episode to double- and then triple-twist his character growth out of existence. And "Shut Up and Dance," after forcing the characters from atrocity to atrocity, ends up twisting the ending into a pointless "Shaggy Dog Story*," leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth.
Thinking back on every episode, I can neatly divide them into three groups. At least one episode per season is amazing, challenging our conception of technology in a thoughtful and interesting way. ("The Entire History of You," "White Christmas," "Nosedive," "San Junipero") At least one is mediocre, telling a decent story but being too on the nose or unimaginative to really leave a strong impression. ("Fifteen Million Merits," "Be Back Soon," "The Waldo Moment," "Playtest," "Hated in the Nation") And at least one is backward, odious, or just plain boring, utterly lacking a heart or soul. ("The National Anthem," "White Bear," "Shut Up and Dance," "Men Against Fire") Clustered this way, I see a negative correlation with twists and "Gotchas!" and a positive correlation with developed, interesting main characters. The ones I'm going to remember the most fondly are the ones with real characters, ones where flawed humans struggle and grow and change. I'll remember poor Lacie, trying so hard to be popular as the world seems fatalistically determined to drive her into the mud, and I'll remember tragic Liam, who loses everything in his obsessive need for perfect information. And frankly, I'm more convinced by the morals and statements of those episodes, even when I disagree with them. It requires a lot more work than coming up with that killer premise, but I think you'll agree that it's so much more satisfying in the long run.
* Say, have you ever heard the origin of the term "Shaggy Dog Story?" It's one of those troll stories where you prolong the ending as long as possible, then hit them with something deeply unsatisfying. (Great fun, those troll stories.) It basically goes like this:
A young couple are walking down the street when they come upon a shaggy dog on the sidewalk. The poor creature's hair is matted with dirt and mud, its collar is missing, and it's barking pitifully. The couple resolve to find the dog's owner and bring it home. First, they head to the kennel, to see if any of the staff recognize the dog. Unfortunately, none of them know who the owners are.
[You repeat this as many times as you like, with the couple going to a different place each time, having more or less luck. Eventually, you get to the end of the story like so:]
Months pass, and the couple are feeling more concerned than ever. They've run about everywhere, with nary a hint about who could be the dog's owner. One day, however, just as they're about to lose hope, they come upon a sign on a telephone pole, saying, "LOST DOG." The description matches the shaggy dog exactly! So they go home, grab the dog, and head straight to the address on the bulletin. They ring the doorbell, and a woman steps out. She looks down at the dog, thinks for a moment, then says, "Nope, sorry. My dog isn't that shaggy."
[And that's the punchline. The joke is that it is the right dog, but it took them so long to find the owner, the dog's hair has grown. ...It's a bleak joke, yeah.]
Oh, no. *That* is not a Shaggy Dog story.
The Never The Final Word sequel to Skywriter's Shipping Sickness is a Shaggy Dog story beyond compare.
(This fandom has some warped, twisted people. I love them.)
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Or do you mean "Shut Up and Dance" isn't one?
...Wait, the literal source of the term "Shaggy Dog Story" isn't a Shaggy Dog Story?
[FAKE EDIT: You know what, I think we have different definitions of "Shaggy Dog Story." Yours is "a long story leading up to a terrible pun." That's... not a Shaggy Dog Story. I believe the official terminology for it is "a joke."
A Shaggy Dog Story is, as my example, er, exemplified, when you tell a long story about characters sacrificing and struggling, only to end it with a gut-punch and a middle finger. Like the "Krusty Krab Pizza" episode of Spongebob, or indeed, "Shut Up and Dance," where: after robbing a bank and killing a man at the behest of extortionists, the extortionists send the MC a troll face and release their blackmail anyway.]
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A story that exists solely to set up a terrible pun is a “feghoot”. Wikipedia says it can be considered a subtype of Shaggy Dog Story.
I had something to actually say about plot twists, but the reply grew and grew until I think it would be better if I made it a post on my blog instead. But I can say this: in addition to the Cypher Test, one should also consider the Motivation Test. Namely: When the protagonist learns the awful truth, does that change their goals and motivations? Or, would the plot play out any differently if the protagonist learned the awful truth from the very beginning of the story? If the answer is “No,” then it’s probably a shallow twist that won’t stand up to repeat viewings.
I haven’t watched any Black Mirror, but from your description of “White Bear”, it sounds like the amnesiac criminal’s goal is just trying to survive the simulated Purge scenario she’s in. But if she knew the truth about her past from the beginning, then her goal would be... trying to survive the simulated Purge scenario she’s in. What a twist.