Black Mirror has always been good at blurring the lines between fiction and reality, although nothing will ever beat the very first episode accurately predicting a pretty disgusting scenario.
“The National Anthem” probably sets the tone best for the whole series, with its dark satirical take on UK politics and its twisted ending, the episode is guaranteed to be seared into the minds of all who watch it. If you remember the first episode, well then you probably already have an idea about what scene we’re talking about, but for those who have repressed that memory, allow me to remind you.
The plot follows UK prime minister Michael Callow, played by Rory Kinnear as he is given an ultimatum by a lunatic who has kidnapped and is threatening to kill a member of the royal family; the ultimatum? He must have sex with a pig on live television. It’s hard not to spoil the episode’s ending, but if you know the show, then you know that they certainly aren’t afraid to go there.
Whilst Donald Trump was gearing up for his election campaign, across the pond, the citizens of the UK were finding out some pretty disturbing facts about their own leader. An unauthorized biography of David Cameron, the Prime Minister at the time, revealed that he had pretty much acted out the final scenes from that episode of Black Mirror. Apparently, long before his ascent to Prime Minister, during his college days, Cameron had intercourse with a pig’s head as part of a sort of college hazing ritual.
The first episode of Black Mirror was released in 2011, but this incident was not public knowledge until 2015. Perhaps the show’s creator Charlie Brooker should join the writers behind The Simpsons as his weirdly specific storyline turned out to be true. Whilst speaking with Empire (print edition) regarding the show’s sixth season, Brooker was asked his opinion on the event and his weirdly coincidental storyline.
“Things like the David Cameron thing felt like that. That actually sent me a bit bonkers for a short period, because I thought, ‘That can’t be real! Surely that can’t have happened? It’s too eerily close.’ It makes you feel like you’re living in a simulation.”
Charlie Brooker in a simulation sounds like the exact kind of meta plotline we’d expect from Black Mirror, so maybe we’ll see something like that if we ever get a seventh season. It’s definitely one of the stranger examples of life imitating art. Of all the cool (but scary) things we’ve seen in the show, we could have gotten real-world simulations for video games, or had our consciousness uploaded onto a server to live forever, but no, we had to get the reality where the Prime Minister had sex with a pig.
Aside from the whole PigGate situation, the show has done pretty well to predict other political events and technological advances that make us think maybe we really are in a simulation, and maybe Charlie Brooker is the mastermind behind it.
