Joan is Awful and The Lecture
Every now and then a piece of pop culture crashes in like an intrusive thought and reminds you just how old you are, and how quickly time is skittering away from you. Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker’s frequently bonkers answer to the question “Was The Twilight Zone too cheerful?,” debuted in 2011, which means I am way, way old. I don’t often remember the beginnings of things, but for some reason I remember when “The National Anthem” first hit screens with its delightful pig fucking, which means I am now excruciatingly aware of how long ago that was. Pig fucking used to seem so fresh and edgy, and now it’s old news. Sadly, is so 2011.
Still, I do love me some Black Mirror. Even the show’s weaker episodes are very well-crafted, with surprisingly deeply-etched characters and often very clever ideas. But not even shows I enjoy can wholly escape the Sauron Eye of Writing Without Rules: Deep Dives, so I have thoughts about the first episode of Black Mirror’s Season 6, “Joan is Awful.” On the surface, this isn’t the best idea the show’s ever had: Joan (Annie Murphy) is a normal, mediocre woman with a crappy midlevel manager’s job, a squishy, polite fiance, and rage issues when it comes to bad coffee. After a bad day at the office where she kind of totally mishandles firing an employee, she goes to therapy, meets (and briefly kisses) her ex-boyfriend, then goes home to watch TV with her fiance. The show they watch is called Joan is Awful, starring Salma Hayek in a crappy drama very, very obviously based on Joan’s life, including private details no one should be able to know. In short order, Joan is hated, unemployed, and no longer engaged.
Joan learns that she can do nothing about this, because she clicked through a EULA and agreed to let the streaming service base a show on her life. She also learns that the whole show is AI and CGI, generated almost instantly after events in Joan’s life. Hayek has licensed her image to the streamer and doesn’t actually act in the show. Eventually, Joan hatches a plan to get Salma Hayek to regret taking part in the show by doing disgusting things that AI-Hayek will then have to replicate on screen, and it works!
That’s a lot of plot dumping, but it’s necessary, because up to this point there isn’t much new here. Black Mirror isn’t always cutting edge, but when Hayek and Joan discover they are actually AI-generated themselves and that there are levels and levels of Joan is Awful universes it’s just not that surprising: It’s been done. But I’m not here to complain about that (I actually enjoyed the episode, because sometimes snappy writing and great performances can make even slightly tired ideas entertaining). I’m here to complain about the reason the show feels kind of perfunctory: The lecture.
Stories begin in various ways. Sometimes it’s an image, disconnected but vibrant, and you slowly construct a universe and a plot around it. Sometimes it’s a character whose world you want to explore. Sometimes it’s a premise, a situation you keep circling around. And sometimes it’s an idea, the sort of idea you probably find yourself bringing up when you’re a little drunk in a bar, causing everyone to groan. You know: A pet theory.
Writers sometimes have these pet theories and we sometimes make the terrible mistake of writing stories just so we can put those pet theories or deep thoughts into a character’s mouth as a Lecture, a variant of exposition where a character explains the whole point of the story, usually in an excited way that implies they believe they are BLOWING your MIND. It almost never goes well, because you’re writing just to get to that speech you’ve been practicing in your head for years and everything else is just a rickety staircase you’re building as fast as you can as cheaply as you can in order to get to that moment.
“Joan is Awful” has some neat ideas to it—the weaponization of the EULA will certainly make everyone in the world feel attacked. But it’s working towards a Lecture: When Joan and Salma Hayek break into the office of the president of the streaming service in order to destroy the quantum computer generating the show, they pause to hide for a ludicrous amount of time while the president speechifies to a reporter about how they tried a more positive version called “Joan is Awesome” but no one wanted to watch it, because people believe, deep down, that they are awful.
That’s not a terrible premise for a story like this. It’s not the idea that’s the problem. It’s the Lecture.
The problem here is what’s going on in this scene: After forming an unlikely alliance and successfully infiltrating the streamer’s offices, Joan and Salma Hayek decide to remain hiding in the next room while this speech is being made for a stupid amount of time. Because the lecture is the point, not the story. Brooker obviously wanted to make a point, so he creates a character to make the point, then has all the other story elements freeze until the point is made.
You could cut the lecture and not lose much, but the idea buried in that lecture is an interesting one, so a better solution would be to find a more organic way to convey that idea. Of course, a few minutes later Brooker chooses to bring in Michael Cera to offer some more exposition to explain the multiple layers of reality at play, so perhaps the cruelty is the point here.
On the record, I enjoyed “Joan is Awful.” Yes, the fake realities and actors playing multiple roles isn’t exactly new, but the idea of corporations stealing your life and transforming it into entertainment is ... well, also not new but it was at least given a surge of energy with the technological aspect. And everyone on the screen is terrific, especially Murphy, who truly conveys a weary rage, and Hayek, who is delightful in her privileged outrage. If only there was no Lecture at the core.
Of course, if someone created an AI-generated show based on my life, it would likely be titled “Jeff is Drunk Again” and it would not be popular. Unless you fancy watching an hour of me slamming shots of whiskey while I stare into the middle distance. The big dramatic moment of each episode? When the phone rings and a mysterious voice asks me what I’m doing, and I answer “Writing.”
Next week: Violent Night wastes it’s one bit of genius.
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