How far would you go to take Revenge?

Black Mirror (Season 7) Episode 2: Bete Noir — A Review

Black Mirror (Season 7) Episode 2- Bete Noir — A Review by Magicthreadworks

Even when one could literally have anything in the world, a technology nerd comes in life of her old classmate, just to take Revenge!

What a delicious episode. The world of chocolates, a revenge served cold, a mind-blowing technology, and courageous twist! Without further ado, let’s jump into it.

The Title

Bete Noir — means “black beast” in french and means someone or something which is the bane of one’s existence. As it is a revenge story hence the name fits just right .

The Storyline

Maria is a successful culinary researcher who is doing very well for herself. In comes Verity Greene, her classmate from school, about whom she had started a nasty rumour, which led to Verity being bullied all her school life. Surprise, surprise Verity was a nerdy computer wizkid who could now influence the reality she is living in. She makes everyone believe that Maria is having a mental breakdown and has some issues with her.

The Horror

The Horror of the episode comes from the helplessness of the character. Imagine someone has the potential to change the camera footage just by talking into a device embedded into her pendant. Just Imagine, you are a nut allergic and the whole world completely forgets the concept of “Nut Allergy” itself. The memory of each and every person on the planet can be tempered against you. It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are and what logic you give, everything falls flat. It feels like slowly sinking in quicksand, without a way out.

The Technology

The premise of the technology taken in this episode is one of my

favourite. It talks about the existence of billions of different universes existing in parallel. Based on one’s choices, we pick one reality over another. The point of choice becomes an origin point of billion more universes where choice we made and every possible choice we left make the reality of that universe. Usually our storyline is a linear selection of universes. In this case, Verity builds a device by which she can send her corporal body in a universe of her choice, just by promoting into a device rather than an actual action.

The Character Arc

Let’s take Verity’s character arc first — she is a nerdy genius who was badly bullied in her school life. She is a genius and makes a major discovery. Even then she is not able to heal her past bruises. It was such a poetically sad moment when she says that she has lived all the best possible reality, has been the empress of the world, been an astronaut, lives all amazing versions of her life but still could heal her past and found closure. Someone who had everything, still had to come back for just ‘revenge’.

Maria on the other hand, did start a nasty rumour in school, and now realises her mistake. She is living with guilt and at first is not comfortable in facing Verity. She has a strong intuition that Verity is playing some games with her. Later she actually acknowledges her mistake and asks for forgiveness. Hence, where the perpetrator was able to finally find closure within herself, the victim kept yearning for revenge.

Reaction

After a lot of reflection I have come to the conclusion that “Kindness is the best form of revenge”. If you forgive you are not only freeing the perpetrator but yourself too, from a vicious cycle which has never had a satisfactory end. Hence the ending seems justified to me. Watch this episode to figure out what happened. Moreover, as I said earlier multi-universe or manipulation of timeline in some form is my favourite genre. At times I get even amazed how movies and TV series have made such a complex concept digestible for our generation.

In one scene Maria’s partner dons a very cool VR Glasses, I really want those. If someone knows, from where to buy, do share the link.

The Very Creepy Mandala Effect

There is also a mention of the Mandala Effect, as per which a substantial chuck of people believes something to be true but it is actually not so. I read through some examples of it on interest and now have a staunch belief that my reality is being tampered with. Say do you remember the old movie mickey mouse cartoon where he is wearing shorts and suspenders, well he never really wore suspenders. 🤦🏽‍♀️

Philosophy

What this episode made me reflect was how most of us live in the past. How our whole self identity ends up based on the experiences we had in the past. We falsely believe that if we have failed once the same will happen to us in future too. There is a book by Eckhart Tolle called “The Power of Now” — This really helped me recover from the misery of the past, stop living in fear of tomorrow rather just simmer in beauty and tranquility of now. Self Awareness is something which is really critical for us to understand, if we don’t want to swept away by our emotions at every turn.

The Ending

The ending is pretty funny, yet rings true. Doesn’t matter whether you ask a small kid or a smart mature person — if they were to live in any reality what would they choose. The prompt answer would be “ I want to be king / queen of the world”. Maria has a similar reaction. Just think this through though, the job of a king or queen is tiring, that is not someone which will make one truly happy. It’s as if we have never really thought about what kind of reality will actually make us truly happy, we just have generic sallow responses which just sound cool.

So what does your favorite reality look like, answer in comments.

Read about other episodes of Black Mirror too: Black Mirror S07E01 - Common People