Bandersnatch: The Vicious Loops
- Keira Vo
- Jul 25, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 1, 2020
Every action, every Stefan's choice, more precisely the viewer's choice, brings us to a predetermined ending, and after brings us back to that choice and find a new turn for the story. These are vicious loops that trick us into believing that we have full control, but no, all are fixed by Netflix.
Bandersnatch is set in the 1980s, when video games are still very new, people use desktop computers with screen boxes and programming, of course, not as hard as it is now. There is a guy named Stefan wrote a game based on the "Bandersnatch" his mother left. He brought the unfinished game to the company where Collin, his idol, was working. His game is noticed and the story starts from here.
From what I saw, viewers have the right to decide on Stefan's options from the smallest things like what to eat for breakfast and what to listen to on the bus. Every action, every Stefan's choice, more precisely the viewer's choice, brings us to a predetermined ending, and after brings us back to that choice and find a new turn for the story. These are vicious loops that trick us into believing that we have full control, but no, all are fixed by Netflix.
All decisions are made, but everything is set
Throughout the film is the process of Stefan building Bandersnatch, which is also the process of psychological collapse. It would not be easy if from the beginning he had been traumatised, obsessed with the death of his mother, and also the author of the book Bandersnatch had a very strange ending.
"Towards the end of his life, Davies was apparently self-administering hallucinogens on a daily basis. This, coupled with his attempts to complete the complex, multiple narratives of Bandersnatch were to prove the final straw. He became obsessed with bizarre symbols and the limitations of his own free will. In his notes, Davies repeatedly sketched a glyph, which to him represented multiple fates, potential realities splitting in two. It was the start of his complete mental collapse."
Stefan increasingly immerses into the story, the more he thinks like him, to the most haunting obsessions, from there he can't control what is happening in his life anymore. It was at this moment that Stefan realised that he was being controlled by a force behind the screen and could do nothing but dive into the pre-determined endings from the beginning.
What makes me realize that the viewer has absolutely no choice over the outcome of the movie is the moment Stefan chose to split his father and complete the game. His game is rated 5 stars, perfect in every way. He pretended to be giving the player the freedom to choose the direction of the character, but in fact he was the one who decided completely from the beginning to the end, the player was only the follower of the instructions he had set. never mind.
As soon as we watch this movie, we become Netflix players and be led by pre-programmed directions. After hours of brooding the movie, I realized there were 10 different endings planned. Will you still find yourself returning to the choice of seeing a doctor, will you let Stefan or Collin jump down from above, cut off his father's body or bury him? Finally, they all returned to the time of 8:30 am in July morning when Stefan woke up. This vicious loop with Stefan's mind-break is the point of making the difference of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
If you pay close attention, you'll recognize the theory of parallel worlds installed throughout the movie. From Collin's lines, The Lives of Jerome F Davies or Jerome's tape that Collin sent to Stefan, all to say: there are literally thousands of universes operating in parallel and each decision His, whether in this universe or another universe, changes his fate every moment. It was like a tree root, starting from one branch and gradually turning into thousands of different directions. Whether or not, go or stay, choose one or the other, each of your decisions affects the future, more or less.
The deeper the loop goes into each of the different links, the more interesting and dramatic new details appear to entice viewers into options to further explore the hidden secrets in the film.
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