Bandersnatch

 Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is a very interesting Netflix show. It is an interactive, ‘choose your own adventure’ show with multiple pathways and outcomes. In this particular episode, Bandersnatch, it is set in 1984 and is about a teenager named Stefan who is trying to create his very own video game. Throughout the whole show there are scenes in which two options are posed to the audience watching it and they are able to choose which one the character enacts. As I said earlier this type of ‘choose your own adventure’ show leads to many different paths based on what the audience chooses. It can be a yes or no question, or in this particular case, Option 1: Kill Dad or Option 2: Yell at Dad. And that is what is so cool about this type of show, the uncertainty. You don’t know what’s going to happen next and you are at a stalemate trying to figure out which path to take. 

The main plot of Bandersnatch is that a boy named Stefan is trying to make his own video game called Bandersnatch. He demo's his game for a big video game company called Tuckersoft. Then the rest of the show is about Stefan’s journey programming the game.  The show also goes into some background about Stefan’s personal life when he goes to see his therapist. His mother was killed in a train accident and he blames himself for it. He lives with his father who he hates. During the show we witnessed different outcomes of Stefan’s game being a huge success and also never being released because he never finished. We also saw outcomes of him murdering his father and getting into a sword fight with his therapist. Although I didn’t particularly like this type of creepy and ominous storyline, I did enjoy the interactive aspect of the show and thought it was a new and interesting twist. 

War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds broadcast was very interesting. The broadcast made it seem like there was an actual alien invasion happening in real time. It was cool to kind of experience what it was like to listen to only sound in 1938. Entertainment back then was a lot different than it is today. We are very fortunate to have such advanced technology and forms of entertainment. Although the whole alien invasion ended up being fake, the broadcasters made it very believable that it caused the nation to panic. Because there was only sound and no images being broadcasted, the listeners could only believe what was being said and hear the horrible background sounds. The performers played their roles very well by dramatizing the whole situation. The occasional silence played very big roles in convincing the audience it was real. Silence is so important because it is so convincing to the listener. As you are listening to someone talk and then the sound abruptly cuts off, you think that the people talking have just been killed or taken away, or the line of the broadcast has been cut in order to interrupt communication to the outside world.

The morning after the broadcast aired on the national radio, Orson Welles found himself to be the most talked about person in America. From coast-to-coast people believed that there really was an alien invasion. Many people in America became furious with Welles for deceiving them. There were reports of massive protests, suicides, and death threats directed at Welles. In countless interviews after the broadcast, the same question was asked: “Did he intend, or anticipate, that War of the Worlds would throw its audience into panic?”. Welles answered by saying that no one involved with the story expected to deceive anyone because they all thought it was too outlandish and improbable for people to believe. However, if I was in the same situation as the people listening to the radio in 1938, I probably would have believed the broadcast too. Because it was played out so well, it seemed believable. Although the story was the only thing people were talking about, it was not for good reasons. And I don’t think that Welles and his team thought that this broadcast would destroy their careers.