One of the weaker defenses of art is that it cultivates empathy. So what are we to make of the latest television show in which the viewer can direct the protagonist to kill his own father?
Netflix’s “Black Mirror” rolled out its latest “Bandersnatch,” a choose-your-own-adventure episode, in late December. It’s dark stuff and has sparked dozens of articles explaining all of the possible outcomes. Most of them end with at least one person dead.
It crosses the line into voyeurism, an uncomfortable participation in a young man’s descent to madness and murder.
“My empathy for the hero,” English professor Namwali Serpell writes in the New York Review of Books, “was completely at odds with my desire to watch Black Mirror — that is, to indulge in an often violent and therefore titillating TV show about the horrors of technology.”
At one point in the episode, you can choose to make yourself known. The protagonist, paranoid that he’s being controlled, cries, “Who’s there? Who’s doing this?” Of two choices on the screen, you can choose “Netflix.”
As an ironic commentary on predestination and free will, “Bandersnatch” is an intriguing watch. It also brings up an interesting point: What are we to make of art that encourages us to empathize with unsympathetic characters and their evil actions?
What of Lemuel Gulliver in Jonathan Swift’s classic satire? Our empathy for him may lead us to share his misanthropic views. What of Crime and Punishment’s infamous murderer, Rodion Raskolnikov?
What makes Gulliver’s Travels and Crime and Punishment great books is not their capacity to make us feel the feelings of their protagonists. It’s their ability to raise bigger questions.
You don’t need to end up hating humanity like Gulliver to understand Swift’s critique of impractical science and class stratification. Likewise, you don’t need to feel Raskolnikov’s guilt yourself to see how his attempt to live above moral standards tears him apart. Literature and other art forms, when created well, don’t have to make us feel with their subjects to push us toward a higher plane.
Of course, if you strip from art its ability to appeal to objective morality, as modernity has done, all you’re left with is the hollow appeal of empathy.
