Utopia in Black Mirror ‘San Junipero’

With last week’s blog post resonating around dystopia, it only makes sense for this week to center around dystopia.

What resonated most with me about the Black Mirror episode, is that the utopia it sets up, San Junipero, seemingly exists without societal judgement and is a genuinely better place than the world is currently. This is the importance in the fact that the main characters are in a lesbian relationship, in the episode it highlights how homophobia is perpetuated in the real world and follows it up with the fact that the main characters are able to be and live together in the end in San Junipero, without judgement.

The biggest connection to the reading and the episode that I was constantly reminded of when watching and reading, were the similiarites in San Junipero and the fictional world of the anime Sword Art Online. Sword Art Online is a fictional game that is an MMORPG where if you die in the game, you die in real life. In San Junipero, it is the opposite, you live there when you die, therefore it is not a threat. It is also not treated as a game, though it does follow the same formula as most MMORPGs. You can pick what body you want and what you want your environment to be reminiscent of, much like in a game.

After videogames, I think people will honestly go into the direction of things like MetaGlasses being used in the same way that a VR headset would be used, but in a way of like a facetime call. A person could visualize themselves talking face to face with the person they are on the phone with and they could choose their own backgrounds.

I think new technologies have a real place in the future, but whether or not it will be a utopia or dystopia is how we treat that technology and how we allow it to enter our lives.

Sources: Reading Link, [Black Mirror Episode](http://Amazon Prime VideoLinks to an external site.)