Danny chooses Lance (Ludi Lin), and they fuck-over and over again. Karl chooses Roxette (Pom Klementieff) in the game. It’s a social construct.Īnd this is not at all to suggest that LGBTQ individuals have some kind of “choice” in the matter-it is to suggest that at the end of the day, perhaps none of us are really “straight.” I may be heterosexual, but equally there, I am not essentially determined to be such. I may be a man, but if I am a man, it is because I perform myself as one. You are-each of us is-but a series of performances of self. It abjures any essentialism: there is no essence of being a man, or a woman, or even of yourself. Queer theory has for decades worked to deconstruct binaries related to gender and sexuality. It would seem to me that this is precisely that which is appropriately described as queer, insofar as the term has been reappropriated. Is this gay? It is a sexual interaction between two men, but one that is mediated through a virtual environment where one of them has taken the role of a woman. The game is pretty much a version of something like Street Fighter, but they are apparently totally free within it, insofar as instead of fighting as the game tells them to, they start fucking. Karl (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) gifts Danny (Anthony Mackie) with the Striking Vipers game, along with the tech needed to play it (which is reminiscent of the tech in “ USS Callister,” e.g.), and off they go. I basically think everything is fine.īut that’s boring, so let’s engage with what might bother people.įirst of all, there is the sexuality question. I can read people talking about it on the internet who were.

I can imagine someone being bothered by events in this episode. Perhaps this is due to my own views about sexuality and infidelity. This has been its consistent theme: the black mirror is at once the dark screen looking back at you and the thing that makes you reflect on the darkness in your own soul.Īnd I, personally, found this lacking in “Striking Vipers.” Black Mirror is fundamentally about holding the dark parts of ourselves, as they are exacerbated by technology, up to us for us to look at.

Striking viper black mirror wiki