Last night had a nasty, searing surprise. I saw things depicted on the small screen that no one should ever see. Which one hopes they would never think of. Nihilism, a philosophy of stark emptiness in human purpose and in ethics, is reproducing itself like a computer virus across the arts. Its bleak message is leaping from the minds of troubled writers into the hearts of millions of viewers. What follows here is a warning of where it leads us: To denying first God, then man.

I was asked by an online magazine to write a review of the series Black Mirror. Launched in Britain in 2011, it has had five more seasons so far, now produced by Netflix. The show won prime time Emmy Awards, features top-line actors, and offers a slick veneer. Reviews describe it as the contemporary answer to The Twilight Zone, boasting that it addresses troubling issues free of “censorship.” Allegedly it probes the impact of technology and media on ordinary life.

So I invited my girlfriend over and we tried to watch the pilot episode. I have never been so revolted by a TV show in my life. I won’t be watching any more episodes, thanks very much.

The Princess and the Pig

The episode tells the story of a British Prime Minister. So far, so good. I’d just seen Darkest Hour the day before, and was still a little bit high on Churchill fumes. (My review of that magnificent movie will appear soon here at The Stream.) I was primed to see a British leader tested for his courage and integrity.

But this prime minister isn’t facing the threat of Nazi terror bombing or invasion. He confronts a terrorist threat of the most repugnant kind. Someone has kidnapped a young British princess, the most beloved member of the British royal family. And the kidnapper has an extremely specific demand, released on Youtube so that the whole world can read it.

There is no way to put this … delicately. The terrorist will murder the princess in 24 hours unless the Prime Minister commits an unnatural act with a pig. On camera, for international broadcast.

Dehumanizing and Flippant

Let’s say it right off the bat: There is no way to tell such a story appropriately, for any TV audience. Period. Just introducing that idea into viewers’ minds is nothing less than demonic. The writer who submitted it should have been summarily rejected, fired, then blackballed. He ought to be handing out rented shoes at a bowling alley somewhere. The producers who accepted it ought to be unemployable in the arts. Such catastrophic bad judgment and moral blindness disqualify them.

So it almost seems foolish to go on and critique how the show executed this execrable premise. Really, I should have turned it off immediately. But I’d already told myself “I’m supposed to write about this,” so I sat through the rest of the hour. Or almost all of it.

Spoiler alert: I intend to spoil this episode so that none of you goes on to watch it. It’s alternately appalling, dull, and dispiriting. We never see the terrorist. We never find out his motives. The Prime Minister and his staff try to track him down, but fail. They even try to do a “faked” CGI version of the unnatural act using a porn star actor with the P.M.’s face green-screened over his. That doesn’t work.

There is no way to tell such a story appropriately, for any TV audience. Period. Just introducing that idea into viewers’ minds is nothing less than demonic. The writer who submitted it should have been summarily rejected, fired, then blackballed.

So in the end, the Prime Minister, under enormous public and private pressure, goes through with it. We see the build-up. And we see the pig. Then we see the P.M. disrobe. I’m amazed that the makers of the show saw fit to end things there. Probably fear of animal rights protestors.

And then it turns out that the princess has already been set free. So the leader of Great Britain has bestialized himself for absolutely nothing.

The end.

Tortured Puppets Theater

I have never seen any piece of entertainment this nihilistic in my life. While it feints at showing the Prime Minister’s grief and anguish, it also partakes in cheap, sniggering humor. The program tries to have it both ways: indulging our darkest impulse of morbid curiosity, then trying to pass itself off as gritty drama. That doesn’t work. The show degrades the viewer and soils his imagination. None of the bleak moral questions that ought to arise are ever addressed. (Such as, for instance, “May we do evil that good may come?”) You can’t have human drama once you’ve dehumanized the characters. Instead of watching real fellow men and women suffer and strive, you’re seeing some sadist filmmaker torture a series of puppets.

None of this stopped the critic from the (staid, conservative!) Daily Telegraph from praising this episode. Michael Hogan lauded it as a “blackly comic study of the modern media…. This was a dementedly brilliant idea. The satire was so audacious, it left me open-mouthed and squealing. Rather like that poor pig,” Hogan wrote.

Why bring this to your attention, dear reader? First of all to warn you off. But also to point to the stark, aggressive nihilism that keeps cropping up in our media. We’re not talking merely sinful or anti-Christian material. The new strain of “edgy” entertainment is anti-life and anti-human. It seems to want to blot out Creation itself.

Postcards from the Inferno

It’s hard to avoid this stuff. There was no warning label on Black Mirror. Nor was there on another Netflix series, this one from Australia, called Rake. I tried to watch the first episode there, only to find that an entire sub-plot was devoted to … “consensual” sexual cannibalism. It was played for laughs, of course.

Then there is the entire comedy oeuvre of Louis CK. Sad as his fall has been — and perhaps out of proportion to his misdeeds — it shouldn’t have surprised anyone. His sole topic, it seemed, was the futility, squalor, and sadness of life. He offers that view of existence in one comedy special as an argument for abortion. And indeed, it is the only really logical one.

Given all that, why not a potted plant? A cannibal? A pig?

The darkness around us grows, and we really need to vigilant about the art and entertainment we let in our homes and hearts. Art moves us, despite ourselves. Too much of what’s out there now is shoving us toward the abyss.