“I’m a murderer.” “Yeah, but not a crazy one.” This is something only a crazy person would respond with.
The fifth episode of the latest season of Black Mirror, what some may call the modern day “Twilight Zone”, portrays just how powerful the power of choice is and easily the wrong decision can lead to destruction faster than good decisions lead to Zion.
This episode focuses on a meek department store saleswoman, Nida, whose quiet and boring life becomes way more eventful than she could have ever imagined when she accidentally summons a demon. As an Indian woman in a predominately white town of London in the late ‘70s, she easily stands out. With racist markings left on her apartment door by neighbors or microaggressions from another saleswoman at work, Nida sometimes fantasizes about violence against those who cross her, which likely made her an even easier target for the devil. Most of us have probably imagined giving that one annoying coworker a good cussing out or even a little slap across the face… but straight up murder? Nida shows to be naive as the show goes on, but she is certainly not innocent.
Her fate begins on an ordinary day at work. Wanting to escape her coworker’s disgust for her cultural Indian dish, she escapes to a forgotten basement underneath the department store for her lunch break. Taking a seat at a dusty desk in the corner, under the limited dim lighting in the room, she finds all kinds of old newspaper clippings about the store's inception and other current events during the time of its opening. But it’s this lone, small domino-like piece that seems to beam in the darkness and reel her in, almost the way the glass holding a genie in a bottle would. Curious about her new find, she pops it into her pocket as her new keepsake thinking it was a relic from the past. Little did she know, it is a curse from hell.
Perhaps the inanimate object would have been just that - an inanimate object, had she just taken it home for a little further inspection of the strange markings and where it would have likely ended up in a junk drawer somewhere. However, what one may not notice on the first watch is that right before picking up the fake game piece, Nida pricks her index finger on something on the desk, drawing blood to the teeny tiny wound. Although not even really the slightest ounce of blood made contact with the piece, what looks to be as faint as a swipe of a skinny, red Crayola marker, blood is significant in the spiritual realm. It is the most expensive and only currency you can use to complete a transaction. Animal blood in otherworldly rituals in order to inflict pain against others or receive worldly riches, among other things. Jesus’ blood in order to save souls from eternal perish. And Nida unknowingly makes a pact with the entity of this demonically charged item when her blood seeps into the grooves of it.
When she gets back home and takes the piece back out is where she is officially summoned or where more like she summons her demon. You see, this being can only enter her with her permission, no matter how loud, scary and demanding its voice is to be set free. Allowing access to her psyche is the first decision in her downward spiral of events as an antihero. Her thoughts are no longer just her own and this new voice in her mind now also manifests itself into a visual only she can see.
Understandably shaken when this entity shows up looking a, you know, evil demon, Nida cowers in the corner of her living room which cues this spirit named Gaap to quickly read her mind and change his appearance into the dashing disco dancer pictured earlier on the television (Bobby Farrell from Boney M). This allowed him to not only be more accommodating but it is a known phenomena that people are more likely to pay attention to, listen to and even give special treatment to those who are more conventionally attractive. We can draw connection to how before his fall from grace, satan was the most beautiful angel there was (Ezekiel 28:12). He reigned supreme among all of the angels and with his musical gifts, led the entire kingdom in worship everyday. This high ranking wasn’t enough though and he used his charms to convince one-third of the angels to join him in his rebellion and become the enemy we rebuke today.
Isn’t it funny how things that are no good for us often come in the prettiest packaging? Glutton-inducing, oversized drinks at those milkshake bars that are topped with donuts, pies and cookies adorned with candy and sprinkles, as if the sugar frenzy in that glass itself wasn’t enough. Vape pens wrapped in vibrant designs emitting smoke that tantalizes the senses, but sucks the life out of your lungs. Many people even say that the finest of the human species tend to be the most toxic and likely to break your heart into a thousand pieces, but we won’t go there. Let’s be clear here though - these unhealthy indulgences have no comparison to that encountering one of satan’s minions.
Along with giving her the opportunity to satisfy her taste for blood caused by her pent up rage, it is also no coincidence that Gaap embodies himself not only as an object of her sinister desire but her sexual desire as well, when he presents himself as the beauty her eyes beheld and had her fixated on the screen. Lust is one of the 7 deadly sins.
We can find similarities to Eve’s encounter with satan in the Garden of Eden. The serpent tempted her with the idea of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil with the premise that she’d be more like God (Genesis 3:4). Gaap persuaded Nida to knock a few bad apples off of the tree of the world in exchange for keeping billions of good ones, under the guise of nobility as well as responsibility. Both were mere suggestions and required the one on the receiving end of them to take action themselves.
The devil persuaded her under the guise that she would be “saving” these victims from harm’s way, but each time this demon gets a call from his "job", the underworld, there are more and more stipulations on what Nida has to do in order to be free from the curse. This is not shocking as this is a known trick of the devil; he’ll promise you glitz and gold in exchange for what doesn’t seem like much. He’ll promise you the whole world and everything in it and before you know it, the price you’ve paid is the priciest or priceless rather, possession you have - your soul. I’ll even (begrudgingly) quote Kanye, someone who appears to teeter on the side of good and evil, and whom may have ultimately let evil win:
“I sold my soul to the devil, that’s a crappy deal
Least it came with a few toys like a happy meal”
This moral dilemma could have been resolved with an old, yet simple adage, “two wrongs don’t make a right.” But that’s too easy. We all know that. The episode wouldn’t have been an episode if Nida reasoned with that logic.
A Missed Opportunity
What would have been a more satisfying and albeit accurate outcome, is to actually show the devil for what he truly is: a liar (I Peter 5:8). After her police interrogation for the murders she was demonically influenced to commit, Nida bears all about the talisman and Gaap, feeling immense existential pressure to save the world, but she’s just left looking like a basket case to the police and staring at the clock on the wall where time is just moving along as normal - or so we’re to think. The world actually does explode due to her and Gaap’s failure to complete the mission, but the reality is that this would never come to be because the devil is incapable of telling the truth in the same way that God is incapable of telling a lie. All throughout the episode, when Nida is seen talking with her demon publicly, it looks like she is talking to herself, which makes it clear that to be demonically influenced, is all a trick of the mind.
This Life is Temporary
At the end of the day, it's not hard to comprehend our protagonist’s (or should I say antagonist, given her actions) feeling of immense pressure to save the world. I mean, who wouldn’t? According to Gaap, she is the only one who can complete this trial. After all, she is the one who took the talisman home, therefore, she is the one who put everyone on Earth’s life in danger. Sparing the lives of billions, at the expense of a few casualties, especially ones that are deemed worthless and unwanted given the sins they’ve committed, it doesn’t seem like a bad bargain.
But what this innocent yet tainted soul does not know is that this life is only temporary. The things that we can see and touch will eventually pass away. What feels like a lifetime here in the physical realm can never compare to that of life in eternity. So what if the entire world blows up because you decided not to become a demon-in-training? What is inevitable, would’ve simply just happened sooner, rather than later. (Luke 21:33)
While the final installment of Black Mirror’s sixth season is set up like an adrenaline inducing ‘70s thriller and far from today’s in-your-face jumpscares, slashings and possessions of today’s horror films, it still yields a warning of the sheer horror that can take place in the mind and ultimately manifest out in the real world when we’re not careful or even aware of the enemy’s deceptive tactics.
