The Prisoner, Black Mirror, and Finding Belonging as an HSP

This post contains spoilers for The Prisoner and Nosedive (Black Mirror). It is an updated version of a post first published on October 19th, 2019.


What can The Prisoner and Black Mirror teach us about being a Highly Sensitive Person?

In the 1960s sci-fi series The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan’s character, Number Six, tries repeatedly to escape a quaint coastal village he’s woken up in. Every effort to escape fails and he is pulled back to this picturesque dystopian home. Number Six is trapped, unsure of why he’s there or how to escape.

In the opening sequence, he asks one of the many faces of Number Two about Number One’s identity, only to be told, “You are Number Six.” He responds, “I am not a number; I am a free man.”

We see this at the start of every episode and only in the finale do we get the reveal. We see Number Six’s face beneath Number One’s mask. McGoohan suggested this is the image of the shadow or alter ego. It turns out, he is holding himself there. So, who is Number One? “You are, Number Six.”

Individualism vs The Collective

Throughout the series, Number Six strives to break free from the village collective he’s woken in. He seeks to prove his freedom and independence by getting away from it and heading home. Ultimately, a court validates his individuality and invites him to take over leading the village because of his success in staying true to himself. He is free to remain a prisoner.

He refuses and confronts Number One, before leading an armed revolution and escaping to return to London. The beautifully ambiguous ending leaves us to wonder if he has integrated his doppelganger and found freedom or if we’ve simply caught glimpse of an endless cycle that plays out over and over.

Nosedive To Freedom

In Black Mirror: Nosedive, Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) lives in a world where social status is determined by a digital rating system. Every interaction contributes to a person’s score, which ranges from one to five stars. The higher the overall average rating, the more options open up to a person, such as access to better housing, exclusive services, and social opportunities. Social engagement is skin deep and judgemental as everyone seeks to gain positive ratings and avoid negative ones.

Lacie desperately tries to fit into this artificial world, hoping to improve her average score to upgrade her living situation. However, her efforts backfire; her ratings plummet after a series of mishaps, leading her life to spiral out of control.

In The System But Not Of It

In a candid moment, Lacie admits to Susan, a truck driver indifferent to the ratings game (who offers her a ride with no ulterior motive), that she’s been chasing an elusive dream. When Susan asks what she wants, Lacie replies:

“Enough. To be content; to look around and think, I’m OK. To breathe out without feeling ‘urgh.’ That is way off. Until I get there, I have to play the numbers game. We all do. It’s how the world works.”

The Real Prison

Lacie sees the system’s promise as an unattainable lie. She acknowledges that the social ratings story is a trap, with no promised land of freedom on the other side of endless striving. Yet, she struggles to let go. It’s hard for her to envision an alternative. Unlike Susan’s indifference to it. She accepts what she can’t control but refuses to let it define her existence and value as a human.

Eventually, she ends up in a prison cell, where, in an ironic twist, she finds freedom for the first time. She is liberated from the tyranny of superficiality, fake smiles, and the masks of digital judgment.

Creative Freedom

Lacie’s emancipatory moment arrives as a prisoner in the jail when she lets go and trades insults with a man in the opposite cell. She mimes the process of down-voting him and then hints at a smile before confronting him in this new reality without consequences for doing so. They are free to hurl slurs at each other with a glint in their eyes as the years of suppressed human creativity come flowing out through vulgar and playful trash talk.

Lacie finds something in herself—her humanity and the authenticity from which this shared moment with a stranger emanates. We might describe this as embracing the joy of not fitting in. Re-defining the parameters of personal value on our own terms. Lacie is forced to confront this drive to acquire things she doesn’t want, from people she doesn’t like, for reasons she doesn’t ultimately care about. And with her plummeted social score, she has an opportunity to rethink everything and the accidental freedom to design things differently.

For highly sensitive people, this creative moment in Nosedive might appeal. The pressure to fit in, perform, and please can become self-alienating. The subtle drift away from our values, needs, and natural rhythms, and into a system that costs us a huge amount when we try to keep up.

Over to You

Have you had a moment like this for yourself, where you were free from expectations and able to express your creative spirit with nothing left to lose? What did that look like? How did it feel?

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