Nabeel Solehdin

Professor Srmabekian
English 114B
08 February 2015

Exercise 1
In the two episodes of Black Mirror, Fifteen Million Merits and White Bear, a
reoccurring theme of love and control plays a part of a class struggle between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat class in the Communist Manifesto. The panopticon is the all-seeing room
where peoples actions are being recorded and processed through a system to maintain a stable
production rate. In the two episodes of Black Mirror and the Communist Manifesto, love gets in
the way of the capitalistic idea of production causing more surveillance between the class in
order to maintain a strict producing world which could possibly causes a disturbance between the
private and public life.
In Fifteen Million Merits, love is portrayed as a rare feeling because in their utopian
society, everyone watches how people make it big on television while they bike their way to
achieving basic needs to survive. A character named Bing meets a girl who sings just like the
people in the show but for him, hearing a live voice sing is something that people dont usually
hear unless on television. Love to him is seen as a visual of something produced in a virtual
world which triggers emotions. When the girl who sang was being blackmailed to do porn, he
threatened to kill himself to prove a point to the judges. The judges in this case are the
panopticon because they control what people see and Bing is offered a spot to move up in class

as long as people get to hear what he revolted on. Bing is used as a method of controlling other
people so they dont start a revolution to over throw the class that controls everything. The
panopticon in this sense is showing what people can see and not seeing in a sense of control over
the lower class; proletariat.
In White Bear, a lady is being controlled and manipulated by people because she
committed a crime. She is placed in a small society in which everyone can see her but she
doesnt know if they are or arent making her react in a certain way. In this case, the people with
the phones recording her every movements are the panopticon because everyone in that area can
see what she is doing. The woman committed a crime and instead of killing her, she is put in an
area in which she repeats her daily live and mental torture in order to teach her a lesson but in a
sense it is considered controlling her actions. She partook in a kidnapping because of her fiance
but didnt actually commit the crime so in an attempt to stop people from doing crimes, they
mentally mess with them and get inside their heads in order to create a better society. The
panopticon in this sense is controlling her every movements, leaving her no privacy what so ever.
Every move that she could possibly make is recorded and repeated on a daily basis in order to
show how much control they have over a person.
Control compared to White Bear can also be compared to reality because the movements
of a daily life is being recorded by the government. In this case, the panopticon is the
government because every transaction we make or place we visit is being recorded. Cameras are
placed around cities in order to have view over any crime on our society.
In the Communist Manifesto, the bourgeoisie owns the means of production and in this
case are considered to be the panopticon because they view everything that happens in their
production. If the bourgeoisies did not know what is happening in their production, there could

not be a production. They also have control over how much money they give to the workers. In a
retrospective, the bourgeoisie know exactly what the proletariat class spends money on because
they are only given a certain amount of money to meet the basic needs requirements. The
panopticon in this sense knows exactly what the money will be spent on and has control over the
class movements because they have to work in order to live. This is controlling their public life
and their private life because the bourgeoisie know that their private life is used to survive life
with no luxury.
The panopticon is an all seeing and knowing system which records movements and
routines creating a threat to private lives. In Fifteen Million Merits, the mans actions and
feelings were produced when everyone saw him and because of his step up in society, everyone
remains watching his stream of revolution even though he doesnt know if it is working or not.
White Bear completely controlled the womans actions and behaviors based on a study of how
the woman reacts in situations. The communist manifesto has control of one class over the other
making them the dominant class because they know all the actions and see all that happens in
their production.