Friday Black

As much as I have enjoyed each story, I do not recommend reading them all at once. They are often painful.

I don't believe the park was built to be a brutality simulator, at least not at first. Based on some of Hedley's remarks, I get the impression that it was meant to make the patrons reflect on their choices in each module. Why did I choose to be aggressive? Why did I target this person and not that one? That isn't necessarily an impossible task. Consider the pedestals in the house: Isaiah describes them as a choice between calling police, shooting the person, or fist fighting, but that's a false trichotomy. The guest could go out empty-handed to invite the actor inside for a drink, or they could stay inside and let the actor walk right by. Being hostile is a choice actively made, not a neutral response.

That breadth of possibility is obfuscated, however, because the scenario is built around the assumption that guests will choose violence. There are police actors in a car on standby. There's a whole police station set and an interrogation script prepared. The actor wears a mech suit with fake blood packets in it. The house narration encourages confrontation. If the guest kills the actor, they get a cutesy postgame email telling them they did a good job. In short, the park fell into the trap of ineffective satire by favoring guest empowerment over challenging critique. And why wouldn't it? It's a for-profit enterprise, and people generally don't like paying to be guilt tripped. They certainly won't become repeat customers.

Regardless of intentions, if the majority of your audience sees your product as an uncritical power fantasy, a simple endorsement of the status quo, then that's what it will be. It is no coincidence that Isaiah, a Black man, consistently receives the highest guest ratings for that role.

To date, no studies have linked media violence to real violent acts. What they have demonstrated is that media can influence our attitudes toward their subjects. Pointing and clicking on virtual bad guys will never equal a real murder. But what about LARPing through a realistic scenario, physically struggling against another real person? What if that scenario is designed to play upon the participant's internalized biases, even reward them?

This is well outside my experience, but “Zimmer Land” also feels critical of the “Black cop” (for lack of a better term) philosophy. An attitude I've heard before is, “if you want cops to stop murdering members of minority communities, then more people from those communities should become cops.” Doug feels like a counterpoint to that argument. Like Isaiah, Doug is himself Black, but he is totally committed to upholding the existing order. He is coldly indifferent to Isaiah and uses his position of power to promote entertaining spectacle over Isaiah's more idealistic goals. Melanie once criticized Isaiah for his role at the park, but even she bought into its ostensible vision once she joined. Isaiah himself sits astride the line between belief in that vision and disillusionment with the park's failure to meet it. To me, these examples serve to argue that a system such as the park (or policing) will have conformity; its members must either adopt its outlook or depart.

This was the story that brought my attention to the collection. Jacob Geller referenced it in his video Time Loop Nihilism, in which he ponders how the protagonists of time loop stories can so seamlessly transition from day after day of consequence-free living back to normal life.

“Through the Flash” is interested in the same question. Because everyone is aware of the loop, they have countless lifetimes to live with the consequences of their actions.