The Insane (On-Screen) are Always Right

The last episode of Black Mirror’s sixth season has confirmed a theory that I have had for a while now; that film and television almost always depicts paranoiacs as justified.

In the episode I’ve mentioned, a character named Nida is visited by a demon who tells her that she has to kill three people in the next three days to prevent the apocalypse. Spoiler alert: she fails, and as the clock ticks past the appointed hour, nothing happens. We assume, like the officers who have arrested her, that she is crazy. A few moments later, however, we hear the sound of an air-raid siren. She was right. She wasn’t crazy after all.

The depiction of paranoia on-screen differs in comparison with literature, where there is more uncertainty as to what is real. The problem with on-screen depictions is not simply that they must show what the deluded see (making it seem real to the viewer), but that they are almost always vindicated.

It would be interesting to see what sort of effect these narratives have. I wouldn’t be surprised if (like confirmed conspiracy theories — like the Tuskegee experiment) paranoiacs are encouraged to assume they’re correct. This might even be one of the factors contributing to the rise in paranoiac belief systems.