In a dystopian society like our own where likes on social media translate to social status, notoriety supersedes everything else. Women jog around plain, monotone cul de sacs and only pretend to eat cookies. Colleagues contort themselves into socially mandated boxes and disassociated with whomever the collective chooses to ostracize. Society at large even decides to participate in groupthink by championing the communal ideas we see perpetuated in mainstream media. Relics of intimate relationships exist as a form of strategic alliance and these bonds are contrived rather than allowed to mature organically. Feeling scared yet, enter the world of 2019, the world of Nosedive. A world were through smartphones and eye implants (scary) everyone shares their every move and perfectly curates their lives to receive high ratings from strangers (We would never do anything like in real life of course.
We meet Lacie a millennial-aged woman who reeks of insecurity and desperately purses a higher rank in society. On a 5 point scale, individuals within the parallel society are judged on their interactions with others and how effectively they curate their lives on social media (again a foreign concept to me). This rating process is of course highly subjective and unfairly marginalizes the constituents of Nosedive that refuse to operate within the society’s narrow purview of politeness. It isn’t until we see Lacie outcast from society that she feigns any real happiness. As evidenced by Lacie’s former toxic friend and object of obsession Naomi, the people who make up the upper echelons of society are just as unhappy. Naomi’s decision to finally exclude Lacie from her wedding was based on her fear of embarrassing herself through her affiliation with someone of low rank rather than a genuine concern. The high ranking guest list Naomi compiled was full of people who by Lacie’s desperate admission did not fraternize with her until she amassed the level of prestige that increased her ranking.
Laci’s worship of Naomi represents how we deify a standard of beauty that casts most of us outside the purview of popularity.
@Camillionaire_16
Lacie similarly attempts to distance herself from her brother (a happier person who ranks below her) once she is unceremoniously asked to be the Maid of Honor at the disaster of a wedding and is offered the chance to speak about her unhealthy obsession with Noami. When we watch as members of the wedding party drag Lacie out of the reception we can imagine what that obsession represents. Even how we deify a standard of beauty that casts most of us outside the purview of popularity. Not unlike our society, Blackness falls outside of the purview of popularity and respectability. Around the time Nosedive first aired in 2016, several of my ninth-grade classmates berated me for cutting my straight, relaxed hair and rationalized that I must want to be masculine. Their apathetic tone suggested their statements were not malicious, but presumptuous, insisting that long, straight hair is the norm and a mark of beauty or femininity. This assumption left me deflated after each trip to the hair salon when I looked more like young Diana Ross than the stock photos on the wall. This deduction devalues blackness. As I progressed through school and different jobs, I learned that, in many cases, black people feel obligated to adhere to Eurocentric beauty standards. In an almost homogenous office environment, I was quickly grouped with the few, much older black employees who cautioned me against wearing my hair natural, citing personal experiences of success with straight hair and ostracization with their natural hair. My mother put diluted relaxers and texturizers in my hair as a child, not out of contempt for my hair texture but because she revered straight or good hair during her childhood. This is not entirely unlike the lifelong reverence Lacie had for the very blond and thin Naomi.
I don’t know whether these ratings are a reflection of cancel culture or they exist to test my nerves. It is true that we engage in groupthink and allow influencers to determine who or what we support.
@camillionaire_16
In exalting Namoi’s image those who the most unlike her is related to subservience, Lacie included. The minute role of black women and their expression of beauty in nosedive also exists in stark contrast to the prop like the addition of black men to the narrative. In the apartment sense, the black man is a desirable fixture in a dream home, a symbol of successful akin to a foreign cigar. In the office is blackman is summarily dismissed from the social sphere following a breakup with his white partner. Lacie appears to have reservations about particapating in this mercilness shunning process vut she gerslef is discared by Namoni and the colleagues she tried to appease once her rankings fall affter a bad night. It seems the greatest character arc for Lacie was being forced to ride with Susan and observing how devoid of meaning her life was.
Camille Alexander 