Fridge / Black Mirror: The National Anthem

Black Mirror FridgeSeries OneThe National Anthem — Fifteen Million Merits — The Entire History of You

• The kidnapper in "The National Anthem" — an anonymous individual who with one action sows the seeds of chaos within an entire community and forces them to dance along to his tune through provocative, vulgar, and inflammatory actions, derailing all discussion until it's about him and what he's done and making everyone else do, all pretty much just to prove a point about how stupid everyone else is for getting caught up in what he's done. So, basically a glorified Troll, in other words.
• Also regarding the kidnapper in "The National Anthem": it's possible that he committed suicide because the public appeared more concerned with pressuring the Prime Minister into acceding to his demands rather than worrying about the Princess's safety. If he wasn't a sociopath, realizing how horrible people can be would make a plausible Despair Event Horizon.
  • Fridge Logic: the episode deftly avoids the questions over how one man acting alone could possibly pull off the kidnapping of a high-profile royal, or whether he was indeed acting alone.
    • The man snapping and tweeting the picture of the porn star to be used in the fake performance suggests he wasn't.
  • It's also possible that he just killed himself in order to escape punishment; after all, kidnapping and holding a princess hostage would probably result in life imprisonment.
  • Maybe he was someone she trusted, and he took advantage of her trust in order to kidnap her, which contributed to his reaction. And that also contributed to him choosing to use his own finger rather than hers. Maybe she was a big fan of his art so they became acquainted...
• Might double as Alternate Aesop Interpretation, but the public is actually pretty on-board with the Prime Minister not going through with The Act until the public finds out his office tried to cheat the rules laid out by the kidnapper. The people want integrity in their leaders and are willing to extend sympathy and understanding to them in the name of maintaining that integrity at damn near any cost, including a princess's life, to maintain the dignity of the nation: that's their job. But that's a very high, narrow pedestal to fall from, and once that integrity is called into question, the public demands he go through with it because the unspoken rule is "we don't negotiate with terrorists", and the PM's office broke that rule entirely because they thought they were untouchable. It's as much a story about hubris in politics as it is about the grimy nature of public attention.

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