I want to continue our class discussion of “hypermediation” in Dead Set by examining the closing scene from episode 3. In this scene, Riq and Alex are safe from the zombies for a moment, in the house in the woods, watching the Big Brother live stream on TV. All the other channels are out, but Riq is hoping to catch a glimpse of Kelly to confirm that she’s alive. About two minutes before the end of the episode, he does.
First, he sees four of the Big Brother contestants from this season walk across the screen and says to Alex, “We’re not the only ones!”
She responds, “They’re miles away; we might as well be looking at cartoon characters.”
This exchange could happen under any circumstances between two people watching any television program. Isn’t Riq’s observation the point of television? Whether we’re watching the news, a fictional program, or reality TV, television, like any form of media, gives us figures with whom to empathize, sympathize, and relate, reminding us we’re not alone – “we’re not the only ones.” But take a step back, like Alex, and we realize that whether or not the characters we’re seeing are real, they can’t hear us and we can’t communicate with them. Once we realize this, Riq’s ability to see Kelly onscreen almost distances them further. Now he has proof she’s alive, but for all the efficacy he has in helping her stay that way, he might as well not know.
I was especially struck by this scene because of the way I watch Dead Set on my computer. I pull up the Netflix window, but because the show is scary and I’m a weenie, I don’t blow it up to full-screen. I keep the window open so that I can see my desktop and applications around the program so I can remind myself that it isn’t real when the action gets too intense. Being aware of the screen on which I was watching Riq watch Kelly on another screen really heightened the drama of this scene: in the same way that Riq can’t help Kelly from his vantage point, I couldn’t do anything to change the ultimate outcome of the show.
Riq takes that problem into his own hands and goes to Kelly. He makes the TV program real so he can affect it. Should we try to affect the truth we find in Dead Set – the zombification of humanity by the media?