
San Junipero is not your typical town found on the coast. While the weather is great, the beaches are beautiful, and the nightlife is prominent, there seems to be something amiss. In Black Mirror’s episode entitled “San Junipero”, the director attempts to focus his attention on the development of the two protagonists and their relationship with each other, but the setting that most of the episode transpires in is undeniably engaging for the audience. The director conveys the idea that this place is a utopia maintained by a corporation using massive server rooms to redirect one's consciousness to San Junipero, making this virtual world seem better than reality. The concept of San Junipero’s utopian world is no stranger to the world of film and literature. The Matrix, a 1999 film, and “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, a 1973 short story, feature utopian societies as well. Through the closer analysis of each individual work, it becomes clear that all of these utopian worlds exist because of another responsible party, with eacho bearing their own set of potential consequences.

The concept of San Junipero’s existence is loosely paralleled and expounded upon in the short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin. Similar to San Junipero, the residents of Omelas are joyous people. The Festival of Summer had just arrived in the city and children and adults alike would play music and dance in the street. However Le Guin outlines a flaw in this utopian society. In order for the land of Omelas to exist, one child must suffer for the rest of the residents to proceed on with their joyous lives.  The people of Omelas all know that this child exists where “some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there” (Le Guin). However, some individuals choose to leave this city because not only can they not tolerate the pain that this boy has to endeavor, but they believe that their happiness as a whole society is simply not worth the suffering that only one individual has to experience. One could say that the same holds true for San Junipero. The corporation that created and maintains the program and servers that allow for San Junipero’s existence is the little boy who must suffer for everyone else to live in a utopia. While it is safe to say that the workers of this corporation do not have to experience the same amount of torture that the boy must endure, they are ultimately responsible for the creation and maintenance of this utopian-like world.

With both the land of Omelas and San Junipero’s creation and stability reliant on an outside force, it begs the question that is it possible to achieve a utopian reality where everyone can be happy as well? Of course movies and literature a like rarely feature a utopian society where there isn’t some kind of catch to it's existence. 

A dystopia is described as an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. In the 1999 film entitled, The Matrix, the directors Lana and Lilly Wachowski attempt to present a dual reality world to the audience that features both utopian and Dystopian qualities. The main character, a computer hacker that goes by the name of Neo, is encountered by a group of rebels. These people inform Neo about the true nature of his reality and he willingly obliges to help them in their goal of waging war against their controllers. Neo discovers that he has actually been living in a dual reality world. One of which could early on in the film be identified as a utopia, the world in which humans hook up to a machine and once entered everything seems to be as normal as humans could imagine their world to be. However after exiting the machine Neo learns the truth about his reality, that humans are simply being harvested by machines and that special agents such as Mr. Anderson are attempting to destroy all of human existence. What initially seemed like an obvious dystopia for the human race quickly shifts into a utopian like society for Neo. Although the real world is ravaged and for the most part broken, every human quickly learns to pull their own weight in the sanctuary that is called Zion.

Similar to San Junipero’s existence, the Matrix is entirely dependent on the operation of machines. However The Matrix takes the concept of a utopian world one step further than San Junipero. It manifests itself on the idea that perhaps achieving an alternate reality world, like the one in San Junipero where individuals can pass over into after they die, is far more harmful for the actual well-being of reality. It begs the question that perhaps having these corporations or machines that allow us to escape the real world will backfire and be very problematic for reality.

The similarities between all 3 of these works is undeniable. These worlds do not just unfold out of the blue, there is always someone who has to pay the price. Through a deeper analysis of “San Junipero”, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, and The Matrix, it becomes clear that attempting to create a utopian society is not only ethically questionable, but potentially harmful for all of mankind.
