“¿Qué es Bandersnatch?” A Look into Netflix’s Groundbreaking Show and what Twitter Users Really Thought About the Interactivity
JMS Professor Dr. Nee discusses her recently published research analyzing the interactivity of Netflix’s Black Mirror episode, Bandersnatch
by Karissa Duran
May 25, 2021
Have you ever been watching a television series or movie and wanted to be in control of what the characters were doing? Have you ever wanted the story to end differently? Netflix spent millions of dollars to give users that chance through a Black Mirror episode called Bandersnatch, released in 2018. The premiere attracted a great deal of attention on social media where users flocked to discuss what they were experiencing. The discourse on Twitter is what specifically caught the eye of School of Journalism and Media Studies professor Dr. Rebecca Coates Nee, prompting her to take a closer look at the reactions trending around the globe. Her article, “Wild, stressful, or stupid: ¿Qué es Bandersnatch? Exploring user outcomes of Netflix’s interactive Black Mirror episode,” has been recently published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.
The word “Bandersnatch” has appeared in a few different places since the 1800s. Lewis Carroll used the word “Bandersnatch” for a fictional creature in his book titled “Through the Looking-Glass,” released in 1871. Bandersnatch was also the name of a computer game developed in the 1980s but never actually released. In Black Mirror’s episode, “Bandersnatch” is a fantasy novel written by Jerome F. Davis, and the show follows the journey a young programmer goes through while creating a video game based on the book. The “choose-your-own-adventure” genre embodied by Black Mirror’s version was made popular in the 1980s and 1990s by a book series published by Chooseco LLC, which has trademarked the phrase.
Dr. Nee traditionally focuses her research on digital technology and social media, more specifically second-screen activity, when a person is watching something on television while also interacting with another form of media such as a phone or laptop. This second-screen activity is what caused Bandersnatch to trend so heavily at the time, prompting Dr. Nee to question the level of interactivity the movie presented if the majority of its viewers felt the need to expand upon their experience on Twitter.
“People had strong reactions to it and I wanted to see how they were reacting and whether or not the experience was really that interactive,” said Dr. Nee.
According to Dr. Nee, Twitter is the platform used most often for second-screen interaction with television, and has a traditionally younger audience and a global appeal. This made it the ideal platform to gather and analyze qualitative data. A common theme among users was a seemingly simple but ultimately complex question: “¿Qué es Bandersnatch?” (Translation: What is Bandersnatch?). It was difficult for users to discern whether Bandersnatch was functioning as a video game or a movie, and users were spending longer than anticipated to find out. Users expressed curiosity in seeing every possible outcome, choosing different answers each time to reach the ending desired. However, many users would make the “wrong” decision, as determined by the movie creators, and it would revert the user back to the same choice, raising the question of how much control users actually had in determining the ending. This led to high levels of frustration, not only in the length of time they were having to spend in front of the screen, but in the decision-making process itself.
“People felt like they were making the wrong decisions and destroying the character’s life,” Dr. Nee said. “There were higher levels of second-screen engagement expressed as stress and frustration because they were seeing dire situations play out in place of the ending that they desperately wanted to get to see unfold.”
Dr. Nee’s research concluded that Bandersnatch presented the illusion of activity but ultimately came up short. This was in part because of the limited choices available during decision-making moments, as well as the user being set back in time if they made the “wrong” choice. According to Dr. Nee, high levels of interactivity occur when users are immersed in the virtual world, controlling characters and conversing with other users who are also engaged at the same time. Since Netflix did not provide a platform for users to interact with each other, the real interaction had to take place elsewhere; Twitter, in this case.
“Users wanted to interact not only with the story but with other users as well,” said Dr. Nee.
Bandersnatch has been available since 2018 and was the first of its kind, but has this technology progressed in passing years? What premiered as a novel opportunity for the media industry essentially turned into a question of not can we execute it, but should we? Film critics noted a decrease in the quality of storytelling to execute the interactivity for Bandersnatch. Putting the power of choice in the hands of users creates the opportunity for any and every possibility to be chosen, and that doesn’t lend itself to seamless storytelling. How much control can Netflix give up yet still retain the storytelling aspect of filmmaking?
“Once you give users that opportunity to really interact with media, it’s hard to convince them to be passive,” Dr. Nee said.
Dr. Nee concluded that the “choose-your-own-adventure” genre has some kinks to work out in the coming years. While we’ve seen similar technology executed in the show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix in May 2020, we haven’t seen much else released. Advertisements are also beginning to embrace the technology on a smaller scale by allowing the user to choose their own advertising experience in an ad placement on streaming platforms like Hulu. This strategy is easier to execute as it only allows the user one chance to choose between ads and the brand still retains full control of the storytelling process.
The rate at which the technology will progress and how users will react is yet to be seen. However, Dr. Nee believes that Netflix will continue to be at the forefront, forging this path.
“Netflix has managed to pivot every time there’s been a shift in the media industry,” Dr. Nee said. “They went from DVDs, to streaming, to creating their own content and now making an interactive space.”
To read the full published research from Dr. Nee, click here. To watch Bandersnatch and test the interactivity for yourself, visit Netflix.
The content within this article has been edited by Lizbeth Persons.
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