MovieChat Forums > Black Mirror (2011) Discussion > The thing about San junipero

The thing about San junipero


Why are people so upset that Kelly choosed San junipero instead of her husband and daughter?
First, that presumes that there's such thing as a life after death, which there's absolutely no evidence of.
But most importantly, second, if there's such thing as a heaven, Kelly would be in it, as everyone else who dies, no matter if they choosed San junipero or not.
There would be 2 consciousness, just as in the episode with the cookies.
One in heaven and an artificial one in San junipero.
Pretty *beep* up, right? Two instances of the same consciousness in different places.
For non believers like me, uploading consciousness to the cloud is when we'll have eternal life. If that can ever happen in the future.
The thing that makes me more sad about dying is not being here to witness the future and all the things that are to be discovered, invented.

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Sorry about my English! Even though i bet its better than your Portuguese...

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From what I understood, Kelly wasn't convinced there was an afterlife, which is why she chose the certainty of being with Yorkie in a simulated world over the uncertainty of being with her husband and daughter in heaven.

The idea of there being two copies of her consciousness - one in heaven and one in San Junipero - is interesting and raises the existential questions of the nature of the soul, consciousness and identity. Which copy is the original one? The logical answer would be the one in heaven, as that reality supersedes the man-made San Junipero. But her choice was to stay in San Junipero, so in a sense the version of her in heaven wouldn't have gotten the afterlife she chose. She still loved her husband and daughter and would have been delighted to be with them again, but she might equally feel guilty that she chose San Junipero and Yorkie above them.

It's a very interesting and unique dilemma with no clear answer. I guess it all depends on the person's religious conviction of an afterlife. The stronger the person's faith, the more likely they would be to choose death over San Junipero.

Expanding the religious aspect, it's possible that God wouldn't let somebody who chose to live in San Junipero after death also go to heaven, as it could be seen as rejecting God.

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Yorkie did say one could "check out" of San Junipero so it seem like you could conceivably have both.

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By choosing San junipero she is choosing man/technology over god/faith that her husband chose. Most religions find this choice to be sacrilegious so choosing San Junipero would be a form of hell in comparison to the supernatural heaven from a religious perspective. For example the Bible talks about a time coming where people would wish to die but wouldn't be able to San Junipero could be an example of this. So that's why people are mad it shows Kelly's lack of faith in her husband/ a god. We can only experience one conscience at a time people might be able to feel others or their primary one might go to sleep you still only experience one so the conscience wouldn't split.

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It was Yorkie's family, not Kelly's, that was religious. Kelly's husband chose death because their daughter never got the choice and two old people living forever after losing their daughter would be unthinkable for most people.


Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. -Isaac Asimov

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Not seeing why this matters. Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that he chose against the "heaven a place on earth" mentality. I think drichinnice was just explaining the Christian perspective on that. Lots of atheists think the same way.

Mark Twain quipped that he'd rather go to hell for the company. He was being ironic but the underlying point is clear: it's more important to live with integrity than comfort.

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Setting aside all the religious implications - it is stated that a person can chose to leave San Junipero if they want, in the click of a fingers. So they can die if they want to.
Of course the whole place sounds terrifying to me.

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I wasn't upset as in i thought she made the wrong choice. I just felt like her decision to stay in San Junipero was kind of flimsy when leveraged against how adamant she was about maintaining her plan to (possibly) reunite with her child and husband. I know love caters to no plan but if it was just a matter of getting over her husband i could understand it but the idea that she'd give up on reuniting with her own child who died at a young age just feels kind of implausible to me given how long she had been holding on to it.

"Sure, we'll help you, just sit down and wait for Detective LIKE-I-GIVE-A-DAMN!" ~Chief Wiggum

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there being 2 consciousness is indeed important problem. even more important than what San junipero portrayed. problem is that biological consciousness always dies, there is no way for it to survive. only copy stays in simulation. so even if we ever have such technology i dont see how we can use it

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The show never said there were two versions of her. The process was a transfering her mind into the virtual world, not a duplication of her. You and others assuming she was duplicated are interrupting it wrong - the show never said or implied that.

I never saved anything for the swim back.

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I guess its something like Transendence where the "uploaded" Will would only be an imitation of the real person. The biological self is the original and there is no way u could transfer that into a computer.

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In Black Mirror they transferred her consciousness into a server. That is impossible, as we know it, but so are light sabers, traveling the speed of light, teleportation, etc. A lot of sci-fi is just a "what if" situation.

I never saved anything for the swim back.

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So here's the thing:

The consciousness in San Junipero is only a simulation of one's consciousness, a copy. For argument's sake, let's assume that an actual afterlife exists (Heaven). If so, and one chooses San Junipero, then there are two instances of one's consciousness: the "real" consciousness in Heaven, the simulated one in San Junipero. But here's the thing...

Neither of these two consciousnesses would be aware of the other or what the other is up to. So the consciousness in San Junipero would have no idea that it isn't the "real" consciousness, and while the "real" consciousness in Heaven might remember that they had chosen San Junipero and know that a "copy" of themself was now living in San Junipero in the cloud, the real consciousness wouldn't be aware of what the copy was doing.

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Shooting has started on my latest movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5531336/

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^This is exactly how I interpreted it.

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It would have been interesting if at the end they'd shown a version of Kelly in heaven with her husband and daughter and a version of her in San Junipero with Yorkie. That would have really screwed with the audience's head.

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"It would have been interesting if at the end they'd shown a version of Kelly in heaven with her husband and daughter and a version of her in San Junipero with Yorkie. That would have really screwed with the audience's head."

With Black Mirror being so dark, I really expected the ending to be that she chooses eternity in souless San Juniero missing out on a much better existence on an a higher plane with the family she loved. And in choosing San Junipero she was actually choosing Hell.

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You're thinking of consciousness the wrong way. You believe that identity can only be in a single place at a single time. If you split your consciousness, you would simply exist in two places at once, but both are still "real" and both are still you. Just because it's a copy doesn't make it less real than the original consciousness, as it would still have all of the qualities and characteristics of the original. The consciousness would still live on, same memories, personality traits, etc. This would only matter if you believe there is a soul, now that is something different, spiritual, but pretty much not real.

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Are we really so egotistical that we need a digital copy of ourselves frolicking around after we die?? We're still dead, the digital copy isn't a part of our own consciousness, it's a separate, independent consciousness that "began" to exist, without being born. It has our memories, but it never actually did those things, it just remembers them as if they did. It's basically a memory implant into a computer. Why am I bothering to post this on a site that will be gone in 2 weeks??

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Gone in 2 weeks he says 2 years ago. Lol!

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That was posted to the old IMDB forums before they closed. A lot of that was migrated to this forum before IMDB shut it down. So, the poster was correct, they were gone in 2 weeks.

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The poetry in this is beautiful, Moviechat is the San Junipero of IMDB. That user simply choose to die with IMDB.

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To nitpick, a digital approximation of something is never the exact same as the original analog form.

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I was not upset about that. She choose the bird in the hand rather than going for the two in the bush. I'm loving watching Black Mirror, and this is a fascinating episode. I give it a 9/10.

Your English is excellent, and you're right about my Portuguese. About all I know is ola! As a matter of fact the only minor error I could see was that you used the word choosed instead of chose. Other than that, it's perfect.

BTW I enjoyed visiting Peru and Brazil last year. Do you by any chance live in Brazil?


😎

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ironically, you made the same mistake lol...

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Yes I did. Senior moment.





😎

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You're back!!!! I hope you had a great time and I expect a full trip report soon.

Welcome back, my friend.

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Thanks, it's great to be back. More later, film at 11.



😎

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Because it may bring up memories of their mother or grandmother remarrying after a long former marriage. My grandmother was married to her husband for 50 years (from age 23) until he dropped dead of a massive heart attack in 2003.

Two years later she moved into a retirement community and remarried a Jewish man. She even converted and she was buried beside him in a Jewish cemetery when she passed in 2014 as he passed in 2012. Instead of being buried beside her husband, my grandfather and my Mother's father. It was a big ''sting'' for us all. And watching this black mirror episode also brought a little twinge on.

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