<em>Upload </em>Satirizes a Capitalist Heaven
In The Good Place, heaven looked like the Getty Center. In Black Mirror, the digital afterlife can be anything from an ’80s beach town to a blank white expanse. In the new Amazon series Upload, heaven is a simulation designed to mimic an upscale Catskills resort hotel, and when the central character Nathan (played by Robbie Amell) dies and has his consciousness transferred into it, he has some trouble adjusting to his new reality. “This,” he tells his customer-service “angel,” Nora (Andy Allo), “is a bad idea. The ads make it seem like a really great thing, but it is monstrous.” Nora tries to soothe him. “I get it,” she says. “This isn’t perfect. And maybe you were led to think it would be, since the marketing mentions ‘heaven,’ like, a dozen times. But … maybe the imperfections make it more like life.”
Nora’s right: The digital afterlife Nathan is in isn’t perfect, but it is perfectly attuned to the show’s earthly world, a 2033 late-late-capitalist America where corporations have found a way to monetize heaven itself.
