The series "Black Mirror" is a phenomenon - each episode weaves a different (always worryingly probable) scenario about the near future, redistributing the plot, setting, and even characters. Direct references to other episodes appear somewhere in the margins, in the form of props or symbols smuggled into individual frames.
The creators reduce them to the role of winks to the most determined viewers who try to decipher the only correct chronology of events and then prove their point in lengthy analyzes and fan compilations on YouTube. The actual relationship between the episodes is rather loose; only the theme of the turbulent relationship between man and technology can be considered unquestionably common.
Brooker himself admits that he was inspired by the Twilight Zone - an American production by Rod Sterling from the late 1950s and early 1960s, which drew on the tradition of SF, thriller, and horror, smuggling controversial, political content in a fantastic guise. The Black Mirror, like the Twilight Zone in the past, offers "separate, closed stories penetrating the collective fears of viewers", while the lion's share of the episodes does not offer any consolation after the painful screening, but only multiply subsequent bitter punch lines.
The spiral of hopelessness is helped by the form of the anthology itself (also known from Tales of Unexpected or On the Other Side), which leaves no time for a proper adaptation to the story being told, or for taking a distance from it, instead, it throws the viewer into a different reality, regularly tearing my already shattered nerves. You can argue whether we are dealing here with five seasons and one interactive episode, or rather with twenty-three separate films; anyway, the inability to return to tame faces and problems consistently upsets and intensifies the dystopian message of individual episodes and the entire production.
The very fact that the Black Mirror is a classic dystopia - science-fiction, black, and at the same time a critical vision of the future - is beyond dispute; the designs of subsequent worlds, apart from the two exceptions proving the rule, are extremely pessimistic, and basically, all episodes deal with "negative consequences of current phenomena of reality". The series does not point out the errors of the concept of utopia (which makes it difficult to call it an anti-utopia), nor does it simply predict tragedies that are yet to come (although Brooker has been a dangerous prophet in the media for a long time); Instead, it focuses on defending the values that are collapsing in the real world right now, which does not inspire joyful expectation of the development of the situation. Some episodes are so deeply rooted in the current reality that they could be played out even this afternoon; others consider current dilemmas, taking on as-yet non-existent technologies.
The extensive catalog of opportunities, pitfalls, and dangers associated with the galloping development of civilization and unstoppable digitization is the main driving force behind the plot (s) of Black Mirror. Technology appears "almost ubiquitous and is a key iconographic theme"; the heroes do not part with their gadgets either during work or after hours. The fantastic nature of some inventions - for example, nanochips that stimulate the senses or copied consciousness enchanted in toys - does not diminish the realism of the problems they cause, and we have a lot of them here: the crisis of an alienated, weakened subject, mutilated interpersonal relationships, a deceptive marriage between the real and the virtual, or finally - carelessly crossing natural limitations and losing the essence of humanity somewhere along the way.
The source of all this suffering is precisely the technology and more specifically the irresponsible, unreasonable, and sensible way of using it. There is nothing revealing about it - Zbigniew Lenkiewicz, the author of a book on philosophy in science fiction, wrote in the 1980s about "being unprepared to use technology", which "makes the world a new apocalypse". In Brooker's series, technology acts as a catalyst for negative motivation and behavior; it takes the worst out of people and at times even strips them of their humanity, weakening their sensitivity and fueling their lowest instincts. A rough lesson in ethics casts a shadow on the characters' lives, effectively eliminating the chance for solace, let alone a happy ending.
The threat from technology is an eagerly picked up plot, which in pop culture usually manifests itself as a literal rebellion of machines with bloodshed in the package. The motifs known from Blade Runner or Terminator have their source in narratives about Golem and the Frankenstein monster, which researchers treat as pioneering androids. There is no point in looking for vengeance-seeking robots in Black Mirror; only the episode of Metalhead, a black and white raisin in a post-apocalyptic atmosphere, spins fantasy in this taste, which in the context of the entire series looks like a visual and genre experiment.
The very title of the series refers to the ubiquitous Orwellian screens - monitors, smartphones, and plasma displays, whose smooth surfaces fill public and private spaces, crawling into the streets and slipping into handbags or pockets. Unlike Lacan, the mirror screens of Brooker's series do not allow for self-indulgence; instead, they thwart self-identification and plunge heroes into an identity crisis. The reflection in them is always darkened and distorted, and in the opening sequence, to make matters worse, it is crossed by a symbolic crack.
In Black Mirror, the very essence of humanity blurs with the characters' self; A subject entangled in a nuanced, toxic relationship with the object finally falls into a crisis from which it is impossible to get out in one piece. The key themes present in the series - digital spectacles and media dependency systems, and finally VR and the issue of mind transfer - serve as a pretext for asking about the agency of human-associated with technology; Brooker needs dystopia to confront the viewer with the progressive loss of control.
The protagonists of Black Mirror, like all postmodern people, rely largely on broadly understood prostheses - you can "attach any otherness" to them, from seals, lenses, and transplanted organs to nano implants and clever chips. Incorporated prostheses and a whole galaxy of electronic gadgets present a sea of possibilities for them; however, they will not hesitate to demand something in return. This twisted relationship of subject and object forms the core around which several episodes have been built (The Whole Truth About You, People Against Fire, Arkangel, Crocodile, Black Museum), in the remaining episodes, it plays at least a significant role.
First, let's take the story of Liam (The Whole Truth About You), whose skull has a grain in it - a chip that records everything that meets the eye 24/7. Recorded memories can then be dumped on the screen and made available to viewers. In general, the new technology makes a lot of sense, because it supplements imperfect memory, disseminates knowledge, and improves the work of security services. Tragedies can be easily prevented (security does not clutter your pockets, only lazily scrolls through the last recordings of a suspected delinquent), and the looped screening of your own mistakes and successes paves the way for a better version of yourself.
The seed offers a substitute for omniscience and the full power over memory, but it does not bring relief; it silently destroys privacy, fuels distrust, and takes space for innocent lies. In a world where an argument and a lawsuit are won in seconds, that is enough to disillusionment. When Liam obsessively suspects his wife of a side jump, the seed gives him irrefutable evidence. For him, the victory of the dispute means a real loss - he ruins the marriage and takes his daughter away from him, and the looped session of the stolen memories of betrayal destroys him from the inside. In the final, drastic scene, the man cuts his own grain, and with it, he deprives himself of the reminiscences of a lost relationship.
Liam is a cyborg with an insight into his own and other people's memories, but a poignantly human cyborg who, apart from the implant, has a full package of human weaknesses and weaknesses. He is guided by "digitally recorded memories that obscure his own", which - as Grzegorz Wójcik rightly notices - brings to mind Paul Virilio's vision machine. By perfecting memory, the seed takes away one imperfection from the heroes, but at the same time stimulates another: obsessive control over another human being. We follow a twin version of this story in Arkangel, in which a concerned mother places her three-year-old daughter with an implant with a tracking option and a clever censorship filter - it imposes a sensory block on violence, dog barking, and any indecent or stressful stimulus.
When a woman loses control over the antics of a rebellious teenager, she abuses the acquired power. The expectation of full disclosure leads to the collapse of the protagonists' accounts and causes harm so great that there is nothing to save. Playing with perception is also the main theme of People Against Fire. There, superiors upload an interface to the soldiers, which makes them perceive their enemies as mutated, monstrous "cockroaches". Optical illusion effectively eliminates the hesitation when pulling the trigger - which is not visible, the heart does not regret it.
Of course, there are more fatal prostheses in Black Mirror: in Crocodile, the senses are extended by a reliable surveillance device that winds up the spiral of murder; The revolutionary diagnostic equipment from the Black Museum also contributes to the bloodshed. The pattern is relatively simple - augmenting the body stimulates minds and perceptions but doesn't leave them unscathed; the human element influences the non-human element and vice versa, the prosthesis also injects its three cents. In this close (too close?) Meeting, both sides transform each other in an "unpredictable" way.
In Black Mirror, objects turn out to be more efficient than people, delude with the promise of extending control, and as a result, they take over the reins themselves, redefine their identity and deprive the characters of any power over their emotions. The technocratic litany of losses is thus opened by enslavement, alienation of the subject, and a painful crisis of agency. As in dystopia, powerless resistance remains the prerogative of individuals who long for imperfection and autonomy; the community surrounded by screens remains blind to the problem.
While dangerous implants that constantly record reality or put cognitive filters on it are still relatively distant fantasies taken out of the realm of fantasy, gloomy stories about being entangled in the digital media system, and especially in social media, already sound suspiciously familiar. Brooker tries to trace how our media presence affects social practices. And so - we spend the episode Head to Neck in a world where each interaction is scored on a scale from 1 to 5. The viewer mainly follows the struggles of Lacie, who is desperately trying to raise her ranking from 4.2 to 4.5 (only then will she get the discount she needs and can afford an apartment in a prestigious district, and in the background and in the background there is a swarm of characters stuck to smartphones...
The very picture itself - which should not surprise anyone - makes you think about who we are and where we are going. In a hypocritical reality ruled by the media, everyone wants to be beautiful, liked, and rich, and because the rating system decides who is beautiful, liked, and rich, deeper interpersonal relations are replaced by superficial contacts with a theatrical smile. In one of the scenes, Lacie goes to a cafe and immediately posts a relevant post on the web. Although the food tastes like paper, an Instagram photo of a cappuccino with a sweet cookie quickly scores top marks. The truth does not matter, but the price is a studied image that paves the way to a good reputation.
Individuals breaking out of this system face a brutal push beyond the social margin, which ultimately happens to Lacie herself. Due to a series of unlucky events, the heroine fails to shine at her friend's wedding with a rating of 4.8, which would allow her to raise her status; instead, the woman goes berserk and ruins the candy wedding, thereby destroying her chances of a decent scoring. He finds the lost freedom only behind bars, where he happily throws meat around with a fellow prisoner.
It is one of the many episodes that implement the concept of Debord's play - interpersonal relations are here mediated by images that take precedence over reality and set the "new, dominant model of social life". Their spectacularity deludes, alienates, and deprives us of the ability to reflect, and since social media is a place where the spectacle takes place virtually all the time, the result is an extreme alienation of the subject surrounded by images. The protagonists of Black Mirror, and most likely its viewers, prepare this fate at their own request when they engage in the digital culture of exposure and voyeurism.
The mechanisms governing digital media, with continuous monitoring of activity and organizing a 24/7 spectacle, are the apple of Brooker's eye. Already in the first episode - the National Anthem - the checkered prime minister tries to save the life of a British princess by forcing himself to have sex with a pig. In keeping with the wishes of the performer-kidnapper, expressed - of course - in the YouTube video, the act of zoophilia flies live on TV, and it all ends up in vain. The released princess wanders the empty street for half an hour before the broadcast, but no one pays attention to her, because everyone is waiting in front of the receivers; after all, only the spectacle matters.
Particularly intriguing is the issue of public (self) judgment, which appears in the episodes of White Bear, Shut Up, and Dance or Hated. The first, the spooky Truman Show 2.0, tells the story of a murderer trapped in an amusement park. Victoria wakes up every morning brainwashed out and, to the delight of people recording her, she experiences a lot of psychological torture. After a whole day of struggle, she goes on stage, where she learns that the horror that happens to her is an eye for eye retaliation; since she was recording the agony of a helpless child with her phone, she would now be the main attraction in the park of justice. The performance is unmasked only to start over the next day; A woman's pain, although real, is mediated by the viewers' smartphones, which reduces her to an unreal source of entertainment.
The protagonist Shut Up and Dance is recorded by a webcam as he masturbates to child pornography; the hackers blackmail him into a series of crimes and then pass the material over to the police anyway. In The Hateful, we observe a private rebellion against spoiled humanity - an anonymous avenger uses murderous nanotechnologies and the hashtag #DeathTo to lynch the winners of an online hate plebiscite, after which he targets hundreds of thousands of authors of hate comments. As in the episode with the British Prime Minister, audiences follow the show on the digital stage, either with flushed faces or in a quiet, free of agency consent; the viewers of the Black Mirror can do little more.
Brooker multiplies successive realities in which the media are "not a boon, but an oppressor" the heroes of public performances know that they are being watched, but have no idea who (and at what moment) is looking at them. Big Brother is awake, so you still have to be careful - since the observer is anonymous, visibility can be constant, and this enforces discipline and establishes a power relationship.
Panoptic threads, present in most of the episodes cited, resonate particularly strongly in 15 million - a model dystopia based on the order of a talent show. Characters in gray uniforms, who have clearly not heard about the action "Log out to life", live alone in cubist boxes with walls made of screens. They spend their days riding stationary bikes and constantly staring at the monitor - this way they earn points for which they can buy food or turn off annoying advertisements, and at the same time generate the energy needed to run the system, which neatly closes the circle of piled up simulacra.
The rhythm of the day is not determined by nature, but the software (the waking up is announced by the rising sun on the screen), and there are not many alternatives for playing games, watching silly programs, and following the adventures of your own avatars. Moreover, from primitive, including erotic content, you cannot simply look away; appropriate punishments await the crooks and rebels in a panoptic prison. Life takes place in the virtual world and becomes "determined by the type of information and the aggressive rhetoric of the media", the order is determined by constant observation (straight from Orwell's 1984) and the caste nature of society (borrowed from Huxley's Brave New World).
If you want to jump to a higher level of gameplay and fight for the media fame of the elite, you have to take part in a TV talent competition, and first, leave a crazy sum of points to even get to the casting. When Bing, a lone rebel, finally arrives in front of the jury, he gives a heartbreaking monologue about the heartlessness of the system and intends to end up on stage with himself. It does not make a big impression on the media propaganda machine; on the contrary, she turns the gesture of resistance to her advantage and offers Bing her own show, allowing her to regularly vent her frustrations and threaten viewers with the empty threat of suicide.
Ironically? Yet how! Not only does the boy have to finally love Big Brother, but also the entire anti-media manifesto is created (and remains) within the criticized medium. Behind Black Mirror is Endemol, a third-party television content producer that spits more than 15,000 hours of entertainment material annually and is responsible for popular talent and reality shows, including Big Brother.
In this light, the approval of the Brooker project appears to be the cynical chuckle of an unchallenged system that graciously agrees to give Bing a separate bandwidth. Beyond the medium - and beyond the media spectacle - there is no escape. In Black Mirror, the agency is a privilege that entails abuses; whoever has the media at their fingertips has the power, and technology can serve as a tool for surveillance and discipline of individuals and masses under surveillance.
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