Black Mirror denotes the British science fiction collection TV series that was created by Charlie Brooker. Annabel Jones and Brooker served as the showrunners of the program. Black Mirror assesses contemporary society, principally in connection with the unexpected consequences of novel technologies. Episodes are unconnected, typically set in an alternate present-day or the near future, habitually with a gloomy and sarcastic tone, although some are lighter and more experimental. It was inspired by older collection series such as The Twilight Zone that was capable of taking care of controversial, present-day themes without qualms of suppression. The episodes premiered for 2 series on the British TV Channel 4 in December 2011 as well as in February 2013 (Murray, 2013). Following its adding to the index in December 2014, Netflix acquired the show in September 2015. Black Mirror commissioned a sequence of twelve episodes afterwards split into the 3rd and 4th series, each, 6 episodes; which were publicized on 21st October 2016 and 29th December 2017 respectively. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, an unconnected interactive movie was publicized on 28th December 2018, while 5th series made up of 3 episodes was publicized on 5th June 2019. Certainly, Black Mirror performs a masterful task revealing in alarming detail of how technology is defining society, however, the show is seen to promote sexual harassment towards women.
Technological development holds a pledge to make dreams real, nonetheless, Black Mirror gaudily displays that the dreams could turn into nightmares. Technology is more impartial than it is wicked; nevertheless, it is extremely powerful, just like money. Both technology and money have a straight line to human desires—bad or good—and could be a path to curse or bless. But then again, Black Mirror is not only about technology. The program utilizes technology as the thematic framework and to “reflect” back the actualities of the society of today in a bigger sense as well. An individual episode of Black Mirror has a dissimilar case, a dissimilar background, and also a dissimilar reality. Nevertheless, the episodes all about how humans live today—and how they may be living in ten minutes’ time in case they are clumsy (Boren, 2015).
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The title itself “Black Mirror” is a key into the manner in which to view the program. When one’s devices switch off, the screens turn into literal dark mirrors wherein one may view themselves. As influential as technology gets, its utmost influence is in the way it mirrors who a person is and what a person chooses to do. It isn’t a technological concern people have; rather, it is a human one” (Brooker, 2012). Without a doubt, the antihero isn’t technology; and it is on no occasion technology. The issue is a human issue since it is an evil issue. Technology is simply an abettor, while the villain is all the time human. The gloomy part of technology in the show is merely an addition of the blackness within human selves. The show perfectly displays that.
There are some problematic issues about Black Mirror. The friendship between Danny and Karl, in the meantime, is more troubled, and more blatantly gay unnerved. They have worry conveying the way they feel, and once they begin having computer-generated sex, the situation becomes even more difficult. At one point, Karl jokes, “Are we gay now?” The discomfort amid them weakens the possibly radical insinuations of the episode, nonetheless in a realm in which a simple picture of 2 straight black males showing love for one another could still cause an outcry; both ways are a captivating indication at the risks and difficulties of black man intimacy.
Furthermore, the episode “Fifteen Million Merits” investigates the hyper-sexualized nature of contemporary mass media. The show undertakes the unfair nature of business fueled, internet porn by displaying to the audiences how such sexualized businesses exploit and forcibly trick young females. Towards the conclusion of the episode, Abi is basically left trapped in a TV box, unwillingly playacting to be a person she is not, and controlled and manipulated by the mass media (Söderberg, 2013). This kind of technology is utilized as an instrument to facilitate and enable harassment and sexual violence against females in terrible ways. The business, which is predominantly geared towards males, funds multimedia and films that portray actions of sexual abuse against females. Furthermore, the enormous invasion of internet porn has aggressively echoed media depictions of females as merely objects of sexual satisfaction—which is a problematic degrading depiction of females. These depictions hearten sexual violence, misogynistic trends and don’t regard the values of individual sexual identity and freedom.
However, regardless of these critiques, it will be imprudent to entirely disregard the Black Mirror. Considering the program’s weaknesses, it is vital to ask what significance could the program still hold. Black Mirror could be valuable, not as an episode that folks sit and view, but as a portion of culture which causes persons to present the queries that the program jumps over. What the show provides, at its best, is a room where persons may deliberate their anxieties and fears concerning technology without fearing that a person will term them as a “Luddite” for trying to have such fears – and for this motive only, Black Mirror can be meaningful. It is factual that the echoes perceived by watching Black Mirror are gloomy, twisted and unpleasant – nonetheless, such echoes are merely worth something in case they induce spectators to reconsider their relations to the dark mirrored surfaces in their existences currently and which possibly will be in their existences tomorrow.
References
Boren, A. (2015). A rhetorical analysis of black mirror: entertaining reflections of digital technology’s darker effects. URJ-UCCS: Undergraduate Research Journal at UCCS , 8 (1), 15-24.
Brooker, C. (2012). Black Mirror . Channel 4.
Murray, T. (2013). Television: Black Mirror Reflections. Philosophy Now , 97 , 42-44.
Söderberg, B. (2013). The dark reflection: A look at how the media is depicted in the short film Black Mirror-The National Anthem and how this could affect society.
