Black Mirror is a well-known TV show that has captivated audiences from all around the world in recent years. It tells a distinct story in each episode, imagining a dystopic near future. The stories focus on where current technology will take us and are frequently depressing and overwhelming, highlighting the idea that technology will cause us to lose our humanity.
When watching Black Mirror, one is left wondering what the series’ goal is. Any cultural product serves a purpose in the culture in which it is created and fills a specific need. A large product like this show would not be created in vain. Furthermore, it would not be as successful if it did not strike a chord with the audience.
When watching Black Mirror, one may feel anxious because it appears to depict society’s near future. And, certainly, it may be claimed that the show takes the most recent social notions, such as isolation, social media, AI, and so on, and pushes them to a potential conclusion. At the same time, one can’t help but question whether we aren’t already in that scenario in many ways. On first viewing, the second episode of the series, in which people pedal to earn a form of money that they may spend mostly on digital products and, at most, on participation in a false talent show, seems highly alarming. However, with closer examination, one will realize that the virtual city’s lifestyle is remarkably similar to many people’s lives throughout the world. If you consider that millions of people nowadays live in small spaces in slums, work in factories doing routine jobs 10 hours a day, only to spend their entire salary on basic necessities and the occasional smartphone, where they consume media and the occasional app upgrade, and dream of becoming famous. Suddenly, the world of BM doesn’t seem so far away.
The same may be said about the show’s social media scores and other seemingly outlandish notions.
Over the last few years, you may have heard someone suggest that happenings in real life resembled a Black Mirror episode. This suggests that, on some level, people are noticing that the show is, in fact, about our current times, and that what is shown there is really a highly fictionalized and dramatized version of it, with certain exceptions, of course.
When discussing BM, a simple imagination exercise can be performed. Consider presenting the world of today to someone from the 1960s, from politics to technology and entertainment. What would they think? They would probably be as frightened and outraged about Black Mirror as we are about social media and everything that goes on there, reality shows, constant news flashes, and outlandish conduct. To think about it, our grandparents’ generation (born in the 1940s and 1950s) would have thought it was unacceptable to share private images from their photo albums with the rest of the world, which is something we now do all the time.
Finally, one can question himself, “What is the message of Black Mirror?” According to Marshall McLuhan, for every technical breakthrough, we lose a certain aptitude. Build the car, and we will walk or ride horses less; invent GPS, and you will lose your capacity to orient yourself in place, and so on. Do we lose our humanity in a world dominated by technology? If that’s the case, shouldn’t we obtain other benefits that we might not have had otherwise?
The show’s purpose, perhaps, is to provoke thought about the dangers and pitfalls of conformity and comfort, as well as about how we can protect our spiritual essence in a world where technology is the norm and the “required” lifestyle. The title of the show can also be an indication: our phones and other screens all look like black mirrors, devices said to be used in dark magic. At the same time, in A Space Oddisey from 1968, the block that had seemingly brought intelligence (and other things) to humankind also resembled a massive black screen.