Twisting the comforting television fallback of narrative storytelling until it is a mess of misdirections and mind-bending plot twists, Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror Netflix anthology exists as both a full-on embrace and cautionary label for fast-paced modern life. Distorting everyday technology like Instagram flex sessions, Facebook TimeHop and the current worrying obsession with cataloguing every single bit of minutiae, each self-contained episode will leave you staring at the screen, mouth agape long after the episode fades to black. Pairing the pitfalls of a hyper-connected world with the human capacity for malice and evil, Black Mirror paints a picture of a black, dystopian future where modern life is equal parts more convenient and horrifying.
Taking normal, milquetoast characters and pushing them to act out in extreme hypothetical situations, Black Mirror exists as the intersection of your brightest dream (what if jetpacks actually existed?) and your darkest nightmare (what if the dead could be technologically reanimated?). Speaking to Vogue, creator Charlie Brooker dished on the actual role that technology plays in his bleak alternate realities. "The technology is never the culprit in our stories," he admitted. "The technology is just allowing people to do terrible things to themselves or others. What the show points out is the possibility of an unforeseen consequence of technology. That doesn’t mean we should get rid of social media anymore than we should get rid of the printing press because somebody used it to print a racist pamphlet. Let’s not blame the invention; let’s look at how we’re using it."
So take a breath from fishing for likes on the Explore page or standing on your Facebook political soap box, and check out the top five Black Mirror episodes of the series.
White Christmas
The three-part-plus-an-epilogue 2014 Black Mirror Christmas special titled "White Christmas" is truly an exercise in both the malleability and breaking point of the human consciousness. Featuring stunning performances by Jon Hamm and Rafe Spall, the episode explores the real-life implications of placing a permanent "block" on another individual. While the stan culture of today makes false-flagging social media posts and videos seem like little more than an annoying inconvenience, "White Christmas" forces the viewer to swallow the present implications of smashing the block button on someone that they don't agree with.
Is it a just punishment for sex and violent crime offenders to be forever "blocked" from interacting with others, spending their days as little more than a static, off-white projection of a human form? Twisting into a narrative surrounding the human brain map, viewers are once more saddled with unpacking the ethics of "uploading one's consciousness." If you could upload your consciousness into a Smart Home device that made everything from scheduling events to cooking breakfast easier, would you do it? Upon deeper reflection, would you be so quick to press the "upload" button if you knew your copy was sentient and unaware that they were little more than a copy? Would you inflict suffering on something that wasn't real...even if the pain was VERY real to the copied consciousness?
With a surprise-twist ending, "White Christmas" is undeniably art in episodic form.
Shut Up And Dance
From lesser offenses like leaving shade in the comment section to ones with real-life consequences like doxxing, online trolls have a wide variety of platforms and methods with which they can spread their hate. True to form, Black Mirror stretches the existence of trolls and Internet vigilantes to their limit, leading fans to question whether or not cyber crime offenders received a just punishment from the Big Brother-esque monitoring service tracking their every move for blackmail fodder. For those who disparage the episode's central plot point, that requires ultimate obedience from the characters to their tech overlords, think again. Every day, millions of people summon strangers to their homes and places of work before wordlessly getting into a car and directing their chauffeur, without ever having to utter a word.
"Shut Up And Dance" makes you look in the mirror and ask yourself--just how far would you go to keep your darkest moment off of social media? Would you steal? Would you kill? The answer might just surprise you.
Be Right Back
With the alchemy of AI interfaces evolving at an alarming rate and companies like Nectome sweeping up Y Combinator funding, the prospect of mind-uploading is no longer reserved for sci-fi fantasies. In the heartbreaking episode titled "Be Right Back" from the second season of Black Mirror, a young woman grapples with mourning her lost love in an age dominated by social media imprints. A grim reality that hits home for millions, there's no denying the certain morbid mysticism that clouds the social media feeds of a recently-deceased individual. Unlinked with reality, the Facebook and Instagram feeds of an individual stay perfectly preserved despite the fact that their subject is no long living and breathing, unable to ever fire off a quick 160-character tweet ever again.
Crafting a future in which grieving widows can upload their late-partner's personality as an aggregate collection from all of their social media accounts, Brooker explores the intersection of death and technology with haunting precision. While we may one day be able to fully clone or re-upload an individual's personality, that doesn't mean we should.
What would you give for another moment with the consciousness of your lost loved ones? Would you still press for it even if the reality would always fall short?
San Junipero
"San Junipero" injects the usual desolation of the Black Mirror universe with a cord of hope so robust you'd do nearly anything to make it a reality. Threading the carrot of eternal life (or consciousness, rather) ahead of the viewer on a proverbial stick, you're transported to a universe in which end-of-life care for the terminally ill extends to mind-uploading. Rather than dwell on the dark implications of one's consciousness interacting with living, breathing individuals IRL, "San Junipero" constructs an idyllic seaside party town in which the sick and dying can be "reborn" and reset all of their earthly regrets. A poignant take on technology existing as a world-broadening freedom offsets the rest of the season with an imagined future that most of us would gladly be a part of. An eternity in a sunny SoCal town--who would turn that down?
Nosedive
Have you ever fixed your hair or your outfit so you could look extra fresh for that Instagram shot? Commented on a picture just to see if the subject of the photo would notice you? Carefully staged your dinner plate so it would flex even harder with that Lo-Fi filter? If so, then "Nosedive" will hit home especially hard. Set in an imagined, near-future universe where everything from your mortgage rates to your career options are dictated by your virtual ranking on a sliding scale from 1-5, "Nosedive" offers insightful commentary on just how differently we live our lives on social media. With Bryce Dallas Howard's character sent sliding back in nearly every aspect of her life thanks to the pressures of an ever-present ubiquitous rating system, it becomes clear just how much we alter our public persona for the benefit of others.
From Instagram celebrities posting videos of themselves helping the homeless to better their own brands, to using FaceTune on every selfie, we're all guilty of putting our best face forward for our own selfish benefit. In a universe where you cannot simply "log out" of the rating system's reach, "Nosedive" shows just how low most of us would go to secure that "5 star" rating.