27|06|2023 by Mila Stepanovic
On June 15th, Netflix realized a new season of Charlie Brooker’s Sci-Fi anthology Black Mirror. Five years after the last season (realized in 2019), the Blackmirror is back on the screens with five episodes. This time, the accent has moved a little bit from the imaginary of high-tech dystopias which we got used to, addressing more societal issues (episodes: “Loch Henry”, “Mazey Day”, and “Demon 79”) and the ‘invisible’ aspects and implications behind advanced technologies (episodes: “Beyond the Sea” and “Joan is Awful”).
The technological artefacts (props) used to be the protagonists in the previous seasons. In the new season, there is an estrangement from speculative fiction – there is almost complete dematerialization in a technological sense. The technological devices are no more storytellers like they were in “Hang the DJ” (dating device), “Archangel” (body implants and software), “The Entire History of You” (body implants), “Metalhead” (robots), “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too” (robots and AI), and others. This caused some debate among the public, saying that the new season has nothing to do with the ‘original’ Black Mirror.
It seems that the collective imaginaries about dystopic futures need to contain these fictional artefacts to be more credible and let the audience feel the future with their hands. In that terms, the new season of Black Mirror is more abstract and confuses the audience with the continuous step forward (to the future) and step back (into the past).
So, how the new episodes are related to our past, present, and future events? How are the technological and societal concerns addressed in this speculative fiction?
Cannot say what could have inspired the author to create this season, but some of the relationships to the past-years global events seem evident.
Before digging deeper into the scenarios and props of the new season of Black Mirror, I would stop to remember some of the social, political, and historical events we went through in these five years.
In 2019, a global outbreak of coronavirus (COVID–19) lasted almost three years (the official end of the pandemic was proclaimed at the beginning of 2023). In times of extreme uncertainty and lockdown, streaming platforms gained even more popularity and kept us away from loneliness.
On February 24th 2022, the war in Ukraine lit up again, with a significant escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which had begun in 2014. The fear of war, international stability, and nuclear threat occupies and alerts public opinion. This event raised collective anxiety about nuclear weapons and World War again.
Not to speak about the immigration and spreading of the right wings parties, diffused racism and racist-founded attacks.
Technological trends in this period were about the rapid spread of AI applications and tools available to everyone, including AI-generative tools (text-to-image, Chat–GPT, deep fakes, and others). The line between what is real and false has always become thinner.
Some of the dominant topics of the 6th Black Mirror season are AI (artificial intelligence), Metaverse, Big Data, Androids, racism, information, media, entertainment obsession, and nuclear war. Only two of five episodes depict the advanced technology, but, this time, there are no physical artefacts. The technology is for most immaterial, consisting of virtual realities, digital platforms, and digital twins. Some of these topics and questions behind the human-technology-society agency were present in the previous seasons (“White Christmas”, “Nosedive”, “Be Right Back”, “Striking Vipers”, “Playtest”), but this time, the narration has changed. The only concrete material representation of technology in the 6th season are androids (humanlike robots) and a few other props to support the scenography. However, the role of these physical props in the plot is relatively ‘neutral’.
Let’s see how these scenarios are represented and what this tells us about the past, present and possible future events and fears.
Episode 1: Joan is Awful
The first episode of the 6th season of Blackmirror is located into not so distant future. Dominant topics of this episode are Machine Learning and AI, including deep fakes, metaverse, quantum computing, and streaming platforms, but also it tackles the law and policies behind the digital tools and streaming services. It addresses the issues behind identity theft, privacy and cyber safety. What if we could agree to grant our identity and share private life events to a streaming platform to make a TV series? Joan is accidentally giving a consense to become a subject of a TV series based on her real-life events (on so called Streamberry streaming platform). Joan’s identity ends up in a metaverse, played by a deep fake of a Hollywood actress. Every single aspect of her life is on the streaming platform in real-time. When it seems already too complex to manage, she realizes that there are multiple dimensions of a metaverse and that that was not even her identity – Joan we have seen until now is just another Hollywood actress deep fake who played the Real Joan at the first level of the metaverse. The narration of this episode is complex and somewhat confusing; however, it depicts well the complexity behind data processing and the implications behind such powerful systems. It will surely make you more paranoid about accepting the terms and conditions of digital platforms.
Episode 2: “Loch Henry”
The second episode of the 6th season of Blackmirror is located in what seems to be present times and excludes the explicit technological perspective. The dominant topics of the second episode are related to the creation of art content for the entertainment industry – a streaming platform called Streamberry) and the human obsession with crime. The obsession with a True Crime is depicted as a human perversion – finding pleasure in a tragedy. The two young video-makers decide to make content that can be more captivating to the audience and easy to sell to the film industry, but suddenly, they are caught in the unexpected and tragic events emerging from the past. Charlie Brooker is tackling some of the very particular aspects of our present, the entertainment media, the voyeurism behind snooping into crime stories and all the macabre details that industry brings us.
Episode 3: “Beyond the Sea”
The plot of episode three is located in the past, but it gives the audience a strong feeling of the future. At the same time, it brings us back to the times of the first space explorations and envisions the dystopic futures of digital twins and androids. Dominant topics of this episode are space-time travel, androids, and AI, including digital twins. The issues addressed in this episode are identity theft, the agency in inhabiting others body but, also safety and mental health. What if we could have a replicant – android – which could enable us to simultaneously be present, feel, and act at more places? What if we could inhabit another’s body – what kind of risks could this provoke? The plot represents two astronauts on an expedition into space with their android replicants on Earth. They can travel with their consciousness between two bodies, allowing them to spend time with their families. After an accident turns into a tragedy, one of the astronauts loses his android replicant on Earth and cannot travel back to space. Seeing him desperate and mentally fragile, another astronaut decides to borrow him occasionally his android body on Earth. The plot of this episode tackles some essential aspects behind human nature and technology, moral and ethical aspects, and the fact that it is located in the past, making it even more significant in meaning.
Episode 4: “Mazey Day”
The fourth episode is about the obsession of media and paparazzi for information and the risks this may cause. This episode is located at the beginning of the 2000s, and it is about a photographer that makes her living like the paparazzi of famous people in tricky or desperate situations. A protagonist is offered a large amount of money to capture a problematic starlet in awful condition after she hit a person with a car and ran out from the place of the accident. This episode recalls some of the actual tragic events that happened in the past due to paparazzi and media obsession with the private life of famous people – ended up in a tragic accident, even death. However, at some point in this episode, the photographer realizes that she underestimated the starlet’s condition and gets into trouble. Also, in this episode, some elements of paranormal, folkloristic mythical creatures are used as metaphors. The starlet turns into a werewolf under exposure to a flash. In folklore, the werewolf is a human creature who can turn into a wolf when exposed to a curse or affliction. The transformation occurs on the night of a full moon.
Episode 5: “Demon 79”
Episode 5 is located in the past, somewhere in ’70s England, dominated by the right-wing parties and xenophobia – and Boney M music. Dominant topics of the fifth episode are racism, nuclear war, and what could be defined as paranormal events. The author seems to make some illusion of horror films from that epoch. There is no technology here, and the entire plot is an interplay between the paranormal and the real. The protagonist is a young Indian-origin woman working in a shoe shop, exposed daily to the racism of her xenophobe coworkers. Suddenly she gets in contact with Devil, who asks her to scarify three people in three days or otherwise, the end of the world will come. The woman is continuously in contact with Devil and is the only one who sees him. After a series of terrible events, she gets caught by the detectives who retain her mentally unstable. But suddenly, the scenario changes and the world’s end seems to have arrived.