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Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to b

Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel flat to me. To be clear it doesn't have to be happy, it can still be grim and dark, but when every character is a terrible character, it undermines the story Take the episode "nosedive" where everyone is obsessed with social media ratings. Compare it to other people who copied it (meow meow beans in community, or majority rule in the orvile). I think the other tv shows did it better and honestly made technology look worse, because they had characters that weren't cartoon villians. Maybe the part i don't like about black mirror is not that it showd technology stripping people of their hummanity but that all its characters already lack humanity so there is nothing to strip, which is kind of boring.

alabastervlog 2y ago
Nosedive is easily among the worst Black Mirror episodes and I was very confused by so many people praising it when it came out.
- addicted 2y ago
  It was praised for its visual style.
- nickpsecurity 2y ago
  It was the one many of us thought was most likely to happen. Some aspects of it were in prior, media reports. It connected to people's memories on top of believable speculation. Then, something like that happened in China. I believe it was popular for those reasons.
onionisafruit 2y ago
Slight correction, Black Mirror copied Community’s MeowMeowBeenz, not the other way around.
wyldfire 2y ago
I enjoyed several episodes, some more than others. "San Junipero" is one of the better ones IMO and IIRC it's a good bit more upbeat than the others.
- Tronno 2y ago
  Not very upbeat actually. The episode drops several reminders that the simulated people can't die, by accident or choice. After they tire of life, they are trapped in an eternity of boredom and madness.
  - wyldfire 2y ago
    I guess it wouldn't be black mirror without some technophobia. But it seems like I didn't imagine it [1]: > The episode received critical acclaim, with particular praise for Mbatha-Raw's and Davis's performances, its plot twist, its visual style, and its uplifting tone, which is atypical for the series. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Junipero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Junipero
  - handoflixue 2y ago
    There's explicitly a conversation of "fine, not forever then - however long you like. You can always choose to leave."
- intrasight 2y ago
  The only episode I really enjoyed.
ryandrake 2y ago
> To be clear it doesn't have to be happy, it can still be grim and dark, but when every character is a terrible character, it undermines the story The world is full of terrible people, though. It's a "mirror" on current society, which is probably where they got the name. And by terrible I don't mean "literally Hitler," but the boring terribleness and malaise that so many around us have kind of just slipped into: Selfishness, impoliteness, paranoia, anger, belligerence, spitefulness, indifference to cruelty, unnecessary competitiveness in everything. Just an overall lack of socialization, grace and empathy. Maybe it's boring to you because the characters' traits can be found all over the place in real life.
- anyfoo 2y ago
  I don't feel my social circle is like that. I mean, you're right that there are plenty of people as you describe, but I like to think that I surround myself with people for which that does not match (not always successfully when I was younger, but you learn as you grow older). As such, bawolff's point resonates with me. And even if that wasn't the case, they still have a good point. If you pick terrible protagonists to begin with, it undermines the morale of the episode a little. Showing how "reasonable" people are affected is stronger, and I indeed feel that both Community and Orville did that really well.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Yea, I do the same, I try to surround myself with positive people. Friends I choose, local businesses I frequent. But there are some forced interactions (like kid's school friends' parents for example) where you have no choice to have to interact with terrible people. My recollection is that niceness used to be the default in random people you might meet. But that's not been true for about the last ten years or so. You actively have to seek out nice people now. Something happened back in 2015-2016, where "casual meanness" became suddenly OK, and people went mask off and it was cool to be an insufferable jerk.
    - anyfoo 2y ago
      Hmm. One thing I have noticed, and something that I discuss with my wife relatively frequently (she notices it as well), is that when I engage with "new" people in something like a professional context, the initial contact indeed often starts as "rough", not rarely unfriendly, even. And that's not just the first sentence, it's through the first few minutes or so. But when I persist in being nice, and having an "I know you're just doing your job attitude", and depending on the situation also an "I know my problem is convoluted" attitude, then more often than not, people suddenly switch to being nice. Depending on what's appropriate, I add in that I'm not in a rush, or signal for unpleasant situations on my side that I understand that it's not the fault of the person I'm talking to (I rarely, if ever, explicitly state that one, it's just clear). Just recently I've even had it that several people then suddenly went out of their way to help me, for example giving me "private" extensions to people who should definitely be able to help me, despite that very explicitly not the procedure they or I am supposed to follow. I always put it down to: People with more public facing jobs have to deal with a lot of angry, dumb, and/or generally unpleasant people, and when they sense that they are now facing someone who is understanding, cooperative, and wants nothing more than for both sides to resolve an issue in a mutually friendly way, but that also understands the limitations of their positions, they jump at that opportunity. So in some sense, this strengthens your point: Society is full of badly acting (I'm explicitly not saying "bad") people, and this fosters the initial rough response of people in public facing positions. But on the other hand, my relative success in "turning" people to be friendly and helpful in an instant, suggests that often, people are not like that at their core, but rather are inherently friendly and helpful and have just adopted a defense mechanism. We have an expression in Germany: "How you shout into the forest, is how it sounds back."
moduspol 2y ago
The part I don't like about it is that the premise is too often: "Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology." For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there would not be people sneaking into warehouses. In a society where people can play back and re-live prior memories, it would not suddenly come up that one can relive experiences with past lovers. In a society where one's consciousness could be contained inside a "cookie," being unexpectedly in a strange place with no explanation would immediately have one questioning whether that's what happened. It just feels ham-fisted. In their defense, I'm sure it's tough to introduce an entirely new concept and world and sell a brand new story all in the scope of a single episode, but the formula felt a little stale, at least while I was watching it.
- mickael-kerjean 2y ago
  > Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology This is precisely why I love Black Mirror. Despite the warnings, we're allowing companies to build killer robot and are running a large scale experiment to build a god. For a long time, I thought ethics is what prevented us from cloning human but recent years are showing balance sheet will outweigh it. As Netflix is 99.9% garbage, watching something like Black Mirror is refreshing
  - moduspol 2y ago
    We always have moved forward technologically despite doomers. They were there for first person shooter games, the Internet in general, dating apps, etc. That’s not to say those things didn’t have significant downsides. They do. But it took years to get there and they weren’t an overnight surprise, like they seem to be in the Black Mirror episodes I saw. Imagine what a few Black Mirror episodes would look like if they were made in the 50s or 60s about some technology we have today. It’d be silly. Our culture and values have changed so much since then over time as the technology came about.
addicted 2y ago
The part you’re misunderstanding about black mirror is that it’s about how technology will strip the humanity out of people. Also, the name of the show is BLACK mirror. Besides the iPhone symbolism by which the name is inspired, the whole point of the show is to hold up a mirror to the dark side of society. This may lead to a show that is without nuance or is less interesting, but thats the point of the show.
- anyfoo 2y ago
  That may or may not be the case, but either way it's still valid to criticize that approach, in favor of a more nuanced and potentially more effective one. Like, maybe that's the show the creators wanted to make. I'm not certain about that, but it's a valid premise. But then maybe I would prefer if the show was a bit different regardless of that. That's always allowed.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Every conversation about art runs into this problem: you can't criticize art without someone saying that the critic simply doesn't understand the art. Maybe in some cases this is true, but I don't think that's what's happening here. It seems pretty clear that OP understands Black Mirror's point perfectly and still thinks that unrelenting pessimism devoid of nuance is a bad point—they understand what the art is saying and don't like it.
- bawolff 2y ago
  I understand that is the goal. I just don't think it succeeds. To show darkness you have to have light. You can't cast a shadow if its pitch black. In terms of black mirror, they show a society devoid of humanity, true. But in most episodes (there are probably some exceptions) it feels like the lack of humanity is not because of technology, but because the world of the show is populated by monsters. As a result, it doesn't effectively show the dehumanizing power of technology. When watching an episode - ask yourself, would these characters still do monsterous things without the tech premise? If the answer is yes, then its not really about the tech.
  - filoeleven 2y ago
rottc0dd 2y ago
It's not necessary for a work of fiction to focus on diverse and realistic characters, particularly when its primary aim is to critique a specific aspect of technology. In such cases, characters often function as just means to highlight and amplify that central theme. Take 1984. It reads like a thought experiment reflecting the author's deepest fears about the dangers of unchecked power structures. Allegedly, Orwell’s own son would have been around 40 years old in the year 1984 (I read so in Pynchon's introduction to this book in Penguin's edition. It was a great essay.) But, 1984 also features a great protagonist and an absolutely haunting language. While many of the other characters mainly serve to convey the broader ideas, it’s him who grounds the story emotionally. His suffering, his moral collapse, and the eventual loss of his ability was so tough to read and will forever haunt me. When he breaks, it feels like a loss for all of humanity. But, what I mean is characters are not essential to make a great work. When Orwell wants to convey his ideas, the characters are sidelined and ideas take the front wheel. I understand your perspective. I'm not a fan of many of the episodes either. I really liked the first season, but the ones that followed just didn’t live up to it. And it does not rise above a horror centered around some particular technology. But, it's them give it cultural relevance.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > But, 1984 also features a great protagonist and an absolutely haunting language. While many of the other characters mainly serve to convey the broader ideas, it’s him who grounds the story emotionally. His suffering, his moral collapse, and the eventual loss of his ability was so tough to read and will forever haunt me. When he breaks, it feels like a loss for all of humanity. But, what I mean is characters are not essential to make a great work. When Orwell wants to convey his ideas, the characters are sidelined and ideas take the front wheel. This paragraph goes one way and then suddenly pivots to the opposite conclusion without any justification. Orwell's character is why the story is wrenching. Without that emotional weight it has no staying power.
  - rottc0dd 2y ago
    I kind of think both are true. I will remember Winston as great thinker who is extremely aware his world. And the tragedy or death of him is death of his awareness. His ability to think. In all the protagonist I have seen in tragedies, he is peculiar. While reviewing one another writer's work, Orwell said > ‘... was a bad writer, and some inner trouble, sharpening his sensitiveness, nearly made him into a good one; his discontent healed itself, and he reverted to type. It is worth pausing to wonder in just what form the thing is happening to oneself.’ In the first act, the writing was so cold and I could not feel any connection to Winston. Even, when getting intimate with Julia, he is thinking, > In the old days, he thought, a man looked at a girl’s body and saw that it was desirable, and that was the end of the story. But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act. I don't know when I started to feel things and empathize with him so much. When you think about circumstances and how he feels, he is cold as it gets, always scheming. And in the most hopeful time of his life, he say these > ‘We are the dead,’ he said. > ‘We’re not dead yet,’ said Julia prosaically. > ‘Not physically. Six months, a year – five years, conceivably. I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you’re more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put it off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.’ But, when you think of an inner life, he has one of the richest and rare ones. We empathize with that, and when crystal ball falls, it was the most tragic thing I have experienced. I think, genius of Orwell is that he made the character and the idea indistinguishable.
FridgeSeal 2y ago
Black Mirror got way less nuanced after Netflix picked it up. “Nosedive” was the most surface-level take of that idea, the “pain chip” episode was basically just shock-value, the “trapped in the weird guys computer simulation” episode was “Whiteout” but derivative. The killer robot bees episode was…an episode of tv I guess? Possibly it’s a format that just inevitably “wears thin” quite quickly, but it did feel like the early episodes had far more “existential dread” and interesting-exploration about them.
- throw310822 2y ago
  Exactly. The first two seasons were mostly a dark humour satire of our times and obsessions rather than a grim depiction of possible futures. The first episode is not even SF like also "the Waldo moment". 15 million merits is a metaphor that is not taking place in any real future. It got much more commercial and literal after that.
- ahoka 2y ago
  Every episode is just "What if people are forced to wear IoT butt plugs?" or something ridiculous stretched over an episode.
  - jijijijij 2y ago
    Well, you have to go slow for wider reception.
20k 2y ago
I think this is exactly why I dislike black mirror. It feels very 'pointless' as a show, because the situations and characters are so far divorced from anything real, that it feels like a meaningless critique. Sure, a technology could be used in a particular way, but all black mirror presents is the consequences, and it feels like it neglects the much more important question of how we got there to the point where it feels completely unrealistic It encapsulates most of what I dislike about horror films as well - so many of them are just a jumpscare extravaganza but without actually trying to present you with anything meaningful, like an underlying critical analysis or anything (or even any characters). Like sure, if we use technology to torture people, that's bad. So what? Somehow though I don't think a legal drama about the creeping erosion of people's rights and the transformation of society by well meaning but unintentionally invasive technology will have mass market appeal, but at least it would feel like its critiquing something real
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  A lot of the early episodes, especially, aren’t about hypothetical uses of technology but current ones, or even are barely about technology at all. White Bear, Fifteen Million Merits, The National Anthem, and The Waldo Moment are mostly works of social and media criticism that aren’t predicting much, or even anything, because they’re about people and situations today. To the extent they employ sci-fi it’s usually to force the viewer into an outsider’s perspective. Admittedly, the show’s skewed farther into straight five-minutes-in-the-future tech-prediction readings as it’s gone on.
harshitaneja 2y ago
Meow Meow Beans episode in Community predated the Black Mirror episode by a couple of years. But yes, agreed about Black Mirror feeling hollow with its lack of nuance in its pessimism. However I don't think Nosedive is the right episode to make this point as we see the protagonist getting assistance from the truck driver lady as well as the people protagonist ends up being held with are able to share a laughter in the freedom of losing it all.
beAbU 2y ago
I re-watched Community probably 5 times by now. It's one of my favourite television series in spite of it's flaws. Sometimes I feel like Community is a more subtle Black Mirror than what we give it credit for. The writers came up with the weirdest ideas, and they just threw these at this world they created in Community to see what came out. /Everyone/ in that story finds themselves at Greendale because of some less-than-optimal circumstance, and the only thing they can do is react to the circumstances given to them. Meow meow beans is a stand-out episode because it takes the absurdity of a social credit system all they way beyond the vale and straight to it's natural conclusion, where common sense failed to step in and take control.
seeEllArr 2y ago
[dead]
radioactivist 2y ago
Small correction: The meow meow beans episode of Community aired in 2014 and the Nosedive episode of Black Mirror aired 2016. So the Community episode came first.

alabastervlog 2y ago

Nosedive is easily among the worst Black Mirror episodes and I was very confused by so many people praising it when it came out.

addicted 2y ago
It was praised for its visual style.
nickpsecurity 2y ago
It was the one many of us thought was most likely to happen. Some aspects of it were in prior, media reports. It connected to people's memories on top of believable speculation. Then, something like that happened in China. I believe it was popular for those reasons.

onionisafruit 2y ago

Slight correction, Black Mirror copied Community’s MeowMeowBeenz, not the other way around.

wyldfire 2y ago

I enjoyed several episodes, some more than others. "San Junipero" is one of the better ones IMO and IIRC it's a good bit more upbeat than the others.

Tronno 2y ago
Not very upbeat actually. The episode drops several reminders that the simulated people can't die, by accident or choice. After they tire of life, they are trapped in an eternity of boredom and madness.
- wyldfire 2y ago
  I guess it wouldn't be black mirror without some technophobia. But it seems like I didn't imagine it [1]: > The episode received critical acclaim, with particular praise for Mbatha-Raw's and Davis's performances, its plot twist, its visual style, and its uplifting tone, which is atypical for the series. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Junipero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Junipero
- handoflixue 2y ago
  There's explicitly a conversation of "fine, not forever then - however long you like. You can always choose to leave."
intrasight 2y ago
The only episode I really enjoyed.

ryandrake 2y ago

> To be clear it doesn't have to be happy, it can still be grim and dark, but when every character is a terrible character, it undermines the story The world is full of terrible people, though. It's a "mirror" on current society, which is probably where they got the name. And by terrible I don't mean "literally Hitler," but the boring terribleness and malaise that so many around us have kind of just slipped into: Selfishness, impoliteness, paranoia, anger, belligerence, spitefulness, indifference to cruelty, unnecessary competitiveness in everything. Just an overall lack of socialization, grace and empathy. Maybe it's boring to you because the characters' traits can be found all over the place in real life.

anyfoo 2y ago
I don't feel my social circle is like that. I mean, you're right that there are plenty of people as you describe, but I like to think that I surround myself with people for which that does not match (not always successfully when I was younger, but you learn as you grow older). As such, bawolff's point resonates with me. And even if that wasn't the case, they still have a good point. If you pick terrible protagonists to begin with, it undermines the morale of the episode a little. Showing how "reasonable" people are affected is stronger, and I indeed feel that both Community and Orville did that really well.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Yea, I do the same, I try to surround myself with positive people. Friends I choose, local businesses I frequent. But there are some forced interactions (like kid's school friends' parents for example) where you have no choice to have to interact with terrible people. My recollection is that niceness used to be the default in random people you might meet. But that's not been true for about the last ten years or so. You actively have to seek out nice people now. Something happened back in 2015-2016, where "casual meanness" became suddenly OK, and people went mask off and it was cool to be an insufferable jerk.
  - anyfoo 2y ago
    Hmm. One thing I have noticed, and something that I discuss with my wife relatively frequently (she notices it as well), is that when I engage with "new" people in something like a professional context, the initial contact indeed often starts as "rough", not rarely unfriendly, even. And that's not just the first sentence, it's through the first few minutes or so. But when I persist in being nice, and having an "I know you're just doing your job attitude", and depending on the situation also an "I know my problem is convoluted" attitude, then more often than not, people suddenly switch to being nice. Depending on what's appropriate, I add in that I'm not in a rush, or signal for unpleasant situations on my side that I understand that it's not the fault of the person I'm talking to (I rarely, if ever, explicitly state that one, it's just clear). Just recently I've even had it that several people then suddenly went out of their way to help me, for example giving me "private" extensions to people who should definitely be able to help me, despite that very explicitly not the procedure they or I am supposed to follow. I always put it down to: People with more public facing jobs have to deal with a lot of angry, dumb, and/or generally unpleasant people, and when they sense that they are now facing someone who is understanding, cooperative, and wants nothing more than for both sides to resolve an issue in a mutually friendly way, but that also understands the limitations of their positions, they jump at that opportunity. So in some sense, this strengthens your point: Society is full of badly acting (I'm explicitly not saying "bad") people, and this fosters the initial rough response of people in public facing positions. But on the other hand, my relative success in "turning" people to be friendly and helpful in an instant, suggests that often, people are not like that at their core, but rather are inherently friendly and helpful and have just adopted a defense mechanism. We have an expression in Germany: "How you shout into the forest, is how it sounds back."

moduspol 2y ago

The part I don't like about it is that the premise is too often: "Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology." For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there would not be people sneaking into warehouses. In a society where people can play back and re-live prior memories, it would not suddenly come up that one can relive experiences with past lovers. In a society where one's consciousness could be contained inside a "cookie," being unexpectedly in a strange place with no explanation would immediately have one questioning whether that's what happened. It just feels ham-fisted. In their defense, I'm sure it's tough to introduce an entirely new concept and world and sell a brand new story all in the scope of a single episode, but the formula felt a little stale, at least while I was watching it.

mickael-kerjean 2y ago
> Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology This is precisely why I love Black Mirror. Despite the warnings, we're allowing companies to build killer robot and are running a large scale experiment to build a god. For a long time, I thought ethics is what prevented us from cloning human but recent years are showing balance sheet will outweigh it. As Netflix is 99.9% garbage, watching something like Black Mirror is refreshing
- moduspol 2y ago
  We always have moved forward technologically despite doomers. They were there for first person shooter games, the Internet in general, dating apps, etc. That’s not to say those things didn’t have significant downsides. They do. But it took years to get there and they weren’t an overnight surprise, like they seem to be in the Black Mirror episodes I saw. Imagine what a few Black Mirror episodes would look like if they were made in the 50s or 60s about some technology we have today. It’d be silly. Our culture and values have changed so much since then over time as the technology came about.

addicted 2y ago

The part you’re misunderstanding about black mirror is that it’s about how technology will strip the humanity out of people. Also, the name of the show is BLACK mirror. Besides the iPhone symbolism by which the name is inspired, the whole point of the show is to hold up a mirror to the dark side of society. This may lead to a show that is without nuance or is less interesting, but thats the point of the show.

anyfoo 2y ago
That may or may not be the case, but either way it's still valid to criticize that approach, in favor of a more nuanced and potentially more effective one. Like, maybe that's the show the creators wanted to make. I'm not certain about that, but it's a valid premise. But then maybe I would prefer if the show was a bit different regardless of that. That's always allowed.
lolinder 2y ago
Every conversation about art runs into this problem: you can't criticize art without someone saying that the critic simply doesn't understand the art. Maybe in some cases this is true, but I don't think that's what's happening here. It seems pretty clear that OP understands Black Mirror's point perfectly and still thinks that unrelenting pessimism devoid of nuance is a bad point—they understand what the art is saying and don't like it.
bawolff 2y ago
I understand that is the goal. I just don't think it succeeds. To show darkness you have to have light. You can't cast a shadow if its pitch black. In terms of black mirror, they show a society devoid of humanity, true. But in most episodes (there are probably some exceptions) it feels like the lack of humanity is not because of technology, but because the world of the show is populated by monsters. As a result, it doesn't effectively show the dehumanizing power of technology. When watching an episode - ask yourself, would these characters still do monsterous things without the tech premise? If the answer is yes, then its not really about the tech.
- filoeleven 2y ago

rottc0dd 2y ago

It's not necessary for a work of fiction to focus on diverse and realistic characters, particularly when its primary aim is to critique a specific aspect of technology. In such cases, characters often function as just means to highlight and amplify that central theme. Take 1984. It reads like a thought experiment reflecting the author's deepest fears about the dangers of unchecked power structures. Allegedly, Orwell’s own son would have been around 40 years old in the year 1984 (I read so in Pynchon's introduction to this book in Penguin's edition. It was a great essay.) But, 1984 also features a great protagonist and an absolutely haunting language. While many of the other characters mainly serve to convey the broader ideas, it’s him who grounds the story emotionally. His suffering, his moral collapse, and the eventual loss of his ability was so tough to read and will forever haunt me. When he breaks, it feels like a loss for all of humanity. But, what I mean is characters are not essential to make a great work. When Orwell wants to convey his ideas, the characters are sidelined and ideas take the front wheel. I understand your perspective. I'm not a fan of many of the episodes either. I really liked the first season, but the ones that followed just didn’t live up to it. And it does not rise above a horror centered around some particular technology. But, it's them give it cultural relevance.

lolinder 2y ago
> But, 1984 also features a great protagonist and an absolutely haunting language. While many of the other characters mainly serve to convey the broader ideas, it’s him who grounds the story emotionally. His suffering, his moral collapse, and the eventual loss of his ability was so tough to read and will forever haunt me. When he breaks, it feels like a loss for all of humanity. But, what I mean is characters are not essential to make a great work. When Orwell wants to convey his ideas, the characters are sidelined and ideas take the front wheel. This paragraph goes one way and then suddenly pivots to the opposite conclusion without any justification. Orwell's character is why the story is wrenching. Without that emotional weight it has no staying power.
- rottc0dd 2y ago
  I kind of think both are true. I will remember Winston as great thinker who is extremely aware his world. And the tragedy or death of him is death of his awareness. His ability to think. In all the protagonist I have seen in tragedies, he is peculiar. While reviewing one another writer's work, Orwell said > ‘... was a bad writer, and some inner trouble, sharpening his sensitiveness, nearly made him into a good one; his discontent healed itself, and he reverted to type. It is worth pausing to wonder in just what form the thing is happening to oneself.’ In the first act, the writing was so cold and I could not feel any connection to Winston. Even, when getting intimate with Julia, he is thinking, > In the old days, he thought, a man looked at a girl’s body and saw that it was desirable, and that was the end of the story. But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act. I don't know when I started to feel things and empathize with him so much. When you think about circumstances and how he feels, he is cold as it gets, always scheming. And in the most hopeful time of his life, he say these > ‘We are the dead,’ he said. > ‘We’re not dead yet,’ said Julia prosaically. > ‘Not physically. Six months, a year – five years, conceivably. I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you’re more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put it off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.’ But, when you think of an inner life, he has one of the richest and rare ones. We empathize with that, and when crystal ball falls, it was the most tragic thing I have experienced. I think, genius of Orwell is that he made the character and the idea indistinguishable.

FridgeSeal 2y ago

Black Mirror got way less nuanced after Netflix picked it up. “Nosedive” was the most surface-level take of that idea, the “pain chip” episode was basically just shock-value, the “trapped in the weird guys computer simulation” episode was “Whiteout” but derivative. The killer robot bees episode was…an episode of tv I guess? Possibly it’s a format that just inevitably “wears thin” quite quickly, but it did feel like the early episodes had far more “existential dread” and interesting-exploration about them.

throw310822 2y ago
Exactly. The first two seasons were mostly a dark humour satire of our times and obsessions rather than a grim depiction of possible futures. The first episode is not even SF like also "the Waldo moment". 15 million merits is a metaphor that is not taking place in any real future. It got much more commercial and literal after that.
ahoka 2y ago
Every episode is just "What if people are forced to wear IoT butt plugs?" or something ridiculous stretched over an episode.
- jijijijij 2y ago
  Well, you have to go slow for wider reception.

20k 2y ago

I think this is exactly why I dislike black mirror. It feels very 'pointless' as a show, because the situations and characters are so far divorced from anything real, that it feels like a meaningless critique. Sure, a technology could be used in a particular way, but all black mirror presents is the consequences, and it feels like it neglects the much more important question of how we got there to the point where it feels completely unrealistic It encapsulates most of what I dislike about horror films as well - so many of them are just a jumpscare extravaganza but without actually trying to present you with anything meaningful, like an underlying critical analysis or anything (or even any characters). Like sure, if we use technology to torture people, that's bad. So what? Somehow though I don't think a legal drama about the creeping erosion of people's rights and the transformation of society by well meaning but unintentionally invasive technology will have mass market appeal, but at least it would feel like its critiquing something real

alabastervlog 2y ago
A lot of the early episodes, especially, aren’t about hypothetical uses of technology but current ones, or even are barely about technology at all. White Bear, Fifteen Million Merits, The National Anthem, and The Waldo Moment are mostly works of social and media criticism that aren’t predicting much, or even anything, because they’re about people and situations today. To the extent they employ sci-fi it’s usually to force the viewer into an outsider’s perspective. Admittedly, the show’s skewed farther into straight five-minutes-in-the-future tech-prediction readings as it’s gone on.

harshitaneja 2y ago

Meow Meow Beans episode in Community predated the Black Mirror episode by a couple of years. But yes, agreed about Black Mirror feeling hollow with its lack of nuance in its pessimism. However I don't think Nosedive is the right episode to make this point as we see the protagonist getting assistance from the truck driver lady as well as the people protagonist ends up being held with are able to share a laughter in the freedom of losing it all.

beAbU 2y ago

I re-watched Community probably 5 times by now. It's one of my favourite television series in spite of it's flaws. Sometimes I feel like Community is a more subtle Black Mirror than what we give it credit for. The writers came up with the weirdest ideas, and they just threw these at this world they created in Community to see what came out. /Everyone/ in that story finds themselves at Greendale because of some less-than-optimal circumstance, and the only thing they can do is react to the circumstances given to them. Meow meow beans is a stand-out episode because it takes the absurdity of a social credit system all they way beyond the vale and straight to it's natural conclusion, where common sense failed to step in and take control.

seeEllArr 2y ago

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radioactivist 2y ago

Small correction: The meow meow beans episode of Community aired in 2014 and the Nosedive episode of Black Mirror aired 2016. So the Community episode came first.