Black Mirror Research Articles

Who Is Awful? Black Mirror and the Dystopian Imaginary of AI Labor

Who Is Awful? Black Mirror and the Dystopian Imaginary of AI Labor

How the Music Machine Makes Myths Real: AI, Holograms, and Ashley Eternal

Since ancient times, music has been instrumental in giving life to the stories we build our identities and cultures around. I will examine how, in our time, music creates new myths by creating its own heroes and heroines through capital and the star system. In traditional literary and cultural analysis, a distinction was drawn between the natural and the supernatural when discussing literary mythology; in the twentieth century, an equivalent distinction was made in works of art that, in Baudrillard’s terminology, make use of the realms of the real and the “hyperreal” (1981). In today’s mythmaking, the supernatural has been largely replaced by the technological, and recent developments blur the line between science fiction and fantasy; tech has become megalotech. A recent episode of the television series Black Mirror, “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too” (2019), explores these concepts with an examination of the pros and cons of replacing human performers with AI simulacra.

O RAPTO DA MENINA DOURADA REDES SOCIAIS, MANIPULAÇÃO DA OPINIÃO PÚBLICA E ATRAÇÃO PELO GROTESCO NO EPISÓDIO THE NATIONAL ANTHEM, DO SERIADO BLACK MIRROR

Created by british screenwriter Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror is an anthology science fiction series launched in 2011 by Channel 4. The episodes, which do not feature characters and fixed frames, are driven by the increasingly frequent mediation of human relations by social networks and technology, represented by the “black mirror” common to all devices – the screen. The National Anthem episode, corpus of this article, will be used to investigate some themes, among which the strength of social networks; the attraction of the public by the grotesque and the manipulation of public opinion in today’s mediatized society.

Looking into the black mirror of the overdose crisis: Assessing the harms of collaborative surveillance technologies in the United States response.

Drug overdose is a leading cause of death among adults in the United States, prompting calls for more surveillance data and data sharing across public health and law enforcement to address the crisis. This paper integrates Black feminist science and technology studies (STS) into an anthropological analysis of the collision of public health, policing, and technology as embedded in the US National Overdose Response Strategy and its technological innovation, the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP). The dystopian Netflix series "Black Mirror," which explores the seemingly useful but quietly destructive potential of technology, offers a lens through which to speculate upon and anticipate the harms of collaborative surveillance projects. Ultimately, I ask: are such technological interventions a benevolent approach to a public health crisis or are we looking into a black mirror of racialized surveillance and criminalization of overdose in the United States?

The Message in a New Phase of Television: An Exploration of the Dichotomy of Good and Evil

Drawing on the ideas of several key sociologists, and the central argument that reality and representation have become blurred, this conceptual paper sets out to explore how television, one of the Big Seven leisure pursuits, has a damaging impact upon moral sightedness in a world where modernity has entered a state of flux. To link seemingly abstract ideas – those of ‘synopticism’, ‘reterotopia’ and ‘adiaphorization’ for example – and the language of poet-intellectuals with events and consequences occurring in people’s everyday lives, a selection of popular reality television shows and TV celebrities are considered. In its second part, the paper goes on to embrace intimations of hope. This is the hope that television can be used in experimental ways to stimulate moral consciousness. To further unpack this suggestion, the paper considers how television networks such as Channel 4, and shows such as Squid Games and Black Mirror, can excite moral impulses for the ‘Other’. In its conclusions, the paper explores whether the presiding message of television can be different to encourage viewers to question what is right and wrong.

The digital afterlife between hypersecularization and postsecularity in contemporary speculative TV seriality: Devs, Upload and Black Mirror’s ‘San Junipero’

This article explores representations of the digital afterlife in contemporary speculative TV seriality within the broader context of their attitudes towards the fate of religions and religiosity in contemporary society. Specifically, it examines the miniseries Devs, the Black Mirror episode ‘San Junipero’ and the dramedy series Upload. Set in a near future, these series present distinctive and contrasting views on the future of religion in the public sphere, as well as in private life, and on the development of secularization processes, along with the entanglements between secular, religious and moral concerns. The article highlights how texts such as those considered exemplify the current transitional phase western societies are experiencing, wherein conventional narratives of secularization and more complex deconstructions of the secular–religious divide coexist. Through the various ways in which a futuristic yet imaginable setting like the digital afterlife is envisioned and represented, these texts articulate postsecular and hypersecularized accounts of near-future societies. The digital afterlife thus emerges as a tool for exploring different world-views, forms of morality and conceptions of everyday life and the meaning of human existence.

Of Monsters and Men

There are few artistic genres more intertwined with politics than dystopia. In its very essence, dystopian fantasy is a method of criticising ideology, at the same time that it serves as a tool for the dissemination of the issuer’s own ideology. Black Mirror’s “Men Against Fire” episode provides a rich case study for considering ideology in one of its most violent formats: the creation of monsters. In the episode, deceived by a helmet that changes reality, soldiers fight and exterminate cockroaches - individuals with a genetic predisposition to diseases - while the civilian population, immersed in that bellicist ideology, dehumanises individuals even without a literal alteration of the real. This article analyses the creation of monsters, putting into dialogue theories on ideology, dystopian fantasy, and dehumanisation to construct a framework of how this dehumanisation process and its relationship with ideology works.

Mourning, melancholia and machines: An applied psychoanalytic investigation of mourning in the age of griefbots*

ABSTRACT Death and mourning are being shaped by posthumous opportunities for the dead to affect current life in ways not possible in pre-digital generations. The psychological and sociological impact of the dead ‘online’ and of ‘grief tech’ is only beginning to be understood. It has not yet been explored psychoanalytically until this paper that examines one type of grief tech, namely the griefbot. This development is critically explored through a psychoanalytic reading of an episode of Black Mirror. I suggest that a psychoanalytic model of mourning provides an invaluable perspective to help us to think about this technology’s potential as well as the psychological and ethical risks it poses. I argue that the immortalisation of the dead through digital permanence works against facing the painful reality of loss and the recognition of otherness, which is fundamental to psychic growth and to the integrity of our relationships with others. Drawing on Derrida’s conceptualization of ‘originary mourning’, I suggest that mourning is an interminable process that challenges us to preserve within the self the otherness of the lost object. The tools we use for mourning need to be assessed first and foremost against this psychological and fundamentally ethical process.

Designing black mirrors

Black mirrors, or total absorbers, are related to neutral density (ND) filters. ND filters are primarily concerned with transmittance, whereas a black mirror has no transmittance and endeavors to reduce the reflectance to zero in the wavelength band of interest by absorbing all the light. Metal layers must be used for the absorptance capabilities and dielectric layers to create the interference phases, which maximize the electric field at the absorbing layers. Very thin metal layers, whose indices of refraction vary with the thickness and require special software handling in the design process, are required. The procedures and an additional viewpoint on designing black mirrors are discussed here.

E pluribus Unum: toward a poetics of the TV anthology

ABSTRACT The TV anthology series, which enjoyed significant popularity in the past but has been scarce amidst the dominance of episodic series and serials in the 2000s and early 2010s, seemed to experience a kind of renaissance after the international success of Black Mirror (Channel 4, 2011–2014; Netflix, 2016–present), followed by other popular shows like Room 104 (HBO, 2017–2020) and Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams (Channel 4/Amazon Prime Video, 2017–2018). The anthology format differs from series and serials in that its seasons consist of packages of episodes that are not connected by a narrative throughline, but instead feature a different plot, cast, and story world in each installment, raising the question of whether they can really be described in terms of ‘seriality’. This article explores the serial qualities of the anthology format and the source of poetic unity that grants cohesion to the multifarious episodes bound together in this type of show. In the absence of narrative accumulation, alternative qualities of seriality are examined and several ‘anthological markers’ are identified. Ultimately, this article argues for a poetic peculiarity of the format that is determined by a dynamic interplay between a single creative purpose and episodic variety and experimentation.

Beyond Truth-Telling: Embodying and Dwelling in Truth and Hope

This paper seeks to argue that truth is not something that relates to telling/speaking only. Its main aim is to show that in their quest for communion with God, other human beings – and one should add – the entire creation, humans need to go beyond truth-telling toward the ways of embodying and dwelling in truth and hope. To introduce its argument, the paper proceeds in the following steps. First, it expounds a Christian perspective on truth, employing notions such as sacrament, desire, and relationality. Through the image of communion with God, a link between truth-telling and hope is outlined. Second, it tries to show that truth-telling is not only an affective but also an existential category. As such, it involves the whole of human being. Therefore, it makes sense to turn to the concept of body and embodiment when reflecting on the human pursuits of truth. The paper then, third, examines various constellations of this central claim by exploring a specific case from popular culture, namely, ‘Crocodile’, an episode from the Netflix series, Black Mirror. In particular, a proposal is made for the significance of embodying and dwelling in truth for Christian theology and practice. Finally, in the last step, this embodying and dwelling is given more concrete contours with respect to hope by probing into the images of home and feast.

Ramifications of Digital Technology - A Critical Study of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Mankind is the only species to be gifted with the power of reasoning. Our quest to comprehend life has always been on the move. There was a time when we were completely governed by the laws of nature. However, through breakthroughs in science and technology, man has been able to evolve and exercise control. We now live in an era where our lives are governed by digital technology. Literature, cinema, and other art forms are the bases on which this is built. As movie lovers there have been times where we wished the movies had alternate endings. This stems from our own thoughts of living vicariously through the main characters. This is being facilitated by Interactive Digital Narrative in video games and movies. To understand and analyse this, the present paper takes Black Mirror: Bandersnatch to study the same. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is an interactive movie that gives us several choices as we become the protagonist and attempt to change the fate of the protagonist in the story. Does digital technology help or harm our core values? Can art forms withstand the test of time, even in this digital era? This paper comprehends to find answers to the above questions.

Black Mirror in Diamond Leadlight

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The consequences of the technologization of life through the lens of mass culture: a case study of the series “Black Mirror”

The consequences of the technologization of life through the lens of mass culture: a case study of the series “Black Mirror”

Power and Control Within the Branching Narrative of Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch: A Postmodern Analysis That Transcends Spatial, Contextual, and Gamified Structures

Power and Control Within the Branching Narrative of Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch: A Postmodern Analysis That Transcends Spatial, Contextual, and Gamified Structures

The Relationship Between Subjectivity and Ambivalence in the Black Mirror Series

Modernitenin öne çıkan unsurlarından birisi belirsizlikleri bertaraf etme arzusudur. Rasyonel özne tanımlamalarında da söz konusu kesinlik arzusu oldukça belirleyicidir. Ancak bugünün toplumlarında bireylerin toplumsal yaşamda birer özne olarak var olma zemininin giderek aşındığı, öznelliğin kesin sınırlar içerisinde tanımlanmış unsurlardan oluşmadığı, müphemliklerle iç içe olduğu fikri ön plana çıkmaya başlamıştır. Söz konusu müphemliğin bireyin kendisini bir özne olarak var edebilmesi sürecinde yıkıcı etkileri olduğu kadar yeni tür öznellik biçimlerini düşünmeye izin veren imkanları da barındırdığı söylenebilir. Popüler kültür ürünlerinde, özellikle de distopik anlatılarda müphemlik-öznellik arasındaki bu çift yönlü ilişkiye sıklıkla yer verilmektedir. 
 Bu çalışmada, öznellik-müphemlik ilişkisi Black Mirror dizisi özelinde tartışmaya açılmaktadır. Amaçlı örneklem tekniğiyle seçilen dizinin tüm bölümleri karakterlerin özne olma-edilgen olma durumları, varsa özne/etken olarak var olma mücadeleleri çerçevesinde incelenmiştir. Dizide özne-nesne, fail-mağdur, iyi-kötü gibi düalist yapıların belirsizleşmesi şeklinde açığa çıkan bu mücadeleler, müphemliklerin özgür, bağımsız bir birey inşasında ne tür olumsuzluklarla ilişkilendirildiği ya da özgürleşme olanaklarını düşünmeyi mümkün kılıp, kılmadığı bağlamında sorgulanmıştır.

“The Monstrous in our Techno-Social World”: Black Mirror Season 6. Produced by Charlie Brooker and Annabelle Jones. Netflix, 2023.

“The Monstrous in our Techno-Social World”: Black Mirror Season 6. Produced by Charlie Brooker and Annabelle Jones. Netflix, 2023.

Beyond the black mirror effect: the impact of machine translation in the audiovisual translation environment

In an increasingly globalized world, technological advancements and artificial intelligence (AI) have catalysed the proliferation of audiovisual productions and their translation, leading to new dynamics in the professional landscape. Tools and practices such as machine translation (MT) and post-editing (PE) are becoming widespread, augmenting and diversifying translators’ tasks and creating new professional profiles and educational needs. While some specialized fields with more restrictive languages and terminology have readily incorporated MT, recent developments in neural MT (NMT) engines have led to their use in more creative areas such as literary or audiovisual translation (AVT). However, this trend raises concerns about the quality of both the raw and the final output, user perceptions, ethics and working conditions. Academic studies which explore the convergence of MT and AVT therefore become crucial to understanding the implications of this technology for all stakeholders: professionals, students and instructors, researchers, audiences and society at large. This article delves into the impact of neural MT and other AI-based tools on AVT workflows, both professionally and academically, and stresses the need for further research in this area. It then proceeds to outline the main research directions in this field as evidenced by the contributions included in this special issue, particularly those regarding the incorporation of MT into different AVT modes.

Revisiting the Cinematography of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch: Problems and the Future of Interactive Movies

Revisiting the Cinematography of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch: Problems and the Future of Interactive Movies

Invisible Extinction: Fragility and the Extinction of the Self in Neoliberal Societies

Understanding capitalism as a system that inherently triggers extinction, this article portrays how the self and its character have been modified within neoliberalism to a point in which it has lost its subjectivity and it is bound to the laws and logic of capitalism. By looking at necropolitics and psychopolitics from a critical neo-Marxist lens, this article puts external biopolitics at stake while connecting them with different ways capitalism has to alienate subjects that are victims and, at the same time, vassals of this extinctive ideology. In addition, this theoretical framework will be analysed in a more tangible way by close-reading some sections of Black Mirror’s episode “Nosedive” as an example of a dystopia that is not that far away from our reality, where value and morality depend on the superficial image and extreme individuality of the subjects that belong to and perpetuate the ideology and dynamics of internal control, extinguishing their own existence as subjects. Finally, this article interrogates present times attempting to understand whether we are living in the Necrocene, the age of extinction due to capitalist logic, and whether this extinction of the self and its subjectivity might be symptoms of it.