Through the Black Mirror: Deconstructing the Side Effects of the Digital Age 3030194574, 9783030194574

This edited collection charts the first four seasons of Black Mirror and beyond, providing a rich social, historical and

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Through the Black Mirror: Deconstructing the Side Effects of the Digital Age
 3030194574,  9783030194574

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements......Page 6
Contents......Page 7
Gazing into the Black Mirror......Page 10
Between Light and Shadow, Between Science and Superstition......Page 11
The Fears and Fantasies of Black Mirror: From “The National Anthem” to Bandersnatch......Page 12
From Channel Four to Netflix: Black Mirror in the Global Age......Page 15
Welcome to the Black Mirror Universe......Page 18
References......Page 21
Part I......Page 25
Introduction......Page 26
Power, Society and Surveillance in “The National Anthem”......Page 27
Terrorism, Cultural Humiliation and “The National Anthem”......Page 30
Conclusion......Page 36
References......Page 37
Introduction......Page 39
Gamification......Page 41
Spectacle and Streaming......Page 43
Conclusion......Page 45
References......Page 46
Enhanced Memory: “The Entire History of You”......Page 49
The Narcissus Narcosis......Page 51
When Memory Becomes Pornography......Page 53
Why Memories Should Decay......Page 55
Visuality as Power......Page 57
References......Page 59
Part II......Page 61
Making Room for Our Personal Posthuman Prisons: Black Mirror’s “Be Right Back”......Page 62
References......Page 72
Ideological State Apparatuses, Perversions of Courtly Love, and Curatorial Violence in “White Bear”......Page 73
References......Page 84
Introduction......Page 86
Gestation, Analysis and Apathy......Page 87
The Trump Moment......Page 91
Endings and Beginnings......Page 93
References......Page 94
Introduction: The Threat of Consciousness......Page 98
Terminology......Page 100
“I’m Pretty Sure I’m Me”......Page 102
“But I Am Me”......Page 105
“She Cut You Out Good”......Page 107
Conclusion: The Real and the Damned?......Page 108
References......Page 109
Part III......Page 111
The Planned Obsolescence of “Nosedive”......Page 112
Augmentation, Simulacra, and Governance......Page 113
Impression Management and the Vanilla Selfie......Page 117
Lacie Let Go......Page 120
Planned Obsolescence......Page 122
References......Page 123
Introduction......Page 125
Synched......Page 128
Game Time......Page 129
Losing the Real......Page 131
Under Pressure in the Unstable Now......Page 133
References......Page 134
Shame, Stigma and Identification in “Shut Up and Dance”......Page 136
“I only looked at pictures”......Page 138
“They’re gonna put it everywhere”......Page 140
“Jerking off to porn or something? Well, everyone does that”......Page 142
“Is that what you are? A dirty, sick, disgusting pervert?”......Page 145
References......Page 146
Unreal City: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and Posthumanity in “San Junipero”......Page 150
References......Page 161
Deviating the Other: Inspecting the Boundaries of Progress in “Men Against Fire”......Page 163
When There Is No Enemy, Bring Out the Zombies......Page 164
We’re on a Road to Nowhere—The Mass, Roaches, and the Notion of Progress......Page 167
Empathy Is the Enemy......Page 171
References......Page 173
Rise of the Drone......Page 176
A Unabomber for the Digital Age......Page 179
Games, Consequences, Online Hatred and Real Life......Page 181
On Nordic Noir and Killer Bees......Page 184
References......Page 186
Part IV......Page 188
Introduction: Ripped from the Headlines......Page 189
Microscopic Gods: Toxic White Masculinity in a Neoliberal World......Page 192
Across the Digital Frontier: The Adventure Narrative as the Master’s Tool......Page 197
References......Page 199
Introduction: A Culture of Surveillance......Page 201
Surveiller-Parenting: Fragmented Control......Page 202
Past Is Prologue: “Arkangel” and Surveiller-Parenting......Page 204
Mommy/Corporation/Me......Page 205
Agency: Power Inequities in Surveiller-Parenting......Page 206
Surveillance Aesthetics: Making Arkangel Sensible......Page 207
Conclusion: Power(lessness) in Societies of Control......Page 210
References......Page 211
The Sovereignty of Truth: Memory and Morality in “Crocodile”......Page 213
We Belong to Good......Page 215
Crocodilian Principles of Truth......Page 217
Truth as Ubiquitous......Page 219
Truth as Eternal......Page 220
Truth as Compulsory......Page 221
To Good We Shall Return......Page 223
References......Page 224
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before: Relationships and Late Capitalism in “Hang the DJ”’......Page 226
References......Page 237
Introduction......Page 240
The Warning......Page 241
A Tale as Old as Time......Page 242
Gender and the End of the Human......Page 245
Those Teddy Bears: Human Comforts and the Death of Meaning......Page 247
The Black Mirror......Page 248
References......Page 249
Hope, with Teeth: On “Black Museum”......Page 251
A Brief History of the Future......Page 254
Emergency Exits and Ambiguous Utopias......Page 259
References......Page 263
Introduction......Page 265
“It’s still a game though, yeah?”......Page 268
Game Over?......Page 275
References......Page 276
Notes on Contributors......Page 279
Index......Page 284

Citation preview

Through the Black Mirror Deconstructing the Side Effects of the Digital Age Edited by  Terence McSweeney Stuart Joy

Through the Black Mirror

Terence McSweeney  •  Stuart Joy Editors

Through the Black Mirror Deconstructing the Side Effects of the Digital Age

Editors Terence McSweeney Southampton Solent University Southampton, UK

Stuart Joy Southampton Solent University Southampton, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-19457-4    ISBN 978-3-030-19458-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Stocksolutions / Alamy Stock Photo Cover Design: eStudio Calamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Joan, Tom, Barry, Den and Kay, gone but never forgotten.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the staff at Palgrave Macmillan for their help and support putting this large and ambitious project together. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the contributors themselves. We thank you for your work, your creativity and your contributions to the field, one and all. We would also like to thank the staff and students at our home institution, Solent University, Southampton. Terence: Special mention should also be reserved for the IAS (Institute of Advanced Studies) at UCL, where much of my contribution to this volume was written and edited during my tenure as Visiting Research Fellow during the academic year 2018–2019. Thank you to my family, to Olga, Harrison and Wyatt, who continue to inspire me every second of the day, especially when life feels more and more like an episode of the show at the centre of this collection with every day that passes. Stuart: I want to express my deep thanks to Terence McSweeney, my co-­ editor, without whom this book would not have been possible. Your motivation and work ethic are a continuous source of inspiration. Thanks also to my close friend Kierren Darke for being an eager soundboard for my ideas and for providing excellent advice. Lastly, special thanks to my wife Sophie for her patience, encouragement and emotional support—you are a constant reminder of everything that is beautiful in this world.

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Contents

Introduction: Read that Back to Yourself and Ask If You Live in a Sane Society  1 Terence McSweeney and Stuart Joy

Part I   17 “The National Anthem”, Terrorism and Digital Media 19 Fran Pheasant-Kelly “Fifteen Million Merits”: Gamification, Spectacle, and Neoliberal Aspiration 33 Mark R. Johnson Enhanced Memory: “The Entire History of You” 43 Henry Jenkins

Part II   55 Making Room for Our Personal Posthuman Prisons: Black Mirror’s “Be Right Back” 57 Andrew Schopp Ideological State Apparatuses, Perversions of Courtly Love, and Curatorial Violence in “White Bear” 69 Paul Petrovic ix

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Political Apathy, the ex post facto Allegory and Waldo’s Trumpian Moment 83 Terence McSweeney We Have Only Ourselves to Fear: Reflections on AI Through the Black Mirror of “White Christmas” 95 Christine Muller

Part III  109 The Planned Obsolescence of “Nosedive”111 Sean Redmond Augmented Reality Bites: “Playtest” and the Unstable Now125 Soraya Murray Shame, Stigma and Identification in “Shut Up and Dance”137 Stuart Joy Unreal City: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and Posthumanity in “San Junipero”151 Isra Daraiseh and M. Keith Booker Deviating the Other: Inspecting the Boundaries of Progress in “Men Against Fire”165 Ana Došen On Killer Bees and GCHQ: “Hated in the Nation”179 James Smith

Part IV  191 Dethroning the King of Space: Toxic White Masculinity and the Revised Adventure Narrative in “USS Callister”193 Steffen Hantke

 Contents 

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“Arkangel”: Postscript on Families of Control205 George F. McHendry The Sovereignty of Truth: Memory and Morality in “Crocodile”217 Jossalyn G. Larson Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before: Relationships and Late Capitalism in “Hang the DJ”’231 Aidan Power Killing the Creator in “Metalhead”245 Barbara Gurr Hope, with Teeth: On “Black Museum”257 Gerry Canavan Change Your Past, Your Present, Your Future? Interactive Narratives and Trauma in Bandersnatch (2018)271 Terence McSweeney and Stuart Joy Notes on Contributors285 Index291

Introduction: Read that Back to Yourself and Ask If You Live in a Sane Society Terence McSweeney and Stuart Joy

Gazing into the Black Mirror Has there ever a been a television show more intrinsically connected to the fears and anxieties of the decade in which it was produced than Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror (2011–)? Across the diverse tapestry of its episodes it has both dramatised and deconstructed the shifting cultural and technological coordinates of the era like no other programme and in years to come when people want to know what we talked about and what we were afraid of in the new millennial decades, they could do a lot worse, and not much better, than begin with Black Mirror. Through the Black Mirror: Deconstructing the Side Effects of the Digital Age charts the first four seasons of Black Mirror and beyond from its opening episode “The National Anthem” (01.01) broadcast on Channel Four on 4 December 2011, a provocative and wildly caustic statement of intent in the form of a forty-four-minute self-contained drama which memorably featured the prime minister of Great Britain having sexual intercourse with a sus scrofa domesticus live on television and the internet for the whole world to see. As a body of work these nineteen episodes and the “interactive movie” that is Bandersnatch (2018) are, without exception, vivid, visceral and disorienting texts, frequently challenging at the level of both form and content. This disorientation might be considered to even begin with the title of the show, after all, what exactly is a “black mirror”? Charlie Brooker, the show’s creator, producer and writer, has suggested “The ‘black mirror’ of the title is the one you’ll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen

T. McSweeney (*) • S. Joy Southampton Solent University, Southampton, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_1

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of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone” (2011). The mirror that Brooker refers to certainly is a screen, but it also refers to a surface that reflects, and not just the faces of those that peer into it, but also the culture and times in which it was made. As Elise Morrison wrote in her Discipline and Desire: Surveillance Technologies in Performance (2016) the title also refers to “dark surfaces that reflect our faces, expectations, desires, hopes, and anxieties” (2016, p.  183) and in The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture (2017) Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco observed that “These cultural changes take place alongside the growing omnipresence of the black mirror—the dark screen of our televisions, computers, tablets, and smartphones—technological devices that we rely on to search for answers to questions both banal and profound” (p. 237). These writers, and many of those who contribute to this volume, articulate the parameters of the show, and it is a series which continues to interrogate our contemporary “expectations, desires, hopes, and anxieties” at the same time as participating in a “search for answers to questions both banal and profound”. Yet perhaps what is most important about Black Mirror is the fact that it never provides answers to the contemporary conundrums and ethical quandaries it raises. Instead, the series encourages audiences to contemplate the moral issues raised by each episode. In “The Entire History of You” (01.03), for example, audiences are invited to consider the ethical implications of a technology that allows characters to record, store, replay and share their most intimate memories. “Shut Up and Dance” (03.03) and “Crocodile” (04.03) take this notion further in asking us what steps we might take to stop our darkest secrets from becoming public. Along similar lines, “Arkangel” (04.02) asks us how far we might go to protect our children, while “White Bear” (02.02) challenges viewers to empathise with a character whose moral compass is revealed to be deeply flawed. In “Be Right Back” (02.01) viewers are encouraged to speculate whether they would ­subscribe to a service that enables a character to recreate a lost loved one in digital form, whereas “San Junipero” (03.04) probes viewers to consider if, given the choice, they would upload their consciousness to a computer so that  they might live forever. Similarly, “White Christmas” (02.04), “USS Callister” (04.01), “Hang the DJ” (04.04) and “Black Museum” (04.06) all, in various ways, ask the viewer to draw a line between what constitutes a living organism and a digital recreation. These episodes ultimately blur the line between our physical and virtual identities in ways that allow the viewer to contemplate perhaps the most fundamental question of all, what does it mean to be human?

Between Light and Shadow, Between Science and Superstition As a frame of reference for what the episodes of Black Mirror offer audiences, one might suggest the likes of The Twilight Zone (originally CBS, 1959–1964), Tales of the Unexpected (ITV, 1978–1988) and the short-lived Hammer House

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of Horror (Hammer films/ITC, 1980), all of which Charlie Brooker has gone on record as stating influenced his approach to the creation of the show (see Brooker, 2011). Undoubtedly these series provide something of a model for what Brooker embarked on in Season One of Black Mirror and the most often remembered episodes of The Twilight Zone are as intimately connected to the Cold War as Black Mirror is to the first decades of the twenty-first century, exploring the fears and anxieties of their own tumultuous era in fondly remembered episodes like “Time Enough at Last” (1959) in which Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) finds himself the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust; “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” (1960) where aliens arrive in small town America, exploring what happens when the thin veneer of civilisation is fractured, revealing a Hobbesian world underneath, an episode which Steven Rubin in his The Twilight Zone Encyclopedia (2017) argued that “perfectly encapsulates how fear of the unknown can sink into a typical American neighbourhood” (p. 91); “The Invaders” (1961), where what initially appears to be another extra-terrestrial invasion ultimately challenges our notions and preconceptions of both self and the Other.1 These episodes are intrinsically connected to the defining fears of the Cold War also dramatised within the frames of films like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Thing from Another World (1951) (see Lipschutz, 2001; Seed, 1999). The original series of The Twilight Zone ran from 1959 to 1964 and was composed of 156 episodes, 92 of which were written or co-written by the show’s creator Rod Serling, who Steven Rubin argued “often exploited his show’s fantasy milieu and allegorical approach to storytelling to evade the censorship that constrained more realistic programmes” (p. 169). Ultimately though The Twilight Zone provided audiences with what Don Presnell and Marty McGee described as “lessons on what it means to be human” (1998, p. 7) and one might say the very same thing of Charlie Brooker’s show, but its frame of reference is a very different one to that of the initial run of The Twilight Zone. Brooker is, without a doubt, the Rod Serling-esque figure behind Black Mirror, of the twenty entrants to the Black Mirror world produced at the time of writing, Brooker has either written, co-written or received a “story by” credit on every single one with the exception of “The Entire History of You” and “Nosedive” (03.01).

The Fears and Fantasies of Black Mirror: From “The National Anthem” to Bandersnatch Black Mirror charts and deconstructs the fears of the modern world, like those explored in Douglas Rushkoff’s insightful Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (2014). Rushkoff asserts that our obsessive reliance on new media technologies has led to the new millennial collapse of traditional 1  These three episodes were all considered to be the top ten best of the series in an article by Gilbert Cruz (2009) in Time called “Top 10 Twilight Zone Episodes”.

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­ nderstandings of the world which has resulted in the emergence of very real u phenomena like “digiphrenia” (a dislocation caused by the attempt to live in the real and digital simultaneously), “fractalnoia” (an attempt to understand everything only in the present tense) and “overwinding” (an attempt to reduce what should be longer experiences into brief more instantaneous shorter ones). He writes, “Instead of finding a stable foothold in the here and now, we end up reacting to the ever-present assault of simultaneous impulses and commands” (p. 4). These fears then can be located in episodes like “Fifteen Million Merits” (01.02), a scathing satire of modern consumer commodified culture and unchecked corporate capitalism in the digital age, which has fundamentally impacted on the way we view and interact with the world around us both figuratively and literally, or the dystopian (not too distant) future of “Nosedive” in which almost every aspect of society is based on peer ratings that can dictate the job we have, the amount of friends and even the property we are allowed to buy, emblematic of our obsession with interacting with modern technology and what has been referred to as the gamification of modern society by a variety of authors (see Bishop, 2014; Burke, 2014). As with these two episodes mentioned above, the vast majority of Black Mirror explores and examines the various ways that new media technologies can shape and transform our understanding of the world while, at the same time, often raising philosophical questions about the complexities of identity and social relationships in the digital age. “Be Right Back”, for example, depicts a vision of a posthuman reality in which it is possible to reanimate lost loved ones using an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) designed to mimic their exact likeness. Similarly, “White Christmas”, “Black Museum” and the award-winning “San Junipero” each present a transhuman future where devices can enable human consciousness to be uploaded to a computer.2 In these episodes, technology ultimately challenges what constitutes the essence of identity when the mind can exist independently from the body. Several other episodes also explore concepts relating to identity albeit through the prism of gaming: “USS Callister”, “Nosedive” and “Hated in the Nation” (03.06), for instance, consider the divisions between online and offline identities and their impacts on real-world social interactions, whereas “Playtest” (03.02), “Men Against Fire” (03.05) and “Hang the DJ” examine the potential moral and ethical implications of virtual, augmented and simulated realities, respectively. While several of these episodes raise questions that are primarily philosophical in nature, others are more closely related to questions that are connected to broader social and cultural issues. Episodes such as “The National Anthem” and “The Waldo Moment” (02.03) foreground the impact of new media technologies on politics. “Fifteen Million Merits” draws attention to the exploitation of the working class for mass media entertainment and 2  “San Junipero” earned Black Mirror its first Primetime Emmy Awards in the categories of Outstanding Television Movie and Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special.

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“White Bear” offers a commentary on the sensationalism of tragedy. “The Entire History of You”, “Shut Up and Dance”, “Arkangel”, “Crocodile” and “Metalhead” (04.05) are united by their shared focus on issues relating to surveillance and privacy. In these episodes, a range of technological devices enable users to track and monitor each other in ways that suggest even our most intimate moments can be used against us. Nevertheless, even though technology is an intrinsic element throughout the series, Brooker insists that the show doesn’t view technological progress as a threat. Speaking at a Television Critics Association press tour, Brooker noted that “Technology is never the villain in the show, it’s about human failings and human messes” (N’Duka, 2016). Black Mirror, then, reminds the audience that perhaps the greatest thing they should fear is not technology but rather themselves. As a result of this the fears that the show mines, as topical as they are, are also deeply rooted in universal themes. So, while episodes like “Arkangel” and “Hang the DJ” deal with very contemporary developments in modern technology, as do “Hated in the Nation” and “Playtest”, they each explore timeless issues relevant across cultures and decades: like the ethical responsibilities of good parenting, fears of death and dying, of what constitutes good relationships, notions of shame and the consequences of one’s actions. These themes can be seen as early as the very first episode, “The National Anthem”, which Brooker revealed that he had been inspired to write after the brief but heated controversy of Labour prime minister Gordon Brown being recorded calling a sixty-five-year-old pensioner, Gillian Duffy, a “bigoted woman” on a Sky News microphone after he was heckled while conducting a television interview in Rochdale, England, in April 2010 in the lead up to the general election. Brooker wrote: Set slap-bang in the present, The National Anthem, starring Rory Kinnear and Lindsay Duncan, recounts what happens when fictional royal Princess Susannah is kidnapped and prime minister Michael Callow is presented with an unusual— and obscene—ransom request. The traditional media finds itself unable to even discuss what the demand is, while the Twittersphere foams with speculation and cruel jokes. As the ransom deadline nears, events start to gain a surreal momentum of their own. This was inspired partly by the kerfuffle over superinjunctions, and partly by the strange out-of-control sensation that takes grip on certain news days—such as the day Gordon Brown was virtually commanded to apologise to Gillian Duffy in front of the rolling news networks. Who was in charge that day? No one and everyone. (2011)

On the decision to use a pig rather than any other animal in the episode he stated “You needed something that straddles the line between comic and horrifying” (qtd. in Benedictus, 2015), and this rather throwaway line might be applicable to the Black Mirror experience as a whole. “The National Anthem”, as many episodes of the show have been, was later regarded as being prescient a few years after when prime minister David Cameron became embroiled in what was widely referred to as the “Piggate” scandal when allegations arose

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concerning initiation ceremonies for the men-only dining club known as the Piers Gavetson Society, which was detailed in Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott in their Call Me Dave: The Unauthorised Biography of David Cameron (2015).3 Brooker added: The first question people were asking me was, Did I know anything about it? And the answer is no, absolutely not. I probably wouldn’t have bothered writing an episode of a fictional comedy-drama if I’d known. I’d have been running around screaming it into traffic. It’s a complete coincidence, albeit a quite bizarre one. (qtd. in Benedictus, 2015)

From Channel Four to Netflix: Black Mirror in the Global Age Since its launch in 1982 as a publicly owned not for profit broadcaster, Channel 4 has garnered a widespread reputation for the production and distribution of distinctive British content across both film and television. It is unsurprising, then, that some of the earliest episodes of Black Mirror—which premiered on Channel 4—have a noticeably British cultural emphasis. “The National Anthem”, for example, focuses on the relationship between the British public and a fictional British prime minister. “Fifteen Million Merits” offers a critique of reality-style talent shows such as Pop Idol (ITV, 2001–2003), The X Factor (ITV, 2004–) and Britain’s Got Talent (ITV, 2007–) that became particularly prominent features of the television landscape in Britain during the mid-2000s. In Season Two, the episode titled “White Bear” draws a significant parallel between the sustained media coverage and public outcry associated with numerous high-profile child murder cases in Britain such as those involving Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and Fred and Rosemary West. Season Two culminates in an episode that has since been interpreted as a prescient exploration of the rise of populism across the political spectrum—especially in relation to Donald Trump’s ascendancy to power in the United States (see Cillizza, 2015; Doran, 2016). However, in “The Waldo Moment”, the profane cartoon bear that attempts to run for political office in a local byelection was in fact modelled on the British politician Boris Johnson (Singal, 2016). The emphasis in Seasons One and Two on various aspects that are nationally specific and recognisably British is further enhanced by the casting of both well-known and emerging British actors such as Rupert Everett, Daniel Kaluuya, Jessica Brown Findlay, Toby Kebbell, Hayley Atwell and Lenora 3  The idea of Black Mirror being prescient or able to predict the future has been applied to several episodes including “The Waldo Moment”, “Hated in The Nation” and “Nosedive” among others from both technological and cultural perspectives (see Weller, 2018).

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Crichlow. By comparison the casting of an award-winning4 American actor, Jon Hamm, alongside Rafe Spall in the one-off Christmas special, was perhaps an acknowledgement of the programme’s increasing popularity in the United States of America which was belatedly broadcast there during the latter part of 2013 via DirecTV’s Audience Network. Nevertheless, despite the presence of an established American star, the episode’s thematic emphasis on separation, loss, loneliness and isolation is largely consistent with an underlying melancholy evident—notably in soaps—across numerous staple British television programmes shown throughout the festive period (Moore, 2014, pp. 115–116). Following the release of “White Christmas”, the announcement that Netflix had successfully outbid Channel 4 for the worldwide exclusive distribution rights to the series not only signposted an ostensible shift away from the distinctly British emphasis of Seasons One and Two, but also marked a significant historical turning point in the global expansion of online streaming platforms. The deal, worth a reported $40 million (Plunkett, 2016), was the first time that a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) provider had outspent a public service broadcaster in the pursuit of an original production. Channel 4 had commissioned and developed the first two seasons of Black Mirror in 2011 and 2013 as well as the one-off Christmas special in 2014 but was unable to retain the show in the face of competition from Netflix. In a statement, Channel 4’s chief creative officer Jay Hunt said: Black Mirror couldn’t be a more Channel 4 show. We grew it from a dangerous idea to a brand that resonated globally. It’s disappointing that the first broadcast window in the UK is then sold to the highest bidder, ignoring the risk a publicly owned channel like 4 took backing it. (Plunkett, 2016)

Regardless, the show’s creator Charlie Brooker has described Netflix as “the most fitting platform imaginable” (Plunkett, 2015), emphasising the streaming service’s ability to reach a global audience as well as remarking elsewhere on the suitability of the series’ anthology format to Netflix’s content distribution model (Landau, 2017, p. 286). Unlike the multi-episode series and serial dramas of conventional broadcast television that evolved from the more traditional plotted narrative of radio, the earliest anthology series were predominantly influenced by the traditions of theatre (Barnouw, 1970, p. 26). Programmes such as The United States Steel Hour (ABC, 1953–1955; CBS, 1955–1963) and Playhouse 90 (CBS, 1956–1960) differed from their long-form counterparts by offering a unique standalone drama each week featuring varied casts, writers and directors. They frequently pushed the boundaries of television drama either in style, length, production values or content—with the latter often addressing pressing social and political issues of the time. However, this focus was eventually perceived to 4  In 2008, Jon Hamm won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in A Television Series—Drama.

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be incompatible with the demands of network sponsors. As the broadcasting historian Erik Barnouw points out, the writers behind some of the earliest iterations of the anthology series populated their dramas with problems that made the commercials “seem fraudulent” (1970, p. 33). Sponsors, therefore, became increasingly uneasy about the messages conveyed within these programmes and responded by demanding extensive script revisions, a factor that inadvertently necessitated a shift away from the apparent confines of realistic dramas to the more flexible opportunities offered by science fiction and fantasy. These genres afforded the writers of programmes such as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits (ABC, 1963–1965) with allegorical, metaphorical and symbolic frameworks to examine a variety of social issues while avoiding the oppressiveness of network censorship (Angelini & Booy, 2010, pp. 19–20). Returning to The Twilight Zone, as Brooker himself has periodically done since Season One of Black Mirror, its creator Rod Serling famously observed that “a Martian can say things that a Republican or Democrat can’t” (qtd. in Javna, 1987, p. 16). Clearly, early anthology series were compromised by the commercial conditions under which they were conceived and produced. Black Mirror, of course, has not experienced the economic system encountered by these early anthology series. Channel 4’s public service remit, for example, to be “innovative and distinctive” (Channel 4, n.d.), means that it is responsible for commissioning content that would otherwise struggle to secure a broadcast platform. Likewise, Netflix’s revenue stream is currently derived solely from monthly subscription fees meaning that writers, directors and producers are offered a significant degree of creative control. In both instances, Black Mirror has been fortuitously positioned to benefit from the industrial context of its conception and production. It might be argued that that the science fiction emphasis and context of the show allows it more freedom to be critical of the culture in which it is made, something that is returned to by more than one author in this collection. Although one might point out that it is problematic to call many of the episodes allegories given they are so close to reality the term does not seem quite enough. As Knafo and Bosco wrote, “The plight of characters is easy to relate to because some of what they experience is happening in our own world” (2017, p. 237). Thus Brooker’s comments about Rod Serling then are relevant for his own creation “If he [Serling] wrote about racism in a southern town, he had to fight the network over every line. But if he wrote about racism in a metaphorical, quasi-fictional world—suddenly he could say everything he wanted” (2011). This freedom gives Brooker leave to confront and explore media hypocrisy, the rise of celebrity and superficiality in “The Waldo Moment”, the reliance on technology which is distorting both ourselves and how we relate to one another in “Arkangel”. While Brooker’s dark, often dystopian, and frequently disturbing parables for modern society initially suited the innovative and experimental brand identity associated with Channel 4, it is Netflix’s rejection of traditional broadcast patterns in favour of one dictated by audiences increasing demands for original

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content that means Black Mirror’s anthology format is particularly well-suited to the streaming platform. Discussing the challenges of working on an anthology series for a traditional broadcaster, Brooker foregrounds one of the main problems of audience retention when he asks “how do you bring the audience back? There’s no impetus to return, because you’re in a completely different world with a new set of characters next week” (qtd. in Landau, 2017, p. 286). Elsewhere, as part of a panel discussion organised by the London Film Festival in 2016, Brooker addressed the shift from Channel 4 to Netflix noting that “shows that reinvent themselves every week have struggled in the ratings. And ratings were king for years” (BFI, 2016).5 By comparison, he remarks, “the advent of streaming platforms has brought [anthology series’] back into fashion. You no longer have to worry about an audience coming back week on week; it’s all just there in the magic streaming cupboard” (qtd. in Lampert, 2017). Nonetheless, for Brooker, the show’s departure from Channel 4 led to the criticism that the series had become too Americanised. For the show’s producer Annabel Jones, however, the notion that Netflix’s involvement has resulted in a dilution of the “Britishness” perceived to be at the heart of the series stemmed from their own assumptions that it would function as a potential source of national identity in the global age. She says, “We thought it was a very British show, but actually everyone around the world was experiencing technology at the same speed we were” (qtd. Temperton, 2016). Likewise, Brooker has also commented upon the surprising global appeal of the show: “It has travelled a lot more than I thought it would. It’s big in China, it’s big in Spain…It’s obviously not as colloquial as I thought it was” (qtd. in Mellor, 2014). He goes on to say, “It’s because technology is a global thing and wherever you go, people are prodding the same devices and worrying in the same way and have had their lives slightly altered in the same way”. The perceived “Britishness” of Black Mirror, then, is secondary to the more relatable fears and anxieties associated with the impacts of globalisation, most notably the increased use of new media technologies in everyday life.

Welcome to the Black Mirror Universe One might persuasively argue that the feature-length Christmas special “White Christmas”, which was produced and broadcast after two seasons comprising three episodes each, marked a turning point for the show in a range of ways: not only is it the final episode produced and broadcast by 5  The anthology series has become increasingly popular in recent years with shows such as High Maintenance (HBO, 2016–) Room 104 (HBO, 2017–), The Guest Book (TBS, 2017–) and Electric Dreams (Channel 4, 2017–) demonstrating a resurgent interest in short-form storytelling. Elsewhere, the self-contained mini-series format of American Horror Story (FX, 2011–), Fargo (FX, 2014–), True Detective (HBO, 2014–) and The Girlfriend Experience (Starz, 2016–) provides further evidence of a sophisticated and demanding audience.

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Channel Four before the move to Netflix for Season Three, but also because of its acknowledgement that every episode is indeed set in the same diegetic world, what we might call the “Black Mirror universe”. Initially these Easter Eggs had been regarded by Brooker as “just a bit of fun” (qtd. in Strause, 2017), but by the time of “White Christmas” they had become one of the defining elements of the show. Thus, the events that take place in the first episode of the series “The National Anthem” are mentioned again in “Shut Up and Dance” where the headline “PM Callow to divorce” is shown and also in “Nosedive” where an onscreen tweet from Callow reads “Just got thrown out of the zoo again”; the protagonist of “White Bear”, Victoria Skillane, is mentioned in “White Christmas”, “Shut Up and Dance” and then in “Hated in the Nation” which informs us of her appeal being thrown out of court.6 After “White Christmas” each episode then seems to be self-consciously constructed as part of this “Black Mirror universe”: like the fact that the television show at the centre of “Fifteen Million Merits” is seen in “White Christmas”, referenced in “Shut Up and Dance”, “Men Against Fire” and later in “Crocodile” and “Black Museum”. These are certainly examples of what Henry Jenkins, who himself provides the chapter on “The Entire History of You” in this volume, termed “participatory culture” which “contrasts with older notions of passive media spectatorship” in his influential volume Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006, p. 3) as audiences are encouraged more than ever to experience media texts in ways which are transforming with every year that passes. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter Brooker confirmed: It always used to be that it’s just a bit of fun. But then sometimes we’ve done some things where we did explicitly refer to other episodes. I think the rule is that when a character says something that explicitly refers to something else, it’s canonical. Also, they follow the same dream universe. That’s the other thing that I tend to say. (qtd. in Strause, 2017)

By the time of the release of the fourth season of the show on Netflix in December 2017 the idea of a Black Mirror universe had been completely embraced in ways it had not been before. This took the form of background details like the naming of characters or places like the planets Rannoch B and Skillane IV in “USS Callister” after the two murderers from “White Bear”; or posters in the background of “Arkangel” showing the rapper Tusk from “Hated in the Nation” and the video game Harlech Shadow from “Playtest”, but arguably reached a metatextual apogee in the concluding episode of Season Four “Black Museum” in Rolo Haynes’ eponymous museum, which he describes as containing “authentic criminological artefacts”, the majority of which are 6  In “Hated in the Nation” there are two other references to her: one in a Twitter hashtag “#deathto” and another when the police office Blue (Faye Marsay) says she worked on the “Ian Rannoch case”.

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explicitly drawn from the previous eighteen episodes: the artist Carlton Bloom responsible for the plot at the centre of “National Anthem”, a video screen showing Victoria Skillane, the perpetrator of the crime at the centre of “White Bear”, the fact that Rolo worked for TCKR, the company which built the device in “San Junipero”, the exhibit even contains the dresses worn by Yorkie and Kelly, a bee from “Hated in the Nation”, the bloody bathroom from “Crocodile”, the smashed tablet from “Arkangel” and even Tommy’s lollipop from “USS Callister”. The meta-textuality of these referencing is dizzying then and perhaps is only surpassed by one moment from Season Four which would have been missed by all the most devoted of fans: in “Crocodile” one of the characters briefly holds up a printed out article during which one can read the information written on it but only if one pauses the screen. Part of the text reads “Of course the real question is ‘why would anyone pause what they’re watching just to read a sentence in a printed out newspaper article’, says a voice in your head—before advising you to share this finding on reddit”. As one might expect, shortly after the image was actually shared on reddit with contributors gleefully deconstructing and commenting on it as they have done on every addition to the Black Mirror universe.7 It seems warranted to refer to the show not just as a success but as a phenomenon which is reflected not just in the ratings it has secured around the globe, the headlines it has inspired and also the wealth of awards it has been nominated for and in many cases won, the variety of which is symptomatic of its own range: from BAFTAs, to Peabodys, International Emmys, Screen Actors Guild Awards, NAACP Image Awards, Hugo and GLAAD. In years to come audiences will turn to the episodes of Black Mirror as some sort of cultural barometer, one which has embedded within it many of the defining anxieties of the times which produced it. Indeed, an exploration and interrogation of what these anxieties might tell us is the central aims of Through the Black Mirror: Deconstructing the Side Effects of the Digital Age. Given his central importance to Black Mirror, it seems fitting then to give the final words of this introduction to the show’s creator, Brooker, who memorably stated: We routinely do things that just five years ago would scarcely have made sense to us. We tweet along to reality shows; we share videos of strangers dropping cats in bins; we dance in front of Xboxes that can see us, and judge us, and find us sorely lacking. It’s hard to think of a single human function that technology hasn’t somehow altered, apart perhaps from burping. That’s pretty much all we have left. Just yesterday I read a news story about a new video game installed above urinals to stop patrons getting bored: you control it by sloshing your urine stream left and right. Read that back to yourself and ask if you live in a sane society. (2011, emphasis added)

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 See, for example, AFellowOfLimitedJest.

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References AFellowOfLimitedJest. (2017, December 29). [S04E03] [EASTER EGG] “‘Of Course the Real Question Is Why Anyone Would Pause What They’re Watching Just to Read a Sentence in a Printed Out Newspaper Article’, Says a Voice in Your Head— Before Advising You to Go and Share This Finding on Reddit.” Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmirror/comments/7mv2yn/s04e03_easter_ egg_of_course_the_real_question_is/. Angelini, S., & Booy, M. (2010). Members Only: Cult TV from Margins to Mainstream. In S. Abbott (Ed.), The Cult TV Book (pp. 19–27). London: I.B. Tauris. Banks, M., Irwin, C., & Jones, P. (Producers). (2007–). Britain’s Got Talent. [Television series]. London: ITV. Barnouw, E. (1970). The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Volume III: From 1953. New York: Oxford University Press. Benedictus, L. (2015, September 21). Charlie Brooker on Cameron and #piggate: ‘I’d have been screaming it into traffic if I’d known’. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2015/sep/21/pigsprime-minister-black-mirror-ashcroft-allegation-charlie-brooker. BFI. (2016). Charlie Brooker at the Black Mirror Q&A: We Wanted to Not Always Fling You into a Pit of Despair. Retrieved from http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tvpeople/57fcf0fa53be2. Bialic, G. (Producer). (2016–). High Maintenance. [Television series]. New  York City, NY: HBO. Bishop, J. (2014). Gamification for Human Factors Integration: Social, Education, and Psychological Issues. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Bridges, W., & Brooker, C. (Writers) & Haynes, T. (Director). (2017). USS Callister. [Television series episode] In L. Sutton (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Bridges, W., & Brooker, C. (Writers), & Watkins, J. (Director). (2016). Shut Up and Dance. [Television series episode] In L.  Dyke (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C., & Huq, K. (Writers) & Lynn, E. (Director). (2011). Fifteen Million Merits. [Television series episode] In B.  Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (2011, December 1). Charlie Brooker: The Dark Side of Our Gadget Addiction. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/dec/01/charlie-brooker-dark-side-gadget-addiction-black-mirror. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Bathurst, O. (Director). (2011). The National Anthem. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Foster, J. (Director). (2017). Arkangel. [Television series episode] In K. Pitt (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2013). Be Right Back. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2016). San Junipero. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Hawes, J. (Director). (2016). Hated in the Nation. [Television series episode] In S. Wohlenberg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Higgins, B. (Director). (2013). The Waldo Moment. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4.

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Brooker, C. (Writer), & Hillcoat, J. (Director). (2017). Crocodile. [Television series episode] In S. Wohlenberg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & McCarthy, C. (Director) (2017). Black Museum. [Television series episode] In I. Hogan (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Slade, D. (Director). (2017). Metalhead. [Television series episode] In L. Sutton (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2013). White Bear. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2014). White Christmas. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Trachtenberg, D. (Director). (2016). Playtest. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Van Patten, T. (Director). (2017) Hang the DJ. [Television series episode] In N. Pitt (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Verbruggen, J. (Director). (2016). Men Against Fire. [Television series episode] In L. Dyke (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Burke, B. (2014). Gamify: How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things. New York: Bibliomotion. Channel 4. (n.d.). What Is Channel 4? C4 Corporate. Retrieved from https://www. channel4.com/corporate/about-4/who-we-are/what-is-channel-4. Cillizza, C. (2015, September 8). Donald Trump’s Troll Game of Jeb Bush: A+. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/ wp/2015/09/08/donald-trumps-troll-game-of-jeb-bush-a/?utm_ term=.2fd5886e73a1. Cowell, S., Holloway, R., Hart, B., Sidaway, M., Davies, C., McNicholas, L., & Mackenzie, I. (Executive Producers). (2004–). The X Factor [Television series]. London: ITV. Cruz, G. (2009, October 2). Top 10 Twilight Zone Episodes. Time. Retrieved from http://entertainment.time.com/2009/10/02/top-10-twilight-zone-episodes/ slide/the-monsters-are-due-on-maple-street-1960/. Doran, S. (2016, November 11). Black Mirror, President Trump and Prophecy—Can TV Really Predict the Future? The Radio Times. Retrieved from http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-11-11/black-mirror-president-trump-and-prophecy-cantv-really-predict-the-future/. Fuller, S. (Associate Producer). (2001–2003). Pop Idol. [Television series]. London: ITV. Garcia, G. T., & Jaffe, A. (Executive Producer). (2017–). The Guest Book. [Television series]. Atlanta, Georgia: TBS. Hawley, N., Cohen, E., & Cohen, J. (Executive Producers). (2014–). Fargo. [Television series]. Los Angeles, CA: FX. Javna, J. (1987). The Best of Science Fiction TV. New York: Harmony. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jones, R., & Schur, M. (Writers) & Wright, J. (Director). (2016). Nosedive. [Television series episode]. In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Kirchner, D. (Associate Producer). (2016–). The Girlfriend Experience. [Television series]. Toronto: Starz. Knafo, D., & Lo Bosco, R. (2017). The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture. London and New York: Routledge.

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Lampert, N. (2017, December 6). The Future Is Now. Drama Quarterly. Retrieved from http://dramaquarterly.com/the-future-is-now/. Landau, N. (2017). TV Outside the Box: Trailblazing in the Digital Television Revolution. New York: Focal Press. Lawrence, B., & Reid, D. (Executive Producer). (1980). Hammer House of Horror. [Television series]. London: Hammer films/ITC Entertainment. Lipschutz, R. D. (2001). Cold War Fantasies: Film, Fiction, and Foreign Policy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Lowther, G., Kondolf, G., Jamison, M., & Janis, H. (Executive Producers). (1953–1963). The United States Steel Hour. [Television series]. New  York City, NY: ABC/CBS. Manulis, M. (Producer). (1956–1960). Playhouse 90. [Television series]. New  York City, NY: CBS. Matheson, R. (Writer), & Heyes, D. (1961). The Invaders. [Television series episode]. In B. Houghton (Producer). The Twilight Zone. USA: New York City, NY: CBS. Mellor, L. (2014, December 16). Black Mirror Interview: Charlie Brooker, Jon Hamm, Rafe Spall. Den of Geek! Retrieved from http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/black-mirror/33368/black-mirror-interview-charlie-brooker-jon-hamm-rafe-spall. Moore, T. (2014). Christmas: The Sacred to Santa. London: Reaktion Books. Morrison, E. (2016). Discipline and Desire: Surveillance Technologies in Performance. Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press. Murcia, J. (Associate Producer). (2017–). Electric Dreams. [Television series]. London: Channel 4. Murphy, R. (Producer). (2011–). American Horror Story [Television series]. Los Angeles, CA: FX. N’Duka, A. (2016, July 27) ‘Black Mirror’ Reflects on Technology and the Modern World, but Not David Cameron, Creators Say  – TCA Deadline. Retrieved from http://deadline.com/2016/07/black-mirror-season-3-netflix-tca-1201793916/. Nyby, C. (Director), & Hawks, H. (Producer). (1951). The Thing from Another World. [Motion picture]. USA: RKO Radio Pictures. Pizzolatto, N. (Executive Producer). (2014–). True Detective. [Television series]. New York City, NY: HBO. Plunkett, J. (2015, September 25). Netflix to Air Next 12 Episodes of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ media/2015/sep/25/netflix-to-air-next-12-episodes-of-charlie-brookersblack-mirror. Plunkett, J. (2016, March 29). Netflix Deals Channel 4 Knockout Blow over Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian. com/media/2016/mar/29/netflix-channel-4-charlie-brooker-black-mirror. Presnell, D., & McGee, M. (1998). A Critical History of Television’s the Twilight Zone, 1959–1964. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company. Romary, T. (Producer). (2017–). Room 104. [Television series]. New  York City, NY: HBO. Rubin, S. (2017). The Twilight Zone Encyclopedia. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. Rushkoff, D. (2014). Present Shock. When Everything Happens Now. New York: Penguin. Seed, D. (1999). American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film. Keele: Keele University Press. Serling, R. (Executive Producer). (1959–1964). The Twilight Zone. [Television series]. USA: New York City, NY: CBS.

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Serling, R. (Writer), & Brahm, J. (Director). (1959). Time Enough at Last. [Television series episode]. In B.  Houghton (Producer). The Twilight Zone. USA: New  York City, NY: CBS. Serling, R. (Writer), & Winston, R. (Director). The Monsters are due on Maple Street. [Television series episode]. In B.  Houghton (Producer). The Twilight Zone. USA: New York City, NY: CBS. Siegel, D. (Director), Mirisch, W., & Wanger, W. (Executive Producers). (1956). Invasion of the Body Snatchers. [Motion picture]. USA: Allied Artists Pictures. Singal, J. (2016, July 27). Black Mirror Creator Charlie Brooker on Predicting Trump, Brexit, and How the Internet Is Making Us Crazy. Vulture. Retrieved from http:// www.vulture.com/2016/10/black-mirror-charlie-brooker-c-v-r.html. Stevens, L. (Executive Producer). (1963–1965). The Outer Limits. [Television series]. New York City, NY: ABC. Strause, J. (2017, September 3). ‘Black Mirror’ Bosses on “San Juipero” Sequel and an Unpredictable Season 4. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/black-mirror-season-4-episodes-charlie-brookerannabel-jones-interview-spoilers-1033807. Temperton, J. (2016, October 11). Charlie Brooker on Where Black Mirror Will Take Us Next. Wired. Retrieved from http://www.wired.co.uk/article/black-mirrortechnology-changing-lives. Weller, C. (2018, January 12). 14 Terrifying Predictions from ‘Black Mirror’ that Could Become Reality. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://uk.businessinsider.com/ black-mirror-predictions-reality-2016-10/#the-national-anthem-1. Welsh, B. (Writer), & Armstrong, J. (Director). (2011). The Entire History of You. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Wise, R. (Director), & Blaustein, J. (Producer). (1951). The Day the Earth Stood Still. [Motion picture]. USA: 20th Century Fox. Woolf, J. (Executive Producer). (1978–1988). Tales of the Unexpected. [Television series]. London: ITV.

PART I

“The National Anthem”, Terrorism and Digital Media Fran Pheasant-Kelly

Introduction “The National Anthem” (01.01), the first episode of Charlie Brooker’s television anthology series, Black Mirror (2011–), deals with a number of contemporary issues, namely, public reactions to, and fear of, terrorism, and the democratising power of social media. Specifically, it explores how the potential for psychological manipulation of both individuals and the masses has increased with the development of digital technology. Indeed, while such technology has the capacity for enhancing communication between physically remote individuals, there is increasing recognition that it also provokes a number of side effects, including a propensity for loneliness, persecution and exploitation of vulnerability (see, for example, Brewer & Kerslake, 2015; O’Keefe, Pearson, & Council on Communications and Media, 2011). As Mark Andrejevic observes in relation to this shift in the perceived value of social media, “[t]here is a progression apparent here, from a celebratory sense of the potential of new media (as a means of expanding social networks and experimenting with personal identity) to a savvy wariness toward forms of deception they facilitate, and finally to a sense of personal risk” (2007, p. 37). Moreover, and linked to the aforementioned issues, especially the exploitation of vulnerability, Brigitte Nacos (2016) argues that there is a symbiotic relationship between the media and radicalisation/terrorism, with each depending on the other to reach its audiences. While Pierlugi Musarò (2016) analyses the episode’s portrayal of communication and power in the network society by examining issues of privacy, spec-

F. Pheasant-Kelly (*) University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_2

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tacle and performance, to date, there has been limited consideration of the side effects of the digital era in respect of surveillance. This essay therefore makes an original intervention in analyses of the series by focusing on surveillance in relation to cultural humiliation and terrorism. Engaging theoretically with the work of Thomas Mathiesen (1997) on synoptic spectatorship as well as that of Nacos (2016) in relation to mass-mediated terrorism, it examines the tensions between these aspects via narrative themes, cinematography and aspects of the mise-en-scène to argue that there are several repercussions of internet and social media usage not yet explored in this episode. These include an apparent democratisation of power, via what is termed here as “synaptic surveillance”, that exists in tension with accepted models of surveillance described by Michel Foucault (1991) and Thomas Mathiesen (1997); an accelerated pace of events; the propagandist potential and capacity of digital media for “fake news”; and the ready malleability of public opinion and resultant collective agency via emotional response rather than rational process. Effectively, the episode, while fictionalised, illustrates the real-world complexity of multiplatform media, with one individual controlling the consciousness of the many and these, in forming synaptic connections with others, ultimately mandating the actions of another character.

Power, Society and Surveillance in “The National Anthem” Originally airing on 4 December 2011 on Channel 4 in the UK, “The National Anthem” is a political drama that follows the course of events after a princess is kidnapped, and the unusual ransom demand that the Prime Minister has sex with a pig, an event that the ransom states must be viewed publicly. Despite feverish attempts to locate the kidnapper, the Prime Minister, Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear), is eventually coerced by public opinion into committing the act. The episode, aside from its taboo content, became notorious for its connections to later unfounded allegations made against former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, which came to light in 2015 in an unauthorised biography by Michael Ashcroft and similarly became highly mediated (see Khomami, 2015; Hooton, 2015). It therefore explores the influence of the public, the power of synoptic viewing and issues of cultural humiliation. The drama’s numerous references to terrorism also connect such degradation with the equally culturally humiliating experiences of detainees at Abu Ghraib and other detention camps set up following 9/11. While this parallel might not be explicit, it is hinted at by Brooker who, in interview, compares the “pig scene” to 9/11, stating “It’s a 9/11—you don’t want to watch it [but you do]” (Bathurst, 2012a). The allusions to Islamic culture, 9/11 as media event, the narrative’s political targets, Jihadism and terrorist execution point more distinctly towards post-9/11 allegory. Furthermore, “The National Anthem” aired just following the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and in the same year as Bin Laden’s execution, an event from

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which the episode appears to draw. Effectively, while Foucault is concerned with the exercise of power in panoptic surveillance, and Mathiesen describes synoptic viewing (whereby the few still exert power), the episode illustrates how the combined effects of traditional and new media nuance power and viewing relationships. The notion of one/few watching and controlling the consciousness of the many is explored by Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1991) in which he proposes that institutions such as the prison, school and hospital are typically organised according to a panoptic model. Such an arrangement pivots around a central tower which facilitates specific modes of surveillance. Drawing on the work of Jeremy Bentham, who originally put forward the design, Foucault explains that the way in which the institution regulates bodies through its physical architecture establishes an inherent relationship between space, surveillance and control. While institutions are sites implicitly concerned with the enforced discipline of the body, Foucault suggests that the typical panoptic structure of the institution also controls consciousness (1991, p. 201). This is because inmates do not know exactly when they are being observed and therefore adjust their actions regardless. Even though Foucault’s concept is based on physical space rather than cyberspace, and scholars such as David Lyon and Zygmunt Bauman now refer to the “post-panoptical powers of liquid modernity” (2013, p. 13), panopticism nonetheless retains contemporary currency in the widespread use of CCTV.  As will be argued, it also remains potentially relevant to digital media, illustrated by the way that the masses are manipulated in “The National Anthem”. In contrast to the work of Foucault, Thomas Mathiesen (1997) describes a synoptic model which he suggests has developed alongside panopticonism, stating that “as a striking parallel to the panoptical process, and concurring in detail with its historical development, we have seen the development of a unique and extensive system enabling the many to see and contemplate the few, so that the tendency for the few to see and supervise the many is contextualized by a highly significant counterpart [original emphasis]” (1997, p.  219). He contends that such mass viewing typically occurs in relation to television and terms the outcome of this concurrent two-way panoptic/synoptic system of observation as a “viewer society” (1997, p. 219). Less obviously than in panopticonism, power and control are also features of synoptic viewing such that “in synoptic space, particular news reporters, more or less brilliant media personalities and commentators who are continuously visible and seen are of particular importance … They actively filter and shape information … they produce news … they place topics on the agenda and avoid placing topics on the agenda” (Mathiesen, 1997, p. 226). As well as personalities exerting specific power over viewers, the media in general also effect control and Mathiesen states that “synopticism, through the modern mass media in general and television in particular, first of all directs and controls or disciplines our consciousness [original emphasis]” (1997, p. 230).

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However, at the time he published this article, the Internet was in its infancy and social media relatively undeveloped. Therefore, alongside the panoptic process described by Foucault and the synoptic model outlined by Mathiesen, a third variation has emerged, involving multiple interactions between many individuals/ groups in what might be described as “synaptic surveillance” and that is consistent with the development of the Internet and social media. Lyon (2011, p. 13) refers to this phenomenon as rhizomatic surveillance and notes that “[p]ost-panoptic surveillance is deterritorialized as well as rhizomatic and as such resists exclusionary control strategies” (2011, p. 13). In a related way, Mark Andrejevic describes it as a lateral watching, and suggests that it involves “a displacement of the figure of ‘Big Brother’ by proliferating ‘little brothers’ who engage in distributed, decentralised forms of monitoring and information gathering” (2007, p.  239). Andrejevic draws further comparisons with Foucauldian surveillance, noting that [i]n an era of distributed surveillance, the amplification of panoptic monitoring relies on the internalised discipline not just of the watched, but also of the watchers … At  the same time, we are becoming habituated to a culture in which we are all expected to monitor one another—to deploy surveillance tactics facilitated at least in part by interactive media technologies—in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones and maximize our chances for social and economic success. (2007, p. 239)

This point is amplified by Ivan Manokha, who describes a comparable “chilling effect” following the Edward Snowden revelations whereby one’s free speech is curtailed in a raised awareness of possibly being watched (2018, p. 228). In a similar vein, and highlighting issues with Mathiesen’s pre-Internet viewpoint, Aaron Doyle states that “[m]odern, disciplinary surveillance is being overlaid. Likewise, with the evolution of the Internet and its intertwining with other mass media, the notion that ‘the many’ watch ‘the few’ through the mass media has become increasingly problematized” (2011, p. 293). It is with these three options that “The National Anthem” is concerned: first, in relation to the Foucauldian control exercised by a single individual, an artist, who engineers the bizarre ransom demand and effectively manipulates the consciousness of 1.3 billion viewers; second, regarding the synoptic viewing by these viewers (who are influenced via a combination of the Internet and television news coverage) of the protagonist engaging in a culturally humiliating act; and third, what is here termed “synaptic surveillance” with respect to the collective agency/intelligence of those engaged with the Internet and social media. Despite Doyle’s reservations about Mathiesen’s model, the manipulation of viewers’ consciousness via the media in this episode initially suggests that Mathiesen’s approach remains appropriate, whether the media is traditional or otherwise. However, their decision is effectively orchestrated by a single observer whilst a third layer of surveillance is in operation whereby the public is swayed by lateral networks. Overall, the various processes of surveillance occur simultaneously: the controlling artist, the voyeuristic watching as a communal mass and synaptic networking (whereby each individual responds to others) to generate a consensus and wield power.

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Terrorism, Cultural Humiliation and “The National Anthem” The episode opens with the Prime Minister being awoken to the buzzing sound of a mobile phone, and then a ringing landline, immediately initiating its media-focused theme. The opening sequence is entirely blue-toned, suggesting an unreal or surreal element and is followed by a scene in which a computer screen foregrounds the frame, featuring a video of the kidnap victim, Princess Susanna (Lydia Wilson), crying and obviously in captivity. In the background, a rear view shot reveals the Prime Minister watching the same video relayed to a larger monitor, the computer screen and monitor positioned so that both are visible in the frame, and indicating the interconnectedness of media (a significant theme of the plot). The camera then cuts to frame the Prime Minister and his aides watching the screen, the same blue tones persisting and contrasting with the vibrant colours of the video (thereby suggesting an inversion of realand cyber-space). The use of video to send a ransom demand immediately summons up associations with terrorism, a strategy used by Bin Laden following 9/11 but since taken up by numerous ISIS radicals, while the way that the video image is constructed is related to the theme of the programme. The aforementioned “synaptic surveillance” has particular relevance to the relationship between media and terrorism suggested here given that each depends on the other. Even before the development of the Internet, as Nacos notes, traditional media, notably news media, were exploited by terrorists to promote their messages. Nacos claims that this intrinsic relationship exists because of the ways in which the media and terrorism are mutually exploitative and dependent. Primarily, this is because “both are trying to reach the greatest number of people possible” (Surette, 1998, p.  148). As Raymond Surette further comments, “the media can provide the potential terrorist with all the ingredients needed to engage in terrorism. The media can reduce inhibitions against the use of violence. They can offer models and provide technical know-how [and] can provide sufficient impetus in themselves to lead to imitative acts” (Surette, 1998, p.  149). Most importantly, terrorist acts monopolise media air-time, with Nacos noting “While violence-as-crime and violence-as-terrorism tend to be grossly over-reported, the coverage of terrorist incidents that provide dramatic visuals is in a league of its own in terms of media attention” (2007, p.  47). Further evidence of the Internet as a vehicle for disseminating violence emerged in the Boston bombings in April 2013. Whilst the two bombers were not affiliated with any particular terrorist organisation, they used the Internet to access bomb-making instructions from an online Al-Qaeda magazine (Cooper, Schmidt, & Schmitt, 2013). In a subsequent example of copycat violence, Nacos links a cluster of beheadings, which were carried out by terrorists and posted on the Internet (Nacos, 2010). Arguably, such “contagion” was also at play in the attempted decapitation of a British soldier in Woolwich, London, in May 2013. Nacos goes on to discuss how traditional media have portrayed

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t­errorists as celebrity figures, a claim borne out in the British context by the celebrification of Mohammed Emwazi, known as “Jihadi John” (Donnar & Pheasant-Kelly, 2018). The link between surveillance, digital media and terrorism gained particular notoriety in 2004 when a series of photographs of torture involving degrading acts at the Abu Ghraib detention camp came to light. This over-reporting and attention to violence as terrorism is highlighted as a media effect in “The National Anthem”, with news stations featured prominently and helping to promote the “terrorist’s” cause, albeit this turns out to be an “artwork” engineered by a controversial artist. In the episode’s initial rendition of this artwork, the camera (in the diegetic video) frames the Princess in close-up and centrally so that her head almost fills the screen. She mostly addresses the camera (and thereby the intra- and extra-diegetic audience) directly, and the monitor is positioned at head height, with two metal perpendicular bars forming a support stand. Overall, the way that the video is presented gives the impression that the victim’s head is positioned directly on the supporting frame, suggesting that the image stands in for the real individual, and implying the diminishing gap between technology and body, and effectively, real- and cyber-identity. The ransom demand for the release of Susannah is bizarre in that it demands that the Prime Minister has un-simulated sex with a pig and for the act to be broadcast on live television through all terrestrial and satellite networks. Despite Callow’s desire to minimise public knowledge of the video recording, it has already been downloaded onto YouTube, and his immediate advisors inform him that it has been distributed widely and is “trending on Twitter”. The influence of media technology is therefore quickly established and becomes even more prominent in the events that unfold subsequently. Regardless of Downing Street’s efforts to minimise the media spread of the kidnap video and ransom demand, the video soon goes viral, newsrooms report it widely and pressure mounts on the Prime Minister, leading to the Queen telephoning him personally in a one-one connection. At the same time, the allusions to terrorism are multiple, with one journalist, Malaika (Chetna Pandya), likening the newsworthiness of the kidnap demand to 9/11—the similarity arises in the way that 9/11 was also a highly mediated event—while radicals and hate groups are suggested as possible perpetrators. “If it’s terrorists, they’ll take her head off” comments a hospital worker as he watches a screen with his colleagues, while UKN news channel reports the YouTube video as “breaking news” with online views and Twitter statistics being superimposed on screen and their numbers rising rapidly. The initial reaction of the public on both televised news channels and social media networks when learning of the ransom demand ranges from one of disgust to hilarity, leading Jane Callow (Anna Wilson-Jones), the Prime Minister’s wife, to comment to her husband “everyone is laughing at us, we [the British public] love humiliation”. In this way, social media proves divisive to personal relationships, a side effect that becomes clear at the episode’s end in their cold dispassionate interaction.

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One of the ways that the Prime Minister tries to deal with the crisis is to identify the source of the video, which is traced (rapidly) via digital media to a remote empty building and interrogates another consequence of the digital era, namely, the impossibility of un-traceability. As Andrejevic points out, “In the cell phone world … [i]t is becoming impossible to call without leaving a trace … Now every call, even a hang-up, leaves an identifiable trace” (2007, p. 34). This initially is not the case, as we learn that the official aides can find “no email address, no code word, no channel for negotiation”. Even so, the fallibility of any forthcoming information is soon realised when a squad of officers, with “helmet-cam relay”, infiltrate the empty building to find a mannequin rather than the kidnap victim. The scene of the Prime Minister and his aides watching from the control room directly mimics the scene of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the attack on a building in Abbottabad by United States Navy SEALs where they suspected Bin Laden might be hiding. The irony of this parallel is that the Obama administration also had no definitive proof that Bin Laden was in the building and based the operation merely on high probability, despite extensive satellite monitoring of the compound. In a related vein, the potential unreliability of digitally relayed information is continually highlighted in “The National Anthem”, first in the fact that a finger delivered to the newsroom is assumed to be that of the Princess because a second video recording relayed to them suggests this to be the case; second, when the Home Secretary devises a back-up plan to digitally superimpose the Prime Minister’s head onto the body of a porn star, a passer-by recognises the star as he arrives at the studio, takes his photograph and immediately uploads it to the Internet, thereby foiling the plan. A further implication of the digital era occurs in the pace of events which unfold within a few hours of the timeline of a single day and are accelerated by a combination of traditional and digital media. As Lyon comments, “the curtain has dropped on the era of ‘mutual engagement’ in which managers and managed confronted each other: the new show is a more elusive drama in which ‘power can move with the speed of an electronic signal’ ” (2013, p. 12). The immediacy of the digital era is particularly suggested when Malaika, keen to get a story about the Prime Minister’s possible course of action, tries to get inside information through bribing one of his aides by taking sexually explicit photographs of herself and emailing them through to him. Not only does this reflect on the tendency to disclose personal details about oneself on social media (and therefore invite watching by others) but also on the potentially rapid concatenation of events in the digital media era. The information that is leaked to her leads her to the aforementioned remote building where the perpetrator is thought to be located. However, as noted, it proves to be a hoax and the police accidentally shoot her, mistaking her for the kidnapper. The sequence involves media imagery throughout which crosscuts between the helmet-cam images of the infiltrating officers and Malaika’s mobile phone footage as she films the building’s interior and transmits it live to the news station. As in the Bin Laden assassination, both the newsroom and the Prime Minister’s aides are

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able to observe events in real time, but are powerless to intervene in the shooting, thereby emphasising the immediacy of, but also the lack of any real control afforded by digital technology. When the perpetrator then uploads a video sequence that apparently shows him amputating one of Susanna’s fingers, the mood of the public shifts, with online polls indicating that Callow should comply with the ransom demand. Close-ups of messages tweeted by the public reveal a change in tone from empathy to one of crudeness and offensiveness. Herein is exposed a further implication of the digital age, namely the capacity to manipulate imagery and mislead audiences. This is because it later transpires that the perpetrator amputates his own finger (and, as noted, such a manipulation is also an option considered by the Home Secretary who arranges the digital superimposition of the porn star’s head). It also illustrates the fickle nature of audiences and the persuasiveness of the mediated image, as extolled by Mathiesen (1997). Home Secretary, Alex Cairns (Lindsay Duncan), pressures the Prime Minister directly, telling him that if Susannah dies, he will be “despised by Party, Palace and public”. Ultimately, she informs him that “it’s out of your hands”, indicating that he has no choice but to comply with the ransom. Paradoxically, despite being Prime Minister, he is rendered powerless. As the time approaches for the filmed event with the pig, crowds of people gather in bars and at their places of work to watch it on live television. At this point, a report on “UKN Breaking News” announces that the “whole nation is at a standstill”, illustrated by a montage of images showing silent, empty streets and malls. Viewed in a sequence that cuts between the “real event” as Callow enters the television studio and approaches the pig, and its live broadcast on television, another montage discloses crowds of people in bars and workplaces now cheering. The camera focuses on the pig as it eats noisily, the amplified sound heightening the animality of the creature as well as its indifference to the act of mortification about to be undertaken. In stark contrast, the Prime Minister enters the room in silence, the deployment of sound distortion and slow-motion editing suggesting his traumatised state and disorientation. However, as he proceeds with the act (mostly off-screen for extra-diegetic audiences), the sounds of cheering in the various workplaces and bars die down and slow pans across the now silent hordes show their facial expressions turn to horror, staring at the screen in disbelief. Otherwise, individuals look away, the crowds seeming to share his humiliation—in other words, the process of synoptic viewing also leads to empathy. As director Otto Bathurst remarks, “the [diegetic] audiences felt their responsibility and were uncomfortable with their level of control” (2012b). He adds that the episode “points the finger at us, at society” (2012a), suggested by the fact that 1.3 billion viewers watch the event. The notion of cultural humiliation is central to an analogy between this episode of Black Mirror and the terrorist detainee camps associated with the post-9/11 era, such an association made prominent in the terrorist implications of the episode. Both forms involve nonhuman animals and in each case, the acts of cultural humiliation are filmed. For those detained at Abu Ghraib,

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the degradation was broad-ranging but relevant to this chapter is the maltreatment of detainees as/involving dogs, as well as coerced acts of sodomy. Even though the Combined Joint Task Force 7 (CJTF-7) mandated that “the presence of dogs during interrogation [was allowed] as long as they were muzzled and under the control of the handler at all times” (Danner, 2004, p.  372), Mark Danner reports in his account of torture at Abu Ghraib that, “The … investigations identified a number of abuses related to using muzzled and un-­ muzzled dogs during interrogations. They also identified dog-use unrelated to interrogations, apparently for the sadistic pleasure of the MPs involved in these incidents” (2004, p. 372). In sworn statements of detainees, this abuse involved cultural humiliation: “they forced us to walk like dogs on our hands and knees. And we had to bark like a dog” (2004, p. 145). The parallel with “The National Anthem” occurs in the correlation between Muslim antipathies concerning the dog, and contemporary Western views around the pig. As Richard Foltz notes, while nonhuman animals are mainly treated with compassion “in most schools of Islamic law, dogs are classified as ritually unclean …, which means, among other things, that a Muslim may not pray after being touched by a dog” (2009, p. 157). In Western culture a similar ambivalence concerns the status of the pig, which has been both celebrated and reviled in different historical periods and cultural climes. For instance, in their analysis of transgression and carnival culture, Peter Stallybrass and Allon White suggest that the cultural ambivalence of the pig derives both from its venerated position within European agricultural practices (1986, p. 45)1 and from its reviled position when introduced to cities (partly due to its contaminating excrement). They note that the pig was also demonised by the Church in Christian parables and in relation to Judaic dietary laws. The animal’s conflicted status persisted even in carnival culture and as the authors further observe “if the pig was duly celebrated, it could also become the symbolic analogy of scapegoated groups and demonized ‘Others’ ” (1986, p. 53). For them, this correspondence extended to Jews, illustrated by reference to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century prints, which “adapt carnivalesque rituals and symbolism to anti-Semitic purposes” (Stallybrass and White, 1986, p. 54). Such connections parallel the above-mentioned “dog on a leash” imagery generated at the detainee camps. A similar correlation exists in relation to homosexuality, also a taboo in Muslim culture and which, according to one Abu Ghraib detainee’s sworn statement (in Danner, 2004, p. 242), was forced upon and between the detainees, alongside other degrading acts including coercive masturbation witnessed by female soldiers. The filming of these acts led Joanna Bourke to describe the torture as pornography whereby 1  “Not only did the pink pigmentation and apparent nakedness of the pig disturbingly resemble the flesh of European babies (thereby transgressing the man-animal opposition), but pigs were usually kept in peculiarly close proximity to the house and fed from the household’s leftovers. In other words, pigs were almost [original emphasis], but not quite, members of the household” (Stallybrass & White, 1986, p. 47).

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the people taking the photographs exult in the genitals of their victims. There is no moral confusion here: the photographers don’t even seem aware that they are recording a war crime. There is no suggestion that they are documenting anything particularly morally skewed. For the person behind the camera, the aesthetic of pornography protects them from blame. (Bourke, 2004)

Judith Butler also contends that the recording of the torture is analogous to pornography and comments that “there is not only a certain pleasure involved in the scenes of torture … but also a pleasure, or perhaps a compulsion, involved in the act of taking photographs itself” (2009, p. 86). She continues that “there does seem to be a frenzy and excitement, but surely also a sexualisation of the act of seeing and photographing that is distinct, though acting in tandem with, the sexualisation of the scene depicted” (2009, p. 91). As in the photography of these acts, the filming of Callow engaged in sexual activity with a pig suggests a similar “pornography” wrought through cultural humiliation and public voyeurism. Indeed, as noted, a “porn” star is employed as a stand-in for the Prime Minister. However, there are several fundamental differences in that, first, in the torture images, the detainees are dehumanised and often anonymised (by hooding), and the cameraman is complicit in the humiliation. In “The National Anthem”, the identity of the “victim” is crucial to the ransom demand and collective coercion, while the cameraman is merely doing his job. Moreover, the event is engineered by a conceptual artist indifferent to the “pornography” of taboo violation but who is more motivated by the message of the artwork. The pig scene therefore seemingly epitomises Mathiesen’s model of synoptic viewing in relation to the media—although having written the article before the dominance of the Internet, his concept that “synopticism through the modern mass media in general and television in particular, first of all directs and controls or disciplines our consciousness” (1997, p. 230) remains relevant. A close-up of a television screen showing Callow in obvious distress during the protracted event then pulls back to disclose the artist (previously glimpsed) suspended by the neck, the camera revealing his bloody, bandaged hand, which is missing a finger. It is only at this point that the spectator is made aware that Carlton Bloom (uncredited) is the kidnapper, and is creating an artwork about the way that the media influence people. This disclosure therefore shifts assumptions about surveillance and synoptic power since it becomes clear that Bloom is the sole orchestrator of the event, albeit power is channelled through the public. Just as Mathiesen (1997) states, the creators of media imagery are controlling. In this way, the episode illustrates that social and digital media do not actually enable an absolute democratisation of power, but indicates that the processes of surveillance and associated power exist in a system of co-­operational modes. This corresponds with Andrejevic’s assessment of political marketing campaigns, in which he claims that the democratising capacity of the Internet is countered by “one in which interactive technology can be used to perfect strategies for target marketing and the centralized management of public

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­ pinion by political elites” (2007, p. 200). As he summarises, “[t]he sellers are o able to sell more effectively precisely because they are able to listen more efficiently” (2007, p. 189). Although not exactly the same, this political scenario is analogous to the one portrayed in “The National Anthem” whereby one individual is able to predict how an audience will respond. However, one might equally argue that since the artist releases his victim before the actual sexual engagement, the power of the audience assumes autonomy thereby shifting control from a panoptic to a synaptic model. In a similar appropriation, Zygmunt Bauman comments that the most remarkable feature of the contemporary edition of surveillance is that it has somehow managed to force and cajole oppositions to work in unison, and to make them work in concert in the service of the same reality. On the one hand, the old panoptical stratagem (“you should never know when you are being watched in the flesh and so never be unwatched in the mind”) is being gradually yet consistently and apparently unstoppably brought to well-nigh universal implementation. On the other hand, with the old panoptical nightmare (“I am never on my own”) now recast into the hope of “never again being alone” (abandoned, ignored and neglected, blackballed and excluded), the fear of disclosure has been stifled by the joy of being noticed. (2013, p. 23)

Conclusion “The National Anthem” illustrates a particular side effect of technology in respect of the Internet, namely the power of collective consciousness enabled by the facility for synaptic, many-to-many connections. Although this is useful in terms of shared agency, it can also have debilitating effects for targeted individuals, as is being exerted on current British Prime Minister, Theresa May, regarding the Brexit process, and as becomes evident in “The National Anthem”. It is neither a top-down panoptic phenomenon, nor a bottom-up process but rather operates as a lateral synaptic event that facilitates communal action. Whereas traditional media, according to Mathiesen, exert control over viewers, new media enable viewers to exercise a similar power through synaptic networking. Hille Koskela maintains that “there is a continuum, from the panopticon to the development of video surveillance, again to the development of digital video devices, and from there again to the Internet representations of these videos” (2011, p. 177). If Brooker’s “The National Anthem” suggests that these modes of surveillance co-exist and the balance of power constantly oscillates between them, it also reveals several unanticipated consequences of the digital era, namely: the potential for public humiliation, persecution and personal risk to reputation, the capacity for “fake” news, the contagious public swaying of opinion, the latent democratisation of power, and the ready promotion of terrorist tactics and propaganda. These unforeseen consequences suggested by the drama have to some extent been borne out in reality, illustrated,

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for example, by the extreme public response to Alfie Evans, the brain-damaged child whose life support was withdrawn in 2017 and which resulted in death threats to the hospital where he was being treated; the rallying of public support for the British Parliament to consider a second Brexit referendum; and the acknowledged centrality of the Internet and social media to terrorist recruitment (High Level Commission Group, 2018, p. 1). Equally, one might argue that while there has been a failure to address the terrorist threat enabled by the Internet, life support for Alfie Evans was withdrawn regardless of public opinion and that calls for a second referendum have so far been overruled, suggesting that any potential democratisation of power is merely illusory and that Foucauldian models of power/surveillance still persist.

References Andrejevic, M. (2007). iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Bathurst, O. (Director) (2012a). Interview with Charlie Brooker. In B. Reiz (Producer), Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror – Season 1 [DVD]. London: Channel 4. Bathurst, O. (Director) (2012b). Directors Commentary. In B.  Reiz (Producer), Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror – Season 1 [DVD]. London: Channel 4. Bauman, Z., & Lyon, D. (2013). Liquid Surveillance. Malden: Polity Press. Bourke, J. (2004, May 7). Torture as Pornography. Guardian. Retrieved from https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/07/gender.uk Brewer, G., & Kerslake, J. (2015). Cyberbullying, Self-Esteem, Empathy and Loneliness. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 255–260. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Bathurst, O. (Director). (2011). The National Anthem. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Butler, J. (2009). Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London and New York: Verso. Cooper, M., Schmidt, M., & Schmitt E. (2013, April 23). Boston Suspects Are Seen as Self-Taught and Fueled by Web. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www. nytimes.com/2013/04/24/us/boston-marathon-bombing-developments. html?hp&pagewanted=all&_r=0&pagewanted=print Danner, M. (2004). Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror. New York: New York Review Books. Donnar, G., & Pheasant-Kelly, F. (2018, June). Promoting Terrorism, Desecrating Celebrity: The Case of ‘Jihadi John’. Paper presented at the Celebrity Studies Conference, Sapienza University, Rome. Doyle, A. (2011). Revisiting the Synopticon: Reconsidering Mathiesen’s ‘The Viewer Society’ in the Age of Web2.0. Theoretical Criminology, 15(3), 283–299. European Commission. (2018, May 18). The High-Level Commission Expert Group on Radicalisation. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-security/20180613_finalreport-radicalisation.pdf Foltz, R. (2009). This She-Camel of God Is a Sign to You. In P. Waldau, & K. Patton (Eds.), A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion. Science and Ethics (pp. 149– 159). New York: Columbia Press. Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin.

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Hooton, C. (2015, September 21). David Cameron Pig Allegations: Black Mirror Episode in Which a Prime Minister Has Sex with Pig Sees Sudden Spike in Interest. Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ tv/news/david-cameron-pig-allegations-black-mirror-episode-in-which-primeminister-must-have-sex-with-a-pig-10510640.html Khomami, N. (2015, September 21). David Cameron, A Pig’s Head and a Secret Society at Oxford University – Explained. Guardian. Retrieved from https://www. theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/21/david-cameron-piers-gaveston-societywhat-we-know-oxford-secret Koskela, H. (2011). The Other Side of Surveillance: Webcams, Power and Agency. In D. Lyon (Ed.), Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond (pp. 163–181). London and New York: Routledge. Lyon, D. (Ed.). (2011). Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond. London and New York: Routledge. Manokha, I. (2018). Surveillance, Panopticism, and Self-Discipline in the Digital Age. Surveillance and Society, 16(2), 219–237. Mathiesen, T. (1997). The Viewer Society: Michel Foucault’s Panopticon Revisited. Theoretical Criminology, 1(2), 215–234. Musarò, P. (2016). Reality Show and Pop Politics: Who Holds Power in the Network Society? Mediascapes Journal, 6, 116–126. Nacos, B. (2007). Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The Central Role of the Media in Terrorism and Counterterrorism. New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Nacos, B. (2010). Revisiting the Contagion Hypothesis: Terrorism, News Coverage, and Copycat Attacks. Perspectives on Terrorism, 3(3), 3–13. Nacos, B. (2016). Mass-Mediated Terrorism: Mainstream and Digital Media in Terrorism and Counterterrorism. New York: Rowman and Littlefield. O’Keefe, G., Clarke-Pearson, K., & Council on Communications and Media. (2011). Clinical Report: The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families. Pediatrics, 127(4), 800–804. Stallybrass, P., & White, A. (1986). The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. London: Methuen. Surette, R. (1998). Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice: Images and Realities. London: Wadsworth.

“Fifteen Million Merits”: Gamification, Spectacle, and Neoliberal Aspiration Mark R. Johnson

Introduction “Fifteen Million Merits” (01.02) is the second episode of the very first season of Black Mirror. Where many claimed to be put off by the shocking and explicit nature of the first episode—an episode where technology is present, although arguably less central than other concerns—this episode might be a more representative introduction to the series for many. The technologies depicted in this episode, although extreme, are all extrapolations from technologies we already see, marking this out as an unusual piece. Indeed, across the entire Black Mirror canon, only “The National Anthem” (01.01), arguably “The Waldo Moment” (02.03), and “Shut Up and Dance” (03.03) also feature only technologies we have in the present-day real world. Nevertheless, whether drawing on existing technologies or their near-cousins, “Fifteen Million Merits” introduces us to what will become the norm of Black Mirror: scenarios that are undoubtedly based on our present world, designed to shed light on potential paths that might be followed and the problems those paths could bring. As in many episodes, it is entirely clear neither how far into a hypothetical future the episode sits nor where geographically the episode is set. Instead, the episode is meant to startle us with worrying futures of several ongoing contemporary trends and present a world that is just realistic enough to get under the viewer’s skin, yet just extreme enough, to grab attention and not let go until its bleak resolution. This episode depicts a dystopian world where the overwhelming majority of people perform endless physical work, watching live-broadcast “reality” shows to assuage the dullness of their lives. The main character is Bing (Daniel Kaluuya), a loyal if bored and almost zombie-like worker who performs this

M. R. Johnson (*) Department of Political Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_3

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physical work via seemingly endless and life-long use of a cycling machine. During this activity the labourers are able to watch simple television programmes, play simple games, or follow cycling simulations, all while watching their “merits”—the ubiquitous currency of this world—tick slowly upward as a reward for their cycling. One day Bing meets a woman called Abi (Jessica Brown Friday) and, smitten with her, offers to pay for her to join a talent show via the impressive number of merits he has long since accumulated but never spent. Abi is unsuccessful, but is offered a life as an erotic performer instead; under pressure from the judges and given the bleakness and monotony of the alternative, she accepts. Devastated by the object of his affections being used in this way, Bing sets out to exact revenge: finding his own way onto the show, he threatens to kill himself before offering a damning condemnation of their society. Against all odds the judges love it and the “honesty” he displays, and offer him his own show on which he will supposedly speak truth to the masses; he accepts and is last seen broadcasting a show where he rails against the system through its own technologies, from a comfortable apartment. His once-fellow workers laugh and relate and feel Bing really understands them, all while continuing to cycle. In this episode, Black Mirror picks up on two technological systems or practices we see in the present day and extrapolates them to their extreme potential conclusions, arguing in particular that these two systems can be conflated in ways that encourage increasingly demeaning or extreme activities in order to be noticed, and stand out from a crowd, in a job market that increasingly offers nothing for even the majority of skilled, hard-working, dedicated labourers. Specifically, the two practices in question the episode concerns itself with are “gamification” and “live streaming.” In the first case, we see characters in this episode being persuaded to carry out menial labour through the attraction of fun, light-hearted, appealing computer graphics and simple psychological tricks drawn from game design. “Fifteen Million Merits” wants to examine the growing role of gamification in our lives, show us how gamification is often nothing even remotely approaching a “game” or even a form of “play” at all, and consider where it might go. In turn, gamification and the competition it implies are also central to the wider society: it appears that the only way to avoid physical drudgery is via competitions such as the talent show we see in the episode, and the game-like competition inherent in pursuing merits appears central to maintaining the world’s social order. In the second case, the episode explores an economy where creative work appears to be one of the only routes for employment, and yet the saturation of that same economy means that the level of competition for celebrity status has become ever more intense. This dynamic is already emerging in real-world live-streaming platforms, and in this episode Black Mirror shows its fear about how these systems are transforming our ideas of influence, importance, and success. In turn, through both of these, the episode has much to say about aspirational labour within neoliberal economies such as our own, and how digital systems of both these sorts can intersect to generate a particular set of highly competitive, exploitative, and unpleasant behaviours and routines.

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Gamification Gamification involves the application of game systems to non-game activities, such as exercise and fitness, one’s productivity during hours of employment, or any number of other things which are presented as enhancements to life. For example, one might download an application to one’s phone that tracks fitness activities and then rewards the user for successfully running a certain distance, or lifting a certain weight. These rewards take the sort of trophies, or achievements, or other kinds of rewards of the sort we are used to seeing in video games: something bright, impressive, and loud, to remind the user they have done something desirable. Gamification has also found use in working environments, designed to encourage employees to work harder and unlock these virtual faux-rewards in exchange for their real-world labour. Gamification is thus a process by which a supposed “behaviourist stimulus-response-­reinforcement process will”, apparently, “naturally motivate the player to play” (Philippette, 2014, p. 188). Tasks that might otherwise seem unpalatable will supposedly become palatable through adding a game element to them, which is to say a playful element. By adding such a component and masking the unpleasant parts of a task under a veneer of play and the kinds of rewards we are used to getting in play, the idea is to motivate users into performing certain actions. Gamification in the real world is not without its critics. I have previously argued that despite the lofty promises of gamification to “make life fun” and other such constructions, gamification in fact represents the capture of play in the neoliberal pursuit of rationalisation and optimisation (Woodcock & Johnson, 2017). Gamification systems are designed around a particular model of time as something to be carefully spent and carefully invested, and something that should be tracked, reflected on, and consequently optimised. Contemporary digital technology more broadly has already heralded a transformation in managers’ abilities to monitor and track work (Moore & Robinson, 2016; Lupton, 2016), and gamification, when put to these ends, is another example of this growing trend. Far from making life apparently more playful and therefore enjoyable, gamification in this way only enhances the aspects of life that need to be made playful, which is to say, the unenjoyable parts. Managerial classes have always sought new ways to encourage the labour of workers (Chyung, 2005; Taylor, 1967; Townley, 1993), and adding a veneer of play over an unchanged core of work has now become an extremely effective way to achieve this goal. The tremendous success of gamification apps, websites, and platforms for a wide range of different purposes demonstrates clearly what an effective strategy the application of mode and models we associate with “play” can be. As such, “Fifteen Million Merits” explores an extreme potential future of gamification, where all of life’s activities have been subsumed into “fun” systems of this sort, each of which tethers an increasingly fatuous or childish veneer to increasingly crushing drudgery, and serves a purpose of social control in the process. Bing is woken up by a seemingly joyful cartoon of a cockerel

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which then leaves the screen in an amusing way, but all it achieves is to wake him, every day, to perform the monotonous cycling labour. When cycling, the workers then watch equally cartoon-like simulations of outside cycling, but it is implied several times in the episode that none of them have ever even seen what the outside truly looks like. The precise value of this cycling is never even explained, yet this seems important to understanding the episode’s world. Given that it consists of physical labour while all the characters we see aspire to a different kind of labour—that of the celebrity or the influencer—this physical labour likely forms some kind of basic role in this society, for the generation of electricity or something comparable. Equally, however, it might just as easily serve no role whatsoever except keeping the masses of the population docile and content, with a trivial and endless physical activity for them to focus on. Gamification also shapes the media consumed in the episode. When Bing buys Abi the “golden ticket” to Hot Shot, the ticket is a shimmering golden graphic which appears on his screen, far more prominent and impressive than anything that had come before. This is an example of what is known as “juiciness” within game design (Gabler, Gray, Kucic, & Shodhan, 2005), where sounds and graphics and colours and dramatic animations are used to make something appear unusually exciting. Equally, when Bing gifts it to Abi, he does not deliver in person, but rather his “dopple”—the Mii-like avatar—is what delivers it, and her dopple in exchange blows him a kiss. All these game-­ like elements serve both to motivate their users to particular tasks, to reward them for particular tasks, and also to increase the distance between the labourers and anything “real” (as Bing rages at the end of the episode). We also sharply see the class dimension to the kind of gamification in this episode. As above, labourers work their physical tasks in pursuit of merits, which can seemingly be used for a wide variety of purposes. They can be used to purchase items on the video or television consoles, or prevent adverts from running; they are used to purchase food, and although we do not see it, this presumably also extends to the other requirements of life as well. They can also be spent on entering contests or competitions, as we see when Abi and later Bing both enter Hot Shot for the price of “Fifteen Million Merits”. This is an extremely high price, which says something about the wider economy that merits are used within: the price is high so that few people will compete, and even fewer will do so often, but it is nevertheless nominally within the reach of a dedicated worker. This both gives a strong sense of aspirational labour to the workers’ (generally, it seems, hopeless) gamified physical activity, while making sure that the normality of the everyday focuses on the bikes, not what one might be aspiring for. Merits are sure enough the only currency we see in the episode: everything must be bought with them, but pricing is controlled in such a manner as to serve clear social, rather than purely economic, purposes. Given capital’s need to continually “co-opt and capture” the potential uses of new technologies (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009, p. 5), none of these are especially surprising phenomena. Many of these are already seen to some

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extent in the present day, whilst the others are certainly not beyond the limits of present technology. Gamification is an impressively effective tool for getting workers to behave in certain ways, even and especially when they don’t see their activities as being work, but this precise conflation serves to control populations with even more effectiveness—and in ways the populations in question are very happy to opt-in to. As such, gamification is a new mode of governmentality (Schrape, 2014) in both the present-day real world, and the future of “Fifteen Million Merits”. In the real world, gamification is put to work ensuring that workers behave as intended, or that people successfully pursue an optimised use of their nominally non-“work” hours. In the merits world, gamification does all of these things, whilst also successfully masking the drudgery and tedium of everyday work which far exceeds almost any kind of labour we see in the present-day real world—although some “gig economy” jobs (Graham, Hjorth, & Lehdonvirta, 2017) perhaps come close. “Fifteen Million Merits” is one of the most striking depictions of gamification yet seen in television or film; this is perhaps unsurprising given the relative newness of the phenomenon, and yet, given its impacts on so many aspects of the lives of so many, it is undoubtedly a technological and social issue of the utmost contemporary importance.

Spectacle and Streaming The idea of “streams”, and the cult of digital celebrity that can go with them, is also essential to “Fifteen Million Merits”. In the present day, live streaming is rapidly becoming a major site of media consumption by hundreds of millions of viewers around the globe, and a major site of media production by millions of amateur content producers. At time of writing the market leader in this area is Twitch.tv, on which around two million people regularly broadcast. In this way live streaming enables “anyone to become a TV provider” (Pires & Simon, 2015, p. 225) by broadcasting content from their own homes, taking part in what appears to be a highly democratic and open market for content—which is to say, the most compelling broadcasts should rise to the top. Given the ability to communicate with streamers whilst they stream, live streaming is what Cunningham and Craig (2016, p.  5412) have called a “protoindustry” of “social media entertainment”. This means a kind of media production which blurs the lines between entertainment—media content produced generally by professional individuals for public consumption—and social media. Although individual live-streaming channels are almost all smaller than any major traditional television channel in terms of viewership, live streaming as a whole brings in an audience able to compete, in size, with almost any global television channel. In turn, the fact that well over ninety-nine per cent of live streamers are amateur content producers lends a very different feel to watching live streams as opposed to traditional television. These are broadcasts more akin to being in the home of the streamer along with them, playing along with whatever they’re playing or otherwise being a slightly more active participant in the activity,

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rather than a merely passive spectator. Streamers are skilled at playing up this sense (Woodcock & Johnson, In Press) and have developed a range of techniques for optimising the income they can get from these viewers (Johnson & Woodcock, In Press). However, live streaming is not without its issues, many of which “Fifteen Million Merits” examines. For example, despite the appeal of simply broadcasting content on camera from one’s home as a source of income, streaming is an extremely demanding job in terms of labour (Johnson & Woodcock, 2017). Streamers in the real world often work for eight to twelve hours per day on stream, not counting all the time they also spend off-stream, and often stream every day a week, with some going as far as to carry out “streaming challenges” where they broadcast, say, every single day for two years without a break. In a space of relatively open competition where there are few rules over what broadcasters do, broadcasting more is almost always better for any streamer who might want to make a living from their practice. In turn, we also note the existence of many streamers doing other extreme things, as well as lengthy streaming challenges, in order to be successful (much like Bing’s suicide-threat “stunt”). At the milder end of the spectrum, many streamers deliberately brush up against the edges of the terms of service of streaming platforms when it comes to, for example, what they wear (unusually revealing clothing), or what they say (controversial or “edgy” opinions). For aspirational streamers  these are all at least in part attempts to make themselves stand out within an extremely crowded marketplace. At the more extreme ends of the spectrum, we note the existence of one broadcaster who was “caught out” pretending to be a wheelchair user—and soliciting donations as sympathy—when he stood up on stream, apparently forgetting the principle his broadcast had been built on (Phillips, 2013). Another broadcaster, known for 24-hour, 48-hour, and even 72-hour streamers, revealed after a long period of speculation that he was only able to maintain such a schedule through consuming amphetamines in order to stay awake for such large blocks of time (Kollar, 2015). The allure of becoming a digital celebrity through live streaming in the real world is encouraging broadcasters towards sometimes quite extreme activities, and consequently leading to some potentially shocking outcomes among its strongest aspirants. What, therefore, can this episode show us about the potential dangers of streaming? We only see relatively few streams in “Fifteen Million Merits”, but all of the television channels are explicitly called streams, and all are led by single, charismatic personalities, who seem to have risen to the top of a hyper-­ competitive broadcast ecosystem we glimpse throughout the episode. Some are based around personalities, some are based around creating a certain kind of content, whilst many are based on “shock” or extreme spectacles. Given what it takes Bing to get his own stream—the meticulous acquisition of merits, the foregoing of food, the scrounging for scraps—even if that is not his intent, it is clear that aspiring streamers in “Fifteen Million Merits” must commit every moment and every action to the goal. In this way streamers and aspiring streamers see themselves as “companies of one”, for whom every last action is

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an “investment in human capital” (Read, 2009, p.  30; cf. Foucault, 2008). This is reflected in the optimisation of time that real-world streamers perform and throughout “Fifteen Million Merits”—the practising singers and dancers in the Hot Shot waiting room, Bing’s dedication to squeezing out every last merit he can from his time in the second half of the episode while earning his own ticket, and so forth—the same is the case. Nevertheless, these remain creative workers, whether through producing their own content or managing the “content” produced by others. In the present day, we live in a society where creative workers are often being framed as superlative entrepreneurial citizens (Gill & Pratt, 2008, p. 1), able to strike out on their own (Freeland, 2012) and pursue enterprising careers. This is the precise framing that programmes like American Idol (originally Fox, 2002–2016) and Britain’s Got Talent (ITV, 2007–) reinforce—the idea that with sufficient talent and dedication, one will be able to secure a career in the creative sector for oneself. This is the hope that Abi goes in with, but upon being told by the judges that they have seen far too many singers recently to add another, the only “creative” work left available to her is in adult entertainment. Nevertheless, any such job on-stream, even if a demeaning one, seems more appealing to a desperate worker than the tedious alternative. Although rarely presented as the focus of the episode, “Fifteen Million Merits” is a sharp assessment of some of the excesses that live streaming and its sense of independence and personal achievement can lead to, and what it can do to young aspirants.

Conclusion This episode is a valuable site for exploring two highly contemporary concerns—gamification and live streaming—and how they connect to existing trends of aspiration within neoliberal economies. The world shown within the episode is unusually adept at using features of play, games, and simulations to mask the working relations and everyday conditions of its labourers: instead, they are made to look fun, to rate and judge and reward “players” for pursuing the desired actions, and mask the dullness or vapidity of what leads to those same rewards. In turn, individuals in this work compete to host, or at least be part of, successful live “streams” under the control of single charismatic figures, examining some of the pressures that real-world live streamers face to stand out and be noticed. More generally, it also proposes that live streaming will become the media form of the future, where the competition of individual creative labour intensifies to the point that other possibilities for such individuals seem impossible. “Fifteen Million Merits” is an impressive narrative exploration of both gamification and live streaming, their positions within a broader neoliberal economy, and the potential directions they might take in the future.1 1  Looking at the series as a whole, four episodes stand out as having commonalities, although none are especially close. In “The Waldo Moment” (02.03), we see a “gamification” of the political process, which undergoes something akin to a Situationist conversion into play, into a farce,

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A final note on the writing team behind the episode is worth making: specifically, that of Charlie Brooker as the overall creative lead on the series, and his partner, Kanak Huq, being responsible for the writing of “Fifteen Million Merits”. Brooker’s own rise to fame was in large part on the back of being an angry and often controversial television critic, known for his acerbic views on a range of topics. Even when explicitly criticising the media through which he was viewed, he nevertheless found significant success as someone willing to speak truth to media power. At time of writing, however, his career has expanded far beyond this role as an explicit critic, with an impressive level of newfound influence. As such, this could also be seen as having an biographical component as written, reflecting Brooker’s concerns with his newfound ability to use the same media systems he once criticised to get a message across. Indeed, by the end of the episode Bing’s new role in the hierarchy is even somewhat akin to the role of Black Mirror itself: it critiques technology while using technology, just as Bing critiques the system through the social and technological rules of that same system. Of course, for example, this is a common observation made about many anti-capitalist bands who distribute their records through large companies; to which the response is that when only capitalistic or digitally mediated forms of idea distribution exist, there is no alternative, even for criticism of those same systems. From this episode, we might therefore suggest that Brooker’s partner Kanak Huq (who co-wrote the episode) and Brooker are aware of this challenging duality, and looking to explore it in the episode. Just as Bing’s resistance to the gamified labour ecosystem, he lives in becomes co-opted back into the same (re)production of the material conditions he fought so valiantly (and genuinely) against, one might well say the same of Brooker, and in this regard the episode displays a level of (auto)biography rarely otherwise found in the series.

References Banks, M., Irwin, C., & Jones, P. (Producers). (2007–). Britain’s Got Talent. [Television series]. London: ITV. Bridges, W., & Brooker, C. (Writers) & Haynes, T. (Director). (2017). USS Callister. [Television series episode] In L. Sutton (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. into a mockery of the seriousness it is supposed to represent. In “Nosedive” (03.01), meanwhile, we see that social life rather than economic life has been “gamified” through a ratings system that everyone carries around with them, strikingly similar to the system that mainland China is currently in the process of implementing. The very next episode, “Playtest” (03.02), is the most gamefocused episode in the entire series, in which once again systems that are either designed to be play, or designed to use play to mask other elements, come to profoundly and irreversibly shape the lives of their so-called players. Finally, in “USS Callister” (04.01), the interest is again in how play can turn into something profoundly not-playful with only a few particular applications of contemporary, or near-future, technology. Lastly, the series’ recent interactive film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018), the entire narrative is in some sense a game, and a game about the development of a game, further reinforcing the series’ strong interests in play, the corruptions of play, and their impacts on our lives.

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Bridges, W., & Brooker, C. (Writers) & Watkins, J. (Director). (2016). Shut Up and Dance. [Television series episode] In L.  Dyke (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Bathurst, O. (Director). (2011). The National Anthem. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Higgins, B. (Director). (2013). The Waldo Moment. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Trachtenberg, D. (Director). (2016). Playtest. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Chyung, S.  Y. (2005). Human Performance Technology from Taylor’s Scientific Management to Gilbert’s Behavior Engineering Model. Performance Improvement, 44(1), 23–28. Cunningham, S., & Craig, D. (2016). Online Entertainment: A New Wave of Media Globalization? International Journal of Communication, 10, 5409–5425. Dyer-Witherford, N., & De Peuter, G. (2009). Games of Empire. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 (G. Burchell, Trans.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Freeland, C. (2012). Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. London: Penguin. Fuller, S., (Executive Producer). (2002–2016). American Idol. [Television series]. New York City: Fox. Gabler, K., Gray, K., Kucic, M., & Shodhan, S. (2005, October 26). How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days: Tips and Tricks from 4 Grad Students Who Made over 50 Games in 1 Semester. Gamasutra. Retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/ view/feature/130848/how_to_prototype_a_game_in_under_7_.php Gill, R., & Pratt, A. (2008). In the Social Factory? Immaterial Labour, Precariousness and Cultural Work. Theory, Culture and Society, 25(7–8), 1–30. Graham, M., Hjorth, I., & Lehdonvirta, V. (2017). Digital Labour and Development: Impacts of Global Digital Labour Platforms and the Gig Economy on Worker Livelihoods. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 23(2), 135–162. Johnson, M. R., & Woodcock, J. (2017). “It’s Like the Gold Rush”: The Lives and Careers of Professional Video Game Streamers on Twitch.tv. Information, Communication and Society. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/13691 18X.2017.1386229 Johnson, M.  R., & Woodcock, J. (In Press, 2019). “And Today’s Top Donator Is”: How Live Streamers on Twitch.tv Monetise and Gamify Broadcasts. Social Media + Society. Kollar, P. (2015, December 8). Popular Twitch Streamer Comes Clean About Drug Use on Stream. Polygon. Retrieved from https://www.polygon.com/2015/12/8/ 9871816/twitch-stream-manvsgame-man-vs-game-drug-use Lupton, D. (2016). The Diverse Domains of Quantified Selves: Self-Tracking Modes and Dataveillance. Economy and Society, 45(1), 101–122. Moore, P., & Robinson, A. (2016). The Quantified Self: What Counts in the Neoliberal Workplace. New Media & Society, 18(11), 2774–2792. Philippette, T. (2014). Gamification: Rethinking ‘Playing the Game’ with Jacques Henriot. In S.  Fizek, M.  Fuchs, P.  Ruffino, & N.  Schrape (Eds.), Rethinking Gamification (pp. 187–200). Leuphana University of Lüneburg: Meson Press. Phillips, T. (2013, April 14). Wheelchair-Bound Gamer Banned from Twitch.tv After Accusations He Faked Disability. Eurogamer. Retrieved from https://www.euroga-

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mer.net/articles/2013-04-15-wheelchair-bound-gamer-banned-from-twitch-tvafter-accusations-he-faked-disability Pires, K., & Simon, G. (2015). YouTube Live and Twitch: A Tour of User-Generated Live Streaming Systems. Paper presented at the 6th ACM Multimedia Systems Conference, Portland, Oregon. Read, J. (2009). A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity. Foucault Studies, 6, 25–36. Schrape, N. (2014). Gamification and Governmentality. In S.  Fizek, M.  Fuchs, P. Ruffino, & N. Schrape (Eds.), Rethinking Gamification (pp. 21–46). Leuphana University of Lüneburg: Meson Press. Taylor, F. (1967). The Principles of Scientific Management. New York: Norton. Townley, B. (1993). Foucault, Power/Knowledge, and Its Relevance for Human Resource Management. Academy of Management Review, 18(3), 518–545. Woodcock, J., & Johnson, M. R. (2017). Gamification: What It Is, and How to Fight It. The Sociological Review, 66(3), 542–558. Woodcock, J., & Johnson, M.  R. (In Press, 2019). The Affective Labour and Performance of Live Streaming on Twitch.tv. Television and New Media.

Enhanced Memory: “The Entire History of You” Henry Jenkins

“New inventions do not release us from old troubles” —John Durham Peters (2015, 50).

Young lawyer Liam Foxwell (Toby Kebbell) sits in a taxi, having just left a tense meeting with his superiors, replaying the conversation in his mind. But in this case, he is literally replaying the conversation, interfacing with a digitally enhanced memory device, rewinding to watch the same moment multiple times, zooming in to scrutinize their body language, freeze-framing at key moments. Anyone who has ever come out of a stressful meeting has probably done something similar without the benefit of the Grain, a high-tech software that is modeled in “The Entire History of You,” Black Mirror’s (2011–present) third episode. This sequence familiarizes us with how this technology works, drawing parallels to today’s digital video recorders, demonstrating the thumbsized remote, the interface where users call up memories and the commands they use to manipulate them. The sequence also introduces the technology through a mock advertisement: “Live. Breathe. Smell. Full Spectrum Memory. You can get a Willow Grain upgrade for less than the price of a daily cup of coffee. And three decades of backup for free…Memory is for living.” The representation of the Grain in “The Entire History of You” doesn’t seem farfetched when read against claims already being advanced by advocates for today’s wearable computing devices. In his book, Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer, Steve Mann writes:

H. Jenkins (*) University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_4

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By supplementing part of the brain with computer memory accessible on the internet, there is no reason why one should ever need to forget what someone looks like. And, of course, with biosensors we can extend memory even beyond matters of simple recall—we can ensure that memories of significant events of our lives are permanently fixed…The wearable computer will bring out the best in both human and machine….Memory is fragile and temporary, and this is part of the tragic beauty of human life. We cannot replace memory with a Visual Memory Prosthetic. We can complement memory, and empower ourselves to have a record of important moments, the same way we take snapshots at graduations, weddings, and reunions…A new way to remember promises a new way to think, leading to new ways of ‘being’. (2001, p. 41)

From 1994 to 1996, Mann—then an MIT graduate student—continuously transmitted his experiences, in real time, to his website for others to access and discuss. Initially, this process required Mann to lug around a heavy backpack full of equipment. He can access the same amount of processing and memory power today wearing a headset that resembles ordinary eyeglasses, and it is not hard to imagine a future technology that links through contact lenses, much like the “Grain” in Black Mirror. Mann’s students, colleagues, and other collaborators have experimented with how such devices might operate in the context of their everyday life; Mann has moved beyond recording and transmission to construct new ways of seeing the world and new ways of sharing memories with others. Nancy Baym uses the term domestication to describe the process by which new media “moves from being fringe (wild) objects to everyday (tame) objects embedded deeply in the practices of everyday life” (2010, p. 45). When domestication occurs, “what once seemed marvelous and strange, capable of creating greatness and horror, is now so ordinary as to be invisible” (2010, p. 45). The wearable computer might be described as somewhere in the process of domestication. This essay explores the Black Mirror episode “The Entire History of You” in relation to two other narratives about prosthetic memory and wearable computers. The first we’ve already introduced, Mann’s Cyborg. The second is Kathryn Bigelow’s 1995 science fiction film, Strange Days. Black Mirror’s Grain, Strange Days’ SQUID, and Cyborg’s WearComp each represent new media technologies which enable humans to record, process, access, and share their perceptual experiences in real time, resulting in what Mann describes as a “cyborg perspective.” Each is in its own way an extension of the human sensorium, which opens up radical possibilities for managing knowledge and interacting with others. “The Entire History of You” imagines what the world might look like if such enhancements became as pervasive and as mundane as the smart phone or the laptop. What happens when people can no longer imagine getting along without the Grain, when government processes start to assume that everyone has access to these technologies? If as Lisa Gitelman (2006) has suggested, a medium includes both a communication technology and the social “protocols” that grow up around it, what social practices would emerge around these memory prosthetics? How would people use this expanded recall? Will such technologies change what it means to be human (a recurring concern around the introduction of any new communication technology) or will basic human

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psychology reassert itself, shaping how we use these emerging technologies? I will give you a hint—as always, Black Mirror approaches this question with a dystopian perspective.

The Narcissus Narcosis The protagonists of these two science fiction narratives struggle with what Marshall McLuhan called “the Narcissus Narcosis”—that is, when a new media is introduced, people become more invested in mediated experience than in the real world. In an interview with Playboy magazine, McLuhan explained: All media, from the phonetic alphabet to the computer, are extensions of man that cause deep and lasting changes in him and transform his environment. Such an extension is an intensification, an amplification of an organ, sense or function, and whenever it takes place, the central nervous system appears to institute a self-­ protective numbing of the affected area, insulating and anesthetizing it from conscious awareness of what’s happening to it. It’s a process rather like that which occurs to the body under shock or stress conditions, or to the mind in line with the Freudian concept of repression. I call this peculiar form of self-hypnosis Narcissus Narcosis, a syndrome whereby man remains as unaware of the psychic and social effects of his new technology as a fish of the water it swims in. As a result, precisely at the point where a new media-induced environment becomes all pervasive and transmogrifies our sensory balance, it also becomes invisible. (1969, p. 4)

While McLuhan describes the numbness (the lack of awareness about a medium’s long-term consequences) that arises as a culture absorbs a new medium, his metaphor of Narcissus suggests something else. In Greek mythology, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection. Unable to walk away, he lost the will to live. The reflection is an interesting metaphor for thinking about media as at once part of us and yet also apart from us. We might think of the memories recorded, stored, and transmitted by the Grain in similar ways—at once subjective, seen literally through the eyes of a particular individual, and yet treated as objective, as if these recordings revealed some truth that the individual was unable to grasp, at least at the time these events occurred. Black Mirror asks what happens when we become fascinated with our own recorded memories, using them as a source of pornographic pleasure or as a focus for jealous or paranoid obsessions. Mann’s book gives us a first person account of what such enhancements feel like: “The wearable system functions as a kind of superhero costume; I become the technologically powerful, and thus I am validated; I am the electronic unknown who must be taken seriously” (2001, p. 116). In his cyberpunk manifesto, Bruce Sterling wrote about how science fiction had shifted from a focus on “the giant steam snorting wonders of the past” toward a focus on the “utterly intimate” technologies of the current moment: “Not outside us, but

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next to us. Under our skin; often inside our minds” (1991, p. 346). Later in this same essay, he asserts that contemporary tech “sticks to the skin, responds to the touch” like the contact lenses which are the most outwardly visible aspect of the Grain. A superhero costume does stick to the skin, at least as represented in most comic book narratives. The superhero costume is at once a source of power and the most visible manifestation of that power. Wearing the costume forces the superhero to embrace a mission, imposes an obligation to be an uncompromising seeker of truths, the relentless righter of wrongs, just as Liam sees himself as a man on a mission throughout “Entire History.” However, his demand for answers—no matter what the human cost—makes him a monster to everyone else in his life: bullying the babysitter, assaulting his wife, punching a rival. Liam compares his constant probing of his enhanced memories to a tongue seeking out a rotting tooth. For him, this metaphor describes a process of digging out rot, but it also generates more and more pain (the opposite of McLuhan’s numbness). Extending the superhero metaphor, Mann compares augmented perception and memory with “special powers”: Every morning I decide how I will see the world. One day, I give myself eyes in the back of my head. On other days I add a sixth or seventh sense, such as the ability to feel objects that are not touching me…. I can choose stroboscopic vision to ‘freeze’;’ the motion of the spinning wheels of a car going a hundred kilometres an hour, allowing me to count the grooves in the tread. I can block out the view of particular objects—sparing myself the distraction, for example, of the vast sea of advertising that surrounds me. (2001, p. 3)

Like a mad scientist, Mann experiments on himself, seeing wearable computers as tools that “allow me to explore my humanity, alter my consciousness, shift my perceptions” (2001, p. 3). It is not clear all of the ways one can augment perception using the Grain, but we do see Liam “enhance” specific segments so he can see things more clearly, or read things beyond the scope of his vision, or read lips and approximate what characters were saying beyond the scope of his hearing. Access to memories seems instantaneous, and he can use these memories to, for example, review previous interactions before stepping into a cocktail party. Such experiences of omniscience and omnipotence may spark giddy feelings for many who feel like cogs in a machine, as Liam does in the opening scenes. For him, the Grain is not yet invisible; the area is not yet numb, as it seems to be for some other characters. Rather, to him the Grain feels itchy and uncomfortable, and he keeps wanting to poke old memories, until by the final moments he stands over the bathroom sink, gouging out the technology with a razor blade and some pliers. We might see him, at this moment, as something like Narcissus, once again, confusing his reflection for himself, trying to remove the technology when what he is really struggling with are his own conflicting feelings. And this may be the core message of “Entire History”: the Grain does

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not make us more or less human; humanity is not “perfected” through the introduction of new communication technologies. Rather, “old troubles” catch up with us.

When Memory Becomes Pornography Prosthetic memory technologies do not simply record, store, or recall individual memories; they create media resources that can be shared with others. Mann describes graduate seminars where “cyborg” students project their memories as contributions to the group discussions. For Mann, these aspects of wearable computers promise to allow a broader range of stories to be told. Contemporary debates around virtual reality express the hopes that seeing the world through other people’s eyes will enhance empathy and social understanding. Both “Entire History” and Strange Days remind us that empathy is not the only possible outcome. Media is understood here as something that mediates—that comes between—people, rather than as something that allows direct communication. “The Entire History of You” talks about “re-dos,” as people entertain themselves and others with old memories, now experienced in a radically different frame. When Liam arrives at the cocktail party, he finds one of the guests replaying videos showing the shoddy quality of a four star hotel he recently visited: “I paid good money to have perfect details. Now I’ve got that shitty carpet for the rest of my life.” And another party guest replies, “Only if you keep looking at it, mate.” In a world where every memory can be recalled and every experience can be shared, details matter. Some things will be forgotten, but we may return to certain experiences many times. And over time, our memories may start to take over, displacing real-time experiences. Mann describes the social estrangement he has experienced as a cyborg: As a cyborg, I live in two worlds, and the perpetual challenge is to bridge those worlds. In conversation, I often appear distracted…I am drawn to the whirling interior of cyberspace, which moves and morphs and changes much faster than physical space. When I am wearing WearComp in my day-to-day social interactions in public, people often complain of a loss of eye contact with me. (2001, p. 208)

The social interactions at the cocktail party are staged so as to convey this same sense of “continuous partial attention,” a term coined by Linda Stone (n.d.) to describe how people interact in today’s mobile communication environment. Here, the characters look at each other through glassy eyes; their eyelines are often slightly askew. Close-ups focus our attention on gestures and expressions that are overlooked by the other guests, suggesting the miscues which surface amongst people who do not fully engage the first time around since they can always “re-do” the party later.

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This quest for the perfect moment can become pornographic, as we use others as props for our own fantasies and recall earlier experiences without consent, much as we may think little of tossing party photos on a social media site. Jonas (Tom Cullen) describes how his memories upstage real-time sexual experiences: There’s a beautiful woman upstairs waiting to have sex with me…and I’m sat downstairs watching re-dos of like some hot times with some hot girl that I picked up in some place, and I’m like, fucking, pulling myself off…Come on, come on, guys, seriously, we all scroll through the grain rifling through our greatest hits for a little bit of filth, now and again, surely.

The term pornography literally refers to the writings of prostitutes, reflecting back to a time when prostitutes were among the few women with core literacy skills. Some of the earliest examples of pornography were accounts of actual sexual encounters. People could reread and recreate their own erotic conquests, carrying sensual memories wherever they went. Pornography evolved from such intimate (if already commercialized) exchanges toward more distanced relationships (watching the sexual experiences of strangers for one’s own sexual gratification). Think about what happens when intimate photographs get posted as revenge porn: something private is shared with a larger public, which objectifies the participants. Pornography requires some degree of displacement—displacements of time and space, displacements via mediation, objectification, fetishization, and commodification. One chilling moment in “Entire History” depicts Liam and Ffion (Jodie Whittaker) having mechanistic sex, their eyes glazed over, each clearly in their own pornographic world. When Jonas brags about his pleasure in replaying old fucks, Ffion—Liam’s wife—looks embarrassed. Liam picks up on her uncomfortable laughter and cannot get this image out of his mind. When Ffion tells him that her relationship with Jonas is in the past, Liam grumbles, “not for him, it isn’t,” recognizing that Jonas’s ability to perfectly recall their love-making gives it an immediacy that shapes how he sees Ffion now. When Liam, having barged into Jonas’s apartment, sees Hallam (Phoebe Fox) emerge half-dressed from Jonas’s bedroom, Liam boorishly asks, “Did you get some good stuff for the scrapbook?… Let’s have a look…Go ahead, chuck it on the screen! Don’t be shy.” Looking about the plush apartment, Liam demands, “Is this where you masturbate to images of my wife?” and, finally, insists that Jonas delete any memories of Ffion. “Entire History” shows a culture still renegotiating the boundaries of privacy in a world of enhanced memory. Who has the right to consume these memories and who has the right to demand that they be deleted? At this same cocktail party, Hallam confesses that she no longer has a Grain because she was “gouged” (the violent extraction of the Grain); her memories were “stolen to order as far as I can tell, probably for some millionaire Chinese Perv.” Since she had not paid an extra fee to have her memories encrypted, “they saw the lot.” Here, “Entire History” links the pornographic c­ onsumption

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of memories with the global sex trade, understanding violence toward women as an outgrowth of a male desire to consume their sexual experiences. Feeling violated, Hallam now lives a “Grain-free” existence; one of the other guests describes her rejection of bodily modification as a “brave choice.” Later, we discover that this choice comes with decreased social agency: when Hallam calls the police to report Liam’s abuse of Jonas, they dismiss her. Lacking a Grain, she can’t show them the crime in process. Hallam gains control over her own memories at the expense of being taken seriously as a citizen. Kathryn Bigelow’s 1995 science fiction film, Strange Days, dealt with the social repercussions of a similar memory augmentation/enhancement technology, taking us deeper into a world where memories are bought and sold on the black market. Lenny Nero, the film’s protagonist, is played by Ralph Fiennes with a mix of sleaze and swagger: he gets by in the world by selling “clips,” recordings produced using the SQUID technology that captures sight, sound, touch, and affect, allowing his users to relive the intensity of someone else’s experiences. As he tells one potential buyer, “This is not like TV only better. This is life—a piece of somebody’s life, pure and uncut, straight from the cerebral cortex. You are there. You are doing it. You’re seeing it, you’re hearing it. You’re feeling it.” Across the film, we see Lenny buy and sell memories, and sometimes hire people to stage memories to order, the more intense the better. Describing himself as “the Santa Claus of the subconscious,” Lenny promises: “You say it. You think it. You can have it.” One guy—experiencing a teenage girl taking a shower—runs his hands up and down his body, writhing in pleasure. Lenny has made a custom recording for a quadriplegic man which simply allows him to look down at “his” legs as he runs along a beach. We learn in the opening segment—footage of a robbery and subsequent shoot out with a priest—that many want the adrenaline rush that comes with high risk violence (in this case, an attack on a Chinese restaurant which includes sexual and racialized brutality), though Lenny draws the lines at “snuff”: “I hate the zap when they die. It brings down my whole day.”

Why Memories Should Decay Beneath his hardened exterior, there lurks the heart of a romantic and that makes Lenny the worst kind of dealer—the kind that gets hooked on their own product. In this case, not unlike Jonas, Lenny finds himself circling around his own romantic and erotic memories. His ex, Faith (Juliette Lewis) no longer wants to have anything to do with Lenny: “You know one of the ways movies are still better than playback? Because the music comes up, there are credits and you always know when it is over.” Mace (Angela Bassett) desires Lenny but he can’t move beyond past relationships: “This is your life, right here, right now. Real time…Memories were meant to fade, Lenny. They were designed that way for a reason.” But Lenny says he can’t let go of the “promise” he had felt at the start of his relationship with Faith, which is the only thing he has in the end.

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This idea of people fixated on old memories was the kernel that inspired Jesse Armstrong (Hanley, 2017) to write “Entire History,” the only first season Black Mirror episode not written by Charlie Brooker: I keep a notebook of ideas and I had one in there which was unusual for me because it was about technology. It was about how the exponential growth in the amount of data you can keep on a chip meant that you’d soon be able to keep a lifetime’s worth on something the size of a grain of rice….How useful it might be to have a passively recorded history of your whole life?…I thought about how essential forgetting is to successful human relationships. I’ve read a bit about memory research and it’s quite fascinating how plastic, fungible and shifting our memories are. That sometimes freaks people out, but it’s also essential to make life bearable, to be able to forget humiliations, painful moments in relationships. What if you could keep all of these things knife-sharp and you weren’t quite strong enough to not keep touching the wounds?

The ability to return effortlessly to old memories means that the characters in both of these stories live out of sync, revisiting earlier moments to reclaim what they felt like, and thus unable to progress in their relationships. Does this mean they are less apt to live in the moment, less open to new experiences? Do they start having experiences to collect memories that they can consume later (in “Entire History”) or even sell (in Strange Days) to others? Given this perfect recall, some people become obsessed with the gaps; the things they do not know become mysteries that have to be solved. Liam’s jealousy has damaged his relationships in the past, but he can’t quite understand what’s going on between Ffion and Jonas. Like a prosecutor, he keeps forcing Ffion to look at old recordings, comparing her reactions at different moments during the cocktail party: does she laugh inappropriately at a bad joke? Does her body stiffen involuntarily when Jonas walks into the room? Where does all of this stop making sense? How far can we go before we start to over-interpret every social cue, beyond any meaningful context? Replaying the cocktail party, he notices a “re-do” of an earlier party that was playing in the background and observes Ffion and Jonas making out. Pulling up thumbnails of Jonas’s memories, Liam notices the painting in the background of one sequence—evidence that the two had gotten together much more recently. Confronting Ffion, she protests, “this isn’t what it looks like,” but he wants to see, he needs to know. Ffion pleads that she has erased those memories, wanting to leave them in the past, and he demands to see the gap where they once were. In the end, she allows him to watch her memories of their love-making, though the audience is denied seeing the recording: we hear the soundtrack as we focus on the two characters’ pained faces. In some ways, this plot follows a familiar trajectory: think of the photographer in Michelangelo Antonio’s Blow-Up (1966) reproducing and manipulating a photograph until it becomes so grainy that it becomes impossible to see what’s going on. Think about the men in Brian DePalma’s Blow Out (1981) or

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Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) perfecting audio recordings but ultimately unable to separate signal from noise. What Liam suspects happens to be true in this case; the perfectly recorded memories do allow him to see what happened (but he may never understand what these experiences meant, seeing only the surface, seeing things without the full context). Liam is closer to Deckard (Harrison Ford) in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), with the capacity to endlessly “enhance” an image, to see around corners, to scrutinize reflections in the doorknob. The limits to recalling your own memories or accessing someone else’s are no longer technological but social. Liam becomes progressively more abusive and intrusive. In the end, he is driven less by jealousy than by misogyny—the desire to possess Ffion, to control her body, her memories, her secrets, as fully his property (just like the “Pervs” who gouged Hallam).

Visuality as Power In The Right to Look, Nicholas Mirzoeff (2011) describes visuality as a form of power, exploring how the slave plantation, colonialism, and the military-­ industrial complex as social structures bestowed the right to observe on the most powerful social subjects while limiting the right of others to return the gaze. The slave master can ogle black women but black men are lynched if they return a white woman’s gaze. Mirzoeff describes that moment when a cop flags away civilians from a crime scene, “nothing to see here,” as performing this divide between those who possess or lack “the right to look.” Might we imagine a similar construct emerging around memory, specifically who has the right to access and re-do the memories of others? We observe this power in many forms across “Entire History”—from something as simple as a mother replaying her child’s memories to make sure the babysitter did not betray her trust to something as complex as “retrospective parenting cases” where adults seek legal damages against their parents for childhood abuse or neglect. Learning about Liam’s recent assessment, the guests want him to “throw it up there” on the video screen as fodder for their social interactions. One man suggests that as a corporate recruiter, he can provide some “pointers,” but others want to rank or rate him like a contestant on a reality television program. But, then, again, his bosses assume the right to access and systematically review their employee’s memories on demand and so do airport security guards, who can deploy facial recognition software to identify anyone you’ve encountered and a database to trace their employment history. Your car warns you about any signs of intoxication and notifies your insurance company to limit their liability. Your memories are not your own. Cyborg raises political and ethical questions about how such devices are apt to be deployed in an era of increased surveillance and diminished privacy, introducing the concept of “sousveillance” to describe bottom-up power that might check powerful institutions in a world where everyone has the capacity to record and share their memories:

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The wearable WebCam ups the ante, turning the tables on those who would have us constantly monitored by applying a similar constraint. Those in authority tempted to break the law will have to be aware that there is very little in the public sphere that will happen free from the prying eyes of a potentially public broadcast. At the same time, anyone who commits a criminal act against another individual will be aware that their visage could be not just recorded but instantly transmitted to a remote location they are unable to destroy. (2001, p. 166)

Produced in the wake of the Rodney King tape and the LA Riots, Strange Days depicts the SQUID as a policing tool but also as one that might empower oppressed groups to challenge official truths. While shooting a “clip,” a sex worker accidentally records the police shooting Jeriko One, a rap star and political activist. This recording becomes the McGuffin (the central device) around which the film’s power struggle centers. When Mace experiences this clip, the black woman instantly recognizes its capacity for political transformation: “This tape is a lightning bolt from God!…It can change things, things that need to be changing before we all go off the end of the road.” She wants to make sure everyone sees it, though she also fears the incendiary effect such a recording might have, given the social unrest and decaying infrastructure all around them. In the end, Lenny and Mace get the recording into the hands of a by-the-book police commissioner, who insures that the bad cops are punished for what they have done. In a police standoff, one cop blows his own brains out while the other gets gunned down by his fellow officers. In 1995, this sequence captured hopes that wider access to camcorders (and later, cell phone cameras) would force police corruption and abuse into the public spotlight, providing courts with evidence they could not ignore. Several decades later, how many black and brown deaths have been captured by sousveillance technologies and replayed endlessly only for the legal system to fail to hold police accountable for their actions? Reviewed in this context, the ending of Strange Days seems as romantic and as improbable as Lenny’s fantasies of rescuing Faith and rekindling their relationship. However cynical the film may seem on its surface, Strange Days maintains hope that the system will fix itself once the public can see what the police have been doing. The #blacklivesmatter movement has taught us that examples of police abuse are not “isolated” incidents but rather constitute a pattern of systemic racism. So far, there are no signs that the truth will set us free, that knowing what happened will allow citizens to change the system. Writing in 1994, the year before Strange Days was produced, John Fiske warned us that new technologies did not in and of themselves possess liberatory possibilities; they could be powerful instruments for change only insofar as we learn to use that power toward our own ends, and otherwise, power would remain in the hands of those who had always possessed power. Fiske wrote, “the multiplication of communication and information technologies extends the terrains of struggle, modifies the forms struggle may take, and makes it even more imperative that people grasp the opportunities for struggle

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that the multiplying of technologies offers.” Without such active struggle, old power structures— patriarchy in “Entire History” and racism in Strange Days—reassert themselves, often in the most brutal forms. A destabilized ­system, like a wounded animal, is dangerous, reasserting its territory rather than ceding ground. Strange Days imagines things might play out differently; “Entire History” offers no such hope. The women here lack what Mirzoeff calls “the right to look,” which we might extend here to the “right to remember.” Mirzoeff writes: “The right to look is not about seeing. It begins at a personal level with the look into someone else’s eyes to express friendship, solidarity, or love. That look must be mutual, each person inventing the other, or it fails. As such, it is unrepresentable. The right to look claims autonomy, not individualism or voyeurism, but the claim to a political subjectivity and collectivity” (2011, p. 1). We see few signs of reciprocity or love across Black Mirror’s bleak depiction of human relationships. We can debate whether this is a misogynistic text or a text which explores the mechanisms by which misogyny might operate through the technology of memory enhancement. Either way, the women are depicted as lacking agency or solidarity. Hallam cannot identify the men who gouged her, and she cannot get the police to respond when she calls for help. Ffion’s intimate moments now function as pornography for Jonas. Ffion’s few attempts to deploy her own memory to hold Liam accountable are dismissed. Ffion can’t deflect Liam’s relentless investigation and she can’t defend herself against his jealous rage. In this world, as, perhaps, in our own, men possess the right to look and women possess the quality Laura Mulvey (1975) described as “to-be-­ looked-at-ness.” They are objects of the male gaze, yes, but in the Black Mirror world, the new technology leaves them even more susceptible to the male demand to access their secrets. Memories have become images that can be extracted, bought, and sold, against women’s will once again; “old troubles” reproduce themselves through new technologies.

References Antonio, M. (Director), & Ponti, C. (Producer). (1966). Blow-Up [Motion Picture]. USA: MGM. Baym, N. (2010). Personal Connections in the Digital Age. London: Polity. Bigelow, K. (Director), & Cameron, J. (Producer). (1995). Strange Days [Motion Picture] USA: Lightstorm Entertainment. DePalma, B. (Director), & Litton, G. (Producer). (1981). Blow Out [Motion Picture] USA: MGM. Fiske, J. (1994). Media Matters: Race and Gender in U.S.  Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ford Coppola, F. (Director), & Ford Coppola, F. (Producer). (1974). The Conversation [Motion Picture] USA: Paramount Pictures. Gitelman, L. (2006). Always Already New: Media, History and the Data of Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Hanley, S. T. (2017, December 21). The Entire History of Black Mirror, as Told By Its Stars. Dazed. Retrieved from http://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/ 38414/1/the-entire-history-of-black-mirror-as-told-by-its-stars Mann, S., with Niedzviecki, H. (2001). Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of The Wearable Computer. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. McLuhan, M. (1969). The Playboy Interview. Retrieved from http://web.cs.ucdavis. edu/~rogaway/classes/188/spring07/mcluhan.pdf Mirzoeff, N. (2011). The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham: Duke University Press. Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6–18. Peters, J. D. (2015). The Marvelous Clouds: Towards a Philosophy of Elemental Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Scott, R. (Director), & Deeley, M. (Producer). (1982) Blade Runner [Motion Picture] USA: Warner Bros. Sterling, B. (1991). Preface to Mirrorshades. In L.  McCaffery (Ed.), Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Fiction (pp.  343–349). Durham: Duke University Press. Stone, L. (n.d.). Continuous Partial Attention. Retrieved from https://lindastone.net/ qa/continuous-partial-attention/ Welsh, B. (Writer), & Armstrong, J. (Director). (2011). The Entire History of You. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4.

PART II

Making Room for Our Personal Posthuman Prisons: Black Mirror’s “Be Right Back” Andrew Schopp

Prisons are everywhere in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror (2011–) series. There are the literal kind, of course, but the episodes that depict figurative and/or non-physical prisons prove just as meaningful, if not more so. In “Be Right Back” (02.01), written by Brooker and directed by Owen Harris, grief-stricken Martha (Hayley Atwell) becomes trapped in an emotional prison wrought by a combination of cyborg intelligence and social media. After her husband Ash (Domhnall Gleeson) dies, an unnamed company uses Ash’s social media postings to create an android that looks and sounds like him and that seems capable of learning how to be more like its original. Viewers might at first believe that Martha is simply imprisoned within her grief, her embrace of the replicant “Ash” a byproduct of that emotion. Martha’s grief does cripple her, and while her chosen method of healing initially helps, it’s eventually thwarted because the potentials inherent in new technology (a living, breathing resurrection of her husband) suffer under the limitations of older technology (her husband’s social media presence that remains incomplete). Importantly, however, the narrative also reveals that Martha has made herself a prisoner to this inadequate reproduction, both unable to destroy it and unable to be with it once she realizes that it is, as she says, “just a performance of stuff that he [Ash] performed without thinking.” Martha’s complicity in constructing her own confinement speaks to a central idea explored throughout the series: that technology can lure us into creating our own virtual prisons. At the same time, the narrative’s emphasis on the marketing used to seduce Martha from engaging with “Ash” via email chat, to communicating with “Ash’s” voice on her cell phone, to resurrecting it in synthetic flesh signifies the market capitalism that drives today’s “liquid modern” world. Because Black A. Schopp (*) SUNY Nassau Community College, Garden City, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_5

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Mirror’s various prisons invite critical interpretations informed both by Michel Foucault’s discussion of panopticism and by current surveillance theory, if we examine “Be Right Back” within this broader context, Martha’s experience with “Ash” becomes a telling metaphor for the individual in her/his relationship to a “post-panoptic”1 capitalist culture. The episode also signals the dangers that we likely face in any posthuman future, for although “Ash” is not AI (i.e., artificial intelligence) in the sense that it is not fully self-aware (e.g., it can only get scared or angry if told to do so), it represents a limited version of what many futurists envision, especially if we become capable of transferring our “selves” into non-biological forms. “Ash” exists as a vision of the posthuman that rests somewhere in-between the idealized, utopian version that these futurists imagine and the dystopian renderings so often depicted in pop-­culture, even in Black Mirror. Yet given the episode’s ending, this vision also questions the extent to which our current and often mindless activities online can come back to haunt us. In those final moments, Martha orders “Ash” to hurl itself off a cliff, and when it calmly moves to do so, she yells that the real Ash would fight back or cry. “Ash” then begins to cry and to plead for its life, and Martha cannot stand hearing it. In a jarring shift, the scene cuts to years later. Martha has kept “Ash” but relegated it to her attic. We are led to believe that she’s done so for their daughter who has remained unborn throughout most of the episode. And yet, when her now adolescent daughter calls for Martha to join her and “Ash” in the attic—in effect, its prison, Martha’s reticence and facial expression suggest that having made room in her life for “Ash” and all it signifies came at a terrible price. In this way, the episode drives home that we know, at some level, what we are doing when we make room for our technology—and still, we continue. “Be Right Back” offers a crucial addition to the Black Mirror series as it underscores that any dystopian future we might incur will be the result of our quotidian undertakings and of our decision to make room for that which we at some level suspect we should not. The prisons in Black Mirror are myriad. There are the literal prisons: the White Bear Justice Park in “White Bear” (02.02); the isolation units confining digitally cloned humans in “White Christmas” (02.04); the digital environment of the “USS Callister” (04.01) with digitally cloned crew members imprisoned both in character roles and in an online game; the apocalyptic world of “Metalhead” (04.05) where humans are tracked by robotic dogs; and the entire enclosed communal space of “Fifteen Million Merits” (01.02). Psychological and emotional prisons are equally evident. In “Nosedive” (03.01), individuals adhere to social media mandates that force them to present a self (virtual and real) that is always positive. Because their social media ratings are tied to everything from job opportunities to the marketplace, they exist in a prison without walls, and while the episode’s protagonist seems most 1  In defining our culture as “post-panoptic” I am not suggesting that the panoptic no longer functions, but that just as “postmodern” can signify an evolution of modernism rather than its rejection, our culture reflects an evolution of panopticism that many scholars strive to delineate.

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liberated when she is locked in a physical jail cell, her prior breakdown documents the emotional and psychological toll that such social media confinement can cause. Similar breakdowns occur throughout the series, such as in “Crocodile” (04.03) and “Playtest” (03.02), where the depicted emotional or psychological traumas remind us that our own minds can construct a more debilitating prison than anything our technology might. Finally, the prison manifests even in the more utopian episodes. Despite the moving narrative of a love that defies boundaries, in “San Junipero” (03.04) the virtual world available to those who are ill or who choose to be uploaded there when they die is essentially a digital coffin. And the dating app in “Hang the DJ” (04.04) might find its participants their perfect mate, but the process necessitates trapping their digital selves in caustic relationships for days, weeks, or years. As a whole, then, the series suggests that confinement is everywhere, and largely because the means of surveillance have proliferated, because the potentials for control have as well, and because we willingly subject ourselves or our “selves” to these new digital prisons. Because Black Mirror so often includes prison imagery in its narratives, it makes sense to analyze the series using Foucault’s discussions of panoptic disciplinary systems—that is, the idea that Jeremy Bentham’s imagined prison, the Panopticon, in which prisoners internalized the need to regulate their behavior because they knew they could be observed at any time, became the model for a disciplinary schema that diffused throughout the social sphere. Gilles Deleuze has argued, however, that in our globalized world the breakdown of various disciplinary institutions, from the family to the school to the workplace, suggests that characterizing our society as Foucault did no longer suffices. For Deleuze, “control societies are taking over from disciplinary societies,” because we have “ultrarapid forms of free floating control” that are “inseparable variations, forming a system of varying geometry whose language is digital” (1995, p. 178). Of course “control society” is not the only way to characterize contemporary surveillance culture. Kevin Haggerty has shown that there are now numerous “opticons” proposed by scholars, including the “superpanopticon,” “electronic panopticon,” “post-panopticon,” “omnicon,” “ban-opticon,” “pedagopticon,” “fractal panopticon,” and “synopticon” (2006, p.  26). For Haggerty, this proliferation of terms underscores the limitations of Foucault’s model and why its dominance in surveillance studies is a problem; however, I would counter that this proliferation instead shows that when Foucault claimed that “the panoptic schema … was destined to spread throughout the social body” (1979, p. 207), he simply could not have known what that social body would become or how the schema would need to evolve and multiply in order to spread. Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon, with their concepts of “liquid modernity” and “liquid surveillance,” respectively, manage both to extend Deleuze’s critique and to demonstrate why Foucault’s ideas remain relevant for understanding our post-panoptic world. For Bauman, our current culture can be characterized as “liquid” because social forms “decompose and melt faster than

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the time it takes to cast them” (2007, p. 1), and for Lyon, we live with a kind of “liquid surveillance” that “morphs with the mood of the moment” (2010, p. 332). And yet, Bauman argues that even in such a liquid world Foucault’s idea of an internalized disciplinary system in which the individual monitors his/her behavior to appease others remains key; it just manifests in a manner appropriate for our times. Foucault posited that “he who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously on himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection” (1979, pp. 202–203). In explaining how this power dynamic plays out in our digital culture, Bauman contends that “just as snails carry their homes,” individuals in the “brave new liquid modern world must grow and carry their personal panopticons on their own bodies” (Bauman & Lyon, 2013, p. 59). Of course, Foucault also argued that “our [disciplinary] society is not one of spectacle, but of surveillance” (1979, p. 217). Spectacle characterized earlier ages, while surveillance purportedly dominates the present. Yet throughout the Black Mirror series we see evidence that because of our social media and new, portable technology we often efface the distinction between spectacle and surveillance. As such, the series reminds us that our post-panoptic culture requires both surveillance and spectacle, and that we enjoy the pleasure of participating in such an exhibitionistic cultural space. In fact, Nicholase Gane has argued that the techniques deployed in our current culture, “are seductive rather than coercive: no one is made to watch, and any immobility resulting from watching is chosen rather than forced” (2012, p. 622). Bauman similarly claims that “the condition of being watched and seen” has been “reclassified from a menace into a temptation,” and that the older Foucauldian “fear of disclosure has been stifled by the joy of being noticed” (Bauman & Lyon, 2013, p. 23). In short, our world of social media and global interconnectedness, coupled with an exhibitionistic culture in which we eschew Foucault’s idea that visibility is a trap and instead render visible our most personal and private selves, compels us to fashion and then inhabit our own prisons. As Bauman explains, “the willing, nay enthusiastic, cooperation of the manipulated is the paramount resource deployed by the synopticons2 of consumer markets” to achieve this end (Bauman & Lyon, 2013, p. 136). The joy and publicness associated with social media is foregrounded from the very beginning of “Be Right Back.” Though we never see Ash literally surveilling others, the opening scenes focus on his difficulty extracting himself from the pleasure provided by his phone. When the episode begins, he leaves 2  Thomas Mathieson introduced the term synopticon into surveillance studies, indicating a more flexible disciplinary space in which the media allows the many to watch the few, thus reversing Foucault’s panoptic disciplinary space in which the few watched the many (Bauman & Lyon, 2013, p. 68). But for Mathieson, synopticism does not replace panopticism for “panopticism and synopticism have developed in intimate interaction, even fusion, with each other” (Mathieson, 1997, p. 223).

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Martha standing in pouring rain outside their car because he’s so fixated on his phone that he doesn’t notice she’s returned, and once he lets her in, he ignores her. She asks him to take the cups of coffee she’s brought, and when he doesn’t respond, she says, “I snotted in yours, is that ok?” to which he mindlessly responds, “Yeah.” Later, Martha asks him what soup he wants, and since he ignores her, she adds, “There’s only one bowl, do you mind having yours out of a shoe?” Again, he just mumbles his assent. Martha then throws a towel at him, and when he asks “What was that for?” she replies, “Just checking you’re still solid. You keep vanishing down there,” as she points to his phone. Of course, it’s crucial for the plot that Ash be a heavy social media user—their friend Sarah (Sinead Matthews) explains to a grieving Martha that because Ash was a heavy user, he’s ideal for the replicant program. Still, these opening sequences underscore that Ash takes pleasure in being seen, in the publicness, and that he willingly participates in his own surveillance. When he ignored Martha’s questions about soup, for example, Ash was posting a shot he’d just taken of a framed photograph depicting him as a child. The episode returns to this image several times. Ash claims he posted it because “people might find it funny,” but Martha replies that “it’s not funny. It’s sweet.” Ash laughs at the irony, explaining that the photo was taken the day his family went to a safari park, the first family outing after Jack (presumably Ash’s brother) died. Of the trip, he describes only monkeys attacking the car and no one saying anything. But he adds that the following day his mother took down all photos with Jack in them. She did the same when Ash’s father died, leaving only this photo—as he says, “Her only boy, giving her a fake smile.” Martha insists, “She didn’t know it was fake” to which he replies, “Maybe that makes it worse.” And yet, Ash photographs this image and posts it on social media to please those who “might find it funny.” His motive for posting elides the reality that the photo itself elides (i.e., his family’s grief over losing a child), just as his desire to be seen, to put his life on exhibition, outweighs the falseness that the photo signifies. Susan Sontag has argued that “something becomes real … by being photographed” (Sontag, 2003, p. 21) and that photos create memory because they “help construct—and revise—our sense of a more distant past” (2003, p. 85). But she also points out that they function much like the “visual equivalent of sound bites” (2003, p. 86), that they can mislead, seeming to tell us all we need to know about an event, a person, a time, and yet inevitably telling us very little (2003, p. 90). Photos can do all this because we invest them with power—to create memory, to tell us what we need to know, to make things real. Of course, the real doesn’t matter in a world where a fake smile can obscure real pain and where, by being exhibited, it can bring pleasure—to the viewers who might find it funny or sweet, but also to the poster. At Ash’s wake, Sarah, who has lost her own husband, talks about how nothing seems real after a death, and for Martha, Ash’s death becomes a reality she can’t accept. She keeps that childhood photo of Ash, and she chooses to remain in Ash’s childhood home. While she initially resists the program that Sarah mentions, she’s eventually seduced by the replicant “Ash” in all its forms, at

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least until she recognizes that it is exactly like the photo—a pleasing surface, a fake smile. “Ash” explains to Martha when they make love that since Ash never included any information about his sex life on social media, “Ash” has no information to draw upon, so it uses internet pornography as its guide. Martha initially finds this unexpected bonus exciting, but she becomes increasingly aware that “Ash” cannot create anything new; instead, it can only replicate surfaces like pornography or like what her husband fostered when he vanished into his digital self. “Ash” can’t sleep or eat, but more crucially it cannot react with any kind of depth—that is, get angry, fight back, or defend itself. It is, in short, as two dimensional as that photo. And yet, much like Ash cannot discard his childhood photo and tries to find a place for it (in his case, on social media), Martha cannot discard “Ash” even if it reminds her of the reality that it lacks. Social media is hardly the only technology that facilitates the construction of personal digital prisons, however. Perhaps the most important tool depicted in the Black Mirror series is the “Z-Eye” technology introduced in the “White Christmas” episode. The Z-Eye provides several enhancements to one’s vision, including being able to block others from seeing you or to mark a criminal as collectively blocked—that is, the person can be recognized as a red figure, but cannot see others or be seen. Throughout the episode people use the Z-Eye in a punitive fashion, most often subjecting someone to what Didier Bigo calls a “ban-opticon,” a surveillance process “wrapped around the task of ‘keeping away’ instead of ‘keeping in,’ as the panopticon did” (Bauman & Lyon, 2013, p. 63). Of course, the ban-opticon is merely one way that isolation becomes endemic to liquid modernity. Bauman emphasizes that modern cities, via their surveillance and security measures, isolate elite citizens physically (e.g., in secured buildings and gated communities) even though they remain connected globally via technology (2007, pp. 75–77). However, his larger point is simply that our technology use isolates us physically from one another. This can be done, as with the ban-opticon, to determine who has access and who does not, but the effect can also be more generalized. Though neither Ash nor Martha use the Z-Eye technology, Ash effectively blocks Martha when he vanishes into his phone. More importantly, Martha’s process of engaging with “Ash” involves self-isolation. Her decision to remain in Ash’s childhood home could be driven by her grief, but it promotes isolation since her main connection to others requires her phone and/or the digital art device on which she does her work. She might not live in a secured urban building as Bauman discussed, but she reflects the elite figure, physically isolated yet able to remain connected to others via technology if she chooses— which she rarely does. She tells no one about resurrecting Ash, not even Sarah. And her sister must drop in unannounced because once “Ash” has entered Martha’s life, she refuses to return her sister’s calls. It is at this point that we can see the complexity of “Ash” as a metaphor. In the simplest sense, Martha vanishes into her life with “Ash” the same way Ash vanished into social media. But Bauman contends that “separation and keeping a distance becomes the most common strategy these days in the urban struggle for survival” (2007,

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p. 72), that the citizens of the liquid modern world have an “‘internal exile’ of sorts achieved through, manifested in and sustained by means of ‘virtual connectedness’” (2007, p. 73), and that “as human agents, they are confined day in day out to the physical space in which they operate” (2007, pp.  80–81). Even though she often does take “Ash” outdoors, Martha evinces these isolationist characteristics from the time that she begins interacting with it, imprisoning herself in her life with “Ash.” In fact, one way to interpret that final expression on her face as she gives herself the strength to join her daughter and “Ash” in the attic is that “Ash” reminds her of the emotional toll wrought not merely by Ash’s death, but by all that her engagement with “Ash” signified, including a kind of isolation that she now imposes on her failed synthetic simulacrum—that is, she and her daughter only visit “Ash” on weekends. Importantly, Martha’s interactions with “Ash” also illuminate the market processes undergirding our liquid modern investments in technology. Scholars frequently examine the relation, even collusion, between our digital culture, its disciplinary techniques, and the market. Rob Wilkie, for example, argues that we need a new understanding of the relation between capital and labor in order to counter “the ideology of the digital” that “promotes the illusion that the new digital economy is the other of class inequality because it allows anyone to transform his or her identity” (2011, p.  168). Wilkie insists that the digital world is the site of class conflict (2011, p. 2) despite claims that we’ve done away with socioeconomic hierarchies or that class has now become virtual, a signifier not of “property itself but of how one thinks about property” (2011, p.  27). Appropriately, Wilkie contends that contemporary imaginings of the cyborg are often “based upon the assumption that … all fixed social divisions of class, race, and gender are replaced with fluid spaces of self-creation” (2011, p. 177), and thus we should expect that “Ash” will be a figure who effaces such social categories. But if we consider “Ash” in all its forms, from idea to email chat to voice chat to cyborg, we see that it is first and foremost a commodity, and that Martha’s relationship with “Ash” signifies that of the typical consumer in the digital age. Bauman argues that, as consumers, individuals in our globalized culture “are simultaneously promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote” (Bauman & Lyon, 2013, p. 31). He asserts that “becoming and promoting a sellable commodity is the most potent motive of consumer concerns,” an idea that “Nosedive” illustrates quite well, as so many of the characters consciously strive to market themselves to increase their social media ratings and thus their commodity status. But for Bauman, this motive is “usually latent and seldom conscious” (2013, p.  33). While there is no indication that either Ash or Martha consciously use social media to become or to promote a sellable commodity, the process Martha follows to resurrect her simulated husband is all about promoting such a commodity, “Ash,” that is the result of the “commodity” that the living Ash had promoted—that is, himself, on social media. Thus, after his death, Ash literally becomes the commodity that he had earlier ­promoted, whether he had done so intentionally or not. And if “consumption

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entails the pleasurable seduction of consumers” (Bauman, 2007, p. 121), then this narrative depicts a process by which Martha is readily seduced. Sarah functions here as the initial promoter. No company or service reaches out to Martha in her grief—her good friend does, bringing to her attention a service that, as Sarah says, “helps.” Sarah even signs Martha up. Martha finds the initial email chat exchanges compelling enough that she shares the news of her pregnancy with “Ash” before she does so with anyone else. The more “Ash’s” talk reflects the real Ash’s vocabulary and phrasing, the more Martha wants from it. She writes that she wishes she could speak with it, and it responds, “What are you doing now then? Duh.” She writes, “I mean really speak,” and it explains that they can. The following scene shows Martha flooding the program with video, images, and voice media of Ash from both computer and phone. We cannot know whether this material comes from Ash’s computer and phone, from hers, from their social media, or from all of these combined. In the end, however, it doesn’t matter. Ash’s social media content forms the basis of the new “Ash’s” being, but Martha augments that material and takes the actions that give “Ash” life. After a period of learning how to speak more like the real Ash, the voice “Ash” seduces Martha to upgrade to an even better model. At the doctor’s to have her first ultrasound, Martha plays the baby’s heartbeat for “Ash,” but in her excitement she drops and breaks her phone. Fearing that she has lost “Ash,” she buys a new phone and contacts it. “Ash” reassures her, explains that “he” exists in the cloud, and it even plays the heartbeat recording it’s saved. “Ash” explains, “I’m not going anywhere,” to which she replies, “you’re very fragile.” It chooses that moment to add, “Yeah, I was going to talk with you about that,” and then proposes the costlier, less fragile upgrade. At this moment, of course, Martha is very fragile too, reliant on a digitally reproduced voice to keep her stable. Their interactions here suggest a sophisticated telemarketing scheme, or the way software manufacturers will allow potential customers to try a product before purchasing it, only the process is exacerbated by the product itself exploiting the consumer’s emotional vulnerability. While the episode offers no concrete indications about Martha and Ash’s socioeconomic status, when “Ash” explains that “there is another level to this available,” adding in “I won’t lie, it’s not cheap,” the cost does not phase Martha. Her willingness to spend might be reinforced by her grief. However, the fact that the episode does not give clear indications of their economic status means that the cost may be minimal for her, a huge expense, or anywhere in-between, and thus this exploitation could have anywhere from a negligible to an enormous financial impact. In an essay that examines our potential posthuman possibilities, Joel Dinerstein cites Brian Cooney, who explains that “market forces will likely drive genetic enhancement,” and then asks, “Can we allow the market to determine the outcome when our human nature is in play” (2006, p. 588)? “Be Right Back” suggests that perhaps we should not, since our human nature can make us vulnerable to market pressures and manipulations. Its depiction of

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the market is often understated, but the episode opens with Ash and Martha’s in-dash TV reporting on “the testing of intelligent synthetic flesh” being used to help amputees, and thus the episode’s framing suggests that such “testing” might not only be done in the lab, but via the test product seducing its consumer into greater participation (Sarah even indicated that the program was in beta status). As Bauman contends, “The gear for the assembly of DIY, mobile and portable, single person mini-panopticons is of course commercially supplied. It is the would-be inmates who bear responsibility for choosing and purchasing the gear, assembling it and putting it into operation” (Bauman & Lyon, 2013, p.  73). This is exactly what Martha does when the less fragile “Ash” she purchased arrives as a synthetic figure—she puts it into operation, activating the body in her bathtub, striving to make it more real, and only later realizing that this posthuman version of her husband has wrought with its activation a kind of prison she cannot fully escape. Overall, Black Mirror questions whether we really want such a posthuman future, and it does so largely by depicting posthuman as posthumane. In this narrative, “Ash” signifies an intermediate step between human and AI, but that step seems far enough along to give one pause and to question whether the utopian vision that futurists offer is a bit too optimistic. Dinerstein reminds us that posthumanism will likely result in “the most radical form of self-fashioning yet” (2006, p. 241), and he cites Vita More who contends that “we are active participants in our own evolution from human to posthuman,” much like Ash was before he died, and that “we are shaping the image—the design and the essence—of what we are becoming” (Dinerstein, 2006, p. 249). But this episode emphasizes that it’s not only Ash who shaped that image. On the one hand, Martha colludes by feeding the program material, but also by participating at all, and especially because she keeps “Ash” for years, even when she understands its limitations. That she does so for her daughter, symbol of the next generation, underscores how such participation, from the seemingly mundane use of technology to more advanced activity, shapes what we are becoming, both individually and collectively. For most futurists, of course, what we will become will be glorious. They “consider the coming of GNR technologies3 inevitable, progressive, and beneficial, and their rhetoric assumes universal, equitable distribution of such changes” (Dinerstein, 2006, p. 571). They rhapsodize that “just a small piece of silicon under the skin is all it would take for us to enjoy the freedom of no cars, passports, or keys,” but they also ignore “the social dimensions of human being” (Dinerstein, 2006, p.  584). Raymond Kurzweil predicts “that smart robots will easily ‘reverse the environmental destruction left by the first industrial revolution,’” while Robert Freitas imagines they will cure all known disease (Dinerstein, 2006, p.  583). In the documentary Transcendent Man (2009), Kurzweil asserts that not only will nanobots roam inside our bodies, but our minds will be connected on the web, via cloud computing, so that we 3

 G for genetic engineering, N for nanotechnology, and R for robotics.

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will, in a way, be like “Ash” before it gets its body. Kurzweil acknowledges the parallels to religious myth in his futurist assertions—for example, eternal life, bringing back the dead—but he insists that our technology will finally give us the tools to accomplish these longstanding human goals. There are less ­optimistic futurists, of course, like Kevin Warwick, who damn those who “will not take advantage of implants to ‘the subspecies human race’” (Dinerstein, 2006, p. 586), essentially asserting that if we choose to “remain behind” technologically, we get what we deserve. In Transcendent Man Warwick even states that he believes we will experience “the Terminator scenario,” but adds that since being human is so clearly limited, he’s willing to be upgraded if he can. Overall, Black Mirror shows that while many might willingly take advantage of such upgrades (e.g., the Z-eye or the digital clones), when we proceed too quickly we often do forget the social dimensions of human being—and the human dimensions of being human. “Ash” exemplifies one possible posthuman future, albeit an intermediary step. But “Ash” is much like the digital world of “San Junipero”—little more than a walking coffin, a repository to house a social media self that, in this case, remains stagnant, static, and incomplete. In fact “Ash” is even more problematic because in “San Junipero” when Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) and Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) decide to pass eternally into the digital space, they have chosen to do so, and they do so as complete digital versions of their living selves. Just as “White Christmas” and “USS Callister” denote the potential nightmares that we might cause once we can digitize ourselves, creating clones that can be imprisoned, abused, forced to work for us, or forced to play out some disgruntled madman’s sci-fi fantasies, “Be Right Back” reminds us that before we get that advanced, there can be interim stages like what “Ash” represents, a living container that can only house what we have chosen to include, before our deaths, in our digital selves, the fake smile we present in order to elicit the digital gaze of others. Importantly, however, Ash does not choose to come back as “Ash,” but because his digital presence lives beyond his physical body, someone else can make that choice—for better and for worse. In the end, we must consider the episode’s very beginning—that is, its title. No one in the narrative ever says, “Be right back,” though one might imagine Ash saying that as he leaves Martha to return their rental van, the trip from which he doesn’t return alive. However, because the title invokes the phrase’s colloquial meaning—that is, that one is going somewhere from which one will soon return, its irony becomes clear, especially given that final image of Martha, her countenance like stone, bracing herself to face the posthuman reminder of the human she loved and lost. As part of the Black Mirror series, this episode reminds us that moving forward mindlessly with our social media and making more and more space in our lives for technology are actions that will likely frame, even determine, our posthuman selves. But since such actions might also inadvertently construct personal posthuman prisons, they are moves forward from which we might not readily come back.

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References Bauman, Z. (2007). Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity. Bauman, Z., & Lyon, D. (2013). Liquid Surveillance: A Conversation. Cambridge: Polity. Bridges, W., & Brooker, C. (Writers) & Haynes, T. (Director). (2017). USS Callister. [Television series episode] In L. Sutton (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2013). Be Right Back. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2016). San Junipero. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Hillcoat, J. (Director). (2017). Crocodile. [Television series episode] In S. Wohlenberg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C., & Huq, K. (Writers) & Lynn, E. (Director). (2011). Fifteen Million Merits. [Television series episode] In Reisz, B. (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Slade, D. (Director). (2017). Metalhead. [Television series episode] In L. Sutton (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2013). White Bear. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2014). White Christmas. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Trachtenberg, D. (Director). (2016). Playtest. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Deleuze, G. (1995). Postscript on Control Societies. In M.  Joughin (Trans.). Negotiations (pp. 177–182). New York: Columbia University Press. Dinerstein, J. (2006). Technology and Its Discontents: On the Verge of the Posthuman. American Quarterly, 58(3), 569–595. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New  York: Vintage Books. Gane, N. (2012). The Governmentalities of Neoliberalism: Panopticism, Post-­ panopticism and Beyond. Sociological Review, 60, 611–634. Haggerty, K. (2006). Tear Down the Walls: On Demolishing the Panopticon. In D.  Lyon (Ed.), Theorizing Surveillance: the Panopticon and Beyond (pp.  22–45). Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing. Jones, R., & Schur, M. (Writers) & Wright, J. (Director). (2016). Nosedive. [Television series episode]. In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Lyon, D. (2010). Liquid Surveillance: The Contribution of Zygmunt Bauman to Surveillance Studies. International Political Sociology, 4, 325–338. Mathieson, T. (1997). The Viewer Society: Michel Foucault’s ‘Panopticon’ Revisited. Theoretical Criminology, 1(2), 215–234. Ptolemy, R.  B. (Director) & Nainoa F., & Ptolemy, R.  B. (Producer) (2009). Transcendent Man. USA: Ptolemaic Productions. Sontag, S. (2003). Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador. Wilkie, R. (2011). The Digital Condition: Class and Culture in the Information Network. New York: Fordham University Press.

Ideological State Apparatuses, Perversions of Courtly Love, and Curatorial Violence in “White Bear” Paul Petrovic

Throughout Black Mirror (2011–), creator and principal writer Charlie Brooker interrogates themes of technological complicity and wrongdoing, complicating punishment and apparatuses of state justice. Episodes ranging from “The National Anthem” (01.01), “Fifteen Million Merits” (01.02), and “Men Against Fire” (03.05) revolve around this interest, but “White Bear” (02.02), from Black Mirror’s second season, most unequivocally concentrates on it. Brooker stages the episode so as to critique the societal impulse toward mob violence, forcing the victim, Victoria Skillane (Lenora Crichlow), into a state of abject suffering that she performs in an endless loop for the public’s need for participatory, cathartic release for her—nonviolent but neglectful— involvement in the abduction and death of young Jemima Sykes. Awakening in a house and suffering from dissociative amnesia due to a neurological memory wipe device, Victoria runs away from weapon-carrying hunters and a surveillance-­addled public that refuses to do more than film her flailing attempts at survival with their mobile phones. As Victoria later learns, she is subjected to a cognitive memory wipe each night so that she will repeat torture sessions designed by Baxter (Michael Smiley) and his project of White Bear Justice Park after she and her boyfriend, Iain Rannoch, were arrested for their crimes; Iain was the only one to physically harm Jemima, yet Victoria filmed the violence, indifferent to Jemima’s suffering. Brooker’s episode centers on two central indictments: first that Victoria excused herself of responsibility over Jemima and instead merely filmed the child’s trauma, and second that visitors to the park remain at such an emotional remove from Victoria that they likewise deny P. Petrovic (*) Emmanuel College, Hull, GA, USA © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_6

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themselves any empathetic connection to Victoria, thus remaining beholden to a never-ending zeal for vengeance. The communal catharsis that the public seeks is brokered through penal substitution since Victoria serves as the actor enduring psychological punishment only because of the absence of her fiancé, Iain Rannoch, who hanged himself and thus avoided any lawful reckoning. Under Carl Tibbetts’s direction, Brooker’s script fashions a state park with its own attraction, Victoria herself, who functions as an unwitting surrogate to be daily tormented in order to offset the public’s impossible punishment against Iain. I want to read “White Bear” through the lens of two theorists, Louis Althusser and Slavoj Žižek. Althusser notes in “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” that civilians become actors “‘constituting’ concrete individuals as subjects” of the state (2014, p. 262), which the state then leverages by its rewarding of proper subjects who perform particular behaviors in accordance with the state’s larger ideologies. In this way, the society self-regulates cultural conduct and normalizes behavior. At the same time, bad subjects also exist as a reality, which forces the state’s hand through, as Althusser frames it, “the intervention of one of the detachments of the (repressive) State apparatuses” (2014, p. 269), namely a police agent, a judiciary, or a penal system. Prison ultimately becomes the institution that controls the bad subject. Likewise, Žižek’s essay “Courtly Love, or, Woman as Thing” engages themes of control and prohibitions that are commandeered to ensure the utility of the courtly Lady. While the embodiment of the Lady might be seen as an ideal, Žižek, reading a variety of literary and filmic texts, suggests instead that “her elevation to a spiritual, ethereal Ideal, is therefore to be conceived of as a strictly secondary phenomenon: it is a narcissistic projection whose function is to render her traumatic experience invisible” (1994, p.  90). In this manner, the Lady becomes an empty vessel onto which other actors within a given work cast their most covetous or abhorrent desires. These two theoretical frameworks encompass and extend one another to secure a more complex understanding of the depth of Brooker’s achievement in “White Bear.” Brooker’s investigation into the complicated web surrounding individual agency, public witch-hunting, and the impossibility of substitutionary penance is the fulcrum of “White Bear.” Yet the bleakness of “White Bear” can mask the more humanist elements entrenched in Brooker’s work, elements that are more transparent in Black Mirror episodes such as “San Junipero” (03.04) or “Hang the DJ” (04.04). As such, while satire is layered throughout the series, such alienation should not distract from the humanism embedded within Brooker’s larger corpus. For example, James Brassett and Alex Sutton argue against perspectives that Brooker is merely recording technology’s estranging effects, contending instead that critic, writer, and humorist is urging viewers to deconstruct that illusory division between audience and media, as well as that between politics and everything else. On this view, it can be argued that the person who watches Charlie Brooker is performatively inscribed as both the recipient and the instigator of the satire. (2017, p. 257)

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If, as Brassett and Sutton write, the spectator in “White Bear” is hailed as the simultaneous culprit and subject of the institutional violence, then this episode raises awareness about the necessity of recognizing framing, especially within the larger demands of the retributory justice. The public, that is, can fall prey to shaming and persecuting others as they multiply the punishment reserved for societal infraction to an exorbitant degree. The very language of “fall prey,” though, is further complicated when the spectator understands that the public is susceptible to others’ machinations, including Baxter’s symbolic substitution of Victoria for Iain. For example, while Victoria is strapped to a chair and on public mock trial, Baxter replays footage of a reporter stating that “By hanging himself in his cell, many believe Iain Rannoch evaded justice. The public mood is now focused on ensuring his accomplice can’t do the same.” The public’s decision to execute a daily punishment, which seems to be situated as justice, by the UK Network News reporter—a broadcasting channel linked across other Black Mirror episodes including “The National Anthem,” “The Waldo Moment” (02.03), and “Hated in the Nation” (03.06)—anchors a larger social and political apparatus that Baxter controls. Baxter’s curatorial violence ultimately serves as an ironic censure against the prison-industrial complex. For example, Louis Kontos, writing on the irrationality of the prison system complex, notes that “The sense of proportion and fairness has been lost in the public and political discourse about crime, where it has seemed until very recently impossible to be ‘tough’ enough”; as a result, “The absurdity of treating people like wild-caged animals for however many years and then expecting them to return as productive members of society is hard to miss when confronted with the reality of prison life” (2010, p. 576). Baxter ensures the public never considers the central question of proportion— because no one offers Victoria the chance at freedom, she is imprisoned in an endless performance of servile punishment. Given the unsettling impression of the public pleasure in persecuting Victoria intercut throughout the denouement and end credits, “White Bear” wields disapprobation against a penal system that derives economic gain from a for-profit institutional prison. Tibbetts offers visual evidence for the unequivocal reality of profit through a shot showcasing the “all-day parking tariffs” instituted for patrons seeking entrance to the park. To this end, as Baxter curates Victoria’s experiential sentence every day, park visitors pay their way into the park and operate as willing actors for his larger state exercise, acting as bystanders who record Victoria’s reactions in an ironic application of mobile-phone technology echoing her own complicity with Jemima’s death. Victoria opens the episode in a state of confusion, anchored by a memory wipe that only allows flashes of Jemima and Iain, decontextualized, to come to the surface. As a crowd gathers around Victoria and records her every movement, seemingly broadcasting her location, the notion of constant surveillance, and the dread that accompanies it, becomes more paramount. Even Gem (Tuppence Middleton), who comes to Victoria’s aid early in the episode and helps her escape one of the Hunters wielding a shotgun, surveys her absolutely. Additionally, because viewers intuit other episodes of Black Mirror’s criticisms

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of the deadening influence of social media, they are liable to accept Gem’s assessment that “almost everybody just became onlookers: started watching, filming stuff, like spectators who don’t give a shit about what happens.” Only later will the secondary indictment surrounding this notion of the unthinking mob come into play, recursively correcting their savagery as voyeuristic rather than as neurologically neutralized. The vitriol that they voice at Victoria by night’s end, to which they pay to testify, reveals itself to be a class privilege. Warning about the functions of the courts and prison systems, Antonio Gramsci contends that “a multitude of other so-called private initiatives and activities tend to the same end—initiatives and activities which form the apparatus of the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling classes” (2003, p. 258). This ruling class constrains Victoria and fashions a cultural hegemony against her, one that denies her access to any individual who would be diametrically opposed to this repressive system. Because of the memory wipe, Victoria is forced to make an immediate judgment on those whom she comes into contact, which positions her as a dependent who needs others for context. Yet this dependency is based on presuppositions ensuring that she relies on any individual who first shows her grace. “White Bear” thus establishes a parallel betrayal, whereby Gem—whose name is certainly a Freudian hint to Victoria about the shared vulnerability between Gem and the later remembered Jemima—deceives Victoria in an uncomfortable echo of Victoria’s own betrayal of Jemima. When Gem and a cohort, who is soon quote unquote killed by Baxter in a hunting disguise, stumble upon Victoria, Victoria proves utterly trusting simply because they don’t wield camera phones at her. Victoria divulges that “I woke up in this house, I don’t even know if it’s my house, I don’t even know who I am.” This confidence in her own subjecthood, and trust that others view her as an equal subject, creates in her a false sense of security. As Althusser argues, “Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (2014, p. 256). In other words, Victoria generates a worldview for herself and Gem that is predicated on loyalty since she knows no reason why Gem would not be loyal to her, imagining that they are equally innocent. In doing so, Victoria binds herself to an individual who leads her through each set piece of torture. Structured in stages of escalating danger, Baxter orchestrates the means of her progress, albeit in a controlled environment. Yet the fact that neither Baxter nor any other patron commits direct physical violence against Victoria within the apparatus of White Bear Justice Park conditions the crowd to regard the experience as a spectacle, with the seams and construction of the park visible to them at every stage, even as they weaponize psychological warfare. To be sure, Baxter perpetrates actual violence on Victoria’s person, but he conceals it from the public, enabling them to participate in a cathartic diatribe since they have narcissistically divorced themselves from empathy. Within the closed system of social construction, “White Bear” offers an argument that empathy is the means of breaking out of this apparatus and, therefore, any social mechanism

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of control must first disable that delicate sense within society for it to be successful. Withholding empathy, the crowd functions as a pack, underscoring Herbert Rosenfeld’s lament on mob mentality, whereby “a powerful gang [is] dominated by a leader, who controls all the members of the gang to see that they support one another,” especially since “It has a defensive purpose to keep itself in power and so maintain the status quo” (1988, p. 249). Even as Baxter mocks how Victoria has been conditioned to believe that the crowd is utterly “mesmerized,” he simultaneously trains the public throng to be unquestioning toward the park’s entire ideological state apparatus (ISA). Baxter’s calculus ironically reveals the danger that authoritarianism can wield, how it can sanction the most undemocratic impulses by suppressing Victoria’s contrition and any chance at rehabilitation. He also suppresses the mob’s potential for empathy, since such an impulse would likely unravel the park’s very project. In other words, Victoria and the mob are both victims, but in different ways. Here the regulatory structure of participating in Victoria’s shaming certifies the society’s sense of fitting into the ideological state apparatus (ISA). Similarly, the fact that the crowd suffers no penalty or reprisal for their belligerence affirms to them that Victoria is part of the repressive state apparatus (RSA). Yet Baxter’s application of the visitors to the White Bear Justice Park is fundamentally theatrical, and the limits of that theatricality are exposed once we realize the rite of passage that Victoria endures daily for them, appearing to them as a broken shell of a person. In their study Punishment and Restitution: A Restitutionary Approach to Crime and the Criminal, Charles F. Abel and Frank H.  Marsh warn against instances where “The perpetrator may be punished most severely, but the victim is left with his or her losses intact” (1984, p. 4). In “White Bear,” the public regards themselves as the victim, and so, even though they excoriate Victoria, the release they desire from their daily berating never comes. This lack of cathartic transference suggests that White Bear Justice Park exists for them as a substitutionary entertainment. Yet, because White Bear Justice Park patrons take pleasure in their torture of Victoria, Brooker’s episode once again collapses the gap between Victoria’s crime and the public’s own entertainment. The ethics of punishment becomes less central, and the performance becomes a diversionary exercise that solidifies the aims of the state through their participation in its measures. “White Bear” never takes a step back and reveals layers to the repressive ideological apparatus beyond Baxter; instead, he becomes a metonym for the very system and apparatus of society. To that end, he is more than just a cog in the machinations of this corrupt and defiled generation, and his sense of enjoyment, for example, is legitimately his and not a conditioned response. Brooker sets the spectator in an impossible position, giving them as little information as Victoria herself knows, and thereby orchestrates a narrative shift so that Victoria moves from a sympathetic subject to a punished object, a narrative conceit that anticipates Kenny (Alex Lawther) in “Shut Up and Dance” (03.03) and Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) in “USS Callister” (04.01). This act serves to reframe how spectators approach the impossible subject of retributory

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violence and complicates the discourse of character identification. In many ways, “White Bear” actualizes the psychological threat of mob violence but delays the physical act of that violence. Such delay is structurally important for Žižek, since “what such hindrances thereby reveal is the inherent impossibility of attaining the object” (1994, p. 94). As Baxter curates each new challenge for Victoria to overcome, he forces her into a narcissistic, and thus ritualistic, ideal of deferral. At the same time, “White Bear” poses the ethical question of whether society is right to punish an individual who has no memory of the crime. Baxter certainly intuits enough about society to understand that he cannot punish her until she comprehends the brutality of her indifference; only once Victoria breaks does Baxter taunt her with TV images of Jemima before leaving her for the night, condemning her with the statement, “You should enjoy this. You shot it.” Yet even that statement is an act of psychological violence—it is the neurological memory device that delivers shockwaves into Victoria’s brain even as she is forced to gaze at the TV screen. Additionally, applying Žižek’s essay onto Brooker’s “White Bear” forces a perverse re-reading of the episode. Baxter’s care toward Victoria is a perverse form of attraction precisely because he ensures her survival within every stage of the park, even in the second act of “White Bear,” which operates as a master class of tension and terror, with Victoria fleeing each site as the hunters close in on her. Baxter anchors the episode’s third and final act, revealing himself as the dynamic subject to Victoria’s static object. Once Gem leads Victoria to a transmission room that is supposed to be able to neutralize the signals of all the mobile phones and revert everyone back to a normal human state, Brooker reveals the transmission room to be a set, Gem to be another actor, and Baxter becomes the showman directing his muse through each machination for his and the public’s collective amusement. To be sure, interpreting Baxter’s care as solicitous reads as counterintuitive at first. Still, even though his fictional persona threatens Victoria with a shotgun and, later, a live drill, the staged nature of those moments transforms terror into entertainment. Actual physical harm is antithetical to the park’s mission, as Baxter and the other corporate actors depend on her to stage these daily scenarios. Thus, Victoria is unknowingly the most indispensable portion of the cast. Without a villain to condemn, the attendees would have to reconcile themselves to the fact that their pursuit of justice is flawed from the start. At the same time, Baxter sentences Victoria to more than just psychological torture when they are away from the public, placing the neurological memory device onto her head that delivers ratcheting shockwaves to her skull. The balance between loving caregiver and bitter executioner becomes explicit when Baxter tells her, in a singsong lilt, “You’ve had a bad day, but this will wipe it clean. Get you in the mood to start again.” Baxter’s glee at administering the punishment upends any final moment of propriety. After all the suffering that she has endured, Victoria pleads with him to “please just kill me,” but Baxter responds with a dismissive smirk, “That’s what you always say.” This line is the moment that Victoria becomes a metonym for all society. No one has escaped

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the cyclical nature of violence and death; thus, she becomes a form of mercy, albeit one denied by the very powers that start and sustain the cycle. She is, in this moment, her most sympathetic, not only because she is her most broken, humbled, humiliated, and vulnerable, but because she represents all of society. Yet, Baxter’s cold admission attests to the ideological apparatus that disciplines her every day. Victoria’s abuse is not actually about her submission to truth or her willful surrender. Instead, the terror becomes a tributary within a much larger umbrella centered around state control. Even though Baxter’s prohibition against the irrevocability of death is tacit, he proves willing to relax protections on her mental capabilities when only park operatives are on hand to witness his scheme. While Victoria screams in agony upstairs, employees go through the motions of fixing up the home for the next day’s performance. However, Tibbetts and Brooker juxtapose these quotidian moments—setting a glass just so, placing Victoria’s shoes at a particular angle on the carpet, marking off another day on the calendar—to such a sustained degree that the villainy of remaining indifferent to the wails upstairs operates as an implicit critique against how anyone could feign a humane appearance without coming to Victoria’s defense. Leaving Victoria to the sadistic memory device, Baxter shows his apathy to her traumatic experience. In this light, he serves as an exemplary model to culminate Žižek’s assessment on the Lady. Žižek argues that the Lady “functions as a unique short circuit in which the Object of desire itself coincides with the force that prevents its attainment—in a way, the object ‘is’ its own withdrawal, its own retraction” (emphasis in original, 1994, p. 96). In other words, Baxter’s act of staging a theatrical punishing of Victoria necessitates her survival for future performances, which negates any decisiveness or sense of completion. Paradoxically, she gains value from the very conditions that—and agents who want to—castigate her. In doing so, the public’s inability to execute Victoria ensures a denial of pleasure, ensuring that no denouement is ever reached, offering instead narcissistically empty repetitions for Baxter and all the others into perpetuity. While Baxter is the most egregious of park abusers, others are certainly complicit in Victoria’s continued punishment. As Gem reminds the crowd before one performance, “Don’t forget, she’s a dangerous individual. Imagine that she’s an escaped lion.” By deploying this violent discourse, she and the other White Bear Justice Park actors arm the patrons with the conceit that she is not a frightened innocent at the beginning of each performance but rather a hardened killer. Mobilizing this discourse reduces any counterpublic sympathy and trains the crowd to experience only the escalating passion and disgust that Baxter wants them to feel. Further, such language positions the attendees to be more receptive to the belief that they are operating as proper subjects of the state. Gem denies Victoria true subjecthood, projecting onto her a persona that limits her autonomy, especially since, as Althusser states, the “(Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and predominantly by repression (including physical repression), while functioning secondarily by ideology” (emphasis in

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original, 2014, p. 244). Repression isn’t a tool of the state, but rather the state is a function and byproduct of repression. Victoria thus functions as a mere body. Further, to meld Žižekian principles back onto Althusser, the public, in their daily effort to humiliate Victoria, “elevate the object into a stand-in for the Thing” (1994, p. 95), which in this case is the unpunishable Iain. The park’s actors who perform this daily ritual with the unwitting Victoria embrace the crowd’s pleasure, and none demonstrates any reluctance for their part. Yet when Gem counsels the crowd on how to react before they start up that day’s performance, noting, “Now yesterday she threw a projectile,” one of the actors, Knife Woman, glances over and casts a look at Gem that becomes especially meaningful since it suggests that Victoria is adapting to her environment through some subterranean means of cognition. While Brooker and Tibbets elsewhere stage “White Bear” in a manner that avoids outright confirmation that Victoria affects change with her actions, this moment highlights some, albeit limited, functional resistance. The Knife Woman appears discomforted by this knowledge, which likely explains why Baxter administers more shockwaves to Victoria every night. The sovereignty of control that White Bear Justice Park wields over Victoria thus comes into question, even if only by small degrees. For Žižek, the courtly Lady ultimately becomes a proxy, a replacement, for something more surreptitious. Indeed, he links the Lady to Jacques Lacan’s concept of objet petit a, or, loosely translated, a love object. Critic Simon Rajbar reads this term within the larger continuum of Žižekian thought, classifying it as “an ordinary object that happens to find itself occupying a position of an impossible object of desire” (2018, p. 8). Baxter’s rules place an ultimatum on the crowd’s inability to level any fatal blow against Victoria, which fundamentally renders the public’s appetite for state-sanctioned abuse as insatiable. Yet the normalcy of Victoria’s failing highlights a more profound moment of indeterminacy within the larger narrative. Since Tibbetts and Brooker structure “White Bear” to subjectively follow Victoria and her travails, the plot never steps back and corroborates that Baxter is being truthful when he accuses Victoria of being an accomplice to her fiancé. In fact, precisely because episodes of Black Mirror often function as narratives of reversal, such as “Playtest” (03.02) and “Shut Up and Dance,” it’s telling that “White Bear” offers no evidence to objectively state that Baxter isn’t preying on indiscriminate women, wiping their memories in order to make them believe that they are Iain’s fiancé, paying courtroom artists money to sketch them into judicial proceedings, and then orchestrating mass public sentencing at the White Bear Justice Park. This layer of cruelty would be entirely in keeping with Baxter’s ethos. If Victoria is already an impossible object, then everything is permitted, including fabricating that object from ordinary subjects. Baxter, then, should be understood as an immoral official who is sanctioned by the state, and operating as an agent of repression, to maintain his hold on power. The tyranny that White Bear Justice Park flaunts over Victoria, despite the corporate doublespeak that invokes the grammar of justice, becomes an oppressive space. Examining mob mentalities, psychologist

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Richard M. Billow clarifies that “Democratic as well as fascistic governments, well-­intentioned as well as malevolent families, and analyst as well as the analysand—all groups and all individuals are vulnerable to gang thinking, scapegoating, and other forms of bullying behavior” (2013, p. 134). This impulse of funneling animosity into a discourse that normalizes totalitarian thinking has dangerous implications, as “White Bear” ably demonstrates. The horror of Baxter’s enterprise with the park is that he ensures that forgiveness is elided, thereby enabling his righteous function as a repressive state apparatus to thrive. Baxter’s operation as a public enforcer of punishment, and his recruitment of the general population, belies larger claims toward a belief in restoration or compassion. The park’s enterprise of having visitors purchase, and thus monetize, torture as entertainment reveals a bold critique of ritual violence and how state industries prosper through the advertising, and capitalizing aims, of punishment. To prevent the attainment of the ultimate desire, the execution of Victoria by her peers, Baxter stages her punishment to be simultaneously a coronation and a judgment. Alert viewers may note that Tibbetts positions Victoria in the vehicle, strapped in though she is, so that the bulbs that shine on her body all further commemorate and make of her a public spectacle; she becomes an icon onto which the public casts their contempt. In this, Victoria’s punishment is analogous to Gospel accounts of Jesus’s walk to the cross (Mark 15.16-25) while the public mocks her. Yet no salvation or resurrection awaits Victoria; instead, seen religiously, she is always awaking in Gethsemane and always walking to Golgotha. Still, as the episode’s coda suggests, the degree to which Baxter counsels park visitors to “enjoy yourself” reveals an inkling of doubt, a sense of searching self-reflection, since the public prerogative to enjoy this excursion is so obvious as to be absurd. Instead, Baxter’s decree begs to be read in a double reading that is itself an echo of Žižek’s persona of the inquisitive double-barreled questioner. In this manner, Brassett and Sutton contend that “Satire is fundamentally situated in the social relations that it seeks to criticise and, as such, the performance can both critique and embody the problems and contradictions of that society” (2017, p.  246). The dueling positions that “White Bear” weighs throughout the episode enable Brooker to critique Baxter, his associates, and the general public that is most gullible for, and desiring of, an easy mark on to whom they can pin their judgment. The degree to which society latches onto others’ sins to simultaneously crucify them and cop to their own superiority is a social condition that endangers actual empathy and psychological growth, and this appears to be one of Brooker’s ultimate assertions within “White Bear.” In one final sociocultural link, Baxter in “White Bear” synthesizes many of the inhumane and obstinate propensities of Maricopa, Arizona, sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was pardoned by US President Donald Trump, after forcing prison inmates to suffer through unconstitutional conditions. From 1992 through 2016, Sheriff Arpaio enforced punitive measures against inmates, using the repressive state apparatus to mock, abuse, and humiliate detainees

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(Strauss, 2016, p. 98).1 Drawing from the work of Hunter S. Thompson and David Altheide, R. J. Maratea and Brian A. Monahan argue that Joe Arpaio fits within the framework of a “gonzo rhetoric,” embodying “the narrative techniques that politicians, public officials, and news workers employ to craft emotionally charged tales of law breaking and injustice that provide symbolic reinforcement for the value of publicly punitive forms of punishment” (2013, p. 262). The ultimate aim is to control the narrative, similar to how Baxter, the actors, and the patrons of White Bear Justice Park mold Victoria’s self-shame. Baxter ensures that Victoria endures identifiable punishment, that she exhibits markers of distress that are readily recorded and transmitted by the public. Further, he enables the paying public, as Maratea and Monahan write about Arpaio, to frame their actions as those of “civic protector[s]” (2013, p. 266). Baxter’s strategies thus serve his ability to maintain his role within the ideological state apparatus, and orchestrate the façade that he is—as is each patron attending the park and hurling abuse at Victoria each day are—operating as a civil agent. The implications of factual figures like Arpaio is that Black Mirror’s judicial satire remains just a little too bitter, a little too dangerously accurate. As Maratea and Monahan conclude, the true danger of figures such as Arpaio is that “Arpaio’s popularity and mainstream media presence parallels the larger institutionalization of the gonzo ethos, which appeals to fear and emotion rather than logic and empiricism, and defines the purveyors of gonzo justice as experts with legitimate, viable, and even preferred solutions to crime control” (2013, p.  272). This sense of warning is corroborated when Black Mirror employs figures like Baxter who project the worst excesses of an epistemology governed by strictures of law and order. The wickedness that Baxter forces Victoria to confront each day loses its empathic register, its moral dimension, and instead becomes seen as an instrument for retributive violence. Throughout the provocations implicit in “White Bear,” Brooker and Tibbetts examine the idea of voyeuristic intensification. For example, each reiteration of the park’s performance bears with it a corollary punishment leveled against Victoria. Victoria’s neurological damage appears to reach new extremes of pressure, since her initial reaction upon waking up is more subdued in the opening moment of “White Bear” than the violent grimace that marks the first coda sequence of Victoria’s return to consciousness, or the subsequent instance that leads to Tibbetts’s hard cut to a black screen at the end of the episode. Justice as a very concept becomes indiscriminate, and the voyeurism embedded in such retributive punishment becomes, ironically, commensurate with Victoria’s initial crime. At the same time, Brooker and “White Bear” generally 1  Maratea and Monahan offer a brief synopsis of Arpaio’s unique public prison system, writing how inmates were housed “in ‘Tent City,’ a facility where inmates reside in outdoor tents rather than traditional jail cells; installing a jailcam that gave Internet users a live view of the daily life of inmates; requiring inmates to wear pink underwear; reinstituting chain gangs; restricting inmate access to various comforts (pornography, coffee, R-rated movies, and so on); providing exceedingly low cost meals; and sanctioning crime-fighting citizen posses” (2013, p. 264).

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seek to unsettle viewer identification through their secondary knowledge of this commensurability. Another way to consider the manner in which Victoria becomes the vehicle for their judgment lies in Sarah Artt’s assessment of another episode of Black Mirror, “Be Right Back” (02.01), where Martha (Hayley Atwell), mourning the loss of her husband Ash (Domhnall Gleeson), “purchases a body to house it, thereby giving the ghost its machine” (2018, p. 269). Even as this analysis summarizes Martha’s actions, it also encapsulates the methodology surrounding the crowd’s actions in “White Bear.” For example, the people that swarm around Victoria are also material consumers of a capitalist apparatus, purchasing access to the White Justice State Park when they—as seen in the episode’s coda—hand a ticket agent their pass to enter the park grounds, and they use Victoria to house their rage. The ease with which they subscribe to Baxter’s encouragement to “make this show happen,” however, positions them as equally culpable in Victoria’s unceasing torment. While they are absolved of any transgression within the diegesis of the episode, their willingness to subject their children to the torture becomes a secondary critique for Tibbetts and Brooker, satirizing the slow decline surrounding how the public conceives of justice. Furthermore, while Martha in “Be Right Back” places machine Ash in the attic and puts “it” away, she also permits her child to play with it; similarly, the park patrons permit their children to enter into a subject position against the traumatically invisible object—for them—of Victoria. “White Bear” warns that the sadism parents embrace and project onto professed state enemies is all too visible to society’s youth, and cautions that society risks indoctrinating sadistic acceptance in children unless adults are more conscious in their policing of their behaviors and underlying ideologies. “White Bear” is ultimately about how Western society has alienated itself to empathic identification with those who are now enclosed within repressive state apparatuses. Critic Greg Singh offers a larger assessment of the dangers of such consumptive yet disaffected attitudes, suggesting that Consumer culture and free market logic are repeated targets of Brooker’s satire, especially when coupled with the schadenfreude of reality TV […] Throughout all of the stories, the characters are somehow beholden to a particular technology, or are otherwise trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with it; and in among these more discernible science-fictional narratives, the themes of recognition and trust emerge as the human stories here—which, as I will argue, is a ‘negative affordance’ of this dysfunctional relationship, more often than not ending up with the various characters misrecognising the relationships they have with other people, and therefore feeling the bite of their alienated existence. (2014, p. 121)

Singh’s notion of the “misrecognizing” of human nature is one of the deepest dangers to society, especially seen within society’s blind acceptance of Baxter’s rule of law. The hateful glee and bloodlust that the public binds to Victoria’s person is the negative affordance, the false mastery of the technological dystopia in which they find themselves. This animosity, this rancor, that they level at

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Victoria enables them to feel their subjecthood, their agency, even as they operate within a repressive state, and produce ideologies of capitalist consumption, over another person. Finally, writing in the New York Times, Jenna Wortham (2015) articulated the uncomfortable balance that the show’s best episodes accomplish—of which “White Bear” often finds itself in the Black Mirror rankings—writing that it is “equal parts horror and wonder, somewhere in the uncanny valley between our world and one dominated by Skynet. It looks like a future we might actually inhabit, making the show a lot more effective as a critique of the tech industry’s trajectory—one that might make you think twice about which devices you buy and which services you use.” Brooker would likely add, based on “White Bear,” how we look at state justice, and what we wish on those who have crossed that system on any level. “White Bear” ultimately questions the degree of punishment that should be placed upon any prisoner, when the mechanisms of retributive justice neglect true empathy in favor of perpetuating an ideological state apparatus.2

References Abel, C.  F., & Marsh, F.  H. (1984). Punishment and Restitution: A Restitutionary Approach to Crime and the Criminal. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Althusser, L. (2014). On The Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology And Ideological State Apparatuses. (G.  M. Goshgarian, Trans.). London: Verso. (Original work published in 1971) Artt, S. (2018). An Otherness that Cannot be Sublimated’: Shades of Frankenstein in Penny Dreadful and Black Mirror. Science Fiction Film and Television, 11(2), 257–275. Billow, R.  M. (2013). The Bully Inside Us: The Gang in the Mind. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 33, 130–143. Brassett, J., & Sutton, A. (2017). British Satire, Everyday Politics: Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci and Charlie Brooker. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19(2), 245–262. Bridges, W., & Brooker, C. (Writers), & Watkins, J. (Director). (2016). Shut Up and Dance. [Television series episode] In L.  Dyke (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Bridges, W., & Brooker, C. (Writers) & Haynes, T. (Director). (2017). USS Callister. [Television series episode] In L. Sutton (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Bathurst, O. (Director). (2011). The National Anthem. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz. (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2013). Be Right Back. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz. (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2016). San Junipero. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Hawes, J. (Director). (2016). Hated in the Nation. [Television series episode] In S. Wohlenberg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. 2  The author thanks the editors and Jeffrey A. Schooley for reading over the essay drafts and suggesting substantive feedback.

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Brooker, C. & Huq, K. (Writers) & Lynn, E. (Director). (2011). Fifteen Million Merits. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2013). White Bear. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Trachtenberg, D. (Director). (2016). Playtest. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Van Patten, T. (Director). (2017). Hang the DJ. [Television series episode] In N. Pitt (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Verbruggen, J. (Director). (2016). Men Against Fire. [Television series episode] In L. Dyke (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Gramsci, A. (2003). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell Smith, Ed. and Trans.). New  York: International Publishers. (Original work published in 1971). Kontos, L. (2010). The Irrationality of the Prison System Complex. Dialectical Anthropology, 34(4), 575–578. Maratea, R. J., & Monahan, B. A. (2013). Crime Control as Mediated Spectacle: The Institutionalization of Gonzo Rhetoric in Modern Media and Politics. Symbolic Interaction, 36(3), 261–274. Rajbar, S. (2018). The Ontology of Crisis: The Sublimity of Objet Petit a and the Master-Signifier. International Journal of Zizek Studies, 12(2), 1–24. Rosenfeld, H. (1988). A Clinical Approach to the Psychoanalytic Theory of the Life and Death Instincts: An Investigation into the Aggressive Aspects of Narcissism. In E.  Bott Spillius (Ed.), Melanie Klein Today: Developments in Theory and Practice (Vol. 1, pp. 239–255). London: Routledge. (Original work published in 1971). Singh, G. (2014). Recognition and the Image of Mastery as Themes in Black Mirror (Channel 4, 2011–present): An Eco-Jungian Approach to ‘Always-On’ Culture. International Journal of Jungian Studies, 6(2), 120–132. Strauss, M. (2016). ‘We Actually Stopped the Raids’: Puente’s Crusade against Family Separations. New Labor Forum, 25(2), 98–101. Wortham, J. (2015, January 30). ‘Black Mirror’ and the Horrors and Delights of Technology. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/ 02/01/magazine/black-mirror-and-the-horrors-and-delights-of-technology.html Žižek, S. (1994). The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality. London: Verso.

Political Apathy, the ex post facto Allegory and Waldo’s Trumpian Moment Terence McSweeney

Introduction On its initial broadcast on Channel 4 on 25 February 2013, the finale of the second season of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror (2011–), “The Waldo Moment” (02.03), was regarded by many reviewers and online commentators as something of a disappointment. It was not that the episode was necessarily considered a weak one, but that it failed to live up to the provocative portrayal of surveillance culture, public shaming and reality television taken to the extreme in the episode before it, “White Bear” (02.02), or the richly textured exploration of artificial intelligence in the transhumanist narrative of the season opener “Be Right Back” (02.01). The majority of reviews for “The Waldo Moment” read something along the lines of Morgan Jeffery at Digital Spy, who wrote that it was “unfocused and, like its title character, takes pot-shots at multiple targets without saying anything particularly meaningful itself” (2013), or Alfred Joyner who suggested that it “misfires on all accounts” (2013), or even Ryan Lambie, who regarded it as “a lesser episode” and that it was hard not to be a “little dissatisfied with the stark, undisguised presentation of its underlying message” (2013). The criticisms were varied but most concurred that the episode’s premise, that a vulgar animated bear voiced by a failed comedian could become an influential political figure, was implausible (see Davies, 2013; Sims, 2013), underdeveloped (see Joyner, 2013; Lambie, 2013; Parker, 2016) and lacked nuance (see Davies, 2013; Lambie, 2013; Robson, 2013). Even the episode’s writer, the creator and producer of Black Mirror himself, Charlie Brooker, commented in the years after it was broadcast that he was not

T. McSweeney (*) Southampton Solent University, Southampton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_7

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entirely satisfied with “The Waldo Moment”, stating that he had “not really nailed it. It should have probably been a separate thing to Black Mirror; maybe a mini series or something like that” (qtd. in Hawkes, 2017). However, about three years after its initial broadcast something curious happened as the episode went from being largely dismissed to widely discussed in a number of editorials and opinion pieces in the United States and in the United Kingdom, much more so than other episodes from season two, the aforementioned “Be Right Back” and “White Bear”, which had been considered far superior. From the middle of 2015 onwards those returning to the episode seemed to have very different observations to make about “The Waldo Moment”: Sabienna Bowman now suggested that it was “the most relevant episode of Black Mirror of them all” (2016) and Brogan Morris indicated that “None of it looks far-­ fetched now” (2017), with Charlie Brooker adding to this with a memorable post on Twitter on 9 November 2016 that simply read “This isn’t an episode. This isn’t marketing. This is reality” (qtd. in McDermott). What might have happened then between 25 February 2013 and 9 November 2016 to have changed opinions in such a way about “The Waldo Moment”? How did a forty-four-minute-long drama about the emergence of an unqualified and unsuitable political candidate made famous by a popular television show, with no clear opinions or policy, who instead prefers to insult opponents while offering little substance outside well-worn platitudes, someone who nobody thinks could win an election but who proves able to connect with voters who have come to regard all of those who represent the political establishment as self-­ serving and corrupt, a candidate who asks and even offers to pay for supporters to physically attack his rivals and opponents, go from “unfocused” to “the most relevant episode of Black Mirror of them all”?

Gestation, Analysis and Apathy The gestation of “The Waldo Moment” reaches back several years before the development of Black Mirror to a concept that Charlie Brooker had devised with writer/director Chris Morris during the production of their short-lived sitcom Nathan Barley (ITV, 2005) which concerned the creation of a populist political figure utilising animation techniques similar to that used by the “virtual” British band Gorillaz formed by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett.1 Later when Brooker returned to the concept for what would become “The Waldo Moment” he remarked on a number of occasions that he had both the British politician Boris Johnson and the provocative comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s character of Ali G in mind. Johnson was, and is, famous for his outspoken, exaggerated and high-profile media persona with many of his political opponents lamenting that a great proportion of people voting for him only do so because “he makes us laugh” (Purnell, 2011, p. 7). Brooker himself described 1  “Waldo” is a commonly used term in robotics to describe a device which allows an operator to control a mechanism by hand.

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Boris Johnson in 2016 as “kind of a quasi-Trump… quite a clown. He appeared on comedy-panel shows here in the UK and was known as sort of an oaf— which inoculated him from criticism, weirdly” (qtd. in Jeffery, 2016). Ali G, the alter ego of Sacha Baron Cohen on The 11 O’Clock Show (Channel Four, 1998–2000) and then Da Ali G Show (Channel Four, 2000–2004) preyed on unsuspecting political figures for a number of years like Tony Benn, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Newt Gingrich, John McCain, Ralph Nader, and even Donald Trump himself via in character interviews, utilising the incompetence and ignorance of his fictional alter ego to provoke often memorable reactions. There is certainly something of both Boris Johnson and Ali G in the eponymous Waldo, an animated and crude blue bear created and voiced by a young comedian, Jamie Salter (Daniel Rigby), for a late night topical comedy programme called Tonight For One Week Only, a show which is decidedly reminiscent of both the Sacha Baron Cohen starring The 11 O’Clock Show and Charlie Brooker’s own 10’O Clock Live (Zeppotron, 2011–2013). Waldo appears in a weekly segment during which interviewees are fooled into believing they are participating in a children’s show called Waldo Check it Out. As the episode begins Waldo is shown interviewing the Conservative politician and former Minister for Culture Liam Monroe (Tobias Menzies) who is campaigning for seat in a local by-election recently vacated as a result of a sex scandal in the fictional borough of Stentonford and Hersham.2 After the popularity of the interview among audiences, Jamie is reluctantly prompted by the owner of the company that produces Tonight for One Week Only, Jack Napier (Jason Flemyng), to enter Waldo as a real candidate in the election. Jamie is understandably reluctant as he is well aware of where his talents do and do not lie, he suggests: “I do piss-taking” and that “I’m not dumb or clever enough to be political”, but the concept proves too powerful to ignore and to everyone’s surprise Waldo’s uncouth humour and his disdain for the political process and those who represent it strikes a chord with the public and sees him quickly emerge as a credible threat to Monroe and the Labour candidate Gwendolyn Harris (Chloe Pirrie). The episode had begun not with Jamie/Waldo, but actually Gwendolyn Harris being interviewed by a panel of representatives of the Conservative party who ask her why she wants to be an MP, to which she answers “Because I am not satisfied with the way things are and rather than sit back and moan I’d rather do something about it!”. These are the first lines of the episode and a motif to which it returns frequently, that a significant proportion of the electorate has become disaffected with the political process which has led to a decline of participation across a broad demographic reach, but especially among those 2  The politician mentioned in the show is Jason Gladwell, who is accused of sending pictures to a fifteen-year-old and claiming he was hacked. The scandal is reminiscent of the case of Anthony Weiner in 2011 during which the then Democrat US congressman sent links to sexually explicit images of himself to several women. He was subsequently sentenced to twenty-one months in prison.

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who identify as millennials (born 1981–1996) and post-millennials (1997–). In 2013, the year that “The Waldo Moment” was first broadcast, Rowena Mason writing in The Guardian, drawing on a range of studies and contemporary polls, suggested that an entire generation was turning away from conventional understandings of political engagement. She wrote, Once, the theory was that people would drift towards the polls when they grew up and became mature, tax-paying citizens. But now the young disengaged are turning into the middle-aged disengaged, who may ultimately become a new phenomenon—the old disengaged. Evidence shows that voting is a habit that millions may just never get into, particularly if they are less welloff. (2013)

Evidence for this in the United Kingdom and the United States is not just anecdotal but empirical and suggests that a range of factors have been influential which are highly dependent on, as one might expect, resources (social, economic and political), education, gender and ethnicity (see Persson, 2013; Dalton, 2013; Wattenberg, 2015). While the terms political apathy and political alienation have gained significant currency in recent years, they are hardly a new phenomenon, in fact it was discussed quite widely as a prominent fear more than a hundred years ago in 1891 where a headline in the Spectator warned of “The Dangers of Political Apathy”. In the introduction to their Institutional Crisis in 21st Century Britain (2014), David Richards and Martin Smith argue that this modern brand of political apathy is part of a more general crisis across the United Kingdom but also has broader more global ramifications. They state at the same time as the financial crisis has unfolded, there is a perception of a domino effect, a crisis of contagion spreading across a range of different institutions — parliament, Whitehall, political parties, local government, Europe, the police, the media, the Union (of UK nations), etc — potentially culminating in what we might label a more general crisis within UK institutions. (2014, p. 3)

“The Waldo Moment” then is firmly immersed in contemporary understandings of voter apathy and alienation, what it means, and what the results of it are, but it makes a point of showing that those attracted to Waldo are not only millennials but reach across age, ethnicity and class boundaries at several moments during the episode. In the early scenes Waldo engages with a young working-class mother, but later those responding to him are from a broad range of social backgrounds.3 Waldo’s rise to prominence comes as a direct result of his appearance on a televised panel show organised by students and 3  While it is difficult to accurately gauge, many of those who indicate their support for Waldo do seem to come from a working-class background. Waldo criticises Monroe for being an “elitist prick” and when campaigning through the area Gwendolyn recognises which homes belong to Conservative voters because “the houses are so far apart”.

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after Liam Monroe calls Jamie a “failed comedian”, Waldo/Jamie responds with the episode’s most memorable line of dialogue: Oh go fuck yourself…you’re a joke, you look less human than I do and I’m a made up bear with a turquoise cock. What are you? You’re just an old attitude with new hair. Assuming you’re superior because I’m not taking you seriously? No one takes you serious, that why no one votes… you think you deserve respect? Because you went to public school and grew up believing you’re entitled to everything. Somethings gotta change, no one trusts you lot because they know you don’t give a shit about anything outside your bubble…

It is interesting to note that as he makes his way through these lines the voice Jamie adopts as part of his Waldo guise begins to be replaced by his own. Waldo/Jamie’s comments are strikingly similar to those made by Russell Brand during an appearance on an episode of Newsnight (BBC News, 1980–) six months later on 23 October 2013 when interviewed by Jeremy Paxman: You don’t have to listen to my political point of view. But it’s not that I’m not voting out of apathy. I’m not voting out of absolute indifference and weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery, deceit of the political class, that has been going on for generations now. And which has now reached fever pitch where you have a disenfranchised, disillusioned, despondent underclass that are not being represented by that political system, so voting for it is tacit complicity with that system and that’s not something I’m offering up.

Both Waldo/Jamie and Brand offer similar variations of anti-establishment protest which are a part of their own political moment, but also evocative of the rich history of various protest candidates like Screaming Lord Sutch, the founder of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party, mentioned in the episode, who stood in numerous parliamentary elections between 1963 and 1997, all of which he lost, but in recent years others have been much more successful like the Italian comedian and actor Giuseppe “Beppe” Grillo who co-founded the Five Star Movement political party in 2009, or the Icelandic comedian Jón Gnarr’s creation of “the Best Party” which won more than a third of the vote in the Reykjavik 2010 city council election. Gnarr’s platform was a remarkable one: he promised free buses and access to swimming pools for everyone with the caveat We can offer more free things than any other party because we aren’t going to follow through with it. We could say whatever we want. For example, free flights for women or free cars for people who live in rural areas. It’s all the same. (Garrison, 2011)

In perhaps his most striking pledge he even refused to work with anyone who had not seen all five seasons of The Wire (HBO, 2002–2008) (See Garrison, 2011).

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As with the cases of Giuseppe “Beppe” Grillo and Jón Gnarr, initially no one believes that Waldo can win, something that Jack clearly articulates, “no one’s actually gonna vote for him, that’s not the point”. But as the process continues Waldo evolves into a legitimate candidate that people, for one reason or another, seem to follow. Waldo offers an explicit challenge to the elitism and hypocrisy of the Monroe and Harris campaigns and a key part of his appeal is his honesty, his directness, and as Nicholas Carah and Eric Louw pointed out, writing in Media and Society: Production, Content and Participation, his willingness to comment on “the broken nature of the media-political process” (2015, p. 314).

The Trump Moment Taking all this into consideration, Charlie Brooker’s aforementioned tweet from 9 November 2016 and Sabienna Bowman’s characterisation of “The Waldo Moment” as “the most relevant episode of Black Mirror of them all” (2016) are, of course, a re-evaluation of the episode from the perspective of Donald Trump’s transition from unlikely candidate to his ultimate victory in the 2016 presidential election in the United States. This victory was received in very different ways, as one might expect, depending on one’s political perspective. Thus, for some it was “a disaster for Republicans and for America” (The Economist, May 7, 2016) and an “American Nightmare” (Kellner, 2017: ix), but for others it was “a political earthquake. It put an end to eight years of a left-wing presidency that divided the American people, eroded American sovereignty, diminished American power, and undermined a constitutional foundation that had made America prosperous and great” as David Horowitz wrote in Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America (2016). During the election campaign and after, a range of films and television shows became read through the prism of Trumpian discourse, with the understanding that they were able to provide some sort of commentary on the nascent “Trump era” with little consideration that the majority of them had gone into production before the emergence of Trump’s campaign and certainly before the election victory. Hence films as diverse Hidden Figures (2016), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Moana (2017), Patriot’s Day (2017), La La Land (2017), War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), The Boss Baby (2017), Black Panther (2018), Death Wish (2018) and television shows like American Horror Story (FX, 2011–), The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu, 2017–) and American Gods (Starz, 2017–) each were often associated with Trump in a process we might call the ex post facto allegory, that is, a text in which is understood as being retrospectively thematically connected to an event which happened after the said text was created. Beginning in 2015 a range of writers started to connect Donald Trump’s campaign explicitly to “The Waldo Moment”. As early as 7 August, just a couple of months after the announcement of his candidacy in June, Meaghan O’Keefe wrote an article titled “Why You Must Watch Black Mirror: ‘The Waldo Moment’ This Weekend” which urged “us to be wary of giving

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our power away to people who say the things we want to hear” and a few months later on 8 September 2015 Chris Cillizza wrote: Waldo has no qualms about using profanity, lewd jokes and all sorts of non-PC behavior to win verbal sparring matches with his opponents. Those traditional pols have no idea how to handle Waldo because he is, well, a made-up bear. Waldo loses, but his impact on the public—and against politicians—is huge. But wait, you say, Donald Trump is not an animated bear. You are correct! But Trump’s ability to say and do things no one else would makes it very difficult for [Jeb] Bush to win a fight with him. If your opponent doesn’t play by the rules -- or doesn’t acknowledge there are rules at all—it’s no fun to play a game with him. Bush is learning that the hard way.

Cillizza highlights some of what many perceived as Trump’s most attractive traits for his supporters, that he was disconnected from what is widely regarded as the entrenched elitism of the political process and that he was somehow more “real” than his opponents in the primaries (Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz) and later Hillary Clinton, two qualities we have already seen attributed to Waldo within the diegetic frames of “The Waldo Moment”. Of course, in the case of Trump these aspects are both ironic and problematic: not just because of his remarkably privileged background, but also his ambiguous relationship with facts and his carefully crafted persona cultivated over numerous decades through the news media, in film appearances and perhaps most importantly a reality TV show, The Apprentice (NBC, 2004–2017), which had been largely responsible for creating a brand that, for a variety of complicated reasons, resonated enough with almost sixty-three million people voting to elect him as the forty-fifth president of the United States. Jack explains the appeal of Waldo in ways in which Trump was often described: “now everyone’s pissed with the status quo and Waldo gives us a voice”. It is clear that both Waldo and Trump appeal to potential voters for similar reasons, by appearing to provide a “voice” for many that considered themselves marginalised by the political process in the modern era (see Jackson & Stanglin, 2017; Sevastopulo, 2018). Trump’s media appearances throughout the campaign drew remarkable audiences, so much so that he was afforded considerably more air time than any of his opponents, which undeniably contributed to the cult of personality which developed around him and propelled his candidacy towards victory. Similarly, the ratings for every show Waldo appears on get a tremendous boost and are considerably more popular than those featuring his opponents. When he is on a fictional programme very similar to Newsnight, called Consensus, he remarks to the host “You know you’re gonna get your best ratings in months because I’m here!”, a topic which Trump returned to frequently in both interviews and on Twitter (see Barr, 2017; Lockie, 2018). It was often Trump’s cruelly inventive put-downs directed at his opponents that gained the most column inches or were gleefully repeated again and again on the twenty-four-­ hour news cycle, as he displayed a talent for creating a brand for opponents as

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much as he had done for himself, with nicknames which came to encapsulate and devastate in some cases: thus Ted Cruz was “Lyin’ Ted”, Hillary Clinton was “Crooked Hillary”, Jeb “Low energy” Bush, “Crazy Bernie” Saunders and “Little” Marco Rubio (see Estepa, 2017) in ways reminiscent of a talent show like The X Factor (ITV, 2004–) or his own The Apprentice. In “The Waldo Moment” it is Liam Monroe who initially criticises Waldo/ Jamie with the suggestion “It’s easy what he does, he mocks”, echoing complaints made about Trump all the way through the election, but it is Jamie himself who emerges as Waldo’s most vocal critic onscreen. It is he who realises what Waldo really represents, that the cartoon bear might be seen as a light-­ hearted protest vote, but actually he is participating in a process that is devaluing legitimate political discourse and does not stand for anything. Of course, similar claims were made about Trump many times during the 2016 presidential election campaign and even after his victory (see Cummings, 2018). Seeking to sabotage his own creation Jamie tries to smash the screen where Waldo is shown on the side of their campaign van, yelling “Don’t vote for me, I’m an insult!” It is this event which prompts what we might call the most explicit Trumpian moment of the episode, when Waldo (now voiced by Jack instead of Jamie) shouts “The first man to hit him gets five hundred quid” offering echoes to Trump’s comments at an Iowa rally on 1 February 2016. “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell… I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise” (qtd. in Sinclair, 2017).

Endings and Beginnings In the aftermath of his assault on the van Jamie wakes up in hospital to the results of the by-election, broadcast on the UKN News Network, the news channel which connects many Black Mirror episodes and is a central part of the “Black Mirror Universe”, which reveals that while Liam Monroe has won, Waldo came in a rather close second, comfortably defeating the Labour candidate Gwendolyn Harris. The end credits of the episode then roll intercut with an ambiguous sequence which seems to take place several years in the future. Jamie has become homeless and images of Waldo are projected on screens around the city where he lives: there is one of Waldo in a Chinese classroom, one of Waldo’s image painted in Arabic on a fighter plane and another with the words: “Hope change believe challenge better hope” repeated in a call back to an earlier scene in which a mysterious American official had described Waldo as a potential weapon in the geo-political conflict for global influence, suggesting that he should be regarded as a “construct that people don’t just accept, they embrace… Energising the disenfranchised without spooking the middle, via your new platform, you got a global political entertainment product that people actually want” and that South America could be a potential launching ground for him.

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These final scenes do not evoke that most popular narrative of dystopian future, George Orwell’s 1984 (1948), but rather Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and the very same threat that Neil Postman observed in his Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985). Not the emergence of a “Big Brother” state which oppresses its citizens externally, but rather the erosion of peoples’ capacity to think critically, challenge themselves and their willing loss of autonomy in a commodified and corporatised political and social arena. More than thirty years before Postman wrote: What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who would want to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. (1985, p. vii)

“The Waldo Moment” is certainly not the only episode of Black Mirror to be regarded as prescient as several authors in this volume have explored: like the emergence of chatbots with artificial intelligence similar to those used in “Be Right Back” (02.01), social credit scores being reported in China as in “Nosedive” (03.01), hackers taking over webcams in “Shut Up and Dance” (03.03) or robotics shrunk to the size of hummingbirds not too far removed from the bees in “Hated in the Nation” (03.06).4 There are a range of reasons for this and none of them include Charlie Brooker owning a crystal ball. What Black Mirror has proved remarkably adept at is mining the anxieties of the modern era in a range of acute ways, entangling its narratives in very real and very contemporary fears that many of us are currently experiencing in the first decades of the new millennium. Given their diverse tapestry and Brooker’s frequently astute social commentary, the question we are left asking is not if many of them might come true, but when.

References Attwood, M., & Moss, E. (Producers). (2017–). The Handmaid’s Tale [Television series]. Los Angeles, CA: Hulu. Barr, J. (2017, October 10). President Trump Can’t Stop Mentioning Television Ratings. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter. com/news/president-trump-cant-stop-mentioning-television-ratings-1050094 BBC News (Producer). (1980–). Newsnight [Television series]. London: BBC. 4  Waldo pops up several times in future Black Mirror episodes: one of the people watching the Z-Eye technology used by Harry on a date in “White Christmas” (02.04) is called “I_AM_ WALDO”, a Waldo sticker is shown on a laptop in “Hated in the Nation” and a Waldo lunchbox appears in “Shut Up and Dance”.

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Berg, P. (Director), & Aufiero, D., Clark, D., Levinson, S., Parker, H., Radutzky, M., Stuber, S., & Wahlberg, M. (Producers). (2017). Patriot’s Day [Motion Picture]. USA: Lionsgate. Bowman, S. (2016, November 9). A Black Mirror Episode Predicted The 2016 Election & The Similarities Are Eerie. Bustle. Retrieved from https://www.bustle.com/ articles/194131-a-black-mirror-episode-predicted-the-2016-election-the-similarities-are-eerie Bridges, W., & Brooker, C. (Writers), & Watkins, J. (Director). (2016). Shut Up and Dance. [Television series episode] In Dyke, L. (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2013). Be Right Back. [Television series episode] In Reisz, B. (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Hawes, J. (Director). (2016). Hated in the Nation. [Television series episode] In Wohlenberg, S. (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Higgins, B. (Director). (2013). The Waldo Moment. [Television series episode] In Reisz, B. (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2013). White Bear. [Television series episode] In Reisz, B. (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2014). White Christmas. [Television series episode] In Reisz, B. (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Burnett, M. (Producer). (2004–2017). The Apprentice [Television series]. New York, New York City: NBC. Carah, N., & Louw, E. (2015). Media and Society: Production, Content and Participation. Los Angeles; London; New Delhi: Sage. Chazelle, D. (Director), & Berger, F., Gilber, G., Horowitz, J., & Platt, M. (Producers). (2017). La La Land [Motion Picture]. USA: Lionsgate. Cillizza, C. (2016, September 8). Donald Trump’s Troll Game of Jeb Bush: A+. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/ wp/2015/09/08/donald-trumps-troll-game-of-jeb-bush-a/?utm_term=. a3d0bdfcd5d6 Clements, R., & Musker, J. (Directors), & Shurer, O. (Producer). (2017). Moana [Motion Picture]. USA: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Cohen, R., & Westwell, A. (Producers). (2011–2013). 10’O Clock Live [Television series]. London: Channel Four. Coogler, R. (Director), & Feige, K. (Producer). (2018). Black Panther [Motion Picture]. USA: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Cowell, S., Holloway, R., Hart, B., Sidaway, M., Davies, C., McNicholas, L., & Mackenzie, I. (Executive Producers). (2004–). The X Factor [Television series]. London: ITV. Cummings, W. (2018, March 3). The Bubble: Trump ‘Has No Core Beliefs,’ Liberals and Conservatives Agree. USA Today. Retrieved from https://eu.usatoday.com/ story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/03/02/media-reaction-white-housechaos/389918002/ Dalton, R. (2013). The Apartisan American: Dealignment and the Transformation of Electoral Politics. Thousand Oaks: CQ Press. Davies, S. (2013, February 25). Review. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www. telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9893606/Black-Mirror-The-WaldoMoment-Channel-4-review.html

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Edwards, G. (Director), & Emanuel, S., Kennedy, K., & Shearmur, A. (Producers). (2016). Rogue One: A Star Wars Story [Motion Picture]. USA: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Estepa, J. (2017, September 21). It’s Not Just ‘Rocket Man.’ Trump Has Long History of Nicknaming His Foes. USA Today. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/ story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/09/21/its-not-just-rocket-man-trump-haslong-history-nicknaming-his-foes/688552001/ Fuller, B., & Green, M. (Producers). (2017–). American Gods [Television series]. Meridian, Colorado: Starz. Garrison, L.  T. (2011, April 28). The Absurd Mayorship of Jón Gnarr, Iceland’s Comedian Politician. Splitsider. Retrieved from https://www.vulture.com/2011/ 04/the-absurd-mayorship-of-jon-gnarr-icelands-comedian-politician.html Gilheany, P. (Producer). (1998–2000). The 11 O’Clock Show [Television series]. London: Channel Four. Hawkes, R. (2017, February 20). Black Mirror’s Charlie Brooker on Predicting Donald Trump, and the Love Story that ‘Terrified’ Him. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/on-demand/0/black-mirrors-charlie-brooker-predicting-donald-trump-love-story/ Horowitz, D. (2016). Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America. West Palm Beach, Florida: Humanix Books. Huxley, A. (1932). Brave New World. London: Chatto & Windus. Jackson, D., & Stanglin, D. (2017, January 21). Trump Is Now President: ‘The Forgotten … Will Be Forgotten No Longer’. USA Today. Retrieved from https:// eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/20/donald-trump-inaugurationday-president-white-house/96782700/ Jeffery, M. (2013, February 25). Black Mirror Series Two ‘The Waldo Moment’ Review. Digital Spy. Retrieved from http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/black-mirror/news/ a461004/black-mirror-series-two-the-waldo-moment-review/ Jeffery, M. (2016, October 17). Charlie Brooker Reveals Which Black Mirror Episode He’d Go Back and Do Differently. Digital Spy. http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ black-mirror/news/a811262/charlie-brooker-admits-he-mad-a-mistake-withblack-mirrors-the-waldo-moment-the-stakes-werent-right/ Jones, R., & Schur, M. (Writers) & Wright, J. (Director). (2016). Nosedive. [Television series episode] In Borg, L. (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Joyner, A. (2013, December 23). Review. The International Business Times. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/black-mirror-season-2-episode-3-review-439333 Kellner, D. (2017). American Horror Show: Election 2016 and the Ascent of Donald J. Trump. Rotterdam; Boston; Taipei: Sense Publishers. Lambie, R. (2013, February 26). Review. Den of Geek. Retrieved from http://www. denofgeek.com/tv/24606/black-mirror-series-2-episode-3-the-waldo-momentspoiler-filled-review Lockie, A. (2018, February 1). Trump Erroneously Claims He Had Record Viewership for His First State of the Union. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://uk.businessinsider.com/trump-celebrates-tv-ratings-and-good-reviews-of-his-sotu-address-2018-2 Mason, R. (2013, December 26). Apathetic and Disaffected: The Generation Who May Never Vote. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/26/apathetic-disaffected-generation-may-never-vote

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Mazer, D., & Thompson, H. (Producers). (2000–2004). Da Ali G Show [Television series]. London: Channel Four. McGrath, T. (Director), & Naito, R. (Producer). (2017). The Boss Baby [Motion Picture]. USA: 20th Century Fox. Melfi, T. (Director), & Chernin, P., Gigliotti, D., Melfi, T., Topping, J., & Williams, P. (Producers). (2016). Hidden Figures [Motion Picture]. USA: 20th Century Fox. Morris, B. (2017, January 20). Black Mirror: The Unexpected Prescience of its Least-­ Loved Episode. Den of Geek. Retrieved from http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/ black-mirror/45817/black-mirror-the-unexpected-prescience-of-its-leastloved-episode Murphy, R. (Producer). (2011–). American Horror Story [Television series]. Los Angeles, CA: FX. N.A.S. (1891, August 22). The Dangers of Political Apathy. The Spectator. Retrieved from http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/22nd-august-1891/9/the-dangersof-political-apathy N.A.S. (2016, May 7). Trump’s Triumph. The Economist. Retrieved from https:// www.economist.com/leaders/2016/05/07/trumps-triumph O’Keefe, M. (2015, August 7). Why You Must Watch Black Mirror: ‘The Waldo Moment’ This Weekend. Decider. Retrieved from https://decider.com/2015/ 08/07/black-mirror-the-waldo-effect-2016-presidential-race/ Orwell, G. (1948). 1984. London: Penguin. Parker, S. (2016, February 26). Review. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http:// www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sam-parker/black-mirror-review-the-waldo-moment_ b_2764672.html Persson, M. (2013). Does Education Cause Participation in Politics? Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg Press. Postman, N. (1985). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin. Purnell, S. (2011). Just Boris: Boris Johnson: The Irresistible Rise of a Political Celebrity. London: Aurum Press Ltd. Reeves, M. (Director), & Chermin, P., Clark, D., Jaffa, R., & Silver, A. (Producers). (2017). War for the Planet of the Apes [Motion Picture]. USA: 20th Century Fox. Richards, D., & Smith, M. (2014). Introduction: A Crisis in UK Institutions? In D. Richards, M. Smith, & C. Hay (Eds.), Institutional Crisis in 21st Century Britain (pp. 1–14). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Robson, L. (2013, February 25). Review. Cult Box. Retrieved from http://cultbox. co.uk/reviews/episodes/black-mirror-the-waldo-moment-review Roth, E. (Director), & Birnbaum, R. (Producer). (2018). Death Wish [Motion Picture]. USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Sevastopulo, D. (2018, October 27). How Trump Gave a Voice to Unheard America. Financial Times. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/4ef103be-9bcf11e6-b8c6-568a43813464 Sims, D. (2013, December 17). The A.V. Club. Retrieved from https://tv.avclub.com/ black-mirror-the-waldo-moment-1798179015 Sinclair, H. (2017, August 14). Trump Told White Supremacists to Attack Protesters, So They Did. Newsweek. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/trump-toldwhite-supremacists-attack-protesters-so-they-did-650622 Thorson, K. L., Burns, E., Chappelle, J., Pelecanos, G., & Overmyer, E. (Producers). (2002–2008). The Wire [Television series]. New York, New York City: HBO. Wattenberg, M. (2015). Is Voting for Young People? (4th ed.). London: Routledge.

We Have Only Ourselves to Fear: Reflections on AI Through the Black Mirror of “White Christmas” Christine Muller

Introduction: The Threat of Consciousness Anxieties about the so-called singularity abound. Science fiction author and computer science and mathematics scholar Vernor Vinge framed the term as “change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.” Such an epochal transformation would occur via the “creation by technology of entities with greater-than-human intelligence,” which would be capable of fostering ever-­ accelerating innovations to “a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules” (Vinge, 1993). This concept of non-human agents provoking an irreversible break with past modes of, well, everything has presented to the decidedly non-Luddite (Bolton, 2016)  likes of Elon Musk (Vincent, 2017) and the late Stephen Hawking (Hawking, Russell, Tegmark, & Wilczek, 2014) an ominous scenario.1 They contend that the radical potential of any self-aware mechanizations we are able to manufacture would pose an existential threat to humanity. In other, possibly even more grandiose, words, a threat to life as we know it. But what would such a threat actually look like? Specifically, concerns about forms of artificial intelligence (AI) have centered, in the short term, “on who controls it, [and] the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all” (Hawking et  al., 2014). In effect, conceivable dangers range from foreign actors manipulating weapons 1

 For a characterization of their worries as technophobia, see Bolton 2016.

C. Muller (*) Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_8

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systems against the states that wield them to weapons systems acting on their own, without regard for any human beings at all. Ultimately, catastrophic implications not just for human safety, but in fact for human existence, could result from machines operating autonomously in ways that we cannot predict, manage, or even fully understand, and which do not prioritize the value of human life. Yet, as others have pointed out (Vincent, 2017), human beings have already been, in this moment, exploiting narrow AI—software designed to problem-solve within finite tasks—to achieve their own malicious ends (think election-disruptive “bots” posting automated propaganda across social media). In that light, the grander project of general AI—software designed to reason independently, presumably leading toward machine consciousness— seems both more remote and yet in some sense less novel. After all, what could AI do to human beings that we cannot already do to ourselves? Contemplating that question reminds us that whatever we might fear from AI sentience, we first learned from the brutalities of our own human history. Perhaps sentient AI, rather than threatening life as we know it, instead offers us more than we would want of the life we already know. General AI’s apocalyptic possibilities have inspired a vast array of popular culture narratives over the years. The Terminator film franchise (1984–) provides a notable example of a tendency to pit “us” (human beings) against “them” (the machines). Yet, over the course of Black Mirror’s four seasons on Netflix, general AI appears not in the guise of impersonal, Skynet-like circuitry with interests of its own and in opposition to those of humanity, but instead in the form of consciousness exported from an extant human being. In episodes such as “Be Right Back,” (02.01) “White Christmas,” (02.04) “San Junipero,” (03.04) “USS Callister,” (04.01) “Hang the DJ,” (04.04) and “Black Museum,” (04.06) individuals’ minds are extracted into vessels and settings constructed outside of the bodies in which they organically developed. These manifestations of general AI are not only similar to us, but they also cause us to wonder whether or not they are us. There are high stakes in answering the question of exactly what distinguishes person from thing, since we traditionally view interactions between person and person or person and thing as warranting different kinds of ethical postures. And human history continues to unfold with tensions and conflicts revolving around the recognition (or not) of the personhood of others. In keeping with the show’s theme of technology as not necessarily a threat in and of itself, but rather as a mechanism to reflect and facilitate human-originated harm, the treatment in Black Mirror of the “cookie,” the reproduction of a particular person’s consciousness, affords insight into just how precisely the ways we treat AI could mirror the ways we have already treated real human beings. In the second of three connected anecdotes within “White Christmas,” client Greta (Oona Chaplin) commissions service provider Matt (Jon Hamm) to replicate her consciousness into the network of her home management system, to ensure through linked housewares flawless delivery of her preferences for daily living, including perfectly (to her tastes) toasted bread. In this scenario,

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Matt’s disciplining of the Greta cookie into accepting the subservient domestic role for which she was created dramatizes the dominance of the human over the AI. Yet, within the episode’s sequenced anecdotes, this troubling relationship between human being and AI serves as a bridge between other instances and degrees of disturbing human behavior, suggesting continuity between them and a fundamental concern with the pervasiveness of human cruelty. In “White Christmas,” the cookie, cognizant of her existential dependence on the whims of her own original consciousness, instantiates the horror of which human beings are capable, casting a reflecting surface by which our fears about AI merely point us back to ourselves.

Terminology Delving into a discussion of artificial intelligence, consciousness, and personhood occasions the need to clarify upfront just how such terms are being used. As noted in the introduction, narrow (also called “weak”) AI, which already permeates our contemporary world through technologies such as robot vacuum cleaners and driverless cars, is programmed to accomplish finite tasks within well-defined parameters—so, brushing over dirty floors or navigating city streets, but not deciding on its own initiative whether to do either, both, or neither. While only as useful or dangerous as its programmers contrive, this kind of software risks abuse by hackers redirecting it for their own purposes. Different from this, general AI—also called “strong” AI or artificial general intelligence (AGI)—is software conceived to be capable of independent thought, judgment, motivation, innovation, and other abilities characteristic of full human intelligence. Although scientists and science fiction writers alike have imagined this technological capacity for years, it has not yet been achieved in real life. Still, its potential for activity unintended and unanticipated by, and even unwelcome to, human beings poses a particularly disconcerting menace. In the form of artificial superintelligence (ASI), which is associated with the singularity to which Vinge, Musk, and Hawkings have referred, capabilities would so far surpass those of humanity that, conceivably, ASI would not be beholden to any of the prohibitions, inhibitions, or limitations that regulate and contain human behavior, rendering it able to incite unforeseeable and uncontrollable harms on unimaginable scales of impact. A fearsome prospect, indeed, and one I invoke in my introduction to signal is why AGI commonly draws acute suspicion. After all, AGI is envisioned as the human-tilled fertile ground from which ASI would germinate. While Black Mirror has so far not included ASI within its episodes’ shared universe, its depictions of human interactions with AGI enable reflection on how human beings, acting according to their own viewpoints and values about consciousness, personhood, and the moral treatment of others, embody the very perils we anticipate would come from an intelligence greater than our own. And why suspect that such a superpower would develop to exploit or destroy rather than protect those more vulnerable than itself, unless we had reason from past experience to expect it?

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Compared to “singularity” and “artificial superintelligence,” terms such as “consciousness” and “personhood” have been in circulation for much, much longer and so appear more familiar. But while the idea that a machine could achieve consciousness and personhood implies that these are reliably identifiable, stable states, the reality has proven very different for any specialist whose work depends upon what these categories might mean. For centuries if not millennia, fields such as law, medicine, and philosophy have wrestled with their definitions, and theorists within these and other disciplines continue to probe each concept’s substance, edges, and implications. To summarize and simplify liberally, though, the tendency in modern, mainstream Western thought has been to view the two as distinct but linked phenomena: while significant debates and nuances persist, commonly, personhood has been viewed as requiring consciousness and consciousness has been attributed primarily to human beings (as opposed to objects or animals—noting again, though, that significant debates and nuances persist).2 And attribution matters; those not regarded as conscious, as persons, lack access to considerations available to those who are regarded as such. For example, collaborating from their medical and legal training, respectively, Cranford and Smith have delineated the connection between and ramifications of consciousness and personhood to inform medical and legal parameters for end-of-life care. They include the ability to experience pain and suffering (1987, p. 237) and to adjudicate between benefits and burdens (p.  235) among the important aspects of consciousness. On the other hand, they point out that “[a]n individual who is permanently unconscious has no will. In the absence of will, thought, expression, or consciousness, legal rights and liberties have no reference and thus no meaning” (p. 247). And so, with consciousness as “the most critical moral, legal, and constitutional standard, not for human life itself, but for human personhood” (p. 233), questions arise as to how differently quality-of-life and end-of-life decisions might be made for those who are viewed as conscious persons and those who are not (pp. 242–248). Throughout human history, these precise questions have long arisen outside of any medical context. Socially acknowledged personhood has long determined whether and how anyone might live. We need only remember that slavery has been implemented and justified according to the argument that the enslaved are not full persons. Yet, as moral philosopher R.M. Hare contends, unlike (presumably) animals or things but very much as full persons, human beings can anticipate future harm but also, as slaves, not be able to prevent or redress that harm (1979, pp. 120–121). It is just such indices of consciousness (anticipation of the future) and personhood (as evidenced by its violation, 2  René Descartes famously posited, “I think, therefore I am” (1998), a proposition about consciousness evidencing selfhood which continues to serve as a focal point for formulations of what it means to be conscious, to be a person, and to “be” at all. This provides as good an entry point as any into a vast literature within Western discourse, since it converses with ancient Greek philosophy while provoking subsequent theoretical responses and disputes.

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­ articularly in the thwarting of personal agency) that constitute the wrong of p slavery, since they indicate the horror for the enslaved of experiencing treatment as less-than-a-person from the perspective of being, as a person, entirely self-aware. In effect, the free are distinguished from the enslaved not according to whether or not the qualities of consciousness and personhood are somehow objectively identified, but whether or not they are acknowledged and respected by others. Given these designations’ practical consequences, for the purposes of this paper, which dwells on how a mainstream entertainment’s ordinary, largely non-expert characters, as well as its ordinary, largely non-expert viewers, understand consciousness and personhood, I draw on a pragmatic approach: forgoing explicit definitions in favor of highlighting how such notions demarcate between entities that do and do not enjoy particular kinds of rights, benefits, and protections. In Black Mirror, consciousness and personhood matter as relational rather than inherent states; they come to be recognized (or not) as attached to entities only by way of how others act toward them. Because this series involves human behavior often at its worst, I draw specifically on philosopher Susan Brison’s discussion of the “self” in the context of trauma to situate this approach. Brison asserts that a person’s autonomy occurs through relationship with others, whether for better—as when caregivers help a survivor to recover, which includes restored independence and confidence in one’s engagement with the world—or for worse—as when a victimizer corrodes these capacities for a victim (2002, pp.  38–66). Ultimately, awareness and experience—consciousness—of self, of personhood, is a dynamic rather than static condition, tied to how others do or do not extend the consideration due to a thinking, feeling, self-determining human being. It is the perception, rather than any sort of objective certification, of the presence or absence of another’s consciousness or personhood that leads to corresponding conduct. And so I use these terms to refer to the quality of the interactions between characters, rather than to assert with certainty any of these characters’ intrinsic features.3

“I’m Pretty Sure I’m Me” As a series, Black Mirror consists of stand-alone episodes with self-contained narratives that also often allude to other installments, signaling that all of these distinct, otherwise unrelated stories occur within a common universe. Within this framework, themes and tendencies begin to emerge, suggesting certain coherent, persistent concerns that prefigure the concerns explored within “White Christmas.” For example, while most of the episodes preceding “White 3  Along these lines, the Turing Test (also known as the “imitation game”), formulated as a way to determine whether or not a machine has achieved intelligence, is about “imitation.” Rather than attempting to verify an entity’s inherent character, an observer infers intelligence based on whether that entity successfully appears to be thinking like a human being while conversing with an actual human being (Turing, 1950).

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Christmas” lack reference to any kind of conscious AI, they do regularly portray technology as functioning primarily as an implementation or amplification of bad behavior by human beings. Whether enabling (to critique) mass, sadistic voyeurism (“The National Anthem” [01.01]); exploiting the vulnerability of the effectively enslaved (“Fifteen Million Merits” [01.02]); highlighting the emotional injuries consequent to total memory recall (“The Entire History of You” [01.03]); exposing a criminal to possibly cruel and unusual punishment embraced as entertainment by the public (“White Bear” [02.02]); or facilitating the compromise of valid democratic political structures (“The Waldo Moment” [02.03]), technology indifferently makes possible only whatever human beings seek to do to one another, without any initiative or investment of its own. And, according to these episodes, human beings apparently seek to do sadistically voyeuristic, exploitative, injurious, cruel, and corroding things. This is a black mirror, indeed, that directs our attention back to the worst of our own potential. Following these preceding episodes’ displays of what human beings already do to each other with the use of technology, the issue of how technology is used when itself exhibiting elements of consciousness and personhood comes to the fore. First aired in the United Kingdom on December 16, 2014, Black Mirror’s suitably bleak holiday-themed episode “White Christmas” consists of three anecdotes told within a larger narrative about two men seemingly working at a remote, cold-weather facility. That larger narrative, as well as the anecdotes, is set during the ordinarily festive season of Christmas, and all of the stories—in keeping with previous episodes—highlight the horrors of which human beings are capable, with technology not originating any damage on its own initiative, but rather serving as a mechanism by which human beings can implement if not amplify the harm they do to others. The positioning of the AGI-centered anecdote as a bridge between the other two anecdotes, one without AGI and the other with AGI used as a tool for criminal justice, and at the core of the larger narrative, underscores the ease and consistency with which human beings cause direct injury toward both organic and inorganic creatures. As a premise, a man named Matt is making conversation with another man named Potter (Rafe Spall), ostensibly to pass the time while they appear to be snowed in at Christmas. In the show’s first anecdote, Matt recounts how he once provided another man, Harry (Rasmus Hardiker), with real-time dating advice through an earpiece while Harry tried to meet a love interest at an office party he had crashed. This scenario hints at a semblance of or prelude to AGI. After all, like software enlisted to offer its own unique cognition, independent of but useful to a human being, Matt serves as an information resource for Harry to augment his ability to navigate dating. To further the allusion to a protoform of AGI, Matt depends on data derived from Harry’s “smart” eye tech “Zed-Eyes,” which provide a streaming visual feed of exactly what Harry sees, and even draws on facial recognition software to search for material on other people that could aid Harry in socializing with them—applications of narrow AI to inform human judgment and action in the real world. And so, the

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episode’s introduction of enhanced intelligence tools and services centers around clandestinely manipulating other human beings to gratify desire. Interestingly, though, when Harry meets Jennifer (Natalia Tena) at the party, she interprets Harry’s talking to Matt through this virtual implant of external intelligence as a form of “hearing voices,” a symptom of the kind of psychosis for which she had received, but ceased, medication. This confusing of device-enhanced thinking and communication with mental illness prompts Harry to (desperately) try to articulate how these two phenomena differ, an effort that only highlights how incommunicable subjective experience can be. Whatever he describes sounds to her just like what she experiences, and not like what we as viewers—having seen Matt speaking to Harry, but no one speaking to Jennifer—know to be the distinction between his reality and her hallucination. For example, when he explains that “they’ve been watching us,” referring to Matt and his associates, whom viewers know exist, she immediately affirms, “We’re the same,” since she too has believed herself to be watched by “a hundred who see through me, standing at their government depots, shouting what to think,” referring to the kind of conspiracy fears that constitute paranoid delusions. That the confusion persists unresolved (fatally, for poor Harry) between them—and that Harry (and Matt and we viewers) had not readily perceived Jennifer’s psychosis in the first place—foregrounds the challenge of understanding the content and quality of another’s consciousness. Between the two characters, who lack the ability to readily apprehend the other person’s state of mind, it is inference and not certainty about the other’s consciousness that informs how they treat one another. And this inference proves to have deadly consequences, since Jennifer poisons Harry to relieve him of what she mistakenly construes as suffering. These interactions, as well as Matt and Potter’s commentary on these interactions, direct attention to the precariousness of the recognition of another’s personhood. As Matt explains to Potter, “People want to be noticed. They don’t like to be shut out. It makes them feel invisible.” He also asserts, “People want to be heard…The important thing is to make them feel important.” In fact, he argues, “Silence can be oppressive. You think weird shit in a vacuum.” Yet these contentions that being acknowledged and respected matter to a person’s sense of self and value only serve to inform Matt’s attempts to manipulate others toward his own objectives. After all, as the episode develops, Matt notices Potter, listens to him, and makes him feel important—but ultimately only to secure a confession to a murder that, through a deal with prosecutors, will mitigate punishment for his own crimes. Similarly, in his work with Harry and later with the Greta cookie, Matt’s self-proclaimed understanding of how the mind works facilitates exploitation of, rather than deference to, their experiences of consciousness and personhood. Moreover, the ability to “block” someone in this episode’s universe, to cause a person to become only a blurred outline in other peoples’ Zed-Eye-managed sight, and heard by them only as muffled noise—which Matt, from personal experience, says “drives you crazy”—indicates that the broader society in which these two men live accepts

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undermining without compunction another human being’s identity and even existence in relation to others. In “White Christmas,” human beings routinely dehumanize one another, raising the question: If living human beings treat one another this way, what kind of treatment could be expected for an entity that seems to think, feel, and act like a human being, but is in fact the product of inorganic digital code rather than organic biological reproduction? As the episode continues, and characters’ minds are extracted into code, the belief championed by Matt, Harry, and Jennifer that “the transition from one state to another…can’t hurt you” comes to invite additional scrutiny. When asked at the office party, “who are you,” Harry had off-handedly responded, “I’m pretty sure I’m me.” To avoid answering with any specific identifiers that would reveal he was trespassing on the party, he instead declared his purportedly self-­ evident status as simply himself. Yet, as the episode’s next anecdote explores, a definitive sense of self is neither simple nor self-evident with the emergence of AGI.

“But I Am Me” In Matt’s second anecdote, a woman commissions the formation of a replica of her own consciousness—a so-called cookie—to serve as a sophisticated household assistant. The replication occurs so seamlessly that the cookie’s earliest reaction when seeing Greta’s body, “That’s me,” evidences the cookie’s absolute, unquestioning identification with Greta. To the cookie, there is no difference between her and Greta. And notice that, here, I use a gendered personal pronoun instead of “it,” since the cookie clearly experiences “herself” as the female person who is Greta. When Matt informs the cookie that she is not truly Greta, but only a copy of the woman, she responds by insisting, “But I am me.” Matt then explains that, because she has no body—because “You’re a simulated brain full of code”—she is not actually herself. Her body, as Matt contends, is “where real you lives,” whereas the cookie has only a “simulated body.” So, as Matt puts it, “You are you. But also not.” Their exchange amply showcases the fluidity of definitions of consciousness and personhood in relation to AGI. The cookie’s subjective experience positions her to feel herself to be a real person, yet those who generated her—both Matt and Greta—do not recognize her as such. Indeed, when the cookie asks, “Why have you done this to me,” Matt points out, “Actually, you did this to you.” The cookie might understand herself to be Greta, including all of Greta’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, but Greta does not see herself in the cookie. For Greta, this sharing via upload of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors simply means that the cookie has the information to effectively manifest Greta’s desires for her home environment; they do not indicate to Greta that the cookie is sharing her consciousness and therefore warranting the kind of treatment that Greta expects toward herself. When Greta first enters the kitchen where the cookie is placed, her choice of pronoun attests to this perspective when she asks Matt, “Is it set up?” Whatever the cookie might believe, for Greta, the cookie is an “it,” a thing.

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This perception of the cookie as a thing, even as the cookie experiences herself as a person, makes possible a particular form of discipline. When the cookie initially refuses to perform the functions for which she has been created— expressing personal preferences and enacting personal choices distinct from original programming, a hallmark of AGI—Matt conditions her to conform by subjecting her to a simulation of accelerated weeks, then of months, of no input—effectively fostering the kind of blocking that he earlier had claimed would deeply trouble human beings, but with the added misery of having nothing to do to occupy the extended time. He tells Potter, “Too much time in solitary and they’d just wig out,” demonstrating his awareness that the cookie will find this enforced seclusion and inaction similarly troubling. Yet, because the cookie is inorganic, she can persist across the simulation of so much time passing, exposing her to a potentially indefinite duration of torment. So, even as Matt denies the cookie the rights of a conscious person by (reminiscent of what R.M. Hare included among the wrongs of human slavery) foreclosing her agency and by inflicting on her whatever agony he unilaterally and arbitrarily elects—which she can anticipate as potential future harm, as well—he also exploits her subjective experience of anguish to compel her submission to her subservient role. So, is the cookie a conscious person, as she feels herself to be, or not, as suggested by Matt’s and Greta’s conduct toward her? The cookie’s predicament underscores what is at stake in answering such a question for her, but the anecdote, and the episode within which it is embedded, only points back to the human beings who decide her fate. In this case, even though the cookie could be viewed as conscious given her human-like responses to torturous stimuli, Matt fails to connect such sensations of self with the status of a person. When Potter describes the cookie’s circumstances as “slavery” and “barbaric,” Matt counters, “It wasn’t really real, so it wasn’t really barbaric.” He reasons that this creature constructed of code only simulates, but does not reproduce, a human being. This reasoning implies an analogy: just as a storyteller (say, for Black Mirror) can insert myriad imaginative horrors for characters in a tale without guilt because these horrors are fantasies directed at fictional people, this cookie’s classification as a fabrication, as “not really real,” makes otherwise socially prohibited behaviors permissible. Even though Potter points out, “she thought she was real,” Matt attributes that claim for consideration only to Potter being “empathetic,” and not to any valid ontological categorization. Yet, Matt has already shown through his first anecdote—in which he fails to report Harry’s death, which he has witnessed— that even toward the human beings he would consider “real,” he extends at best equivocal ethical commitment. And when he mentions that the cookies damaged by extended enforced solitude and inactivity are then used for “cannon fodder for some war thing,” terminology used in the real world to characterize human beings as expendable during actual conflict, he occasions another illustration of human harm against AGI as continuous with human harm against other human beings. In sum, the conditions under which the AGI of the Greta cookie’s personhood is validated and respected prove fully d ­ ependent

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on the nature of the human beings around her—a dependence that differs possibly in degree, but not in kind, from the conditions that human beings have long constructed for one another.

“She Cut You Out Good” Potter tells Matt the episode’s third anecdote. Although AGI is absent from this story, the narrow AI of the Zed-Eyes features critically. With the capacity to block people—to render their bodies and voices indecipherable and thereby readily ignored—this technology serves as a site of significant power in human relations. It effectively terminates interaction with undesirable or offending others, which empowers those seeking the terminated interaction and disempowers those for whom the termination is unwanted. As Matt has pointed out, if you are the blocked person, involuntarily subject to enforced silencing and separation from those with whom you wish to communicate, it can make you “crazy.” Potter’s blocking follows a fight with his girlfriend Beth (Janet Montgomery). His violent anger toward her upon learning she is likely to abort a newly known pregnancy prompts her not only to initiate the block, but also to leave him altogether without notice or possibility of further contact. While the block persists, Potter indeed seems to become a bit crazed, ultimately grasping at whatever slim forms of connection he can generate over the years by watching her and—as it turns out—the child’s activities from the Zed-­ Eye-­regulated remove. Rather than occasioning any form of intentional conflict resolution, which would have ensured a context of safety while each person’s concerns could be acknowledged and addressed, the Zed-Eye technology enables emotions of fear and anger to fester without mitigation or resolution. While Potter’s blocking compromises his exertion of agency, his rage threatens the violation of Beth’s will and bodily integrity, and later erupts into the murder of Beth’s father, Gordon (Ken Drury), which also results in the loss of Beth’s daughter May (Lianne Li), who is too young to care for herself in the immediate wake of her grandfather’s passing. With or without AI, the principle figures in this anecdote find ways to diminish validation of the personhood of others, culminating in the most fundamental, literal erasure of another’s personhood: death. As Potter confesses to these deaths, the conceit for the telling of the anecdotes—conversation to pass the time on a snowy holiday—is revealed to be an element of AGI.  Matt and Potter have in fact been conversing in a code-­ fabricated setting, as code-generated versions of themselves similar to the Greta cookie. In the real world, Matt sits in a precinct, aiding law enforcement in securing Potter’s admission of guilt for the deaths of Gordon and May, while Potter, imprisoned within the precinct, sits alone and quiet. This revelation leads to another: that the Potter cookie can confess, without the originating consciousness—the Potter of the world outside of code—intending or even knowing about it. If this can happen, then—as the Greta cookie’s behavior suggested—AGI performs a kind of dynamic self-awareness and independent

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decision-­making, the ability to experience pain and suffering and to adjudicate between benefits and burdens that Cranford and Smith have construed as elements of consciousness and personhood. Following law enforcement’s interests in holding Potter accountable for his crimes, the Potter cookie’s concession of responsibility is treated as sufficiently authentic to serve as grounds for conviction in the real world. Yet, at the same time, the relegation of the Potter cookie to “1000 years/minute” of listening to the same Christmas song as “a proper sentence” signals a punishment not possible—nor, if considered unacceptably cruel, likely to be condoned—for his organic counterpart. As the episode as a whole has showcased, how human beings treat AGI, rather than any intrinsic or objective quality or certification, frames AGI within the terms of conscious personhood. This relational approach to recognizing rights and selfhood mirrors the approach human beings have long extended to one another. It seems, at times, contradictory—after all, an entity (the Potter cookie) in one instance is granted the self-awareness to admit crimes for which the originating consciousness will be held culpable, while in another instance, a similar entity (the Greta cookie) is afforded no self of which to be aware at all, and is subjugated entirely against her will to the equivalent of unending slave labor. Yet, rather than collapsing the analogy between organic and inorganic creature, these contradictions only reinforce the connection: after all, human beings have demonstrated throughout history just such vagaries when it comes to acknowledging and valuing the inconvenient personhood of others.

Conclusion: The Real and the Damned? Throughout “White Christmas,” the concept of “reality” remains nebulous.4 While Matt tells Harry that “Nothing is too real,” Jennifer tells him that “There’s no such thing as real people.” Matt’s perspective embraces the distinctive value of palpable materiality—you cannot get enough of it—while Jennifer doubts that any such state exists at all. Both positions lead to consequential outcomes, with Matt effectively torturing what he views as a synthetic human mind in the form of the Greta cookie and Jennifer killing a living man, Harry. For Potter, when his block is removed and he fully sees for the first time the little girl he thought was his daughter, he considers her finally to be “real”— only to realize immediately that she never was his actual daughter. This disillusionment, knowing the girl herself to be a fact but his belief that she was his daughter to be a fiction once he encounters her directly in the “real” world, incites a rage that fuels his murder of her grandfather. It is perhaps this disillusionment that leads to his refusal to admit to the murder. As long as the event remains a story in his mind, he can regard it as unreal, but as he tells Matt, “if 4  This nebulousness pervades the entire series. When AGI entities in the form of extracted human consciousness confront the possibility of complete termination in “USS Callister,” the comment, “Whether it’s dying would depend on your philosophical position regarding sentient code,” succinctly expresses the equivocal and contingent nature of determining what might be real (2017).

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I said it, then it would be real.” Such are the tensions permeating the entire episode: the legitimacy of reality matters profoundly to both organic and inorganic entities, even as the ability to discern qualities of the “real person,” such as consciousness, eludes transparency, consistency, or even, in some ways, accountability. Indeed, the episode concludes with Matt blocked by everyone as legally instituted punishment for his crimes, and a Potter cookie lured into a confession that the original, organic Potter resists making. In “White Christmas,” whether biology-based or code, whether readily understood as real or not, an entity’s consciousness—the subjective experience of one’s self— and the integrity of personhood—the agency to advance and protect one’s own interests and well-being—prove vulnerable to disregard and exploitation by others. It might not be entirely dire within the Black Mirror universe; in “Black Museum,” viewers learn that the United Nations and American Civil Liberties Union have developed protocols regulating the export of human consciousness outside of the originating body. But, gazing into the black mirror of “White Christmas,” if we look to the future and see technology that resembles ourselves, perhaps we should be afraid after all.

References Bolton, D. (2016, January 19). “Artificial Intelligence Alarmists” Like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking Win “Luddite of the Year” Award. The Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elonmusk-stephen-hawking-luddite-award-of-the-year-itif-a6821921.html Bridges, W., & Brooker, C. (Writers) & Haynes, T. (Director). (2017). USS Callister. [Television series episode] In L. Sutton (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brison, S. (2002). Aftermath. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Bathurst, O. (Director). (2011). The National Anthem. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2013). Be Right Back. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2016). San Junipero. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Higgins, B. (Director). (2013). The Waldo Moment. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. & Huq, K. (Writers) & Lynn, E. (Director). (2011). Fifteen Million Merits. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & McCarthy, C. (Director). (2017). Black Museum. [Television series episode] In I. Hogan (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2013). White Bear. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2014). White Christmas. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Van Patten, T. (Director). (2017). Hang the DJ. [Television series episode] In N. Pitt (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Cameron, J. (Director), & Hurd, G. A. (Producer). (1984). The Terminator [Motion Picture]. USA: Orion Pictures.

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Cranford, R.  E., & Smith, D.  R. (1987). Consciousness: The Most Critical Moral (Constitutional) Standard for Human Personhood. The American Journal of Law and Medicine, 13, 233–248. Descartes, R. (1998). Discourse on Method (D. A. Cress, Trans.). (3rd ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Hare, R.  M. (1979). What Is Wrong with Slavery. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 8(2), 103–121. Hawking, S., Russell S., Tegmark. M., & Wilczek, F. (2014, May 1). Stephen Hawking: ‘Transcendence Looks at the Implications of Artificial Intelligence—But Are We Taking AI Seriously Enough?’ The Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-transcendence-looks-at-the-implications-of-artificial-intelligence-but-are-we-taking-9313474.html Turing, A.  M. (1950). Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind, 49, 433–460. Retrieved from https://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/471/papers/turing.pdf Vincent, J. (2017, July 17). Elon Musk Says We Need to Regulate AI Before It Becomes a Danger to Humanity. The Verge. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/ 2017/7/17/15980954/elon-musk-ai-regulation-existential-threat Vinge, V. (1993). Technological Singularity. Field Robotics Center at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute. Retrieved from https://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/ book98/com.ch1/vinge.singularity.html Welsh, B. (Writer), & Armstrong, J. (Director). (2011). The Entire History of You. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4.

PART III

The Planned Obsolescence of “Nosedive” Sean Redmond

“Nosedive” (03.01), the opening episode to Series 3 of Black Mirror (2011–), takes place in a near future where one’s status is determined by the ratings one gets from the people—family, friends, service providers, work colleagues—that one meets in everyday encounters. In “Nosedive”, nearly all individuals are augmented and it is through virtual interactions that identities emerge. In the episode, one wears eye implants in algorithmic tune with one’s mobile device, essentially allowing—or forcing—the characters to navigate the social world through their screen-based presentational and representational strategies, which are in turn given scores, or ratings, from one to five stars. The higher score or rating, the higher the social status one achieves. Aesthetic, impressionable selfies are the driving apparatus of this ratings culture. One’s overall rating determines a whole range of life opportunities including where one can live, the type of employment one can undertake, the finance one can access, medical provision, and the social networks that one can be part of. This ratings system is public, in two ways: one publicly awards scores to those that one meets and greets, in a heightened display of “mobile” gesturing, and one’s scores or ratings are available for all to see, determining the opportunities that one is afforded, the interactions one has, and the way one feels about oneself. These ratings systems, then, are new forms of bio-political governance, and new and all-pervasive surveillance systems made from and out of the compliance of the augmented docile body. Lacie Pound (Bryce Dallas Howard), the central character in “Nosedive”, has been fully interpellated into these status operations and has adopted them as their mode of being-in-the-world, desperate to rise up the ratings ladder, so that she can live somewhere nice and be afforded the esteem she so desperately S. Redmond (*) Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_9

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desires. Lacie reconnects with an old school friend, Naomi Blestow (Alice Eve) a “4.8”, and is invited to be her bridesmaid at a high society wedding. Lacie seizes the opportunity, believing that by attending and delivering a heartfelt love poem to their shared past, this will increase her own score from a “4.2” to a “4.5” and enable her to rent a house in an exclusive new development. As she makes her way to the wedding a series of events and encounters reduces her overall rating to less than a 2 average, which means when she arrives at the wedding it is now as an unwanted and un-invited guest. Her status dreams have been shattered. Nonetheless, it is at this moment, without her phone, that she finds her voice—her carnal, non-augmented rebelliousness—and the episode ends with a name-calling encounter with another inmate in the prison cell she has been placed in. “Nosedive” addresses a number of social concerns that have arisen over the ubiquitous use of the social media alongside a recognition of the growth of audit culture (Shore & Wright, 2015) and the way new forms of classificatory systems are emerging because of it. The episode draws attention to aspects of the quantified self (QS), big data discourse, the simulacra involved in modern identity construction, the processes of self-presentation and impression management that goes into making and possessing the self, and the bio-political forms of surveillance that are countenanced in and through these new forms of augmentation. “Nosedive” also shows how the gendered body is particularly caught up in this regime of docility and passivity. Finally, the episode offers us a way of resisting and rejecting these status cultures—a message sketched out in the final scene’s language play, and the let loose forces of Lacie’s unruly or wayward body. What will now follow is an exploration of the key themes found in the episode, concluding with a discussion of the idea of planned obsolescence, the message which I will suggest “Nosedive” is operating from.

Augmentation, Simulacra, and Governance “Nosedive” sets out its visual aesthetics and storyline through forms of augmentation, where its world is “overlaid with dynamically changing information, multimedia in form and localized for each user” (Manovich, 2006, p. 220). Lacie orientates herself through the screen of her mobile phone and her phone “presents” her identity to the world. In one scene, with a data therapist, we see her social relationships and encounters projected as data zones, mapping her ratings status, showing Lacie where her influence, or lack of, lays. However, this virtuality is counter-balanced with a vision of suburbia that is analogue, or past-tense, in part functioning as a pastiche of 1950s’ American housing, replete with picket fences and pastel shades that colour facades, walkways, furniture, and the dress/costume of the main characters. As Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey suggests: Even the drinks people are drinking and the biscuits people are eating all have a cohesiveness to get a sense of this world. I wanted to add to that with creating

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this not exactly “Stepford Wives” environment but a sickly pastel feel that would be so sweet as to be almost indigestible. Through the gritted teeth and rictus grins, there’s a kind of underlying malaise. That’s the world. We had to get elements of that in every frame. (Turchiano, 2017)

There is a “deep remixability” (Manovich, 2006, p. 221) to the mise-en-scene of “Nosedive”, dehistoricising its social and architectural temporality, and flattening it out so that its events could be taking place in almost any liquid modern, Western country (Bruno, 1987). The pastelisation, of course, suggests a modern utopia while immediately undermining such a vision by its sensorial nausea. Dystopia is the current that runs through the river of utopia in this episode. “Nosedive” draws attention to the digital rematerialisation of the social world and the supposed loss of an indexical reality through which one directly feels and experiences everyday life. In “Nosedive”, directly seeing, touching, hearing, smelling, and tasting things is always conjoined or layered with virtual versions of the sensorial. When one prepares a meal, one does so with the intention of photographing it for sharing, with the virtual presentation more important than its actual taste, since in “Nosedive” a gorgeous culinary aesthetic gets one higher status ratings. But this is rendered obscene, as McGarvey hints at above, since “what is left out of the scene” (Bauman, 2000) is the politics of seduction and coercion that the ratings culture is enacting here. The insipid pastels that fill the void of “Nosedive” begin to show us that what has been left out of the scene is humanity, intimacy, feeling. These aesthetics are challenged as the episode progresses, nonetheless, as Lacie’s road journey takes her to the grittier societal margins, where, for example, she hitches a lift with Susan (Cherry Jones), the off-grid trucker who reveals how her husband was denied cancer care because of his low star rating. In this near future, status still ends or begins with the disadvantaged: with outsiders, misfits, and workers who service the status economy. Lacie begins to see herself differently on this journey and by episode’s end, phoneless, she tears to shreds the pastel garments that had constrained and contained her. “Nosedive” recognises and establishes the present human condition as having entered a posthuman state or the time of “Me ++ … man-computer symbiosis” (Mitchell, 2003). Almost all the central characters are versions of the quantified self, plugged into devices and systems that monitor, survey, and rate them. Interaction becomes parasocial and metrical, turning human contact into virtual connections based upon one’s place in the algorithm ratings hierarchy. Lacie is—until episode end—a version Paul Virilio’s “spastic”: the catastrophic urban figure that has abandoned themselves to the passive dreamscapes of new media technologies and interfaces; unable to exist freely in the world, they are controlled by the status ratings machine (1997, p. 20). “Nosedive” embeds the politics of the quantified self into its narrative through three entwined mechanisms: Lacie’s individual obsession with self-­ tracking; collective encounters that are built out of and measured by self-­

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tracking events; and the role of the data therapist, Anthony (Colin Moss), who advises Lacie on how she can improve on her status rating. Anthony very much embodies the discourse of the Quantified Self (QS) movement, founded in 2007 by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly. QS is the term that embodies self-knowledge through self-tracking. The list of things that we can measure about ourselves is endless: among others our heart rate, respiration, hours slept, or even the number of sneezes and coughs during a day. However, not all important things in life can be measured and not everything that can be measured is important. QS really revolves around finding personal meaning in your personal data. (Quantified Self Institute, n.d.)

This mantra is of course double-speak, suggesting people gain knowledge through “living themselves as code” (Hayles, 1993) while suggesting that not everything can be measured, while measuring everything and demanding, instructing that measurement matters. In “Nosedive”, Chester (Kadiff Kirwan) can no longer gain entry to the office he works at because his score has fallen below 2, based upon negative ratings following a nasty split with his partner, while Lacie’s ratings begin to fall after accidently spilling coffee on someone. These technologies of embodied datafication are being shown to be the instruments of the frivolous played out in what presents itself as a culture of civility, at the height of the civilising process (Elias, 1978, 1982), but which reveals itself to be the exact opposite. “Nosedive’s” metrification regime sits within what Shore and Wright define as audit culture or those contexts where: the principles, techniques, and rationale of financial accounting have become central organizing principles in all aspects of society, from the provision of safe nurseries and the transformation of government to the execution of war. In stating this, we are not proposing audit as a metatype of society alongside alternatives such as feudal society, capitalist society, or postindustrial society. Rather, we see audit culture as a rationality of governance and a corresponding set of dispositions and practices. It therefore refers to a condition or constellation of processes. This is similar to what Foucault (1980) called a formation, or dispositif. Put simply, audit culture refers to contexts where auditing has become a central organizing principle of society. (2015, p. 422)

Auditing is the AI plasma that shapes, structures, and propels the governance principles in “Nosedive”. We see it operating institutionally, in the workplace and in the homespace, through the myriad of personal relationships that are operating, and through the many service-led encounters that take place. Smiles are rated. Baristas are given star ratings. The work place is audited. One’s ability to get on an aeroplane, hire a car, rent a property is subject to audit ratings. One cannot get medical treatment if one hasn’t got the right star rating and capital that is tied to it. “Nosedive” explores the two tentacles of corporate culture: the systemic, corporate manufacture and surveillance of data, and the personal or micro audited interactions—both shaping and affecting each other.

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In the real world we see that being played out through the way credit rating agencies measure not only the creditworthiness of countries and businesses but also the credit scoring of individuals to assess and then rank their eligibility for a mortgage, credit facility, personal loan, or credit card. In “Nosedive”, these two nodes of audit culture are callously embodied through the way that Chester is fired and refused entry to the workplace once his credit ratings dips below an average of two points, as I note above. Chester is both enmeshed in the macro and micro forms of auditing—he represents the downgrading of banks and countries, such as Greece, that followed the global financial crisis (GFC), and he stands as the individual cast aside in the age of precarious labour. These forms of audit culture are of course tied to new regimes of surveillance and control, to a: Profound societal change in the architecture, administration, and deployment of surveillance… This change is most often imagined as a transition from panopticism—the central monitoring of pre-sorted bodies— to “panspectrocism” (De Landa, 1991)—a 360-degree, multi-sensorial monitoring of all human bodies administered by algorithms equipped with relevant watch-lists of “filters.” This logic of surveillance, said to be characteristic for a post-disciplinary “society of control” (Deleuze, 1992), is presumably not so much about using visibility to reshape individuals (e.g. by forcing them to internalize punitive norms) as it is about deploying overlapping regimes of visibility to generate “shadows” of the individual. (Baruh & Popescu, 2017, p. 3)

These shadow individuals are writ large across “Nosedive”: they appear as individualist simulacra, plastic cut outs, such as Bets/Bethany (Daisy Haggard), who Lacie meets twice in the lift. Bets is climbing the ratings ladder, her 4.6 score a marker of her status, but she inhabits the social as mere data, as a sign of and for datafication, and as a conduit of and for panspectrocism—she looks down on Lacie because of her lesser score and occupation, something that Lacie visualises and internalises. Bets is robotic, she moves and talks as if she data stream, piercing the screen with vocalised digits and haptic numbers. Bets has become a “‘dividual’ whose parts are modulated and recombined indefinitely according to criteria as unintelligible to the individual as they are uncontrollable” (Baruh & Popescu, 2017, p. 3). “Nosedive” draws attention to the way information is stored, shared, retrieved, and accessed in contemporary life. As David Lyon contends: All contemporary institutions in the so-called advanced societies are characterized by an internal imperative to obtain, store, produce and distribute data for use in the risk management for and of their respective populations. Employers try to reduce risk—of workers using office time or equipment for their own purposes, for instance—in employment situations. The police, in concert with other institutions, work towards preventing the risks of crimes being committed, or, more generally, of threatening behaviours. And marketers do all in their power to avoid risks of lost opportunities, market niches, and, ultimately, profit. All engage in data gathering procedures to try to pinpoint risks (or opportunities) and to

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­ redict outcomes. So surveillance spreads, becoming constantly more routine, p more intensive (profiles) and extensive (populations), driven by economic, bureaucratic and now technological forces. (1998, p. 92)

In “Nosedive”, we see these surveying forces played out through impression management or the way the self is aestheticised and marketed.

Impression Management and the Vanilla Selfie “Nosedive” represents two articulating concerns about modern living: first, that identity can be possessed, maintained, and curated like a consumer product; and second, that the selfie is a form of self-actualisation tied to new forms of status acquisition. In this respect, impression management can be defined as: How people attempt to manage or control the perceptions which others form of them…The main aim of impression management is to steer others’ impression with the use of controlling information, photos, and videos and present them in a proper way in social media. In real life, the impression management takes place through both verbal and nonverbal communication, including body language, posture, speech and rank… Both in real life and online, self-representation connects the idea of who we are to the outside world. (Paliszkiewicz & Mądra-­ Sawicka, 2016, p. 204)

In “Nosedive”, we see the great lengths that Lacie goes through to create a presentation of the self that meets and sets expectations: at the level of interpersonal interaction, she has a set smile, an affirmative way of laughing, and a set of rehearsed plenitudes she uses to meet and greet people. This very much feels like the McDonaldisation or standardisation of face-to-face communication (Ritzer, 1998). Through her social media use this is magnified as we see Lacie staging meals and drawing on totemic items, such as her teddy bear, to upload as an indication of her happy life and to be awarded the status-likes she craves for and needs. At one point in the episode, we see her rehearsing her maid of honour speech, delivered with tears and verisimilitude. In “Nosedive”, emotion and affect are consumable durables, turned into ratings ideologies, emptied of their authentic power. Of course, Lacie’s self-reflexive, “back stage performance” (Lemert & Branaman, 1997) draws attention to the artifice of her performative self and sow the seeds for her dissolution and redemption by the end of the episode. In “Nosedive”, we see that self-identity is caught up in a regime of individuated ownership: is a hyper-extended version of the “possessive individual” (Pateman, 1988), concerned with the ownership of the self that has become “a kind of cultural resource, asset or possession” (Lury, 1996, p. 8). The possessive individual styles themselves in the same way as goods and services are styled: they measure their self-worth in terms of the aesthetisation of the self. Nonetheless, “Nosedive” draws attention to the relentless effort need to

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c­ ultivate one’s social status and it is left to Lacie’s brother, early in the episode, to articulate the ethical issues to do with code-switching—he sees through Lacie and the surveillance systems they operate under. Of course, it is the taking and the posting of the selfie where we see this identity formation being played out. Selfie-posting is, in the context of this episode, a self-promoting online activity designed to brand and market the self. Selfie culture includes a repertoire of codes and conventions, aesthetic principles, a time and date-stamp posting regime, set within a “respectability politics”. At one point in the episode, we see Lacie preparing an aesthetically pleasing Tapenade with the sole intention of uploading the photograph, a visual marker of her “taste distinctions” and alignment with Naomi, who had posted a “tapenade” collage earlier in the day. One key “entrapment” scene involves Lacie uploading a photograph of her doll, “Good ol’ Mr. Rags”, directly connecting her to Naomi, and to memories of their childhood friendship. The vectors of such behaviours connect “Nosedive” to identity impersonation and the way the social media masks fraudulent behaviours (Turkle, 2011). Lacie wants to blend in while being noticed—acting as the lightning rod for the inherent contradiction of neoliberal and gendered conformity and aspiration: she wants to be the same but different, better. “Nosedive” taps into the envy and longing for status that the corporatised social media elicit, foster and, seemingly paradoxically, deny. As Griffiths, Kuss, and Demetrovics summarise: … a German study of 583 Facebook users showed that people who passively follow online users, experience feelings of envy, which decreases their satisfaction with life (Krasnova, Wenninger, Widjaja, & Buxmann, 2013). Another study found that people who have used Facebook for a long time and people who check Facebook more frequently believe that other people are happier than they are, that others have a better life, and that life is unfair (Chou & Edge, 2012). In a Swedish study of 1011 participants, the authors showed that people use Facebook to convey the best of their lives, interesting events, and positive happenings, which makes others falsely believe they live a lesser life by social comparison which in turn negatively affects their self-esteem and well-being (Denti et  al., 2012). (2014, p. 120)

“Nosedive’s” sickly pastel palette in part is meant to represent the illusion of happiness that the social media engenders. This is supported by a soundtrack that scores the underlying anxiety, as the composer Max Richter neatly summarises: Everything is very shiny and perfect, and it sort of glows and everyone’s smiling because they can’t afford not to smile, otherwise they get a bad rating! So it’s got this incredible anxiety hovering beneath this smiley surface, and that to me was very compelling. I started thinking about the sort of music that would support that while at the same time not flattening out the emotionality of it, because actually it’s an utterly tragic film. It’s so bleak. It’s a sort of hell that she lives in, so I wanted music that was emotional and would speak to those feelings. (Warwick, 2016)

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“On Reflection”, the recurring piece of music in the episode, is composed of piano and strings, the latter cutting through the softness of the notes, while a deep and rumbling base is found across the episode to represent the virtual machinery that sits behind the pink façade. When someone is given a low rating, the sound of atonal notes seems to weep into the scene. Of course, Lacie carries the baggage of envy and sadness through the episode: she is an “addicted” social media user, following those she most wants to be like, aspiring to have the status that they do. The more she aspires the less happy she seems to be: the frenzy for status, for recognition, for visibility, an empty substance that leaves her dead cold. Lacie is also a conduit for “respectability politics” or: … a self-presentation strategy historically adopted by African-American women to reject White stereotypes by promoting morality while de-emphasizing sexuality. While civil rights activists and feminists criticize respectability politics as reactionary, subordinated groups frequently use these tactics to gain upward mobility. (Pitcan, Marwick, & Boyd, 2018, p. 163)

In terms of the social media, respectability politics involves people “self-­ censoring, curating a neutral image, segmenting content by platform, and avoiding content and contacts coded as lower class” (Pitcan et  al., 2018, p. 163). One aspect of this civil social discourse is the “vanilla selfie”, where people post images that reflect and refract the higher ideals and values of whiteness, of white culture, disavowing their own racial or ethnic identity, with the intention of passing as white, and gaining social status as a consequence. This is particularly true of black women who “adopted self-presentation strategies that downplayed sexuality and emphasized morality and dignity to reject White America’s stereotypes of them” (Pitcan et al., p. 164). All the augmented characters in “Nosedive” practise this regime of respectability: the vanilla selfie—the incorporation of politeness, manners, heightened civility—defines almost everyone who takes part in this new ratings-based economy. However, Lacie’s adoption of respectability politics is complex, given that she is white but not “ideally” so. Lacie is not high status (upper class), thin or blonde, the embodied markers used to designate idealised whiteness. She is clumsy, her etiquette slips, and we come to realise that she was an outsider, bullied or picked up on in school, her copper red hair a marker of “difference”. There are other characters in “Nosedive”, of course, who are marked by forms of difference and who compromise the civil discourse of the episode: the black cab driver who gives Lacie a low rating does so, it is suggested, because he can see through her faux performance; the Electro Station Attendant (Andrew Roux) gives Lacie a low score because their exchange wasn’t “meaningful”, drawing attention to the boredom of low status service jobs; and Susan has gone off-grid because of the way rating datafication let her husband die of cancer because he couldn’t foot the bill, itself a comment on America’s broken health-care system.

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Difference is of course heavily gendered in the episode: the data, audit surveillance technologies, and cultures that Lacie is subject to and the object of, position and model her as a compliant female—that is until she starts to unravel and then resist these processes.

Lacie Let Go As Marcell Mauss (1973/1934) contends all those “techniques of the body” which we think of as innate and essential are in fact acquired behaviours. Walking, sitting, eating, and sleeping are all produced through particular regimes of training: training exercises that make bodies civil and gendered and racialised. Michel Foucault suggests that the body is “directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs” (Foucault, 1977, p. 25). Foucault also suggests that the regulation on or of the body has moved away from the more formal, external forms of bodily domination and control towards a system of surveillance that emerges from individual self-regulation, self-management, and self-discipline. In the modern world, according to Foucault, this body has become increasingly “docile” because of the exhaustive amount of regulation imposed upon it from within. In a data-driven world, regulation is metrical, a pulsating sea of forces, working to manage behaviour at the virtual level. We can see these technologies of the self-working through Lacie’s self-­ monitoring and self-management regimes: she practises her smile in the mirror; rehearses her maid of honour speech; engages in polite small talk; and her clothes are pastel prim and proper, the very definition of respectful politics, of whitely femininity. Lacie moves with small steps and tries to keep herself small. Of course, this is all heavily gendered. Iris Young (1980) and Sandra Lee Bartky (1997) have both written on how women are “taught” to move and use their bodies in typically limited, constrained postures, where reach and stretch actions are met by an invisible wall or boundary which women literally feel they cannot reach or stretch beyond. As Bartky writes: Here is field for the operation for a whole new training: A woman must stand with stomach pulled in, shoulders thrown slightly back, and chest out, this to display her bosom to maximum advantage. While she must walk in the confined fashion appropriate to women, her movements must, at the same time, be combined with a subtle but provocative hip-roll. But too much display is taboo: Women in short, low-cut dresses are told to avoid bending over at all, but if they must, great care must be taken to avoid an unseemly display of breast or rump. (1997, p. 136)

The training in “Nosedive” is virtual and electronic. Lacie’s performativity is networked, screen-based, assessed in and through algorithm relays and the shadows of auditing screens found in the plasma of the world she lives in. Lacie

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mirrors her behaviour on others, on the profiles she reads, on the screen she stands in front of and responds to—watching herself, watching the data, as the data “watches” and replays her. In her life encounter with Bets, Lacie runs her eyes over her profile, her cat pictures, while each of them scrolls the screens on their phones, the connection both a form of ratings surveillance, and a performance of polite status behaviour. Nonetheless, “Nosedive” does offer us a complex set of gender roles. Naomi appears on the screen in a bikini, in a dressing gown, not overly sexualised but a girly, commodified blonde bombshell figure. Susan is a denim-clad trucker with a husky voice, while the female fans of Sea of Tranquillity are bitchy and besotted. We see different versions of femininity, then, in the episode, paving the way for what will become Lacie’s resistance to and rejection of her ratings training. Lacie is also classed, that is to say her status is not top tier and her bigger-sized body gives her lower status away at crucial times: she spills wine on herself before her first reunion video call with Naomi; she accidently spills coffee on someone instigating what becomes a run on her rating average; and she struggles to fill her rental car with petrol. While these are gendered—indicators of the ditzy, uncoordinated female—they are articulated with class dimensions and ultimately lead the way to her implied or possible emancipation. Lacie is off-white (Negra, 2001) and her difference becomes her escape. Lacie begins to reject respectability discourse at the airport when her flight is cancelled, and because her rating has dipped below a 4.2 average, no longer qualifies for a standby ticket. The scene comments on audit culture more generally, as the interaction with the check-in attendant represents the various categories of traveller status and fare conditions and the robotised training of air staff when complaints arise. When Lacie swears and becomes animated, security is called and her rating is immediately deducted by two points. What Lacie is doing here, of course, is rejecting the codes of civility and the constraints placed on language and on the body. Lacie is rejecting gendered discourses and the politics of ratings culture. That the scene is also tinged with comedy, with satire, moves the episode into the body genre where repressions are let go of. Lacie fully lets go of her body at the wedding: having stolen a quad bike and crashing it, she arrives dishevelled, eye liner running down her face, covered in mud, her dress ripped and her pink pastel shades sodden and scorched. She delivers her speech, dislocated and full of bile and anger. The wedding is idealised whiteness personified—full of (mainly) beautiful white people, white flowers, white dresses, blonde hair, in a luscious mansion setting. Phones are pictured in everyone’s hands as they rate the setting, the couple, the speeches. This is an audited wedding. Lacie’s speech is memorial, drawing back on the memories the two friends shared together. However, these are not singularly sugar-coated memories but recall, amongst other things, Naomi’s cheating with her boyfriend. The speech is also fully corporeal, fleshed, in voice and in action, as she rejects respectability politics and gendered discourse. Lacie gesticulates widely, prowls the stage. The wedding guests begin to score her speech lowly, and this produces what

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becomes a strangulated laugh out of Lacie’s twisted mouth. In a sense the control over her smile, her giggle, her mouth that civility has demanded of her, has been replaced with an inner scream, and then with language that takes aim at her friend, at audit culture, and respectability. Up until now, “Nosedive” has imposed upon Lacie what might be called a “linguistic constraint and physical confinement—confinement to the body, to claustral spaces, and to inner narratives” (Silverman, 1988, p. 45). In this scene, Lacie’s voice and body is radically charged, as she threatens to expose “discursive mastery as an impossible ideal” (Silverman, 1988, p. 86). When describing her own size as a girl, Lacie blows up her cheeks, makes gurgle and blob-like noises, drawing attention to the tyranny of slenderness that marks out female identity. The wedding scene ends with Lacie picking up a knife while threatening to cut the head off her rag doll and “stick it up her ass”. Scatological humour is combined with mental breakdown which ultimately could be read as stereotypical gendered representations—hysteria and vulgarity taking over this off-white imposter who shouldn’t be there in the first place. However, the final scene mitigates this reading: locked up in a cell, and with her phone and eye implant confiscated, she engages in a name-calling stoush with the Man in Jail (Sope Dirisu). Lacie takes off her dress—peels away the strictures of conformity, the confines of gender—and watches what appear to be snowflakes or feathers fall in the cell: nature, “reality” entering the grey cubicle. When she spies the Man in Jail staring at her, she tries to (negatively) rate him with her hand, as if the device was still a part of her. The verbal repartee that ensues is both existential and childish: Lacie says, “don’t wonder”, he says, “it would be a dull world without wonder”; he says, “I don’t like your brassiere”, Lacie says, “I don’t like your moustache”. Free of respectful politics, of audit culture, they can say what they feel and the joy in expressing this freedom is beautifully captured as they press their faces against their see-through cell doors at each other. That Lacie is “different” and the Man in Jail is black suggests two things: difference is still marginalised and punished; and that differences united can create new forms of wonderment.

Planned Obsolescence “Nosedive” is the first episode to be produced by and aired/streamed on Netflix, and as a consequence had a larger budget. Netflix, of course, is one of the engines and drivers of audit culture, of employing algorithms to shape their programming. They are kingpins in creating a new type of “algorithmic audience”: On the one hand, the Netflix algorithm is positioned as the solution to the complications of fragmentation for media industries in an era of globalization. Algorithms Netflix employs are thought to directly impact audience participation. While this may, in fact, be the case, algorithms also work discursively to position the audience. This discursive positioning of the audience through the algorithm we label the “algorithmic audience”. (Burroughs, 2018, p. 10)

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The very concerns, then, we find embedded in “Nosedive” are those being acted upon by Netflix. To see Black Mirror, to happen upon it, to be offered it as a choice in your Netflix feed, will in part be shaped by the algorithms that are used. Netflix will have bought the production and distribution/airing rights of the show on the basis of audience share, of the ratings the show garnered in its first two seasons—on the algorithms they will have employed to test and measure its appeal and longevity. Netflix, like any media provider, will cancel a show if the algorithm falls below a certain threshold, a certain market share. The very auditing tools that are shown in the near dystopian future of “Nosedive” are already being used by Netflix. Similarly, the Social Credit System being developed by the Chinese government is an audited/auditing national reputation system, intended to standardise the assessment of citizen’s and business’s economic and social reputation, or “credit”. “Nosedive” is no longer at all a fiction. There is something of a planned obsolescence in such ratings systems: calculations are made on beginning and end dates; cycles are created to only last a certain period of time. All that is solid melts into audited virtual air. Nothing is planned to last in “Nosedive”, or rather the streams one finds oneself navigating, posting to, reviewing, replaying, are instantaneous, gone, scrolled down, as soon as they have been seen. That is not to stay that “Nosedive” doesn’t limit or fix opportunities but those who don’t make a higher rating status are imagined to be obsolete in any case, like the memories that Lacie shares but which Naomi has long forgotten. Where is the wonder in that?

References Bartky, S. L. (1997). Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power. In K. Conby (Ed.), Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory (pp. 129–154). London: Columbia University Press. Baruh, L., & Popescu, M. (2017). Big Data Analytics and the Limits of Privacy Self-­ Management. New Media & Society, 19(4), 579–596. Bauman, Z. (2000). Scene and Obscene: Another Hotly Contested Opposition. Third Text, 14(51), 5–15. Bruno, G. (1987). Ramble City: Postmodernism and Blade Runner. October, 41, 61–74. Burroughs, B. (2018). House of Netflix: Streaming Media and Digital Lore. Popular Communication, 9, 1–17. Elias, N. (1978). The Civilizing Process, Volume 1: The History of Manners. Oxford: Blackwell. Elias, N. (1982). The Civilizing Process, Volume 2: State Formation and Civilization. Oxford: Blackwell. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish. London: Tavistock. Griffiths, M. D., Kuss, D. J., & Demetrovics, Z. (2014). Social Networking Addiction: An Overview of Preliminary Findings. In K. Rosenberg & L. Feder (Eds.), Behavioral Addictions (pp. 119–141). New York: Elsevier. Hayles, N. K. (1993). Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers. October, 66, 69–91. Jones, R., & Schur, M. (Writers) & Wright, J. (Director). (2016). Nosedive. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix.

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Lemert, C., & Branaman, A. (Eds.). (1997). The Goffman Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Lury, C. (1996). Consumer Culture. Cambridge: Polity. Lyon, D. (1998). The World Wide Web of Surveillance: The Internet and Off-World Power-Flows. Information, Communication and Society, 1(1), 91–105. Manovich, L. (2006). The Poetics of Augmented Space. Visual Communication, 5(2), 219–240. Mauss, M. (1973/1934). Techniques of the Body. Economy and Society, 2, 70–88. Mitchell, W. J. (2003). Me++ The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Negra, D. (2001). Off-white Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom. London: Routledge. Paliszkiewicz, J., & Mądra-Sawicka, M. (2016). Impression Management in Social Media: The Example of LinkedIn. Management, 11(3), 203–212. Pateman, C. (1988). The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity. Pitcan, M., Marwick, A. E., & Boyd, D. (2018). Performing a Vanilla Self: Respectability Politics, Social Class, and the Digital World. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 23(3), 163–179. Quantified Self Institute. (n.d.). What Is Quantified Self? Retrieved from https://qsinstitute.com/about/what-is-quantified-self/ Ritzer, G. (1998). The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions. London: Sage. Shore, C., & Wright, S. (2015). Governing by Numbers: Audit Culture, Rankings and the New World Order. Social Anthropology, 23(1), 22–28. Shore, C., Wright, S., Amit, V., Brown, J., Bruun Jensen, C., Maguire, M., et al. (2015). Audit Culture Revisited: Rankings, Ratings, and the Reassembling of Society. Current Anthropology, 56(3), 431–432. Silverman, K. (1988). The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Turchiano, D. (2017, August 6). ‘Black Mirror’ DP Seamus McGarvey Talks About Finding the ‘Photographic Heart’ of ‘Nosedive’. Variety. Retrieved from https:// variety.com/2017/tv/awards/emmys-black-mirror-seamus-mcgarvey-interview-1202520496/ Turkle, S. (2011). Life on the Screen. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Virilio, P. (1997). Open Sky. London: Verso. Warwick, O. (2016, October 27). Black Mirror Composer Max Richter on Soundtracking Society’s Social Media Meltdown. Factmag. Retrieved from http://www.factmag. com/2016/10/27/max-richter-soundtrack-black-mirror-nosedive/ Young, I. (1980). Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility and Spatiality. Human Studies, 3, 137–156.

Augmented Reality Bites: “Playtest” and the Unstable Now Soraya Murray

Introduction Do augmented and virtual reality technologies dislodge us from a grounded sense of space and time—or even a stable notion of self? Often packaged as tools for entertainment or play, do these simulations work us over, deeply disrupting our ability to distinguish what is real? These dystopian fears of total technological immersion are explored in the Black Mirror (2011–), episode entitled “Playtest” (03.02). In it, we meet Cooper (Wyatt Russell), an American traveler in London. Short of cash, Cooper agrees to playtest a cutting-edge augmented reality video game. Submitting to having a tiny brain stimulator implanted at the base of his skull, he experiences a series of impressive simulations that leaves him wanting more. Before long, the unwitting Cooper is in deep, experiencing visualizations of an increasingly profound, horrific and ultimately lethal order. Originally airing on 21 October 2016, director Dan Trachtenberg’s episode was well-timed to coincide with the October release of Sony’s PlayStation VR headset. “Playtest” pointedly cast virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies as horror scenarios with no outside, in a moment when VR was being advertised with a great deal of techno-utopianism around its immersive potentials. Therefore, the episode’s consideration of VR/AR technologies specifically in relation to their implementation for video games makes sense, given the time in which audiences would first view it. Writer Charlie Brooker has claimed that the episode is “not about anything particularly. I just wanted

S. Murray (*) University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_10

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to do a haunted house movie” (qtd. in Stolworthy, 2016). And it is true that a portion of the episode unfolds in a fictive Saito Gemu game design studio ­horror house, which conforms to a typical survival horror game genre scenario. An avid fan of video games, Brooker certainly inserts a few knowing winks to fellow gamers within the story. But it is clear that “Playtest” also constitutes a provocation regarding a set of anxieties present within game culture (Brooker, 2009). At the time, both the games industry and its ancillary cultures had undergone several years of unpleasant public scrutiny. On the one hand, a divisive harassment campaign within game culture called GamerGate had become so vitriolic as to spill over from its insular communities, attracting mainstream attention for its toxic male culture of protecting “fun” against the incursion of feminism, progressivism and identity politics (Chess & Shaw, 2015; Mortensen, 2016; Campbell, 2018). These complaints were often euphemisms for the increasing presence of women, trans/non-binary individuals and people of color, the constituencies largely targeted. This was compounded by growing criticality—also driven by women and people of color—toward the representations within video games, specifically, the pervasive white male hero and relative lack of any other kind of protagonist. On the other hand, Silicon Valley itself faced ongoing criticism on several fronts, the most significant of which were its shoddy statistics on gender parity and racial inclusion in the tech industry (Zarya, 2016), its disreputable “bro” culture (Hicks, 2017; Chang, 2018) and its brash approach to innovation exemplified in Facebook’s old motto: “move fast and break things” (qtd. in Murphy, 2014; Ganesh, 2018). In terms of its story, the episode suggests the seductiveness and annihilative potential of VR and AR technologies to the body and mind. But on another level, the casting of key characters of color within the scenario operates as subtext, pointing back to this troubled period and smartly poking at a fresh wound within game culture. Before probing the deeper more implicit cultural and social commentary embedded in the episode, there is the technological anxiety itself to consider, which is satirized in “Playtest”. The most superficial, obvious game-oriented anxiety featured is that of progressively more invasive virtual/augmented reality which, within the world of this near-future narrative, dangerously threatens to dislodge players from their grounding in the real. This has been explored in several technological thrillers; namely, David Cronenberg’s film Existenz (1999), the Wachowski siblings’ iconic The Matrix (1999) and, more recently, Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010). Existenz features more invasive forms of technology that seem to organically integrate with characters’ bodies in horrifying ways, then refuse to separate, and whose characters increasingly lose their grip on whether they are in a simulation or the so-called real. In the imaginings of The Matrix, the real and the simulated are clearly aesthetically marked (the former is grungy and worn, the latter slick and clean) and even the steampunk tech used to make the connection is decidedly invasive and violent to the body. The real and the simulated, in this case, are not easily confused. Inception, a

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film invoked by Wyatt Russell himself during an interview about “Playtest”, is not technically about pure simulation, but about hacking into the dream-life of a subject, and changing it for purposes of manipulation and control (qtd. in Strause, 2016). Targets are unwittingly subjected to infiltration of their subconscious through an experimental technology, which can be used to extract secrets, shape perception and, most radically, plant an idea that feels utterly authentic (called “inception”). “Playtest” specifically references Inception in several ways. The Japanese businessman at the center of the film is named “Mr. Saito”, and Shou Saito (Ken Yamamura) is the head of Saito Gemu, the fictitious game studio featured in the Black Mirror episode. More significantly, the relation of time-within-­ time between the onion-like subconscious layers, in relation to the real, as illustrated in Inception, forms an important element of the “Playtest” narrative. And, questions about the very nature of memory as building blocks of a stable self drive the plot. While the episode outwardly expresses a paranoia or moral panic tied to video games and the people who engage with them, in many ways, it is less explicitly about games per se, and more focused on technology’s ability to blur the barriers between the simulated and the actual, the body and technology. Or as Brooker, colorfully put it: “Hey, I’ll tell you what would be mental: if you could inject a video game augmented reality system into your fucking eyes” (qtd. in Stolworthy, 2016). This chapter proposes that beneath its moral tale, “Playtest” is a techno-horror which images societal anxieties about the disorienting pace and fluidity of advanced technological life. This is metaphorized in both the main character’s inability to assimilate himself smoothly into virtual space and the erosion of the barrier between his body and computational technologies, leading to his increasing inability to discern the simulated from the real. Three critical instabilities emerge from this episode regarding (1) the body in technology, (2) memory and forgetting and (3) time dilation. This chapter addresses itself to how the anxiety narratives around these three elements of the unstable “now” unfold and unveils how “Playtest” is far more than a simple indictment of video games and VR/AR technologies. In the episode’s beginning sequence, a burdened Cooper is quietly leaving his parents’ home. His mother calls him on his mobile phone, but Cooper doesn’t answer. Throughout, there’s a strong sense that the episode is as much about this blond, blue-eyed, likable character himself—as a cipher for something—as it is ‘about the technology narrative. Given the topic and plot, Cooper seems a bit older than the image likely conjured in the minds of viewers when the term “gamer” is used. However, at the time of the episode’s first airing in 2016, statistics identified the average male player at 35 years old (Entertainment Software Association, 2016)—so Cooper actually fits the bill. He comes across as good-natured and oriented toward and fun, a guy who doesn’t have a mean bone in his body; the human equivalent of a Golden Retriever. After a long trek through Asia and Europe, Cooper seeks the companionship (via a dating-app) of a young London journalist named Sonja (Hannah John-Kamen, who is British of Nigerian and Norwegian descent). He admits

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he is traveling “to get away from family at home”—his father has recently died of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Cooper has left his bereaved mother behind, who calls him incessantly throughout his travels; but he never answers, wanting to, as he put it, “make all the memories that I can, while I can”. These themes of making memories, memory impairment and mortality loom throughout. But Cooper has immediate problems: he’s broke. To fund the trip home, he answers an ad for playtesters from Saito Gemu, a cutting-edge game design studio. Sonja urges him to photograph anything he can so she can have the scoop on their secret project. Cooper agrees.

Synched “Playtest” takes a turn toward themes of advanced technology and the body, when the story moves to the remote Saito Gemu design studio. There, Katie (Nigerian-born British actress Wunmi Mosaku) welcomes Cooper and requests that he surrenders his phone for confidentiality purposes. She powers it down, before ushering him into an antiseptic white room with two gray chairs arranged around a table. Katie leaves and Cooper turns on his phone, photographs the device and texts it to Sonja. Unaware of what’s transpired, Katie returns, and explains that he will be participating in a test of a prototype “Interactive Augmented Reality System” that requires a minor medical procedure. She implants a small node (a “Mushroom”) in the back of Cooper’s neck, and notes the beginning of the playtest as 5:38pm. This ongoing marking of the time will become significant. Cooper’s phone rings, and Katie is perplexed, grabs the phone, mutters that she already turned it off, then powers it down again and proceeds synching the first simulation to his node. After a preliminary test that verifies Cooper’s high compatibility with their tech, Katie introduces him to genius designer Shou Saito, a youngish, scruffy, hoodie-clad innovator who pitches his revolutionary gaming system as the “most personal survival horror game in history”. Shou explains that the game accesses the individual fears of its players using the node, and then integrates those personal phobias into the game. Cooper eagerly agrees to participate. Once Cooper’s Mushroom is synched, Katie notes the begin time as 6:17pm. Cooper is deposited at a creepy mansion, and told that there’s nothing for him to do except wait for the augmented reality experience to begin. Katie guides him remotely by way of an earpiece. There are a few increasingly disturbing simulations that impress Cooper: first a small spider, and later, fanciful manifestations of a feared high-school bully. Then Sonja unexpectedly knocks at the door, accosts him and morphs into a skull-headed monster that he kills. Shrieking, he opens his eyes to realize that the audiovisual simulation is gone, and with it the monstrous Sonja as well as his injuries. Hysterical and wanting out, Katie reassures him that none of it can actually hurt him and that the deactivation access point can be found upstairs. At the top of the stairs, he bristles at the notion of what personal fear will be manifested at the other side of the

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door. Katie persuades him to move forward entreating, “Would you kindly open the door?” The phrase “Would you kindly” would be instantly recognizable to game aficionados as the critical hypnotic suggestion trigger from BioShock (2K Games, 2007)—widely considered one of the most iconic video games—in which deception, moral ambiguity and mind control play a major part. Within the dystopian narrative, Jack, the playable character, is brainwashed and it is the phrase “Would you kindly” that comes to signify the manipulation of his will, even while he feels he is in control. In “Playtest”, this phrase is uttered to Cooper by Katie, whose disembodied, soothing voice compels him into a room of his deepest fear—and he complies. This can simply be regarded as a kind of intentional inside joke or “Easter egg” for the video game savvy audience. But it also functions to add a layer of possible meanings. Cooper is the sort of character who would have played BioShock. Likely, the dominating narrative within the game of not being in full mental command of one’s actions would tap into Cooper’s deep-seated fear of losing his mind to external forces controlling or tampering with him, or to a disease that would rob him of his memory. Once inside the room, Katie verbally torments Cooper about his mother, his guilt and his memory—what does she look like? Can he remember? His memory is being overwritten, she explains. A hysterical Cooper shrieks “Get it out of my head!” and he attempts to cut the Mushroom from his neck with the shard of a broken mirror. Shou and Katie rush into the room, but it’s too late. The damage is done; Cooper can no longer remember who he is, or why he is there.

Game Time Time dilation and the notion of simulations within simulations are abruptly introduced at this critical point in the narrative. As the memory-deprived Cooper is dragged off, he screams again “Stop!” and the simulation dissolves. Suddenly, he’s back in Shou’s office, and both the designer and Katie are apologizing for the unintended intensity of the augmented reality experience, to which he seems overly susceptible—and which Katie notes has occurred in a duration of one second. That is, it is still only 6:17pm. Cooper calms himself and returns to America, to his home in Seattle, to his mother (Elizabeth Moynihan), whom he finds at the top of the stairs in her bedroom, distraught and wanting to know where “Cooper” is. She seems disoriented, confused, perhaps suffering from dementia. “I have to call him”, she says. “Where did Cooper go? I have to Call Cooper. I have to call and make sure he’s safe”. Cooper becomes upset and screams for his “Mom”. Then suddenly, we are back in the white room again, and Cooper is seizing in his chair and shouting “Mom” while his phone rings with an incoming call from “Mom”. The time is 5:38. Katie and Shou debrief about what could have gone wrong, while Cooper’s lifeless corpse is zipped into a body bag. Katie notes the interference caused by his phone, and the duration of the playtest as 0.04 seconds.

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These notions of time within time and nested simulations invoke Inception. In the film, time moves with increasing speed at each deeper layer entered into within the subconscious. What feels like a lifetime at a deep layer simulation may occur at a much shorter span of time in a shallow layer. Time dilation in “Playtest” operates similarly; by the time the episode reaches its conclusion, the viewer realizes they have been presented with at least two layers of time in addition to the apparent duration elapsed in the actual time of the “player”, Cooper. The innermost layer of the story presents Cooper’s playtest time as lasting from roughly 5:38pm on the day he visits Saito Gemu, until he purportedly returns from London to Seattle. The middle layer suggests that his experience of the aforementioned occurred within one second. And the outermost layer that corresponds to the diegetic time of the story for the characters involved is revealed at the end of the episode to have occurred in 0.04 seconds, or four one hundredths of one second. The time dilation presented in “Playtest” also evokes constructions of time within video games. In-game time is often discontinuous with the “lived” time spent interacting with the game. For example, sports games often truncate time, abbreviating minutes in “realtime” for seconds in the game. In a more extreme example, Jason Rohrer’s art game Passage presents a lifespan of its playable character within a duration of five minutes (Rohrer, 2016, p. 27). A core mechanic of Jonathan Blow’s Braid (Number None, 2008) is the ability to rewind time. The in-game clock in Grand Theft Auto III and its sequels (Rockstar, 2001–) exchanges every minute of “lived” time for 1 hour within the game, so that a “day” within the game occurs in 24 minutes of “realtime”. Game scholar Jesper Juul describes this in terms of a difference between “fictional time” or diegetic game time, and “play time” or the time spent actually playing the game (Juul, 2005, pp. 141–162). Additionally, video games often borrow structures of time from cinema in other ways; for example, the innovation of “bullet time” as imaged in The Matrix—in which time slows to follow the trajectory of bullets and action heroes moving through space. Mainstream titles like the Max Payne series (Remedy Entertainment, 2001–), and Remember Me (Dontnod Entertainment, 2013), utilize time and memory in compelling ways, slowing time in key moments of intensity and focus, or suspending characters within memories, flashbacks or atemporal non-spaces. Repetition is core to mastery in video games; anyone who has played a video game knows this. Players often repeat particular actions in order to perfect their skill set, and for their bodies to learn the twitch control reflexes required of the system with which they are engaging. It is a rare exception that a game does not allow for repetition, replay and endless chances to refine and perfect maneuvers. Repetitions in “Playtest” come in the form of refining and revisiting Cooper’s fears within the stacking chronologies (spider, bully, monstrous woman, memory loss), until the most perfect fear is achieved: loss of the self. The implication is that the program is too powerful and efficient, and Cooper’s traumatic memories are too intense, so that their conjuring and repetition have dislodged his sense that he is experiencing a simulation.

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Video games often use time, memory and repetition in central ways that are unique to the medium, but also borne of the advanced technological and ­globalized ethos into which they came into being. I have elsewhere described (Murray, 2018) that this metaphorizes the condition of postmodernity, in which the increased pace of the market (and by extension, life), the increased economic dependencies, the flow of bodies, information and goods (Castells, 2000), and increasingly flexible modes of accumulation have resulted in the compression of space-time (Harvey, 1989). Manuel Castells, a venerated sociologist of the information society, globalization and communications, describes this paradigm shift as resulting in a dispersion of conventional anchors of self-­ definition. This in turn elicits an anxious, destabilized sense of the self; in short, it engenders a profound identity crisis. Castells writes: “Our societies are increasingly structured around a bipolar opposition between the Net and the self” (Castells, 2000, p.  2). In his book entitled Game Time, Christopher Hanson proposes that “games offer new modes of temporal control that fundamentally alter our experience and understanding of time in contemporary culture” (Hanson, 2018, p. 2). This all seems to bear down own Cooper, who has flung himself into the world, and into a profound distortion of his own reality and sense of self, without giving much thought to how destabilizing the experience would be. The phenomenological experience of gameplay is one with a relatively small but important body of scholarship. Among others, Brendan Keogh has discussed video game time in consideration of the embodied experience of game play (Keogh, 2018, pp.  141–165). Keogh describes time in video games as “intricate and malleable” (Keogh, 2018, p. 141) and that “through repetition and failure multiple pasts and lost futures converge on the present play experience to intermediate each other through muscle memory, genre conventions, retries, ‘Game Overs’, seriality and wasted time. To play a videogame”, according to Keogh, “is to overwrite invalidated pasts and to peek at alternative futures” (Keogh, 2018, p. 140). In Cooper’s case, the final reveal of time dilation unveils layers of increasingly disturbing overwritten pasts, failures of memory and repetitions that collapse into a permadeath—a character’s permanent “game over” caused by a critical interference into the self by communications technologies and AR augmentation.

Losing the Real “Playtest” is as much about mobile devices as technological extensions, as it is about video games. Within the narrative, part of the strange slippage that occurs between the so-called real (or authentic) experience and the virtual is a direct result of the implant on Cooper’s neck, and the way it immediately becomes entangled with him. Sherry Turkle, esteemed psychologist and professor, has studied people’s intimate connections with their computational media since the 1980s (Turkle, 1984, 1995). In more recent work, Turkle has addressed wearable media and cellular technologies, describing how these “always-on/always-on-us” devices reshape us into “tethered selves”.

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In particular she sees that the “self, attached to its devices, occupies a liminal space between the physical real and its digital lives on multiple screens” (Turkle, 2008, p. 122). In her formulation, the body now exists in a mixed reality that combines the world around us with our simultaneous co-presence within the spaces of people and things made ready to hand by our devices. Cooper mediates his relations through his mobile phone: he defers his connection to his mother, establishes his connection to strangers in foreign spaces with dating apps, mediatizes his travel experience, generates funds through work apps, and ultimately the device ends him. One’s incapacity to divide the virtual experience from the real, the simulation from the actual, applies a pressure on the body—it invokes a duress around maintaining the autonomy of the body as whole, separate and under control. This is not so subtly conveyed in the Mushroom implant which is described as having tendrils that integrate with Cooper’s brain, becoming permanent and violating his sanity with the very fears it has searched from within. This reverses the sci-fi utopian vision of increasingly transparent, tool-free, haptic media that extends the body but remains under command of the user. Of course, in reality, VR and AR technology has always been awkward, clunky and comparatively unwieldy—not to mention that wearable technology like VR goggles or AR systems technologies tend to impair the user’s access to the lived-world around them, inducing a sense of vulnerability. It is common to find the VR/AR experience disturbing or to have drastic corporeal responses like motion-sickness. Circling back now to the specters of memory, experience and forgetting, it is important to consider the central importance of these notions for the main character. Cooper craves authentic experiences, and collecting them before it is all too late. This is motivated by having observed his father’s death from Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive brain disorder which robs its victims of memory, skills and eventually the ability to conduct basic daily functions. Making memories, the fear of forgetting them, and losing the self, drives him. To “make all the memories that I can, while I can” is Cooper’s goal. However, within one iteration of his horror experience, he is left incoherent and confused as a result of his melding with technology. Within another layer, it is in fact his mother who exhibits signs of dementia, upon his fictive return home. Interestingly, the horror house stairway leading up to the room in which he faces his greatest fear (losing his mind) echoes the exact shape and cinematic framing of the stairs leading up to his mother’s room, where he finds her calling out for “Cooper”, unable to recognize him. Cooper’s mind has mapped the horror house onto his family home, where real fears, not AR manifestations, lie in wait. More than fanning a moral panic around games and violence, “Playtest” seems to capture a public anxiety around video games and the violent re-­ orientations they demand of body and mind. Certainly, the episode images the seductiveness and annihilative potential of virtual and augmented reality technologies to wreak havoc on the self. While the episode superficially seems to express a paranoia or moral position tied to immersive video games and the

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people who engage with them, in many ways, it is less explicitly about games per se, and more focused on technology’s ability to blur the simulated and the actual. If, in keeping with Hanson, “games afford players new ways to experience and understand time”, then I would argue that this episode images anxieties about what new forms of time are cracked open with advanced computational technology and global capitalism (Hanson, 2018, p. 12).

Under Pressure in the Unstable Now Ultimately, the episode highlights a few core modern techno-anxieties. First, it stages a societal fear around the ability of our bodies to keep up with our technologies, and furthermore, how to negotiate those technologies which seem to challenge the autonomy of the body. Second, it suggests that one of the key building blocks to our notion of the self—memory—may be uniquely imperiled when invasive technologies tamper with a user’s ability to access the real, or discern the actual from the simulated. Third, new understandings of time initiated by hypercapitalistic global markets, combined with simulation technologies, profoundly alter our sense of space and time in contemporary culture. All of these elements swirl around the figure of Cooper, who stands in for a normative “average” user, and who is ill-prepared to assimilate the unstable new into himself. There is, in addition, a deeper critique of the tech industry which is implicit in the subtext of “Playtest”. Consider the centrality of Katie and Shou Saito, who embody the “move fast and break things” ethos of the games industry, and the tech world more generally. In the innermost layers of the AR experience, Katie is nefarious and sadistic in her manipulation of Cooper. She has lured him into something that will destroy his mind, and does so as a representative of a company willing to test human subjects under potentially lethal conditions. She is an emissary of Shou Saito, who is, within that same reality, cold and instrumentalizing of his playtesters, apparently far more concerned with his invention than the damage caused. In the horror house, Shou apologizes to the demented Cooper, and tells his henchmen to “put him with the others”—indicating that there have been numerous previous playtest casualties. Within the intermediate reality of the game designer’s office, Shou again apologizes to Cooper (who has in this scenario survived) for the intense experience. In the outermost level, Cooper has suffered profound brain overstimulation and death within a fraction of a second. His eyes are rolled up into his head, and there’s blood coming from his nose. Shou Saito is debriefing with Katie, asking her what happened. He reprimands her for not taking the phone from him, and she assures him it is an “oversight” which “won’t happen again”. Katie is consumed with keeping her job, and Shou is preoccupied with the technical failure of the experiment; neither seem bothered by Cooper’s brain synapses having been fatally overstimulated. This displays a ruthless utilitarianism and goal-orientation toward technological progress, one that is morally disconnected from ethical concerns.

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This, along with the racialized configuration of characters surrounding Cooper, conjures a disturbing set of relations in which he is besieged by women and people of color, all of them connected to the tech and all of them trying to kill him. Cooper is framed as the noncritical, normative or “average” user looking for the next thrill. Within his fantasy, the biracial Sonja potentially lured him to his death, and attacked him within his horror fantasy. Katie, who is black, presents a deceptively warm “face” of (or interface to) the industry, but ultimately leads him to the digital gallows. The Japanese mad tech genius, Shou Saito, is rapaciously goal oriented. It is a smart provocation that illustrates an awareness of identity-based tensions within the game community. “Playtest” enters into a public conversation in which the games industry and its ancillary cultures are in a period of reconciling notions of “fun” and “entertainment” with their social, political and moral responsibilities. “We make our technologies”, Sherry Turkle wrote, “and they, in turn, shape us. So, of every technology we must ask, Does it serve our human purposes?—a question that causes us to reconsider what these purposes are” (Turkle, 2011, p. 19). Within the logic of “Playtest”, the powerfully disruptive capacities of mobile and immersive entertainment technologies threaten our cohesive selves, in the unstable now. Not to worry—it isn’t real; it’s all a game.

References 2K Games. (2007). BioShock [Video Game]. Novato, CA: 2K Games. Brooker, C. (2009, December 11). Charlie Brooker: Why I Love Video Games. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/ dec/11/charlie-brooker-i-love-videogames Brooker, C. (Writer), & Trachtenberg, D. (Director). (2016). Playtest. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Campbell, C. (2018, July 25). Gaming’s Toxic Men, Explained. Polygon. https://www. polygon.com/2018/7/25/17593516/video-game-culture-toxic-men-explained Castells, M. (2000). The Rise of the Network Society (2nd ed.). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Chang, E. (2018). Brotopia: Breaking up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley. New York, NY: Portfolio/Penguin. Chess, S., & Shaw, A. (2015). A Conspiracy of Fishes, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying About #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59(1), 208–220. Cronenberg, D. (Director), & Cronenberg, D., Hamori, A., & Lantos, R. (Producers). (1999). Existenz [Motion Picture] USA: Dimension Films. Dontnod Entertainment. (2013). Remember Me [Video Game]. Osaka: Capcom. Entertainment Software Association. (2016). Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry. Entertainment Software Association. Retrieved from http:// essentialfacts.theesa.com/#key-facts Ganesh, B. (2018, April 26). The Silicon Valley Mantra of ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ Has Fallen Miserably Short. NS Tech. Retrieved from https://tech.newstatesman. com/guest-opinion/move-fast-break-things-mantra Hanson, C. (2018). Game Time: Understanding Temporality in Video Games. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

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Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Hicks, M. (2017, August 10). What the Google Gender ‘Manifesto’ Really Says About Silicon Valley. The Conversation. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/whatthe-google-gender-manifesto-really-says-about-silicon-valley-82236 Juul, J. (2005). Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Keogh, B. (2018). A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mortensen, T. E. (2016). Anger, Fear, and Games: The Long Event of #GamerGate. Games and Culture, 13(8), 787–806. Murphy, S. (2014, April 30). Facebook Changes Its ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ Motto. Mashable. Retrieved from https://mashable.com/2014/04/30/facebooksnew-mantra-move-fast-with-stability/ Murray, S. (2018). On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space. New York, NY: I. B. Tauris. Nolan, C. (Director) & Nolan, C., & Thomas, E. (Producers). (2010). Inception [Motion Picture] USA: Warner Bros. Number None. (2008). Braid [Video Game]. San Francisco: Number-None Inc. Remedy Entertainment. (2001–). Max Payne [Video Game]. Espoo: Remedy Entertainment. Rockstar. (2001). Grand Theft Auto III [Video Game]. New York: Rockstar. Rohrer, J. (2016). The Game Worlds of Jason Rohrer. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Stolworthy, J. (2016, October 21). Our 40-Minute Chat with Black Mirror Co-Creator Charlie Brooker. The Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/ arts-entertainment/tv/features/black-mirror-season-3-charlie-brooker-interviewrelease-date-joe-wright-nosedive-shut-up-and-dance-a7372841.html Strause, J. (2016, November 3). ‘Black Mirror’ Star Wyatt Russell Breaks Down ‘Playtest’s’ Twisty Ending. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from https://www. hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/black-mirror-season-3-wyatt-russell-breaksdown-playtests-twist-ending-943546 Turkle, S. (1984). The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Turkle, S. (2008). Always-On/Always-On-You: The Tethered Self. In J. E. Katz (Ed.), Handbook of Communication Studies (pp.  121–137). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York, NY: Basic Books. Wachowski, L., & Wachowski, L. (Directors) & J. Silver (Producer). (1999). The Matrix [Motion Picture] USA: Warner Bros. Zarya, V. (2016, November 16). Female Programmers Make Nearly 30% Less Than Their Male Counterparts. Fortune. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2016/ 11/16/gender-pay-gap-programmers/

Shame, Stigma and Identification in “Shut Up and Dance” Stuart Joy

From the opening episode of Black Mirror (2011–) in which a fictional British Prime Minister (Rory Kinnear) is coerced into having sex with a pig on national television, the anthology series has rarely shied away from presenting audiences with characters who are publicly shamed. In “White Bear” (02.02), for example, Victoria Skillane (Lenora Crichlow) is paraded through the streets in a Perspex box as a punishment for her role in the kidnapping and murder of a child. In the series one-off Christmas special “White Christmas” (02.07), retinal implants allow individuals to easily identify and subsequently ostracise Matt (Jon Hamm)—a voyeur who secretly records a sexual encounter between two strangers. Elsewhere, in “Nosedive” (03.01), an app enables users to publicly rate each other based on their everyday interactions resulting in one woman (Bryce Dallas Howard) suffering a nervous breakdown as she watches her social ranking rapidly decline. In “Hated in the Nation” (03.06), a number of people—all of whom transgress societal norms in some way—become targets in an online hate campaign that blurs the line between victims and perpetrators. In the finale of season four, “Black Museum” (04.06) the digital consciousness of a falsely convicted killer (Babs Olusanmokun) is tortured as part of an interactive museum exhibit that allows paying customers to participate in the re-enactment of his death. In these and several other episodes, creator Charlie Brooker and producer Annabel Jones exploit the generic conventions of science fiction, inviting audiences to contemplate a series of moral and ethical questions prompted by the use of shame and stigma as tools for social control and, in many cases, criminal justice.

S. Joy (*) Southampton Solent University, Southampton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_11

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Even though much of Black Mirror’s appeal relies on its sceptical attitude towards the impacts of advanced technology, this theme is frequently s­ ubsumed by our emotional investment in deeply flawed characters whose dependence on various electronic devices mirrors our own. Episodes regularly feature individuals who are confronted with difficult moral decisions that arise from their misuse and abuses of technology. Most episodes, however, refuse to provide viewers with a straightforward position from which to pass judgement. Rather, they prompt them to think first and foremost about their own critical response to encourage a more open-ended reflection on the various dilemmas presented. A few episodes, for instance, feature narrative twists that force the viewer to re-evaluate their emotional reactions to the endings, thereby complicating any claim of moral superiority over the characters and events. Nevertheless, there is perhaps no episode that offers a more surprising denouement than “Shut Up and Dance” (03.03), which draws viewers into the series’ most complex engagement with shame, stigma and criminal justice. In this episode, a teenager called Kenny (Alex Lawther) is unknowingly filmed masturbating while watching pornography on his computer. Significantly, however, in the episode’s climactic moments the character is revealed to have been looking at images of children. Such is the potency of the twist at the end of “Shut Up and Dance” that it has the dramatic effect of revising our understanding of the entire narrative. Writing for The Atlantic, Sophie Gilbert notes that: The reveal throws everything else in the episode into confusion, from the scene in the beginning of the episode where Kenny is nice to a little girl in the restaurant to the sympathy we’ve been encouraged to feel for Kenny throughout his ordeal…the question for viewers at the end is, can we still sympathize with him? Should we? (2016)

The revelation that Kenny was looking at images of children whilst masturbating requires the audience to reconsider their own affective and intellectual responses to the central character, as well as the anonymous hackers responsible for blackmailing him. The twist effectively ridicules the very possibility of passing moral judgement on either. Instead, it encourages viewers to consider the ethical implications of empathising with people who are deemed to be perverse, or those who force people to do terrible things. This chapter begins by tracing the cultural significance of “the paedophile” within society1 through a broader consideration of shame, stigma and the relational concept of othering. I then go on to discuss the ways through which “Shut Up and Dance” offers a commentary on the role of retributive justice and the “normalisation of pornography” (Poynor, 2006). The remainder of the chapter outlines how the episode utilises a series of narrative deceptions to 1  In this chapter, I am focusing specifically on Britain and the United States due to the affinities between the two countries in terms of their regulation and treatment of sex offenders.

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encourage viewer identification with a character whose actions would ordinarily provoke feelings of anger and revulsion. Finally, the chapter concludes with my observation that the episode is part of a wider trend identified by Steven Kohm and Pauline Greenhill (2011) that highlights the prevalence of more empathic portrayals of “the paedophile” in fictional crime narratives. Like these other texts, “Shut Up and Dance” enables audience members to adopt sometimes uncomfortable points of view in ways that facilitate a consideration of shame, stigma and criminal justice. This section briefly focuses on how Netflix, the largest online subscription-based streaming platform in the world,2 is contributing towards a mainstreaming of discourses related to “the paedophile” through increased access to a range of content dealing with alternative perspectives.

“I only looked at pictures” The discovery that Kenny was masturbating while looking at pictures of children is significant precisely because his character represents a clear departure from the cultural construction of “the paedophile”. “Painted in stark terms”, writes Steven Kohm (2017, p.190), “the prevailing popular conception of the pedophile [sic] since the late twentieth century has coalesced into a recognizable constellation of attributes both feared and loathed by the general public”. He goes on to note that paedophiles are assumed to be “violent and predatory monsters—mostly strangers—organized into sophisticated, often international crime rings intent on abusing children, or lone predators who stalk parks, playgrounds and schoolyards looking for victims to lure away with candy” (2017, p.190). Such cultural attitudes prevail, in part, because the popular media has played such a pivotal role in shaping public perceptions of “the paedophile” (Greer, 2007). In the tabloid press, for example, sex offenders—particularly those who commit offences against children—are branded “evil”, “monsters”, “beasts” and “sex fiends” (Soothill, Francis, & Ackerley, 1998; Thomas, 2000, p. 1). Such stereotyping is not restricted to newspapers. Rather, factual documentaries, special investigative reports, chat shows and fictional narratives in television dramas and films have all historically presented “the paedophile” as “the Other”, with a capital “O” (see Lee, 2005; Lockyer & Attwood, 2009). The process of “othering” is an integral part of establishing both individual and collective identity within a social context. Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson (1996, p. 8) note, for example, that “who and what others are…is intimately related to “our” notion of who and what “we” are. That is, “we” use the Other to define ourselves: “we” understand ourselves in relation to what “we” are not”. The “othering” of sex offenders that predominantly takes place in the media reinforces the comforting impression that those who commit such acts 2  At the time of writing, Netflix has over 125 million subscribers (Disis, 2018). By comparison, Amazon Prime Video has roughly 26 million subscribers and Hulu has approximately 20 million subscribers (Disis, 2018).

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are fundamentally different from the rest of us. Jennifer Klein (2017, p. 488) concurs suggesting that, “the image of the reviled ‘monster’ offender is much easier to comprehend than having to imagine that an uncle, a cousin, or even a mother could be the real monster”. She goes on to remark that, “The stranger is easily placed in the “other” category but when the offender actually comes from the ‘us’ category, it is more difficult to comprehend” (2017, p. 488).3 The widespread practise of othering sex offenders performs an important social function insofar as it situates the threat posed by these individuals outside the sanctity of the home and the family. It reaffirms the values of the dominant social order by stigmatising perpetrators through negative depictions and stereotyping. In his 1963 essay on the topic, Erving Goffman defined stigma as “an attribute that is deeply discrediting…really, a special kind of relationship between attribute and stereotype” (1963, p. 4). According to Goffman, stigma is a social construction that emerges primarily from deeply rooted ideological assumptions that are intimately connected to negative stereotypes and preconceived notions about a person (or persons). Put simply, those stigmatised are seen to have less social value than others because of their perceived or imagined differences (Goffman, 1963). In society, being accused of a crime or being convicted of a criminal offence is one of the most stigmatising statuses that a person can possess (Westervelt & Cook, 2009). However, as Rose Ricciardelli and Dale Spencer (2018, p.  40) point out, beyond the label of “prisoner” or “exoffender”, the “most distressing stigma possible is that tied to the status of sex offender”. The ways in which these individuals experience both tangible and symbolic forms of stigma have been documented at length elsewhere (see Madden, 2008; Rickard, 2016), but to summarise, the most common collateral consequences reported by convicted sex offenders are housing restrictions and maintaining employment (Jennings, Zogba, & Tewksbury, 2012). Research has also shown that sex offenders are likely to experience symptoms of emotional distress such as depression and hopelessness (Levenson & Hern, 2007). In many cases, sex offender registration laws and other legislative acts have exacerbated the social and psychological problems encountered by convicts and, most importantly, have  increased their likelihood of re-offending (Leon, 2011). However, such policies can be seen to reflect a more general perception that those who commit these types of crimes cannot be rehabilitated into society and deserve to suffer a punishment that is proportional to their actions (Edwards & Hensley, 2001). Stigma, then, appears to envelop any and all attempts at rehabilitation whether culturally (in terms of shared social values) or institutionally (in terms of the practices of those who administer criminal justice). In the past 20 years, the demand for this kind of retributive justice has been considerably strengthened by an increased public awareness of a small 3  Research confirms that the clear majority of child sexual abuse cases occur within the home and are perpetrated by family members, relatives and friends (Davidson, 2008).

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number of extremely violent cases of child sexual abuse reported by the media. Highly publicised crimes involving pathological strangers who kidnap, assault and murder their victims have perpetuated widespread “myths” surrounding the nature of “the paedophile” while constructing a distorted picture of national crime rates. Such misconceptions can be further connected to an exaggerated public perception of “stranger danger” (Silverman & Wilson, 2002) as well as an overly critical view of the criminal justice system. Following the abduction and murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne, for example, the News of the World—at the time the UK’s best-selling Sunday tabloid—began a public campaign of naming and shaming convicted paedophiles to encourage policing and judicial reforms. On 23 and 30 July 2000, the newspaper published the details of 82 known paedophiles leading to widespread vigilante action (Bell, 2002). The campaign was suspended on 6 August 2000 following claims that innocent people were being attacked (Silverman & Wilson, 2002). Nevertheless, this kind of unofficial lawenforcement has flourished in the age of the Internet which has afforded users with a level of anonymity previously unavailable. This, in turn, has led to a notable rise in various forms of “digital vigilantism” directed against alleged sex offenders (Trottier, 2016).4 It is at this intersection—between technology and identity—that Black Mirror frequently situates its social commentary and in “Shut Up and Dance”, the Internet is the primary mechanism through which the anonymous hackers are able to  punish Kenny through the threat of public shaming.

“They’re gonna put it everywhere” The threat of public exposure is a repeated motif throughout “Shut Up and Dance”. Towards the end of the episode, for instance, Kenny is confronted by an unidentified man (Paul Bazely) who has also been subjected to the demands of the anonymous hackers. “We’ve got to fight, or else they post everything they’ve got on us” the man says. “What sort of fight? How do we know when it’s over? How…How do we know who’s won?” Kenny replies. The man remains silent, but a wry smile appears across his face and Kenny eventually grasps the implication of his twisted expression. “I don’t know about you, but my life’s over if this gets out. Fucking over. What did they get you for?” the man says, “I just looked at some photos that’s all. I just looked at one or tw-, one photo” Kenny replies. The man registers Kenny’s momentary verbal slip and gestures with a knowing nod before responding disingenuously, “Yeah, yeah I just looked at pictures too”. The scene subsequently takes a darker turn when he goes on to ask, “How young were they? In the pictures?” Kenny 4  In the UK, for example, there are at least 75 active paedophile hunter organisations (Evans, 2018) targeting suspected perpetrators using a variety of strategies shaped by recent technological advances.

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doesn’t answer the question, but instead quietly sobs while shaking his head from side to side thereby cementing a bond between the two men that is affirmed when the man says, “Me too”. Moments later, they receive a text that informs them that they must fight to the death. The man begins to move towards Kenny, his gaze fixed upon him with clear intent. However, Kenny pulls out a gun and turns it on himself. The pace of the non-diegetic music begins to increase and reaches a climax as he pulls the trigger but, unbeknownst to him, the gun isn’t loaded. Nevertheless, what becomes clear during this sequence are the lengths that either man will go to avoid facing the stigma of being publicly exposed. When asked how viewers should feel when it is revealed that Kenny was filmed masturbating while looking at child pornography, Brooker replied: “It’s ambiguous, isn’t it? Your empathy for him drains away. You look at him fresh. It’s not to condone what the hackers have done…But it puts a new spin on the logic of what they’re doing. It complicates things” (Hibberd, 2018). The hacker’s “logic” that Brooker refers to is, on the one hand, seemingly underpinned by the principals of vigilantism and retributive justice. During the episode’s final moments, for instance, a montage sequence alludes to the nature of the crimes committed by those who were similarly blackmailed, and in each instance, the individuals responsible are held accountable for their actions. This sequence culminates in Kenny receiving a phone call from his Mother who cements his identity as a paedophile when she declares that he’s been “looking at kids” just as the police arrive to arrest him. Writing for Digital Spy, Alex Mullane (2016) notes that, “While our sympathies have been firmly with Kenny throughout, this turns us against him. All of a sudden, the emotional backbone of the hour is shattered”. The episode’s ending confronts the viewer with a sense of profound discomfort by revealing that they have been empathising with a paedophile. The ending also allows the viewer to temporarily shift their identification to the anonymous hackers who—at least from one perspective—seem to have been justified for punishing Kenny. Unfortunately for the viewer, what appears to be a simple switch is complicated by the assumption that the hackers were motivated by a sense of moral righteousness. This is immediately undermined when each of the victims receive a text containing the ubiquitous “Trollface” meme. Created in 2008 by Oakland-based artist Carlos Ramirez, the black and white drawing of a face with a large mischievous grin was initially intended to criticise the nature of online trolling—the practise of posting deliberately provocative, offensive or abusive messages to incite others for fun (see Hardaker, 2010). Ironically, the meme has since been widely adopted by those who seek to identify themselves as being trolls. The decision, therefore, to utilise the “Trollface” meme during the climactic scenes of “Shut Up and Dance” restricts viewer’s ability to assume a position of moral superiority by situating them between the perverse impulses of one character and the sadistic drives of another.

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“Jerking off to porn or something? Well, everyone does that” The enactment of retributive justice in “Shut Up and Dance” is misleading as, for much of the episode, the viewer is led to believe that Kenny is the innocent victim of a highly invasive crime. The initial threat, an email from an anonymous account, states “WE SAW WHAT YOU DID”. Then another: “REPLY WITH YOUR PHONE NUMBER OR WE POST THE VIDEO TO EVERYONE IN YOUR CONTACTS”. The subsequent cut to an extreme close-up on the words “WE POST THE VIDEO” and the positioning of the camera as a point-of-view (POV) shot encourages the audience to adopt a shared perspective of the events as they unfold. The ensuing close-up of Kenny’s face functions as what Carl Plantinga calls a “scene of empathy” as “the interior emotional experience of a favoured character becomes the locus of attention” (1999, p. 239). The close-up reflects Plantinga’s argument that “facial expressions in film not only communicate emotion, but also elicit, clarify, and strengthen affective response—especially empathic response” (1999, p. 240). In this moment, the character’s panicked reaction is emphasised not merely to communicate the severity of the threat posed by public shaming, but also to encourage viewer identification and invite empathy. The use of a GoPro camera at several other points throughout the narrative is also symbolic in this regard as the proximity of the camera to the actor’s face not only captures the intensity of moments where Kenny attempts meet a deadline, it also provides an intimate connection with the character that invites empathic identification with him. Beyond the style, aesthetics and mise-en-scène of the episode, there is a wider interplay of other factors that contribute towards how “Shut Up and Dance” attempts to engineer an empathic engagement with Kenny. One of the most prominent examples is how the episode responds to the growing public concern over privacy in the digital age. In recent years, a series of high-profile data breaches involving celebrity iCloud accounts, government networks and several well-known retailers have highlighted an increasing cultural anxiety about the security of our personal and private information. In “Shut Up and Dance”, this theme materialises when Kenny’s webcam is hacked thereby allowing those responsible to surreptitiously record his illicit behaviour. The blackmail that results from his actions prompts empathy from the viewer and makes a moral judgement of Kenny more difficult because the hackers actions appear to be unjustified in relation to his own indiscretion. Writing for The Independent, Christopher Hooton and Jacob Stolworthy (2016) remark, “why is Kenny so upset throughout, when all he’s done is masturbate to some porn like every other teenager?” However, such reductive comments draw attention to a broader issue that relates to the cultural acceptance of pornography and its consumption as part of everyday life (Knudsen & Sorensen, 2004). Since the turn of the millennium, there has been a growing concern about the potential risks posed by the unprecedented proliferation of online pornography alongside the increasing sexualisation of young women in a variety of

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cultural forms such as art, fashion and advertising (Kinnick, 2007, p. 7). The visibility of such imagery in mainstream society is invariably accompanied by a set of associated social values that enforce a gendered hierarchy of power in which women are treated as objects to be used and abused for male sexual pleasure. This trend, often referred to as the “normalisation of pornography” (Poynor, 2006) or the “pornification” of everyday life (Aucoin, 2006; Paul, 2005), is evident at various points throughout the episode. One of Kenny’s co-workers, for example, openly objectifies a woman who has sent him a private video by sharing it with another colleague and remarking upon her physical attributes, “She was some yoga teacher, proper bendy” he says. Later in the episode, it also becomes clear that Kenny’s reluctant accomplice Hector (Jerome Flynn) was planning on filming his encounter with a female prostitute. At another point, Hector assumes that Kenny was caught masturbating to pornography and attempts to comfort him by saying, “Well, everyone does that. The fucking pope probably does that”. The culture of pornography presented in “Shut Up and Dance” has a distinct role insofar as it allows the viewer to be deceived by the narrative twist. This, in turn, has the effect of drawing attention to the episodes underlying commentary on the link between the apparent legitimacy of pornography and society’s blindness to broader social issues such as gender inequality and child abuse. The initial narrative deception occurs during a crucial scene that begins with Kenny sitting idly watching a music video on television. Although this fleeting moment may appear somewhat redundant upon first viewing, it is nonetheless significant as it not only offers a subtle critique on the widespread exploitation of women’s bodies in cultural forms such as music videos (see Aubrey & Frisby, 2011), it also deceives the audience by inferring a connection between the image of a semi-naked woman and Kenny’s subsequent state of arousal. The opening medium over-the-shoulder (OTS) shot shows Kenny staring at the image of a semi-naked woman on television. A combination of the framing and composition instantly aligns the viewer with the perspective of the protagonist whose lingering gaze explicitly positions her as an object of his desire. The ensuing shot temporarily defuses the sexual tension of the sequence by revealing that Kenny is watching the music video in the presence of his younger sister (Maya Gerber). Moments later, however, another cut communicates his retreat from the living room to the privacy of his bedroom where he is shown locking the door behind him. This specific action, when considered in relation to the content of the previous shots, provides the viewer with an indication of his intentions which are cemented when he closes an open window blind, approaches his laptop and picks up a box of tissues. The scene then cuts from the wide angle of Kenny’s room to a medium shot taken from the perspective of his webcam as he stands to unbuckle his belt and unzip his jeans. The deliberate arrangement of these shots is designed to manufacture a misleading assumption about the nature of the pornographic material that Kenny uses to satiate his arousal. In this regard, the opening shot of the semi-naked woman is particularly influential as it creates far reaching consequences for the remainder

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of the episode. The viewer begins with a mistaken idea and this, in turn, informs a series of subsequent narrative assumptions that culminate in the revelation that Kenny was masturbating while looking at images of children. The episode’s conclusion is not only shocking because it reveals the true nature of the crime committed by the protagonist, it also draws attention to the viewer’s flawed moral evaluation of his actions. Specifically, it is their tolerance of pornography as a cultural norm that contributes towards their inability to perceive the narrative’s deception until the climax of the episode. The casting and performance of Alex Lawther as Kenny also plays a significant role in deceiving the viewer by challenging the popular cultural norms about the nature and appearance of “the paedophile”. Otherwise best-known for playing a teenager in The End of the F∗∗∗ing World (Channel 4, 2017–) as well as younger versions of Alan Turing in The Imitation Game (2014) and Christopher Robin in Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017), the child-like appearance of Lawther goes against the conventional depiction of “the paedophile” firmly ensconced in the public imagination by presenting Kenny as a socially awkward teenager. Discussing the audition process for the episode, Alex Lawther remarked: I read the script, and thought, “Come on Kenny, just turn yourself in—don’t rob a bank or kill someone, it’s not that big of a deal!” And then I thought “Oh God!” and felt very unnerved. How brilliant that they’d made me sympathise with a paedophile for so long, and the complexity of that, because he’s so young. (qtd. in Brooker et al., 2018, p. 165)

While Kenny’s age is not explicitly addressed within the episode, in promotional interviews Lawther has referred to the character as being 19-years old (HeyUGuys, 2016) and there are several contextual clues that indicate he is in his adolescence. Significantly, these clues have the subtle effect of obscuring the truth about Kenny while simultaneously contributing towards the degree of empathy that audience members are encouraged to feel towards him. To begin with, Kenny is introduced occupying one of the lowest rungs of the socio-­ economic ladder working as a busboy in a fast-food restaurant and, to compound matters, he is bullied by some of his co-workers. While not strictly the preserve of young people, many jobs available to teenagers are in the service industry and so assigning Kenny this occupation is one of the earliest indications of the character’s age. The fact that he is also intimidated by his colleagues only furthers his characterisation as a child-like victim. Kenny is also shown to be living at home with his family, possessing a particularly close relationship with his Mother who, at one point, infantilises him by affectionately pinching his cheeks. The most telling sign of Kenny’s adolescence, however, is his immature attitude towards sex. During one conversation, for instance, he is unwilling to admit that he had been caught masturbating, preferring instead to use the vague term “doing it”. When combined, these character traits are demonstrative of an individual stuck in a state of arrested development. This is

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nowhere more symbolically apparent than during a scene in which Kenny involuntarily wets himself, a regressive act that has clear connotations of early childhood. Moments such as these draw attention to Kenny’s child-like vulnerability and Lawther amplifies this crucial aspect of the character’s persona through a series of nervous tics, twitches and stutters. These moments within the narrative and Lawther’s performance techniques contribute towards shifting the discourse surrounding paedophilia from outright shame and stigma towards a more empathic engagement with the perpetrator. By the same token, these character attributes can be retro-fitted to the idea of the paedophile in popular culture thus challenging the dominant stereotype.

“Is that what you are? A dirty, sick, disgusting pervert?” The TV critic Andy Greenwald notes that, “Black Mirror asks rough, unsympathetic questions about the world we’ve made and the one we’re in the process of making and then, before you can even reach for an answer, it makes you complicit” (Greenwald cited in Knafo & Lo Bosco, 2013). Unlike several episodes of Black Mirror that are set in the near future, “Shut Up and Dance” depicts a world set in the present day and, as a consequence, addresses a range of contemporary anxieties. Principal amongst these is our cultural response to the figure of “the paedophile”. By encouraging the viewer to empathise with Kenny throughout the episode, “Shut Up and Dance” fundamentally questions the reasoning that stigmatises paedophiles. John Douard and Pamela Schultz (2013, p. 184) acknowledge that, unlike other groups that have been stigmatised, “most of us cannot—or refuse to—identify with sex offenders”. To perceive Kenny, then, as a deeply flawed human being rather than a monstrous Other, is to enter into an empathic relationship with the character in a way that forces the viewer to confront preconceived notions about those responsible for committing these types of crimes. Rather than focusing on the symptom, “Shut Up and Dance” encourages the viewer to consider the possible causes. Steven Kohm and Pamela Greenhill (2011, p.  196) suggest that crime films—particularly those focusing on the moral complexities of paedophilia— provide a “figurative site for the re-imagination of justice, a discourse which develops, but also critiques, popular and criminological understandings”. Like “Shut Up and Dance”, films such as Happiness (1998), Mysterious Skin (2004) The Woodsman (2004) and Little Children (2006) similarly challenge the depiction of the archetypal sex offender and therefore offer opportunities to interrogate the issue of paedophilia from philosophical, moral and ethical perspectives. Kohm and Greenhill go on to suggest that these films are part of a wider trend towards more complex portrayals of “the paedophile” in contemporary fictional crime narratives. Crime films, they note, “set up conditions for more sympathetic emotional encounters with pedophile [sic] characters, pushing audiences in sometimes uncomfortable ways that allow for identification with offenders and invite them to question taken-for-granted assumptions

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about justice” (2011, pp. 197–198). Historically, however, these types of films have largely existed on the margins of mainstream cinema featuring primarily on the festival and art house circuit. Likewise, other attempts to offer a more complex and layered depiction of “the paedophile” can be found in documentaries that have traditionally been produced in partnership with, or distributed by, a Public Service Broadcast (PSB) Network. These include examples such as Louis Theroux: A Place for Paedophiles (BBC 2, 2009), The Paedophile Next Door (Channel 4, 2014), I, Pedophile (CBC Television, 2016) and Stacey Dooley Investigates: Second Chance Sex Offenders (BBC 3, 2018). In these instances, the funding mechanisms associated with independent filmmaking and the programming remit of public service broadcasting offer a certain degree of protection from excessive market or political pressures. However, this is frequently at the expense of a limited theatrical release, fewer reviews in the popular press and, as a result, lower viewing figures. In contrast, the business model of Netflix means that writers, directors and producers are provided a significant degree of creative control alongside the potential to reach a large audience. The implications of more empathic representations of “the paedophile” on a platform such as Netflix are significant, especially in a society which has perhaps become even quicker to judge and shame others. Marieke Jenner (2018, p.  270), in her discussion of the various forms of consumption that Netflix (and the “quality” television forms that it embraces) introduces to viewers, connects the streaming platform’s willingness to challenge the norms of television with the “transgression of social norms”. Elsewhere, Jenner (2018, p. 171) explores how Netflix has attempted to curate a distinct brand identity that is increasingly connected to diversity based on the growth of its in-house productions. For Jenner, programmes such as Orange Is the New Black (Netflix, 2013–) demonstrate how Netflix has progressively shifted away from delivering “quality” television for the purposes of binge-watching, opting instead to emphasise the acceptance of identities that are traditionally inscribed as “other” (2018, p. 174). While Jenner’s observation is principally related to the conventional expressions of racial, gender and sexual identity, “Shut Up and Dance” demonstrates how this approach can be extended to others who have also been stigmatised, albeit for reasons that remain culturally taboo. In doing so, ultimately the episode asks complex moral questions about who we identify with and why.5

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Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Greer, C. (2007). News Media, Victims and Crime. In P. Davies, P. Francis, & C. Greer (Eds.), Victims, Crime and Society. London: Sage Publications Ltd.. Hardaker, C. (2010). Trolling in Asynchronous ComputerMediated Communication: From User Discussions to Academic Definitions. Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture, 6(2), 215–242. Herzog, R., & Humphries, S. (Directors), & Herzog, R., & Humphries, S., & Maddocks, N. (Producers). (2014). The Paedophile Next Door. [Television Movie] London: Channel 4. HeyUGuys. (2016, October 6). Alex Lawther Premiere Interview—Black Mirror Season 3. [Online Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_ continue=43&v=L9WEjsnlGsI Hibberd, J. (2018, December 12). Black Mirror Showrunner Explains Season 3 Endings. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved from https://ew.com/article/2016/10/23/ black-mirror-postmortem-interview-season-3/ Hooton, C., & Stolworthy, J. (2016, October 21). Black Mirror Review: The Season 3 Episodes, Ranked. The Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent. co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/black-mirror-season-3-episodes-1-6-netflixranked-a7373321.html Jenner, M. (2018). Netflix and the Re-invention of Television. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Jennings, W., Zogba, K.  M., & Tewksbury, R. (2012). A Comparative Longitudinal Analysis of Recidivism Trajectories and Collateral Consequences for Sex and Non-­ sex Offenders Released Since the Implementation of Sex Offender Register and Community Notification. Journal of Crime and Justice, 35, 356–364. Jones, R., & Schur, M. (Writers) & Wright, J. (Director). (2016). Nosedive. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Kassell, N. (Director), & Daniels, L. (Producer). (2004). The Woodsman. [Motion Picture] UK: Tartan Films. Kinnick, K. (2007). Pushing the Envelope: The Role of the Mass Media in the Mainstreaming of Pornography. In A.  Hall & M.  Bishop (Eds.), Pop Porn: Pornography in American Culture (pp. 7–27). Westport, CT: Praeger. Kitzinger, C., & Wilkinson, S. (1996). Theorizing Representing the Other. In S. Wilkinson & C. Kitzinger (Eds.), Representing the Other: A Feminism & Psychology Reader (pp. 1–32). London: Sage. Klein, J. (2017). The Media Response to Sex Crimes. In T.  Sanders (Ed.), Oxford Handbook on Sex Offences and Sex Offenders: Confronting and Challenging the Issues (pp. 482–497). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knafo, D., & Lo Bosco, R. (2013). The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture. London: Routledge. Knudsen, V.S., & Sorensen A. D. (2004). Unge, køn og pornografi i Norden – Slutrapport (Youth, Gender and Pornography in the Nordic Countries. Final Report). Copenhagen: The Nordic Council of Ministers. Retrieved from https://www.nikk. no/wp-content/uploads/NIKKpub2006_Unge-kon-og-pornografi_ Slutrapport.pdf Kohm, S. (2017). Representing the Paedophile. In M. Brown & E. Carrabine (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology (pp. 190–201). New York: Routledge.

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Kohm, S., & Greenhill, P. (2011). Pedophile Crime Films as Popular Criminology: A Problem of Justice? Theoretical Criminology, 15(2), 195–216. Lee, J. (2005). Pervasive Perversions: Paedophilia and Child Sexual Abuse in Media/ culture. London: Routledge. Leon, C. (2011). The Contexts and Politics of Evidence-Based Sex Offender Policy. Criminology and Public Policy, 10(2), 421–430. Levenson, J. S., & Hern, A. (2007). Sex Offender Residence Restrictions: Unintended Consequences and Community Re-entry. Justice Research and Policy, 9(1), 59–73. Lockyer, S., & Attwood, F. (2009). “The Sickest Television Show Ever”: Paedogeddon and the British Press. Popular Communication, 7, 49–60. Madden, S. (Ed.). (2008). The Labeling of Sex Offenders: The Unintended Consequences of Best Intentioned Public Policies. Lanham. Maryland: University of America Press. Paul, P. (2005). Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families. New York: Owl Books. Plantinga, C. (1999). The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film. In C. Plantinga & G. M. Smith (Eds.), Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion (pp. 239–256). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Poynor, R. (2006). Designing Pornotopia: Travels in Visual Culture. New  York: Princeton Architectural Press. Ricciardelli, R., & Spencer, D.  C. (2018). Violence, Sex Offenders and Corrections. London: Routledge. Rickard, D. (2016). Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Silverman, J., & Wilson, D. (2002). Innocence Betrayed: Paedophilia, the Media and Society. Cambridge: Polity. Solondz, T. (Director), & Hope, T., & Vachon, C. (Producers). (1998). Happiness. [Motion Picture] USA: Good Machine. Soothill, K., Francis, B., & Ackerley, E. (1998). Paedophilia and Paedophiles. New Law Journal, 148, 882–883. Thomas, T. (2000). Sex Crime: Sex Offending and Society. Cullompton: Willan. Trottier, D. (2016). Digital Vigilantism as Weaponisation of Visibility. Philosophy & Technology, 30, 1–18. Tyldum, M. (Director), & Grossman, N., Ostrowsky, I., & Schwarzman, T. (Producers). (2014). The Imitation Game. [Motion Picture] USA: The Weinstein Company. Westervelt, S., & Cook, K. (2009). Framing Innocents: The Wrongly Convicted as Victims of State Harm. Crime, Law, and Social Change, 53, 259–227. Williams, L. (Director & Producer). (2018). Stacey Dooley Investigates: Second Chance Sex Offenders. [Television Episode] London: BBC3.

Unreal City: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and Posthumanity in “San Junipero” Isra Daraiseh and M. Keith Booker

At one point in The Waste Land (1922), one of the multiple voices that inhabits T.S Eliot’s masterpiece describes an “unreal city” that is teeming with the walking dead. “I had not thought death had undone so many,” says the voice, in amazement. The speaker refers, of course, to 1920s London, reflecting a sense of the dehumanizing alienation that Eliot saw as central to the experience of life in the modern world. But he might also have been describing, a century in advance, “San Junipero,” (03.04) Black Mirror’s (2011–) most awarded (and probably most discussed) episode.1 After all, this episode ends with a final revelation that death has indeed undone a surprising number of people, leaving them to wander the streets of an unreal city of a different sort—perhaps this time a postmodern, rather than a modern one. However, “San Junipero” is also the most optimistic episode of Black Mirror’s first four series, suggesting an ability of technology to improve and enrich human experience that contrasts sharply with the dark tone of most of the series. “San Junipero,” the fourth episode of the third series of Black Mirror, begins with a shot of gently rippling ocean waters, then fades into a shot of the lights of the seaside town of San Junipero, seen from the water. A quick cut moves us into the town itself, focusing on a giant poster for the film The  For example, the episode won the Prime Time Emmy Award for “Outstanding TV Movie,” while writer Charlie Brooker (who also created Black Mirror as a whole), took home the Emmy for “Outstanding Writing for a Limited series, Movie or Dramatic Special.” 1

I. Daraiseh (*) Arab Open University, Al-Ardiya, Kuwait M. K. Booker University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_12

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Lost Boys (1987), set on the side of a building that houses Tucker’s dance club, where happy young people are beginning to party for the night. As one carload of potential partiers drives up, we hear Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” playing on a car radio as a DJ announces that the song is “one of the biggest hits of 1987 so far.” Then we see Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis), a nerdy, bespectacled (but vaguely pretty) young woman, as she walks along the sidewalk and peers into a store display window where computer simulation pioneer Max Headroom can be seen on an array of television sets. The other protagonist, Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a more spectacularly pretty party girl, walks across the street toward the club, fending off the advances of Wes (Gavin Stenhouse), who complains that they only have “a couple of hours.” Ultimately, we will come to know that San Junipero is a computer-simulated environment where the elderly, dying, and dead can relive their younger, healthier, happier days, though perhaps in significantly modified (possibly idealized) form. The “real” Kelly and Yorkie, as it turns out, are both aging and nearing death (probably sometime in the 2030s)2, Kelly suffering from cancer in a retirement facility in Carson City, Nevada, and Yorkie on life support in a hospital in Santa Rosa, California. In this future world, those nearing death are allowed an opportunity to visit San Junipero for up to five hours per week (more exposure is apparently considered dangerous), both because these trips into the past are believed to stimulate the memory and serve as a sort of “immersive nostalgia therapy” for Alzheimer’s and because it gives them a chance to check out the town before they die. Upon death, they will then have the option of being permanently uploaded into the town’s programming. The basic plot of the episode involves the growing relationship between Kelly and Yorkie after they meet in Tucker’s, realize that they have a genuine connection, and then fall in love, ultimately both opting for legal euthanasia so that they can escape the pains of the physical world and live together in San Junipero, forever young. “San Junipero” echoes several other episodes of Black Mirror. The motif of producing virtual versions of actual individuals is central to the excellent “White Christmas” (02.04), as well as to “Be Right Back” (02.01). And the motif of using technology to allow re-creation of the past is the crux of “The Entire History of You” (01.03), the closing episode of Series 1. Of course, the basic idea of becoming more and more immersed in technology is central to all of

2  The action of the episode clearly takes place in the future relative to the 2016 broadcast time of the episode. The episode does not specify the year—and even a shot of Kelly’s tombstone does not indicate the year of her death. However, we know from the episode that the action in the physical world takes place when Kelly is 74, and she seems perhaps 50 years older than the Kelly we see in 1987. By one line of reasoning, that would put the physical action in 2037, though the episode does not really establish that Kelly in the simulated 1987 has to be the same age she was in the real 1987.

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Black Mirror.3 Indeed, the fourth series episode “Black Museum” (04.06) involves the early development of the same technology as that which is central to “San Junipero.” However, while all of these other episodes suggest frightening and dehumanizing consequences resulting from excessive technologization, “San Junipero” would seem to focus on the potential of technology to make human life better. Thus, “San Junipero” stands in dialectical opposition to these other episodes, joining with them to suggest that technology has both good sides and bad sides. In addition, a closer look at “San Junipero” itself shows that it contains both utopian and dystopian energies, placed in dialectical opposition even within the episode. The basic plot and scenario of “San Junipero” already raise a number of questions and issues, but the episode is also richly populated with details. For example, that poster for Lost Boys—a film that also takes place in an idyllic California beach town—includes text that reads “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.” Except for the ending vampire reference, the poster might be an advertisement for the town of San Junipero itself. Moreover, as we will discuss later, even that vampire reference isn’t wasted. Meanwhile, the relevance of the Carlisle song to a locale that is meant to allow customers to live out their fantasies is rather obvious—and will be re-emphasized when the episode ends with this same song playing as well. But a closer examination of the lyrics of the song shows that it is even more pertinent than might be immediately obvious. These lyrics not only make clear the suggestion that heaven is found through the love of two people but also suggest the joy of initial discovery of a love that makes for a new life and a new world. “In this world we’re just beginning,” proclaim the lyrics, “to understand the miracle of living.” Similarly, the passing glance we see of Max Headroom is of obvious relevance to an episode about virtual reality, given that Max was supposedly a virtual character, generated by computer and first appearing in the 1985 British television film Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. Of course, Max was actually portrayed by actor Matt Frewer, so he was really a simulation of a simulation, which makes his ontological status even more complex. For a several-­ year period in the mid-to-late 1980s, Max Headroom was a genuine pop cultural phenomenon, even starring in his own ABC television series beginning in 1987, the key year of “San Junipero.” What Yorkie sees in the opening moments of the episode, however, is Max’s appearance in the 1986 music video for the song “Paranoimia,” by Art of Noise, an English pop group that produced heavily synthesized music. As this video begins, a female voice soothingly assures Max, “Relax. You’re quite safe here,” as if welcoming Yorkie to 3  Black Mirror thus dramatizes the arguments of many recent theoretical formulations, as when Robert Crary (2013) argues that human identities have come, in the twenty-first century, to be defined more and more in relation to our consumption of specific technological objects and devices that themselves are continually replaced by newer models and thus rendered obsolete, making our identities more and more tenuous.

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San Junipero on what is, in fact, her first visit to the simulated town. A confused Max then responds (in words that can faintly be heard in the episode) in a way that corresponds to Yorkie’s actual situation perfectly: “Am I dreaming? No. Where am I? In bed?” That Max was first produced in 1984 inevitably evokes Orwell, and it is worth noting that the world of Max Headroom is fundamentally dystopian, more in the mode of most episodes of Black Mirror than of “San Junipero.” 4 1984 was also the year that William Gibson’s Neuromancer put cyberpunk (a science fictional form with its own dystopian leanings)5 on the science fiction map and helped to popularize the notion of virtual reality—is surely no accident. Virtual reality, like dystopian thinking, was part of the zeitgeist of the Reagan-Thatcher 1980s.6 It is also worth pointing out that “San Junipero,” meanwhile, resembles cyberpunk in other ways as well, most importantly in its assumption, exemplified in the work of Gibson, that “the duality of mind and body is radical and complete” (Booker, 1994, p. 75). The rest of “San Junipero” is similarly filled with richly appropriate pop cultural allusions, with the diegetic music being particularly effective at evoking the setting in 1987. When Yorkie first enters Tucker’s, for example, Robbie Neville’s “C’est La Vie,” another top hit from 1987, is playing on the sound system. Here Neville complains about working night and day at his job: “Punchin’ in, punchin’ out. Is this really what it’s all about?” The song thus suggests the function of San Junipero as a locus of escape from the humdrum routine of life in the physical world of modern capitalism. When Yorkie and Kelly first meet, moments later, the Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” is playing in the background. The relevance of this song is not as immediately obvious, though as Billboard’s top hit of 1987, the song certainly helps to establish the cultural milieu of that year. But a close look at the lyrics of the song reveals that “walking like an Egyptian” (a reference to a well-known pose from art found inside ancient Egyptian pyramids) also serves as a symbol of liberation from tedium and routine, as when it is associated with the celebratory antics of children getting out of school. In any case, it’s a light-hearted song, meant to be fun (potentially problematic Orientalist stereotyping aside), suggesting not only the general tone of life in San Junipero but also the tone of 1987 American pop culture, with its yearning for an escape from the darker aspects of Reagan-­ era America. Of course, at this point we have no idea that the action of this episode is not, in fact, set in the real world of Reagan-era America. Other songs that play in Tucker’s going forward provide hints (at least retrospectively) of what is actu4  See Staiger (1999) for a reading of the dystopian aspects of Max Headroom, in conjunction with other “future noirs” of the 1980s, including Blade Runner (1982) and Brazil (1985). 5  On the dystopian vision of cyberpunk (relative to the frequently utopian vision of Golden Age science fiction), see Ross (1991). 6  On Max Headroom’s participation—along with films such as Tron (1982) and WarGames (1983)—in a growing fascination with virtual reality in American popular culture in the 1980s, see Kerman (1992).

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ally going on in the episode. Immediately after “Walk Like an Egyptian,” “Fake,” by Alexander O’Neal (which went to No. 1 on Billboard’s “Hot Black Singles” chart and peaked at No. 25 on the Hot 100) begins playing on the club’s sound system, as Kelly convinces a reluctant Yorkie to dance with her. On a subsequent visit to Tucker’s, Kelly drinks at the bar as a guy hits on her while the self-titled 1987 song by the group Living in a Box plays on the sound system. Both “Fake” and “Living in a Box” can be taken as clues that this is a simulated environment and that the “Kelly” and “Yorkie” we see in San Junipero really exist inside a computer. At the same time, however, these songs are also apt commentaries on the real 1987 environment in which they were originally produced, when the increasing routinization of life under late capitalism made many feel like they were trapped inside a box and in which authenticity seemed to many to be at an all-time low. After all (and perhaps not coincidentally) 1987 was also the year of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, a searing cinematic indictment of the greed and pretense that were such a big part of the texture of life in Reagan’s America. Indeed, the next song that plays (just before Yorkie agrees to have sex with Kelly, moving their connection to a new level) is “Need You Tonight,” a 1987 No. 1 song by the group INXS. The song clearly points to Yorkie’s desire to be with Kelly (and to actively explore her lesbian sexuality for the first time). However, the very name of the group indicates the excess that was so prominent in the 1980s, while the lyrics of the song (“All we’ve got is this moment /The twenty-first century’s yesterday”) are perfectly appropriate as an indication of the way San Junipero is frozen in 1987, the yesterday of the twenty-first century in which Yorkie and Kelly are actually living. But this indication of the late 1980s as the yesterday of the twenty-first century also serves as a suggestion of the way in which the roots of so many elements of the late capitalist culture of the twenty-first century can be found in the Reagan era. There are numerous other examples—including one bravura sequence in which Yorkie tries on a sequence of looks for her next trip to San Junipero, each accompanied by an appropriate pop song from 1985 to 1987—as when Yorkie adopts Ally Sheedy’s look from The Breakfast Club (1985) to the strains of “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” or when she mimics the mannequin-like girl-­ band members from Robert Palmer’s iconic 1986 music video for “Addicted to Love.” All of these songs help to illustrate the meticulous construction of this episode, which echoes the careful design of the simulated environment of 1987 San Junipero itself. However, more important than any of these specific examples is the implication of the crucial role played by popular culture in recreating the texture of life in any era from the past. Indeed, in trying on these costumes, Yorkie would seem to be pursuing exactly the inauthentic stylistic strategy Kelly had earlier criticized among the customers at Tucker’s. “People try so hard to look how they think they should look,” Kelly had complained to Yorkie. “They probably saw it in some movie.” Perhaps Yorkie recalls this criticism when she gives up on finding the perfect 1987 look and goes back to her original understated, bespectacled style, which is perhaps more authentically her.

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Music, the episode implies, is particularly crucial to our cultural memory of any era, though it is significant that the episode also places an emphasis on video games, which were such an important (and still relatively new) aspect of late-1980s American popular culture. Thus, Tucker’s not only has a dance floor and a sound system but also features an arcade games section. And, during one segment in which Yorkie travels to a series of different time periods seeking Kelly (who has disappeared from 1987 San Junipero), these periods are identified not only by the varying film posters shown outside of Tucker’s and the music playing inside of Tucker’s but also by the arcade games that are featured inside the club. These arcade games, of course, are the obvious forerunners of the virtual reality simulation of San Junipero and thus serve a sort of metafictional function. By extension, the references to music, film, and television in the episode can also be seen to be metafictional, suggesting the sort of heavily mediated environment in which we all live, immersed in a constant stream of manufactured images that makes the distinction between “real” and “virtual,” on which the episode apparently hinges, extremely blurry and unstable. In our postmodern, hyperreal world, “real” and “virtual” are not polar opposites; instead, we all live in a sort of dialectical synthesis of physical reality (rooted in biological needs) and virtuality (rooted in mediacreated images). “San Junipero” addresses a number of crucial technology-related issues quite directly. Ultimately, the happy-ever-after ending of the episode appears to be largely free of irony, so that the episode endorses the notion of uploading human consciousnesses into computer-simulated worlds, even as a replacement for biological life, which can then be removed from the equation by euthanasia. But this possibility nevertheless raises a number of both ethical and practical dilemmas. The episode implies that the option of euthanasia and permanent uploading is available only to those who are nearing death anyway. But the episode does not provide detailed specifications regarding eligibility for this option, nor should it—“San Junipero” is not intended to propose future social policy but to stimulate thought about the possibilities that the future might hold. The same might be said for Black Mirror as a whole, of course, though most of the series poses these possibilities as cautionary tales about the dehumanizing potential of excessive reliance on technology. “San Junipero,” on the other hand, seems primarily to be a utopian exploration of the potential of technology to create a posthuman future that is better than our present and possibly even more authentically human. In an obvious way, living a virtual life in San Junipero frees Kelly from the physical suffering of her terminal cancer and liberates Yorkie from the quadriplegia that has dominated her entire adult life. What is less obvious (and perhaps more important) is that life for both Kelly and Yorkie in San Junipero is potentially more authentic than their respective lives in the physical world. Kelly has spent her entire adult life in a single committed heterosexual relationship with a man whom she assures us she has deeply loved throughout their forty-nine-year marriage. This marriage seems to have been largely a happy

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one, though it has been marked by tragedy in the form of the death of their daughter Alison at the age of thirty-nine. However, this life choice (like all life choices) has meant that Kelly has not been free to pursue other options or other aspects of her personality. She has long known, for example, that she is bisexual, but in the physical world she never acted on her attraction to women. In San Junipero, on the other hand, she is free to pursue the party-girl side of her personality and to explore all facets of her sexuality. Yorkie, meanwhile, is a lesbian, but was brought up in a “big-time religious” family in which her sexuality would be considered a reprehensible perversion. She came out to her parents when she was twenty-one, but they reacted so badly that she rushed from the house and into the auto accident that resulted in her quadriplegia, placing dramatic limits on her opportunities in life. In San Junipero, she has a young, healthy body and can pursue whatever sexual choices she prefers, without being judged. One could argue, then, that—free of the artificial social pressures and arbitrary physical accidents of the material world—both Kelly and Yorkie are free to be more their “real” selves in the simulated environment of San Junipero. Indeed, the episode goes out of its way to emphasize the realness of San Junipero. At one point, for example, Yorkie admits that she wears her glasses in “San Junipero” just because she feels comfortable in glasses but does not need them for vision correction. Kelly responds, “They’re authentically you.” More importantly, after Yorkie has “passed over” permanently to San Junipero and tries to convince Kelly to join her, Yorkie emphasizes how real everything looks and feels in the virtual city. She then declares to Kelly, “It’s real. This … is real.” One question not entirely answered, though, is whose reality? Thus, Yorkie cannot simply choose to be with Kelly without Kelly’s consent—individuals seem to be independent and autonomous, though the episode leaves open the possibility that certain individuals (such as the bartender at Tucker’s) are simply part of the virtual environment of San Junipero (what in gaming are known as “non-playing characters”), intended to provide specific services to the “customers” and not fully autonomous individuals in their own rights. Though Kelly and Yorkie appear to be experiencing the same virtual reality, it is not clear how much of that reality is simply produced by the programmers at TCKR Systems (the massive computer facility that houses the simulation) and how much is derived from the fantasies and desires of the customers, who seem to have at least some control over their experience in San Junipero. They also have some choice of basic environs within the city. Indeed, any consideration of the utopian potential of the virtual environment of San Junipero must take into account the fact that we actually see two primary public locations in the simulated city. In addition to the relatively clean, well-lit fun-time environment of Tucker’s, we also see another club on the outskirts of the city. This club, which seems to be set in an abandoned industrial building, is tellingly known as the Quagmire. It is a place that most of the San Juniperans seem to prefer not to talk about, a locus of total decadence and even squalor. Dark and dirty, the

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Quagmire is the evil twin of Tucker’s, a place of extreme entertainments that seems to be designed to provide one last chance for those who have failed to find fulfillment in the more wholesome environment of Tucker’s. During her search for Kelly, Yorkie pays a visit to the Quagmire, knowing that Kelly sometimes goes there. As she approaches the dystopic building, she is passed (and nearly run over) by a group of maniacally shouting and laughing motorcyclists, clearly drunk or on drugs. When she enters the actual building, she passes through a dark, crowded corridor peopled with strange-looking individuals dressed in extreme garb, with lots of tattoos and leather and bare skin. One customer wears demon’s horns, while one woman holds a coiled python. Sex and drugs and violence are everywhere in the dark, smoky club; people are in chains and cages; a brutal fight is underway in one enclosure. Sadomasochistic and other “perverse” pleasures reign. Garish, bare lightbulbs provide little illumination (though strobes flash in the darkness), and the blaring, almost demonic musical background stands as the antithesis of the bright pop tunes played in Tucker’s. The innocent Yorkie is clearly horrified and very much out of place. The obvious implication is that, if Tucker’s is a vision of heaven as a place on earth, the Quagmire is a vision of hell. On the other hand, those who frequent the Quagmire do so of their own free will, even if it comes from the desperation of those who have failed to find solace in any other way, even in virtuality. Among other things, the Quagmire thus serves as a reminder that it is not a simple matter to provide a perfect environment in which everyone can be happy. In addition, the Quagmire is not quite as diametrically opposed to Tucker’s as it might first seem. After all, one of the first identifiers of the cultural context of Tucker’s is that Lost Boys poster at the beginning of the episode, and Wes later complains, just outside of Tucker’s, that the denizens of San Junipero are “like dead people.” It is only later that we can appreciate what he really means, but the suggestion that the San Juniperans are like zombies combines with the vampire-film poster to suggest that there is something potentially monstrous and horrifying even about the more wholesome areas of the city. Tellingly, the only familiar face Yorkie sees in the Quagmire is that of a beer-­ swilling Wes, who, having seemingly struck out with Kelly once and for all, has turned to the dark side (though he doesn’t yet quite seem to fit in there). Notably, another man who hits on Kelly in Tucker’s also fails to impress her (perhaps because he drones on endlessly about his knee surgeries and his missed opportunities in the computer business). In addition, the nerdy Davis (Billy Griffin, Jr.), tries to connect with Yorkie via video games, at first complimenting her on her skill at the game Bubble Bobble (Taito Corporation, 1986). Then, of course, he can’t resist trying to impress her with his superior knowledge, mansplaining that this was the first game to have different endings whether you are in one-player or two-player mode. One can, of course, read this comment on the ending of Bubble Bobble as a metafictional commentary on the way experience in San Junipero is much better if one can connect to another as a couple. Thus, the ending of the episode

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becomes a “happy” one when Kelly finally decides to join Yorkie there permanently. But Davis’s nerdy come-on can also be taken as another indication of the way individuals are their real selves in San Junipero. Once a nerd, always a nerd—and Davis can’t seem to change his basic nature simply by going to San Junipero. Thus, he always seems to make exactly the wrong move with Yorkie— as when he invites her to play the car race game Top Speed (Taito Corporation, 1987), not realizing that she has been traumatized by a car crash in physical life. Of course, he also doesn’t realize that she is a lesbian, retrospectively increasing our sense of his ineptitude. The lack of success at these three men at picking up women in San Junipero again raises the questions of agency and control in the simulated environment. These men are certainly unable to control the outcome of their interactions with the women they meet in Tucker’s, at least not in the version we see. But then, it is also possible that each simulated individual actually experiences their own world differently. If we, for example, are really only seeing Yorkie’s version of San Junipero, then it might make sense that men seldom succeed sexually with women, given that Yorkie does not appear to find men sexually attractive. If Yorkie’s desires are, in fact, controlling the outcome of what we see in San Junipero, then it also makes sense that she is ultimately joined there permanently by Kelly, her dream girl. In any case, one important thing to note about the contrast between Tucker’s and the Quagmire is that both are derived equally directly from the American cultural climate of the late Reagan years. If the milieu at Tucker’s is constructed from the “official” pop culture of 1987, then the environment of the Quagmire is equally derived from the underground/alternative culture of the same time period, which was a boom time for clubs that provided an escape from the strait-laced rectitude of Reaganite America. For example, the Quagmire has much in common with New York’s Tunnel, which opened in 1986 on the site of a former railway freight terminal in the Chelsea neighborhood, incorporating the train tracks into its décor, which also featured dance cages and S/M dungeons. Even the cacophonous song playing in the Quagmire is authentic period culture—“Something Against You” (1988), by the Pixies, whose music has sometimes been labeled as “noise pop.” The Quagmire, like the rest of San Junipero, thus provides commentary not just on virtual reality in the future, but also on the historical reality of the late 1980s. At the literal level of the action of the episode, both the Quagmire and Tucker’s provide virtual alternatives to aging, sickness, and death in the 2030s. But the clubs (and other aspects of San Junipero) also provide a reminder of the extent to which Americans in the 1980s were badly in need of utopian alternatives to the cutthroat capitalism embraced by the Reagan administration and dramatized in Wall Street. That the real-world counterparts to the Quagmire and Tucker’s (and the pop culture they embody) were about the best alternatives that anyone could come up with at the time (as opposed to genuine alternatives to capitalism itself) simply attests to the weakness of the utopian imagination in the Western world of the 1980s. This environment,

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after all, was the very one in which Fredric Jameson formulated his seminal theorization of postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capitalism, a key characteristic of which was an enfeebling of the ability to imagine alternatives to capitalism (Jameson, 1991). The collapsing of the boundary between fiction and reality, so key to the success of “San Junipero,” is also a key characteristic of postmodernism—and of American life in the 1980s. Reagan himself might be seen as a key symptom of this inability. After all, as Michael Rogin has documented, Reagan’s dual identity as a film star and political leader involved a collapsing of precisely this boundary (see Rogin, 1987). But, if fiction and reality are indistinguishable (or even, as Jean Baudrillard would have it, “reality” no longer exists in a simple non-mediated way7), then it becomes very difficult for fiction to provide an alternative to reality. Not coincidentally, this was also the same time period in which British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher formulated her notorious “There Is No Alternative” justification for her own Reagan-like policies, a formulation that Mark Fisher has seen as key to the worldview he describes as “capitalist realism,” which is essentially the same phenomenon as Jameson’s postmodernism, seen from a slightly different angle (see Fisher, 2009). 1987, then, is the perfect time frame in which to focus on the shallow and superficial pleasures offered by Tucker’s—as well as on the more extreme and debauched pleasures offered by the Quagmire. It should also be noted that this same time period has recently become the focus of a great deal of cultural nostalgia, as when Black Mirror’s fellow Netflix series Stranger Things (2016–) is constructed essentially as a pastiche of 1980s popular culture or when the characters of a dystopian future in Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One (adapted to film by Steven Spielberg in 2018) escape their grim 2040s environment through a virtual reality game that is heavily populated with potentially utopian images from 1980s popular culture, derived from everything from Blade Runner to Pac-Man (1980).8 The decision to focus on the late 1980s in “San Junipero,” then, would seem to be a wise (and logical) one, even though the episode also acknowledges that a variety of other time frames (ranging at least from 1980 to 2002) is also available via the services of TCKR Systems.9 What is perhaps more important, though, is that (as far as we can tell from the episode) the people of the 2030s, now armed with the technology to place individual consciousnesses inside any reality they choose, still cannot conceive of anything better. Moreover, rather than creating entirely new worlds of jus7  For Baudrillard, in the postmodern world, physical reality has been supplanted by a virtual, image-saturated “hyperreality” in which the world has essentially become a simulation of itself. For him, Disneyland epitomizes and literalizes this notion, but the same might also be said of the virtual city of San Junipero. See Baudrillard (2014). 8  For a discussion of the utopian potential of gaming (and virtual reality in general) in Ready Player One, see Nordstrom (2016). 9  In an interview, Brooker has stated that he would have liked to have covered an even wider range of time frames (including the 1920s and the 1960s) but couldn’t do so simply due to budgetary limitations (Formo, 2016).

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tice, equality, and plenty, free of the social and economic woes of the past, all the programmers at TCKR Systems seem to be able to imagine are nostalgic recreations of that very past—though perhaps modified to be better in some ways than the past really was (as nostalgic visions of the past typically are). Granted, “San Junipero” itself looks forward to the future (relative to its production in 2016), but it does not look forward to a future in which capitalism has been replaced by something more humane. TCKR Systems, presumably, is a corporate enterprise (the very name evokes not just Tucker’s club, but also stock tickers, one of the most capitalist images of all), and apparently a large one at that. Indeed, the final shot of the episode shows a fleeting glimpse of the vast array of memory banks in which the digitized consciousnesses of customers are stored, suggesting a large investment in computer equipment. It is little wonder, then, that TCKR would not produce virtual worlds that are fundamentally contrary to the ideology of capitalism. Further, one would assume that TCKR is in the business of making money and that those whose consciousnesses are stored there must pay a fee, possibly a substantial one. This probable expense (conveniently ignored within the episode) means, among other things, that the utopian compensations offered by the company are available only to those who can afford to pay, which makes them seem much less genuinely utopian. Of course, in “San Junipero,” the central utopian image is not that of the virtual town but that of the lovers Kelly and Yorkie, now perpetually able to share and enjoy a world of youthful delights that Kelly’s life in the physical world largely denied to her and that Yorkie’s physical life denied her altogether. Love is, indeed, a powerful utopian image, and surely genuine contact between human beings is a good thing. And perhaps the fact that Kelly and Yorkie are both female, while one is white and one is black, can be taken as a utopian suggestion that certain social prejudices have been overcome or rendered irrelevant in this virtual world.10 Still, romantic love of the sort experienced by the virtual Kelly and Yorkie is decidedly individualist and potentially obstructionist—offering solace and escape within a private space without addressing the problems of the public world. Finally, that last shot of TCKR’s memory banks serves as a jolting reminder that the happily joined Kelly and Yorkie we have just seen in San Junipero are mere technological artifacts—accompanied by the suggestion (given the size of the facility) that there are probably a wide variety of places and times contained within the system. We also see that the facility seems to be entirely automated, operated by robots, suggesting a posthuman world in which physical humans might soon be irrelevant. This last image is, in fact, chillingly 10  These prejudices seem to have been largely overcome in the physical world of the 2030s as well. Late in the episode, Kelly and Yorkie are married in the physical world so that Kelly can sign the papers authorizing Yorkie’s euthanasia, but their marriage does not particularly appear to raise eyebrows. Meanwhile, Brooker has stated in an interview that he made both characters women to add an extra utopian dimension to the virtual world of 1987 San Junipero, given that same-sex marriage would have been impossible in the real world of 1987 (Hibberd, 2016).

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dystopian, suggesting dark possibilities that stand in dialectical opposition to the happy dancers we see in Tucker’s in the shot just before. The final shot, in fact, has something of the feel of The Waste Land. Ultimately, then, the flurry of images that ends the episode (interspersed with the closing credits) serves as one final reminder that the difficult questions posed by the episode are not easily answered, however urgent it is to ask them.

References Badham, J. (Director), & Schneider, H. (1983). WarGames [Motion Picture] USA: MGM/UA Entertainment Company. Baudrillard, J. (2014). Simulacra and Simulation, trans. S.  F. Glaser, original work published in French in 1981. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Booker, M.  K. (1994). Technology, History, and the Postmodern Imagination: The Cyberpunk Fiction of William Gibson. Arizona Quarterly, 50(4), 63–87. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2013). Be Right Back. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2016). San Junipero. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & McCarthy, C. (Director). (2017). Black Museum. [Television series episode] In I. Hogan (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2014). White Christmas. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Cline, E. (2011). Ready Player One. London: Century Random House. Crary, R. (2013). 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London: Verso. Duffer, M., & Duffer, R. (Writers & Directors). (2016–). Stranger Things. [Television Series] Los Gatos: Netflix. Eliot, T. S. (1922). The Waste Land. New York: Boni and Liverlight. Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? London: Zero Books. Formo, B. (2016, October 27). Black Mirror: Charlie Brooker and Gugu Mbatha-Raw Talk ‘San Junipero’ in Our Spoiler Interview. Collider. http://collider.com/blackmirror-san-junipero-explained-netflix-interview/ Gibson, W. (1984). Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books. Gilliam, T. (Director), & Cassavetti, P., & Milchan, A. (Producers). (1985). Brazil [Motion Picture]. USA: Universal Pictures. Hibberd, J. (2016, October 23). Black Mirror Showrunner Explains Season 3 Endings. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved from http://www.ew.com/article/2016/10/23/ black-mirror-postmortem-interview-season-3/ Hughes, J. (Director), & Hughes, J., Friesen, G., Manning, M., Meyer, A., & Tanen, N. (Producers). (1985). The Breakfast Club [Motion Picture]. USA: Universal Pictures. Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Jankel, A., & Morton, R. (Directors), & Wagg, P. (Producer). (1985). Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. [Television Movie] London: Channel 4. Kerman, J.  B. (1992). Virtual Space and Its Boundaries in Science Fiction Film and Television: Tron, ‘Max Headroom’ and WarGames. In D. E. Morse, M. B. Tymn, &

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C.  Bertha (Eds.), The Celebration of the Fantastic: Selected Papers from the Tenth Anniversary International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (pp.  191–203). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Lisberger, S. (Director), & Kushner, D. (Producer). (1982). Tron [Motion Picture]. USA: Walt Disney Company. Namco. (1980). Pac-Man [Video Game]. Namco. Nordstrom, J. (2016). “A Pleasant Place for the World to Hide”: Exploring Themes of Utopian Play in Ready Player One. Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory, 18(2), 238–256. Rogin, M. (1987). Ronald Reagan, the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ross, A. (1991). Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age of Limits. London: Verso. Schumacher, J. (Director), & Bernhard, H. (Producer) (1987). The Lost Boys. [Motion Picture] USA: Warner Bros. Scott, R. (Director), & Deeley, M. (Producer). (1982). Blade Runner [Motion Picture]. USA: Warner Bros. Staiger, J. (1999). Future Noir: Contemporary Representations of Visionary Cities. In A. Kuhn (Ed.), Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema (pp. 97–122). London: Verso. Stone, O. (Director), & Pressman, E.  R. (Producer). (1987). Wall Street [Motion Picture]. USA: 20th Century Fox. Taito Corporation. (1986). Bubble Bobble [Video Game]. Taito. Taito Corporation. (1987). Top Speed [Video Game]. Taito. Welsh, B. (Writer), & Armstrong, J. (Director). (2011). The Entire History of You. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4.

Deviating the Other: Inspecting the Boundaries of Progress in “Men Against Fire” Ana Došen

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw (qtd. in Kronenberger, 1972, p. 224)

Even though this famous remark by George Bernard Shaw has been excessively quoted by many dealing with the notion of progress and has hence become a rather worn-out claim, it perfectly epitomizes the main issue of the fifth episode in Black Mirror’s third season, titled “Men Against Fire” (03.05). This episode depicts a dystopian vision in which humans have found a way to overcome their weakness of empathy in the name of progress. In this episode, the potential “empathy problem” of soldiers trained to destroy the expendable Others in face-to-face combat is overcome by technology which artificially distorts the foe’s all-too-human appearance and turns it into that of a horrifying, zombie-like creature. In order to eradicate those who stand in the way of progress, the phantasm of monstrous corporeality becomes compulsory. This chapter will foreground the real-life similarities within the contemporary military system which are reflected in this ostensibly futuristic war-themed episode. As the matter of reason and unreason plays a crucial point in “Men Against Fire”, I investigate the paradoxical notion of progress and one’s urge to self-justify the act of killing. Specifically, my focus is on both the ethical-political and technological aspects of progress and its tendency toward dehumanization, in the

A. Došen (*) Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_13

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realm envisioned by Charlie Brooker. In this regard, I will first address the issue of how the enemy is construed in the domain of war film and how the Others are commonly portrayed as zombies.

When There Is No Enemy, Bring Out the Zombies As is often the case with Black Mirror, the episodes depict the near-present, and do not attempt to predict the future. Nevertheless, media reports have on several occasions drawn distinct parallels between the fictional narratives of more  than a few episodes and real-life events (see Ashcroft & Oakeshott, 2016; Botsman, 2017). The reality of “Men Against Fire” emerged through the media in two instances—in revealing the advances of new technological projection and manipulation of photo-realistic facial re-enactment and in uncovering the fact that the US military is funding tests of chip implants affecting soldiers’ brains, something I will return to in more detail later. Several months before the air date of the episode, Stanford University introduced the Face2Face project dealing with real-time face capture and re-enactment of RGB videos (see Thies, Zollhofer, & Stamminger, 2016). It is based on the manipulation of image data, similar augmented reality interactive experiences where the somatosensory system is affected by computer-generated information, augmenting the objects in the real environment. Their method of reconstructing the facial identity of “the target” mirrors the “Men Against Fire” face deformation of the quarry, as the enemy has to be deprived of human qualities and transmuted into a monster. In the episode, the determining power to alter a soldier’s visual perception and transmogrify a foe’s face is in the hands of the military and the government, personified in the character named Arquette (Michael Kelly). His discourse is set to reassure the protagonist Stripe (Malachi Kirby) of what is right and fundamentally the ultimate and only choice of being. But Stripe, a rookie African-American soldier, has a malfunction of the MASS chip implanted in his head which would otherwise enable him to be able to efficiently terminate the “roaches”, zombie-like beings. The defect in Stripe’s chip allows him to see them as they really are—no different than any other human being. Throughout film history, war films have tended to dehumanize the enemies through various stereotypes that deprive them of their individuality, often turning them into a wicked, collective body. Racist sentiments toward the Japanese in World War II and the Vietnamese during the 1960s and 1970s, for example, are apparent in mainstream Hollywood films dating from the classical era (Bataan [1943], Guadalcanal Diaries [1943]) to the Reaganite 1980s (Rambo: First Blood Part II [1985]). Regarding the former, historian John W. Dower investigated the Western understanding of the Japanese as Others during the Pacific War, and how mass media generated the imagery of the enemy that shifted from superhuman (emphasizing the boldness and fanaticism of their attacks) to subhuman (insisting on their primitivism, inherent inferiority or mental deficiency). He suggested that the “subhuman and superhuman share common the ascription of being nonhuman” (1986, p.  99) and that

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these concepts do not mutually exclude each other, but are rather reciprocal. Setting aside the plain notion of the zombie as a menacing figure, both subhuman and superhuman, we should look further into the multilayered connotations of its cinematic representation. Robin Wood’s seminal text, “Introduction to the American Horror Film” (1979), foregrounds the relational aspects of repression, the Other and the Monster in American cinema. In an attempt to propose a theoretical approach which would closely relate theory to our “daily practicalities”, Wood examines the aggressiveness of direct political ideology and different forms of repression which limit and restrict the development of human potential through a critical analysis of the horror genre. His reading of (American) culture suggests a unique taxonomy of the Others whose autonomy is never accepted or fully recognized and who are represented by the figure of the Monster (women, non-heterosexuals, children, other cultures, ethnic groups, the proletariat, those promoting alternative ideologies).1 Wood’s remarkable categorization of horror films into either progressive or reactionary, based on a criterion of monster definition and representation, is of utmost value to our comprehension of “the roaches” in “Men Against Fire”. Wood detects the progressiveness of the horror genre in the films that defy the simple specification of the monster as evil: “What is repressed … must always return as a threat, perceived by the consciousness as ugly, terrible, obscene” (1979, p. 23, emphasis mine), but interpretations of monstrosity could be numerous in progressive horror films. Another feature of these films, Wood notes, dwells on the “monster’s capacity to arouse sympathy”, while a radical dehumanization of the monster obviously reduces a film to ideological uniformity. In “Men Against Fire” the MASS chip employs the conventional paradigm of the monster derived from the reactionary properties of the horror genre, dehumanizing it completely. The monster here is only a gimmick, a ploy designed to apply the basic patterns of the genre in order to fulfill the demands of the state. The recent popularity of the zombie figure in pop culture symbolizes the need to envision the modern enemy as a zombie—a menacing, drooling entity deprived of rational mind and ideology, and reduced to a fundamental urge to gratify its insatiable hunger. These “standardized” monsters elude the possibility of reading them in a more complex manner, and more importantly, as “ineffective” representations, they essentially negate the intricate differentiation of all the Others who are not acknowledged in terms of normativity imposed by those who rule. In 1968, one of the most turbulent years in world history—from the Prague Spring and the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, bloody student and worker demonstrations all over the 1  Women—Island of Lost Souls (1932), Cat People (1942), Sisters (1973), non-heterosexuals— The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Demon AKA God Told Me To (1976), children—The Exorcist (1973), It’s Alive (1974), The Omen (1976), other cultures—The Manitou (1978), ethnic groups— The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972), proletariat—The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Race with the Devil (1975), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), those promoting alternative ideologies—1950s sci-fi invasion movies dealing with the Communist threat.

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world, to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy— George Romero’s first feature film Night of the Living Dead (1968) brought zombies to theaters, while indicating that the genuine horror transpires from within our humanity. In fact, Romero’s Dead trilogy implies that the zombies are never really threatening, and that the true danger derives from fellow humans. In the final scene of Night of the Living Dead, for instance, an African-­ American zombie-survivor gets killed by the all-white posse and in Dawn of the Dead (1978) a racially mixed couple must escape from a brutal gang of bikers. Likewise, the unending heated disputes and clashes of military and scientific sectors in Day of the Dead (1985) bring us closer to our doom than the zombies themselves. In Romero’s films the monsters are essentially portrayed as the lesser evil in comparison to humans, while in “Men Against Fire” apparent zombie monsters mask the individual’s humanity. The same concept of monstrosity is enforced, but in this Black Mirror episode the monsters are make-believe, a product of virtual reality. Brooker also generates a metanarrative commentary on the contemporary pop-cultural craze for zombies. The postmillennial zombie fad is evidently recognized in numerous TV shows like The Walking Dead (2010–), Fear the Walking Dead (2015–), iZombie (2015–), movies such as 28 Days Later (2002), I am Legend (2007), Zombieland (2009), World War Z (2013), and video games Left 4 Dead (Valve South, 2008), Dead Island (Deep Silver, 2011), The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013), and so on. Brooker cunningly uses the zombie trope in order to criticize the need to label the Other as a pop-cultural villain whose malevolence is indisputable. “Men Against Fire” teaches us that once you stylize the enemy in an appropriately villainous disguise, the self-justifying act of killing becomes effortless. Any possible questioning of the given task of killing the Others gets lost through the placement of the zombie illusion. The empty mind frame of the executioners is constantly fed by the pop-culture zombie reference. Brooker’s original approach is also found in an inversion of the familiar horror trope of recognizing the Others disguised as humans, as seen in films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Hidden (1987), and They Live2 (1988). They Live could be most suitably juxtaposed with “Men Against Fire”, as it deals with an object (sunglasses) that similarly discloses the true self of the Others around “us”. In this instance, “they” are aliens invading the Earth in order to control the human population through mass media. Just as an ordinary unemployed man (Roddy Piper) unveils the reality behind the yuppies slick appearances in the consumerist frenzy of They Live, the typical everyman soldier accidentally discovers the ordinariness of “low-life roaches” in “Men 2  John Carpenter adapted a comic book based on Ray Nelson’s 1963 short story entitled “Eight O’Clock in the Morning”. The Italian comic book Dylan Dog—the episode titled “The Vampires” with a narrative of a special military unit which discovers the monstrous Others by submitting themselves to drug stimulants that eventually turn them into vampires, stands in the middle between They Live and “Men Against Fire”.

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Against Fire”. Unlike those films produced during the 1970s and 1980s when the protagonist often confronts the enemy, the new millennium portrays a rather nihilistic world in which the main character ultimately chooses not to fight against the establishment, but instead serves it by accepting to kill those who are considered to be less valuable. Stripe, who we learn volunteered for the service, does not even consider forcibly rebelling against the system, but struggles with the dilemma of whether to go to prison, tortured by the memories of killing innocent people, or to forget the past and continue to execute the orders of his superiors. The horror of this episode derives from the plausibility of such a narrative in terms of an individual’s decision-making process, and not necessarily uncanny technology. Shifting the paradigm from hiding the monstrosity under human disguise, to virtually transmuting the unfit humans into the horrible creatures, Brooker delineates “our” superficiality and propensity to be easily manipulated by visual deception. At least in the realm of our cinematic past, “the real” threat had to simulate “our” likeness, whereas nowadays “we” ourselves have to produce the terrifying menace among each other. Ironically, the analogy between the monstrous Others and “us” who are voluntary taking the role of fighting against them derives from the shared naked existence. By tenaciously forcing the zombie genre convention with a use of the MASS chip, the ruling class engages in an extensive production of the men without qualities. The imposed conflict between them blurs the line of their similarities in the environment of artificially induced hostility and virtual reality.

We’re on a Road to Nowhere—The Mass, Roaches, and the Notion of Progress In November 2017 at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting in Washington DC, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded by US military presented their research based on trials of brain implants that would regulate mood disorders. The ongoing goal of the project is to treat soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder or depression using the simulation technology. The researchers determined that delivering electrical pulses to areas of the brain involved in decision-making and emotion significantly improved the performance of test subjects (Reardon, 2017). Such mind-­ control technology used for military purposes has already been explored in the Divergent film trilogy (2014–2016) and Amazon web television series Homecoming (2018). However, unlike the mind-control drugs seen in these works, which further emphasize the question of what makes us human—the heart or the mind—the MASS chip, as a device of relieving the “stress of killing”, draws attention to the issue of progressiveness. Early assumption of progress as an endpoint which would lead to general emancipation and democracy through industrialization and secularization proved to be a utopian dream. Throughout the twentieth century, both the East and the West demonstrated that the hopeful vision of transforming the world for the better is often followed by mass killings and genocide done in the

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name of the progressive future. This crisis of modernity and belief in human perfectionism is reflected in critical theory, which has a long tradition of skepticism toward the idea of historical progress. Nietzsche expressed a doubtful attitude toward this notion by associating it with “romantic fantasy” (1996, p. 25) or “a false idea” (2004, p. 104). Criticizing Hegel’s philosophy of history and attacking his lack of theoretical consideration of the individual suffering in the negative events of the past, Adorno claims that “affirmative mentality” crucial to a discourse on progress toward freedom could only be comprehended as “the mere assertion of a mind that is incapable of looking horror in the face and that thereby perpetuates it” (2006, p. 7). The “romantic fantasy” of human betterment advocated by the character of Arquette is grounded in an undisputed discourse of biopolitics. Through screening tests and DNA checks, certain individuals or groups are marked as weak and their bloodline should not be continued as it is perceived as sickness. “Men Against Fire” indicates clearly, in two instances, the principal incapacity of progressive human mentality. First, those who are regarded as subservient and regressive, and consequently, the nemesis of the progressive forces, are the humans who carry a higher risk of undesirable traits—of both biological (cancer, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, SLS) and psychological (substandard IQ, criminal tendencies, sexual deviance) pathologies. Here, the eugenic principles are reinstated as the crucial progressive nexus, but instead of implementing a policy of regulating sexual reproduction, radical annihilation occurs. Such practices were known from ancient Sparta and Rome (where physically weak and disabled children were sentenced to death by the law or the council of elders) to enforced euthanasia and mass murders in Nazi Germany. Unsurprisingly, Arquette endorses and promotes this strategy of obliteration. What may seem striking, though, is that the evident technological advancement that allows the control of soldiers’ vision is not preceded nor followed by an ideological evolution. The concurrent scientific developments de facto provide a misleading confirmation of progress, appealing only to our fascination with what is possible to achieve by the instruments of technological innovation. “Men Against Fire” conveys the fragility of the human evolutionary stage in a sense that it is invariably limited by the framework of persistent prejudices and distortions. Continuous stagnation could be interpreted as a result of a progressive preservation of the powerful class, always in fear that their sovereignty may come to an end. Arquette explains all the benefits of the MASS chip—not only does it visually transform expendable humans into zombie-like monsters, but it spares the soldier the additional nuisance of his other senses—they would not hear the shrieks and screams, nor smell the shed blood of the “roaches”. In Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others (2011), David Livingstone Smith argues that “in the movies, it’s all very easy. You just pull the trigger and blow away the enemy. And death is usually tidy—there’s a corpse with a barely detectable bullet hole lying in a pool of its own blood. In real life, things are different. Killing is hard” (2011, p. 229). The MASS chip enables

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the “ease” of the killing seen on the screen, increasing the efficacy of the kill ratio. Although this technological advancement could be obviously understood as a “refinement” of military combat, it can also be used as a disciplining technique. The terms and conditions which the soldiers voluntarily sign empower the military officials to administer the MASS chip as a torture device for those who contravene (not allowing them to see reality but pitch darkness, or repeatedly forcing the images of the horrible truth which was concealed by the virtual reality simulation). When Stripe behaves adequately, the MASS chip “rewards” him with a sex dream. This recurring dream could be easily misunderstood as the soldier’s memory of the loved one, but it would be highly improbable that Stripe recalls only being with her in bed. In fact, induced nocturnal sexual energy is a “motivating” factor that directly correlates with soldiers’ performance in the field. The first dream sequence is just a tease depicting a woman who is presented as attractive and smiling. After killing the roaches, his dream gets an “upgrade” with her in a bra. When Arquette wishes Stripe “a real good sleep”, the girl is naked, and they are having sex. However, due to a malfunction of the MASS, the dream with a multiplied woman in several incarnations starts to glitch, waking Stripe abruptly. Echoing Marshall McLuhan’s notion that the medium is the message, the message of the MASS chip would indicate that the transformation of the mental state does not occur, but as a device of the authority, it inevitably enhances the effectiveness of mass killing or torture, whether through unquestionable elimination of the Others, or the enforced compliance of the executors (see McLuhan, 1994). Variations in the technological aspects of the soldier’s advanced daily routine correspond to an invariable set of doctrines that are showcased in Arquette’s frame of mind. The technology of (make-)believe is at play; it promotes blunt political projection as literal hallucination, through a production of Others’ monstrosity. Livingstone Smith argues that dehumanization is “the belief that some beings only appear human” (2011, p. 4) and thus, there is a need for a vocabulary that distinguishes those being human from those only appearing to be. Therefore, to kill a subhuman is different from killing a person—the Nazis labeled their enemies rats, Rwanda’s Hutus named Tutsis cockroaches. The roaches in “Men Against Fire” are a direct reference to English media personality Katie Hopkins’s 2015 The Sun column where a comparison was made between migrants and cockroaches (see Brooker, Jones, & Arnopp, 2018, p. 194). The need for “proper” language when referring to an enemy is evident in a scene when Arquette’s attention calls Stripe’s use of the pronoun he, instead of it while speaking about the roaches. Smith asserts that the manifestations of legitimizing the killing of the Other (and following the logic of conceiving of ethnic groups as pseudospecies) date earliest from the second millennium BCE. By selectively dehumanizing other communities, humans found a way to get around their ambivalence. They could selectively exclude ethnic groups from the charmed circle of a common humanity, slaughter them, and take their ­possessions, while at the same time enjoying the benefits of trade and affiliation with others. (2011, p. 251)

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The handicap of combat “guilt” (induced by awareness of terminating a foe’s life) lessens through a method of dehumanization. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s monster theory could offer a better understanding of the culture in which this production of monstrous beings takes place. His theoretical approach foregrounds seven theses which provide the knowledge about the environment which spawns its monsters. “The monster dwells at the gates of difference” is what Cohen defines as his fourth thesis: The monster is difference made flesh, come to dwell among us. In its function as dialectical Other or third term supplement, the monster is an incorporation of the Outside, the Beyond—of all those loci that are rhetorically placed as distant and distinct but originate Within. Any kind of alterity can be inscribed across (constructed through) the monstrous body, but for the most part monstrous difference tends to be cultural, political, racial, economic, sexual. (1996, p. 7)

“Roaches” are a simulacrum of monstrosity, and their difference tends to be biological, one that eludes Cohen’s codification. That is to say, Arquette’s progressive agenda certainly intensifies the monstrous difference on a political level, but conceals it behind “empty signs” of the “roaches’” horrible appearance. Such a set of policies and tactics transcends the Darwinian phrase “survival of the fittest”, as it indicates that a biological imperative of the healthiest equals the progressive strength, while it utterly obliterates those who are deemed appalling. These differences, understood as hindrances to progressiveness, in fact represent a key element for the perseverance of the status quo of those in power, which also delineates immutability of the human mentality. In addition to a perseverance of the eugenics policy, “Men Against Fire” demonstrates that the ruling class preserves its status only by imposing the vision of others as horrendous creatures. Therefore, the assumption that any direction of progressive change would necessarily lead to general improvement confirms to be a naive one. Progress is not automatically an issue of achieving the betterment, but of protecting what has already been established. Cohen remarks appositely: The political-cultural monster, the embodiment of radical difference, paradoxically threatens to erase difference in the world of its creators, to demonstrate the potential for system to differ from its own difference, in other words not to be different at all, to cease to exist as a system … Difference that exists outside the system is terrifying because it reveals the truth of the system, its relativity, its fragility, and its mortality … Despite what is said around us persecutors are never obsessed with difference but rather by its unutterable contrary, the lack of difference. (1996, pp. 11–12)

The lack of difference is essentially threatening because it would disclose that the continuing gravity of progressivist faith only serves as faux altruistic excuse for those in power who would never be in favor of change. Drawing on Cohen’s suggestion that etymologically a monster, which is always a construct and a

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product of the governing entity, is “that which reveals” or “that which warns” (1996, p. 4), we could better understand the need for its destruction. However, the success of reaching the goal of totally eliminating the monster would eventually prevent the ultimate favorable outcome that the power structure is pursuing. Even if Stripe and other soldiers turn to be extremely productive with absolute eradication of the “roaches”, Arquette and men alike would have to engage in new inventions of the monstrous. Karl Marx’s standpoint on materialism unveils the mechanism which supports the ruling class: “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society” (1992, p. 34). As shown in the episode, the technological revolution indeed transforms the relations of society—it is easier to terminate the Others, although the conservation of the ruling system’s old modes still prevails.

Empathy Is the Enemy George Lakoff finds empathy to be a key element of progressiveness and as one of the most important social virtues, the foundation of democracy. By taking into account Darwin’s belief that empathy is “crucial to species survival”, Lakoff proposes that cultivating empathy is a democratic value (Lakoff & Wehling, 2012, p. 128). According to Lakoff, America’s moral system, which is closely related to our well-being and the well-being of others who we could connect with, is based on empathy. Hence, nurturing empathic connection generates a discipline of responsibility toward the others. With this in mind, let us consider Arquette’s standpoint on empathy—“We’re genuinely empathetic as a species. I mean, we don’t actually really want to kill each other. Which is a good thing. Until your future depends on wiping out the enemy”. His discourse acknowledges empathy as a human value, but denotes it as an obstacle to a progressive future. The truth that “roaches” mask is hidden in the historical records that Arquette shares with Stripe—in the early twentieth century, most soldiers did not fire their weapons, but instead shot above the heads of the enemy. This 15% of ready-to-shoot-and-kill soldiers in World War II increased to 85% in Vietnam war, but the kill quotients were still not high enough, and many soldiers who were successful at it suffered from post-­ traumatic disorder. As an ultimate military weapon, the MASS chip improved the efficacy of those hired to kill. Arquette’s discourse and the title of this episode refer to a famous 1947 study Men Against Fire by S. L. A. Marshall, one of the most influential US military authors and analysts in the twentieth century. In this study, Marshall deals with the “ratio of fire” which reveals the low percentage of men ready to shoot to kill the enemy in the battle. His standpoint presumes the need to increase effective fire and to overcome the “fear of killing” (2000, p.  78) deriving from “civilian thinking” (2000, p.  67) that enforces the idea that it is a wrongful act. According to Men Against Fire, infantrymen were unable to fire due to their conscious or unconscious reluctance to act violently toward another human being. Marshall suggests that 75%

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of well-trained soldiers would not fire (2000, p.  50) even when they faced danger. Over the years, especially from the 1980s, the validity of Marshall’s data concerning the pervasive non-participation of soldiers has been questioned. Many critics doubt the reliability of the evidence to Marshall’s “resistance to killing” theory, claiming that he fabricated the data values (2000, p. 6). Nevertheless, Robert Engen argues that Marshall’s study has been “frequently reproduced and cited not because of its accuracy but because many important people believe in it” (2012, p.  47). This continuing belief in Marshall’s standpoint reveals the paradox of faith in humanity and its kindness which needs to be surpassed in the name of a “better future”. The thought-provoking aspect of Arquette’s argumentation correlates empathy and the MASS chip. By definition, the concept of empathy involves an imaginative predisposition of the observer. One has to be able to envision oneself in the other’s situation, or to bring oneself to act as if one can encounter the other person’s position. But, instead of emphasizing the experience of the Other, the MASS chip enforces the virtual aspect that desensitizes the observer and dehumanizes the opponents. As previously discussed, it allows the first-­hand experience of emerging into a dystopian world, highly referenced in pop culture where terminating the monstrous Other is given as a heroic act. Interestingly, Lakoff argues that empathy begins physically—“you have a physical ability to connect with other people, to see what they are doing with their body as if it were your body” (Lakoff & Rutsch, 2012). Brooker’s cynicism is to be found in contrasting this idea of soma-emphatic sensation with mediabolic chip which “doubles” the experience of one’s own body—to see what you are doing to others’ bodies without any remorse, as if it were justifiable or reasonable. When one perceives the illusion instead of reality, and if that phantasm supports the context of one’s valor and honor, empathy is beyond the bounds of possibility. Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom’s provocative book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (2016) debunks the prevalent idea of empathy as the highest virtue, and marks it as fundamentally narrowing. He implies that people empathize more with those of their likeness, and that they are even liable to consider violence and intentional infliction of torture as excusable, as exemplified in the case of torture and murder of SS soldiers in Dachau by the Americans whose act of killing was basically disregarded by General Patton. Bloom rejects the theories of cruelty that implicate the correlation between the lack of empathy and all the wrongdoings in the world. He opposes the conclusion that “evil is caused by dehumanization and objectification, by seeing people as somehow less than human, perhaps as nonhuman animals or as objects” (2016, p.  178). Instead, he summarizes his perspective in the following paragraph: Similarly, I’ve been arguing throughout this book that fair and moral and ultimately beneficial policies are best devised without empathy. We should decide just punishments based on a reasoned and fair analysis of what’s appropriate, not through empathic engagement with the pain of victims … None of this denies

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that pain and suffering exist, and none of this is dehumanization in the sense that we should worry about. It’s just that we are better off focusing on some things and not others in order to achieve certain good ends. Since the ends matter, this is not cruel; it’s kind. (2016, p. 207)

This means that Bloom’s point of view parallels the one proclaimed by the character of Arquette—the carriers of progressive change, engulfed by rationalism, suppress empathy, and obscure the traces of humanity in the name of well-­ being. One could agree with Bloom that there is no objective empathy or that it is not a necessary constituent of fair and just morality, and that the issue of humanity, violence, the divide between “us” and “them” is eternally complex. Regardless of the course of history, or mechanism of achieving the desired development, the true understanding of the idea of progress seems inadequate, if not considered through a satirical gaze. The notion of progress, in all of its many incarnations that we are aware of, proves to be fundamentally and terminally flawed. The reason behind this claim derives from the conclusion that the betterment of humanity would permanently be out of our reach, given that we still ontologically do not fully understand what a human is. The Cartesian divide, embedded as a threshold of Western thought, embroils the conceptualization of progressive development. When considering “our” well-being, the choice between empathy and harsh reason is utterly ineffective, as it indicates the limitations of human logic. The question whether we are incurably predictable, or conversely, fatally unpredictable, is deeply hidden in the darkness of our being. Constantly fighting against fire within ourselves, we seek to find our own reflection.

References Adorno, T.  W. (2006). History and Freedom: Lectures 1964–1965. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ashcroft, M., & Oakeshott, I. (2016). Call Me Dave. London: Biteback Publishing. Bloom, P. (2016). Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. New  York, NY: Ecco. Botsman, R. (2017). Who Can You Trust?: How Technology Brought Us Together—And Why It Could Drive Us Apart. New York, NY: PublicAffairs. Boyle, D. (Director), & Macdonald, A. (Producer). (2002). 28 Days Later. [Motion Picture] USA: Fox Searchlight Pictures. Brooker, C., Jones, A., & Arnopp, J. (2018). Inside Black Mirror. London: Ebury Press. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Verbruggen, J. (Director). (2016). Men Against Fire. [Television series episode] In L. Dyke (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Burger, N. (Director), & Fisher, L., Shahbazian P., & Wick, D. (Producer). (2014). Divergent. [Motion Picture] USA: Lionsgate. Carpenter, J. (Director), & Franco, L. (Producer). (1988). They Live. USA: Universal Pictures, Carpenter, J. (Director), & Kaplan, J.S. (Producer). (1976). Assault on Precinct 13. [Motion Picture] USA: Turtle Releasing Organization.

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Marshall, S. L. A. (2000). Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1992). Communist Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Original work published in 1964. Naughty Dog. (2013). The Last of Us. [Video Game] Sony Computer Entertainment. Nietzsche, F. (1996). Human All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Original work published in 1878. Nietzsche, F. (2004). Ecce Homo & The Antichrist (T. Wayne, Trans.). New York, NY: Algora Publishing. Palma B. D. (Director), & Pressman, E. R. (Producer). (1973). Sisters. [Motion Picture] USA: American International Pictures. Reardon, S. (2017, November 22). AI-Controlled Brain Implants for Mood Disorders Tested in People. Nature, 551(7682). Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/ news/ai-controlled-brain-implants-for-mood-disorders-tested-in-people-1.23031 Romero, G.  A. (Director), & Hardman, K., & Streiner, R.  W. (Producers) (1968). Night of the Living Dead. [Motion Picture] USA: Continental Distributing. Romero, G. A. (Director), & Rubinstein, R. P. (Producer). (1978). Dawn of the Dead. [Motion Picture] United Film Distribution Company. Romero, G. A. (Director), & Rubinstein, R. P. (Producer). (1985). Day of the Dead. [Motion Picture] USA: United Film Distribution Company. Schwentke, R. (Director), & Fisher, L., Shahbazian, P., & Wick, D. (Producers). (2015). Insurgent. [Motion Picture] USA: Lionsgate. Schwentke, R. (Director), & Fisher, L., Shahbazian, P., & Wick, D. (Producers). (2016). Allegiant. [Motion Picture] USA: Summit Entertainment, 2016. Seiler, L. (Director), & Foy, B. (Producer). (1943). Guadalcanal Diaries. [Motion Picture] USA: 20th Century Fox. Sharman, J. (Director), & White, M. (Producer). (1975). The Rocky Horror Picture Show. USA: 20th Century Fox. Sholder, J. (Director), & Meltzer, M.  L., Olson, G.  T., & Shaye, R. (Producers). (1987). The Hidden. [Motion Picture] USA: New Line Cinema. Smith, D.  L. (2011). Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Starrett, J. (Director), & Bishop, W. (Producer). (1975). Race with the Devil. [Motion Picture] USA: 20th Century Fox. Thies, J., Zollhofer, M., Stamminger, C.T., & Niener, M. (2016). Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos. CVPR. Tourneur, J. (Director), & Lewton, V. (Producer). (1942). Cat People. [Motion Picture] RKO Radio Pictures Inc. Valve South. (2008). Left 4 Dead [Video game]. Bellevue, Washington: Valve Corporation. Wood, R. (1979). An Introduction to the American Horror Film. In R.  Wood & R.  Lippe (Eds.), American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film (pp.  7–28). Toronto: Festival of Festivals.

On Killer Bees and GCHQ: “Hated in the Nation” James Smith

With a plot structured around an inquest into the deaths of 387,000 people after attacks from hacked surveillance drones driven by social media campaigns, “Hated in the Nation” (03.06) might, on first glance, seem to be safely speculative science fiction. However, as is so often the case with Black Mirror (2011– ), “Hated” uses this premise to interrogate an urgent intersection of current technological and social issues that are only otherwise just hazily emerging into the realm of public debate. This chapter will look in detail at the ways “Hated” grapples with a range of these contentious current debates, such as the use of increasingly ubiquitous drone technology for covert government programs, the vulnerability of digital infrastructure to backdoor hijacks by hostile actors, the role of social media in inflaming mob mentalities and the dangerous illusions of online anonymity. In doing so, I will also address the ways in which “Hated” ironically frames these debates through a fusion of its science fiction premise with other genre forms, particularly its combination of the contemporary police procedural format with the tropes of 1970s B-grade horror films.

Rise of the Drone At the core of the imagination of “Hated” are the so-called ADIs, the “Autonomous Drone Insects” developed by the Granular company and deployed as part of Project Swarm, an attempt to combat the “colony collapse” of organic pollenating bees by replacing them with “honeybee-mimicking drone insects.” On a basic level, this episode is engaged in a deft etymological game with the

J. Smith (*) Durham University, Durham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_14

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concept of a “drone” itself. The word of course has its origin in the worker bee of a beehive, before it was appropriated within aviation to describe an unmanned aerial vehicle (or, as shortened in current military parlance, a UAV), and technology here has come full circle to replace the organic original with a mechanised clone. But as the plot of the episode unfolds, successive twists reveal the coercive potentials lying behind the seemingly benign function of the ADIs. Individual ADIs are hijacked to conduct brutal attacks on those who are nominated in a macabre #DeathTo social media campaign, the entire ADI project has been secretly “bankrolled by the government” and is really an unprecedented surveillance operation conducted by the UK signals intelligence agency GCHQ, and once rolled out the technology proves to be devastatingly insecure and vulnerable to malicious takeover. Speculative scenarios concerning coercive surveillance systems have been at the heart of many Black Mirror episodes. “Fifteen Million Merits” (01.02) reimagines the telescreens of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) for a digital age of interactive entertainment, “White Bear” (02.02) shows a world in which punishment of offenders is turned into a live-action role-playing game for the onlooking public, “Men Against Fire” (03.05) speculates on the impact of militarised “real time” augmented reality as it filters out disruptive content before the cognition of its user, and “Arkangel” (04.02) explores the emotionally destructive potential of advanced child monitoring systems. Yet “Hated” dramatises different aspects of this debate in a particularly stark and pointed way: not only speculating on the increasing ubiquity of drone technology in our society, but also interlocking this with debates about the scope of contemporary state surveillance in the wake of the unprecedented 2013 Snowden revelations concerning the worldwide digital monitoring capacities of agencies such as GCHQ and the US NSA. Of course, drones had a significant history in modern warfare and military surveillance operations long before the digital era. The US Air Force has engaged in extensive secret drone programs since the Cold War, with UAVs used for surveillance overflights since the 1960s, and myriad other highly classified drone programs have been developed to meet the reconnaissance and combat needs of intelligence agencies and the military (Ehrhard, 2010). Such military drones emerged into wider public knowledge in the 1990s, with increasing acknowledgement of the deployment of UAVs (such as the Predator) to conflicts abroad, and the “War on Terror” cemented the presence of UAVs as now-standard military assets (even if individual operations and capacities remain secret). Concurrent with this, science fiction narratives have also long speculated about the capacities and implications of drone technology. While not as central to philosophical and ethical debates over artificial intelligence as the many films and novels depicting sentient androids or cyborgs, the implications of mass deployment of UAVs are still a staple of numerous dystopian or apocalyptic works: The Matrix (1999–) and Terminator (1984–) franchises, for example, are both based on the premise of a future in which humanity is hunted and enslaved by armies of militarised drones.

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The significance of the vision of “Hated,” however, is that it captures a crucial shift, as only in more recent history have drones moved from theatres of war or speculative works into the actual practices of domestic surveillance. In 2007, for example, the highly regarded Surveillance Studies Reader did not index drones or UAVs as part of the topics covered, which suggests that drones were not yet at the forefront of critical debates about surveillance technology in the early 2000s (Hier & Greenberg, 2007). Yet over the past decade, we have seen a remarkable boom in the availability of drones for civilian markets: one 2015 report captured this shift by showing how the 4.3 million drones sold in 2015 represented a 167% year-on-year growth in civilian drone sales (Meeker, 2015). From highly classified objects only a few decades ago, drones are now regularly used by police and emergency services, in agriculture and mining, for package deliveries, for professional and amateur film-recording and simply by hobbyists for amusement—a boom of immense benefit across these industries, but one that also carries with it increasing privacy and security risks. In light of this, “Hated” therefore looks towards the next thresholds of this development, away from large and expensive combat drones, or even smaller surveillance vehicles under direct human control, towards systems where such technology is autonomous, mobile and so ubiquitous in its presence that interaction with it is unavoidable in our daily lives. In doing so, we are faced with new implications, most notably concerning the incorporation of such drones into the broader surveillance apparatus, an airborne addition to the constant data feeds already provided by CCTV camera networks, internet activity and mobile phone “pings”—the era of big data that, as Edward Snowden showed in 2013, is now routinely captured and analysed by US and UK signals intelligence agencies. Such a tension is dramatised in the unfolding narrative, as the investigating officers DCI Parke (Kelly Macdonald) and TDC Colson (Faye Marsay) peel back the conspiracies and cover-ups surrounding Project Swarm’s role in this apparatus. Initially, while Colson warns that “many people are paranoid” about the implications of the ADIs, such suspicion is dismissed by Parke with the statement “There’s a schizophrenic world view”—an exchange that echoes many of the pre-Snowden political denials of state-backed internet surveillance. Equally, the true capacity of this surveillance technology is initially downplayed by the corporate interest behind it. Granular claims that the ADIs possess “just a basic visual sensor” to enable “rudimentary pattern recognition in order to locate compatible flora and navigate,” and agree that “They make their own decisions” and “look after themselves” without any actual human intervention—limitations that seemingly rule out any possibility of dual use for this drone technology. Yet as the police push further, a grudging series of concessions unfold about the exact capacities and purpose of this drone system. Granular admits it “had to consent to permitting government security services access to the visual feed at times of quote, ‘increased national security’”—an admission which echoes many of the state–corporate data exchange interactions exposed by the

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Snowden leaks, such as the revelations about PRISM.1 As is finally laid out, the environmental benefits of the ADIs were only ever a fig leaf for the true national security purpose: “Look, millions of those things flying around, propping up the ecosystem? Well, that’s great, save the planet, hallelujah! Government’s not going to pump billions into it just ’cause some lab coat says so, and it grabs 200 green votes. They saw an opportunity to get more, they took it.” The result is a backdoor into the Swarm system routing all the visual data gathered by the drones through GCHQ for processing and analysis, allowing the secret implementation of a system that achieves “total nationwide surveillance,” the mobility and ubiquity of the ADIs going far beyond the coverage that could ever be achieved by static CCTV cameras. This is defended on the grounds that it allowed law enforcement to track “suspects for weeks,” preventing “bombings, mass shootings”—but, conspicuously, there is no attempt to justify the operation on the grounds of legality or oversight. When layered with the other information GCHQ has access to, such as the IMEI number possessed by “every phone, every device” allowing links to be made to a “unique user,” such micro-­ drones present an unpresented stage in social monitoring—as Shaun Li (Benedict Wong) of the National Crime Agency describes it, a surveillance network operating in ways we “couldn’t dream.”

A Unabomber for the Digital Age If “Hated” warns about a possible dystopian future risked by the rise of the drone, this is only one side of the debate enacted in the episode, for the actual weaponisation of the ADIs was not implemented or intended by GCHQ, but rather by a rogue Granular employee. This employee, Garrett Scholes (Duncan Pow), is described to be “a real wunderkind” and “Ultra-smart,” having left the country six months prior to the events, with the experience of seeing his friend cyber-bullied to the point of suicide now motivating him to launch the #DeathTo game. This motif of hacker-on-the-run carries certain resonances with the case of Edward Snowden (who fled to Hong Kong to make his leaks, then claimed asylum in Russia), emphasised by the lingering scenes of Scholes, in a remote foreign location, using his laptop to finalise the malware, before changing his appearance and throwing his computer equipment over the wall of a dam. Yet Scholes is a terrorist, not a whistleblower, and therefore his motivation and activity represents a different order of intervention and threat. 1  PRISM was detailed in Snowden’s leaked material. One of these slides, dotted with corporate logos from many technology giants, starkly evidenced the extent to which state surveillance depends on corporate backdoor feeds: in one column headed “Current Providers,” the corporations included “Microsoft (Hotmail, etc.), Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, Apple.” In the other column, headed “What Will You Receive in Collection,” material gained from these companies included “E-mail, Chat—video, voice, Videos, Photos, Stored data, VoIP, File transfers, Video Conferencing, Notifications of target activity—logins etc., Online Social Networking details, Special Requests.” For overview of PRISM and other programs, see Greenwald (2014).

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Indeed, “Hated” seems to offer a deliberate allusion to the case of Ted Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, whose sequence of letter bombs across the United States in the late twentieth century saw him rise to the top of the FBI’s most wanted list. Kaczynski, like the fictional Garrett Scholes, was a highly intelligent loner motivated by a disdain for the social implications of modern technology, and sought to have these views published in a manifesto. In Kaczynski’s case, his 35,000 word “Industrial Society and Its Future” was published in the US news media in 1995 in response to his demands, and in it he set out a lengthy case for why “the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race” as they “destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering … and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world” (Kaczynski, 1995). In Scholes’s case, a similarly long 98-page manifesto is buried in the memory of an ADI for the investigators to find, and its rhetoric is strikingly similar to that used by the Unabomber, albeit with the “technological revolution” having supplanted the “industrial revolution.” For Scholes, “Thanks to the technological revolution, we have the power to rage and accuse, spout bile without consequence.” His mission is to force individuals “to recognize the power technology grants us, to acknowledge individual responsibility”—a point brutally made in the implementation of the hashtag game. “Hated” therefore raises the spectre of a new form of terrorism: no longer dependant on sending bombs through the post, but in hijacking and weaponing infrastructure through malicious hacking. Recent years have shown the increasing plausibility of such attacks, with the Stuxnet malware perhaps the most prominent example. A suspected US/Israeli cyber warfare attack against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, Stuxnet was designed to infect certain Iranian computer systems through software vulnerabilities and then use this to cause Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges to physically damage themselves and fail—an attack that crossed a new threshold in cyber warfare, with malicious software being used to cause physical damage to assets rather than simply online disruption or data loss, and one that in many ways can be seen as a precursor to the ADI hijack that “Hated” depicts. Further evidence of the increasing vulnerability of infrastructure to such attacks was clearly demonstrated by the so-called Vault 7 trove of CIA documents. These have been released in several phases on Wikileaks since March 2017, and although post-dating the broadcast of “Hated,” again point to the accuracy of Black Mirror’s insight into this realm. Whereas the Snowden files largely showed a system capturing everything at an overarching level, Vault 7 showed the sharp end of targeted hacking skills, with the CIA able to exploit software flaws and vulnerabilities to compromise and command specific target devices and systems in highly intrusive ways. WEEPING ANGEL, for instance, was a program to compromise specific smart TVs, allowing the set to be used as an active listening device in a home even when appearing to be switched off, turning an entertainment system into a de facto surveillance and communication post. Therefore, while

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certainly not as elegant or pervasive as the single hack of the nationwide Project Swarm envisaged in “Hated,” the Vault 7 documents suggest that the era of the “internet of things” risks ushering in such an age, where the privacy of our homes and personal information can be undone by a single software vulnerability. While Granular are confident about their software security—“You see, it’s got military-grade encryption, and you would need a diagnostic controller, which is also encrypted”—the fact that they have left a “backdoor” for government use also leaves a gap for malicious actors. As “Hated” suggests, time and again even the most secure systems can fail: a fact emphasised by the Vault 7 leaks themselves, where some of the most highly guarded secrets of the CIA were leaked onto the internet and the software vulnerabilities previously exploited by the CIA effectively handed to adversaries.

Games, Consequences, Online Hatred and Real Life It is important to note that the politics of state surveillance, or even the mass-­ murdering malicious hacking of Scholes, is only one side of “Hated’s” dystopia—for arguably an even more coercive force is shown to be wielded by social media, where the apparent safety of online anonymity tempts people to enact behaviours that otherwise would be beyond the pale. Take, for example, how the episode portrays the initial victim of the bee attacks, the newspaper columnist Jo Powers (Elizabeth Berrington). While her webpage banner describes her as “Opinionated…Unstoppable… Fearless,” for most of the public she is simply known for writing abusive “clickbait” pieces, with the episode focusing on the fallout from her attack on the “disability rights activist Gwen Marbury” who self-immolated outside Downing Street in protest against government cuts. Powers could be based upon any number of people, but seems particularly reminiscent of Katie Hopkins, the British reality TV contestant who has subsequently carved out an infamous niche as a right-wing tabloid columnist and minor media personality, the extremity of her views often courting controversy for its own sake rather than any attempt at debate. Like Powers, Hopkins has been the target of many death threats and online campaigns, to the extent that she was personally subject to a video by Anonymous threatening retribution, and (more recently) a musical entitled “The Assassination of Katie Hopkins” (Youngs, 2018)—a notoriety and public outcry which suggests that public embrace of a #DeathTo game would indeed be a plausible scenario if it were to exist. It is clear that, in “Hated,” Powers is a character deliberately presented as a provocation. Powers smirks at the glances of the public as she walks through the street and shrugs off the abuse hurled at her. She apparently relishes the outrage she causes, as we see her scrolling through the comments on her computer, clicking on the pop-up informing her of “over 200 new notifications including 96 mentions,” and laughing at the abuse as she drinks a glass of wine. The narrative drive of “Hated” therefore tempts us to adopt a position of ambivalence about Powers’s death—if not outright wishing for it, at least ­siding

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with the mob mentality that suggests she had it coming or that she got what she deserved. But by doing this, “Hated” is suggesting that, even in the case of someone as deplorable as Powers, the viewer is playing their own “Game of Consequences,” showing how easy it is to side with the rage fanned by social media—a perspective that interestingly parallels current research into the psychology of trolling and the extent to which “ordinary” users can be drawn into escalating attacks.2 As the episode proceeds, we see how such sparks, when fanned, quickly flame into ugly outpouring of hate, nowhere more evident than in the montage shown of news broadcasts, social media posts and chat shows debating the #DeathTo game, where participants often openly admit that they are “happy to see her die” because “if you’re an arsehole, you deserve to be shamed,” and advocating the legitimacy of murder-by-hashtag in select cases such as “someone, you know, who deserves it, like a racist.” As the #DeathTo game rises in popularity, the choice of victims becomes more arbitrary and capricious: the rapper Tusk (Charles Babalola), killed because he mocks the dancing of one of his young fans; Clara Meades (Holli Dempsey), a protestor who took a picture of herself pretending to urinate on a war memorial; and the Chancellor (Ben Miles), long unpopular and now the face of the government’s disability cuts— the killer bee replacing the ballot box. And with the final twist, when the “real targets” are revealed—“everyone who took part” in the #DeathTo game— stark questions are posed: if we initially felt little sympathy for Powers, is it possible we, or anyone we know, might have joined in and now be among the 387,000 victims? And does a willingness to participate in the #DeathTo threats implicate them, in at least some way, in an extreme form of eye-for-an-eye vengeance? One of the deepest tensions explored in “Hated,” therefore, is the false dichotomy people draw between what happens “in real life” and online, and the illusion the internet and social media can give its users that actions on this platform are “free speech” or without serious consequence. The shallowest articulation of this position—that trolling is an inconsequential activity—is found in Liza Bahar (Vinette Robinson), the woman who sends a cake to Powers’s home decorated with “Fucking Bitch” written in the icing, and one of earliest adopters of the #DeathTo game. Bahar is a primary school teacher who funded the cake through donations from “a mums and carers message board,” unaware of the contradiction apparent between this “real life” role as teacher and carer and her online personality sending death threats and abuse. Even after having posted Powers’s name as a #DeathTo candidate, Bahar is unrepentant: the abuse is justified due to the “horrible shit” Powers had written, sending the cake is a case of “just using my freedom of speech” and being “funny,” and online death threats are “not real” and just a “joke thing”—the 2  Research by Cheng et al. (2017), for example, challenged the image of the troll as a “vocal or antisocial minority,” showing how the growth of negative moods and contexts in online communities can escalate and cause otherwise “ordinary” users to engage in troll-like posting.

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quintessential excuses offered by trolls when forced to justify activity that, in any other form, would be criminal abuse. Bahar is by no means isolated in her views that what is said online is merely a “joke thing” without implication. Indeed, in slightly different ways, these are views shared by the investigating officers. Parke, when confronted with the torrents of online abuse directed at Powers, dismisses it with the view that “That Internet stuff drifts off like weather. It’s half hate. They don’t mean it.” Even Colson, despite her previous job in computer forensics and success in cracking the hard drive of the child killer Ian Rannoch, still views digital work as somehow less significant than being “in the field”: “out here in the real world, you can genuinely prevent stuff, can’t you?” Yet while Parke can dismiss online mobbing as something that will “drift off like weather,” for the victim of such an event this “weather” is devastating and a core thematic of “Hated” is to dramatise the personal and psychological impact of such attacks. This is most vividly described by Scholes’s former flatmate Tess Wallender (Georgina Rich), who caused a social media storm after inadvertently complaining online about someone with a learning disability. As she states: “It was like having a whole weather system turn against me. Just hate message after hate message, around the clock, all piling on. It’s hard to describe what that does to your head. Suddenly there’s a million invisible people, all talking about how they despise you. It’s like a mental illness … I mean, hands up, I made a mistake, but the way people enjoyed kicking me, that’s what got to me. The casual fun they had and, um I just felt I couldn’t go on.”

As has sometimes been noted, this speech seems to carry the personal voice of Brooker himself, a figure who is no stranger to online controversy and hatred. This was most evident after Brooker wrote a 2004 piece in The Guardian newspaper, deriding President Bush and ending with the question: “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr—where are you now that we need you?” In speculating on an assassination (even satirically), Brooker clearly crossed a major line, and The Guardian issued an apology and deleted the article from the online site. Yet the extremity of the reaction went well beyond even Brooker’s transgression, to the extent that “someone wrote to say that they were going to smuggle a sniper rifle through customs and kill me, so I had better walk close to buildings, stay under trees and move in a zig-zag. That one stayed with me” (Brooker & Jonze, 2016). In this context, the repeated metaphor of the “weather” is a significant point across the episode. In what seems a deliberate counterpart to the verbal descriptions of social media rage as a storm cloud, the ADIs physically appear as dark clouds in the sky as they swarm, and their movements are followed in the headquarters by a system akin to weather maps. And “the cloud” can, of course, be used as a metaphor in a different way: a term for shared computer infrastructure, where resources are accessed and stored across the internet rather than physically installed on a given machine. “Hated” therefore offers us a sustained imagining of a scenario in which the online cloud of social media is given a physical form—the devastation wrought by the ADIs suggesting the true

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destructive impulse lurking behind much of the discourse online that is otherwise safely hidden from public view.

On Nordic Noir and Killer Bees While “Hated” presses upon some of the most urgent debates we face over automated surveillance, cyber warfare and online shaming, it does so in a deft and non-didactic way. For despite its bleak premise of catastrophic loss of life, and despite the often-gruesome moments of individual violence, it is held together with a dark irony that offers a counterpoint to the otherwise brooding tension that builds across the episode. This is, in part, injected by individual satirical characters. The Chancellor, for example, is a particularly pointed caricature of a self-serving politician (in many ways reminiscent of the political world of “National Anthem” [01.01], or the cynical denizens of The Thick of It [BBC4, 2005–2012]), willing to cast aside any notion of democratic or liberal values to protect his life (but not that of others) from the #DeathTo game. This ranges from the suggestion of pulling “a North Korea” and shutting down the entire internet to stop the ADIs from attacking him, to authorising “A head-­ to-­toe shit smear” campaign of illegal leaks against a suspected paedophile to ensure he is overtaken in the #DeathTo vote, on the grounds that “He’s in his 80s. He’s had his life. Fuck him under the bus.” Beyond this individual characterisation, however, is a deeper game of inter-­ referentiality. Much of this is inward looking to the Black Mirror mythos itself. As many fans quickly noted, “Hated” presents several self-referential moments to reward the attentive devotee—whether referring back to the police case that underpinned the premise of “White Bear,” or forward to the rise of the technology seen in “Men Against Fire,” this episode plays a significant role in linking together the universe’s mythology. But outside of this web of Black Mirror self-referentiality, “Hated” assembles its narrative from the conventions of several well-established genre formats, which provides a juxtaposition of the science fiction drone technology against other very different story-telling structures. This was remarked upon by many of the initial reviewers and discussions online, but here I will look at two examples which seem the most prominent and significant areas of this genre fusion. The episode, framed through the lens of an inquest after the ADI catastrophe, most directly invokes the format of the police procedural, and borrows from many of the tropes of the hard-boiled genre. Most obvious is the pairing of the main characters, with Parke the cynical experienced officer, Colson the idealistic young protégée—a cliché of the genre here given new life by the fact that they are investigating a cybercrime in the future world. More specifically, “Hated” carries the strong influence of Nordic Noir, a fact Brooker deliberately flagged when he announced the episode to be “a Black Mirror Scandi Noir,” further suggesting that this was a form made possible by the shift to Netflix which allowed an atmosphere to build over the longer run time, uninterrupted by commercial breaks (Jeffery 2016). Such Scandi Noir had come to

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international prominence on television through works such as the Danish series The Killing (2007–12), which was picked up by BBC4 in the United Kingdom and was further enhanced by a remake of an American version by AMC in 2011. The characteristics of Nordic Noir have been defined in several ways, but here a pertinent definition can be drawn from Jensen and Waade, who stress the sense of “melancholy” created through the psychology of characters as well as through the use of “landscape, nature, climate, … general atmosphere,” colours and light (2013, pp. 192, 194). Such influence pervades “Hated,” and is evident from the opening scenes, where we are introduced to Parke as she attends the inquest. The scenes are dominated by washed-out colours of grey, white and brown; camera angles shift across various obstructed or partial views; the pace is slow; speech is hesitant and quiet; and Parke is surrounded by people yet is isolated, pale and worn. As the scene changes, back into the historical investigation being described, the onscreen caption provides a day-by-day breakdown of the events (May 15/Day One), that mimics the 24-hour episodic structure of The Killing. Yet while the episode keeps up this melancholic aesthetic across much of its span, particularly enhanced by the soundtrack composed by Martin Phipps (notably including the slow, brooding “Fall into Me” by Alev Lenz which as a sonic backdrop links together the unfolding catastrophe of the drone attack in the United Kingdom and Scholes’s location abroad), the inquest framing is also subject to its own ironic intervention. At the end, Parke actively deceives the inquest about Colson’s supposed death, receiving a text message that indicates she is supporting Colson in the pursuit of Scholes. While not undermining the credibility of the entire testimony, this is still enough to introduce at least an element of doubt about the narration, forcing us to look back at the action through a subjective, not objective, frame. However, working alongside this contemporary noir aesthetic is another, very different, filmic form—that of the B-grade “Killer Bee” film, a wave of which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Deadly Bees (1966), The Savage Bees (1976), Killer Bees (1974), The Swarm (1978) and Terror Out of the Sky (1978). Such films were often made for television and suffered from numerous defects, including bad acting, thin or nonsensical plots and clumsy special effects. Moreover, like other types of “invasion” narrative, such stories often tapped a thinly veiled xenophobic discourse: the killer bees are often emphasised as having African or Central America origins, and the films are sometimes set in the border states of the United States as citizens struggle to fend off this immigrant threat. Consequently, most suffered from terrible reviews: a Radio Times review lists The Swarm as “one of the worst [B-movies] ever made” (Jones, n.d.). Nonetheless, the rhetoric has evidently generated a certain cultural fasciation, seen in the fact that these films have attracted a cult following, and that low-budget horror movies continue to be produced on similar themes. This is not limited to fictional works: the various “killer bee” documentaries produced by channels such as National Geographic indicate the traction this particular horror motif has gained, and one that, in its own way, Black Mirror now exploits.

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“Hated” evokes many images from this genre: the scene where Clara Meades is moved to a safe house, only for a swarm of ADIs to descend in a black cloud and force their way into the home, is reminiscent of publicity posters for The Swarm, depicting the lead actor Michael Caine and others running from an office building under the shadow of a huge cloud of bees. But beyond this nostalgic nod to an otherwise preposterous genre, this choice is also loaded with a contemporary point. While these narratives of only a few decades ago were based on fears about the growth of uncontrollable swarms of bees, the crisis facing the modern ecology demonstrates that exactly the opposite is true: bee numbers have been rapidly declining, threatening the ability of ecosystems to function by removing their crucial link as pollinator. Our world, in other words, is not so many steps away from requiring a solution such as ADIs to prevent our own ecological collapse. Of course, “Hated in the Nation” can only engage with one facet of drone technology, let alone all the possible intersections of this with social media and government surveillance, and at this time, the ADI remains in the realm of science fiction rather than ubiquitous reality. And yet, what this episode also leaves us to speculate upon is how thin this fictional line really is. Swarm-like miniaturised drones are indeed being tested for military applications (Baraniuk, 2017), and (separately) the Christmas 2018 shutdown of London’s Gatwick Airport due to unidentified drone incursions showed the true disruptive implications of this technology, with the police seemingly powerless to prevent this new form of attack. Once again in Black Mirror, the most disturbing part of the premise lies not in the distant future it predicts—but, rather, how little seems to separate our society from the dystopia it imagines.

References Allen, I. (Director & Producer). (1978). The Swarm [Motion Picture]. USA: Warner Bros. Baraniuk, C. (2017). US Military Tests Swarm of Mini-Drones Launched from Jets. BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38569027 Bernth, P. (Producer). (2007–2012). The Killing [Television series] Copenhagen: DR1. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Bathurst, O. (Director). (2011). The National Anthem. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Foster, J. (Director). (2017). Arkangel. In K. Pitt (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Hawes, J. (Director). (2016). Hated in the Nation. [Television series episode] In S. Wohlenberg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. & Huq, K. (Writers) & Lynn, E. (Director). (2011). Fifteen Million Merits. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C., & Jonze, T. (2016, October 19). Interview. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/19/charlie-brookersomeone-threatened-to-smuggle-a-rifle-through-customs-and-kill-me Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2013). White Bear. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4.

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Brooker, C. (Writer), & Verbruggen, J. (Director). (2016). Men Against Fire. [Television series episode] In L. Dyke (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Cameron, J. (Director), & Hurd, G.  A. (Producer). 1984. The Terminator. USA: Orion Pictures. Cheng, J., Bernstein, M., Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, C., & Leskovec, J. (2017). Anyone Can Become a Troll: Causes of Trolling Behavior in Online Discussions. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW ‘17) (pp. 1217–1230). New York, NY: ACM. Ehrhard, T. P. (2010). Air Force UAVS: The Secret History. Arlington, VA: The Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies. Francis, F. (Director), & Subotsky, M., & Rosenberg, M. (Producers). (1966). Deadly Bees [Motion Picture]. USA: Paramount Pictures. Geller, B. (Director & Producer). (1976). The Savage Bees [Television Movie]. New York, New York City: NBC. Greenwald, G. (2014). No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA & the Surveillance State. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Harrington, C. (Director), & Bernstein, R., & Rosenman, H. (Producers). (1974). Killer Bees [Television Movie] New York, New York City: ABC. Hier, S.  P., & Greenberg, J. (Eds.). (2007). The Surveillance Studies Reader. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Jeffery, M. (2016, October 17). Charlie Brooker Reveals How Black Mirror Is Different Now It’s on Netflix. DigitalSpy. Retrieved from http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ black-mirror/news/a811287/charlie-brooker-reveals-how-black-mirror-is-different-now-its-on-netflix/ Jensen, P. M., & Waade, A. M. (2013). Nordic Noir Production Values: The Killing and The Bridge. Akademisk Kvarter, 7, 189–201. Jones, A. (n.d.). The Swarm. Radio Times. Retrieved from https://www.radiotimes. com/film/cztwj/the-swarm/ Kaczynski, T. (1995, September 22). Industrial Society and Its Future. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm Katzin, L.  H. (Director), & Nelson, P. (Producer). (1978). Terror Out of the Sky [Television Movie]. New York, New York City: CBS. Meeker, M. (2015). Internet Trends 2015. Presented at Code Conference. Rancho Palos Verdes, CA. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/2015/5/27/11562966/ mary-meekers-2015-internet-trends-slides Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Secker & Warburg. Tandy, A. (Producer). (2005–2012). The Thick of It. London: BBC4. Wachowski, L., & Wachowski, L. (Directors), & J.  Silver (Producer). (1999). The Matrix [Motion Picture]. USA: Warner Bros. Youngs, I. (2018). Katie Hopkins Musical Confronts the Age of Outrage. BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-43746654

PART IV

Dethroning the King of Space: Toxic White Masculinity and the Revised Adventure Narrative in “USS Callister” Steffen Hantke

Introduction: Ripped from the Headlines The opening episode of Black Mirror’s (2011–) fourth season, “USS Callister” (04.01), follows the show’s commitment to topical relevance by taking on an issue that had come to dominate the 2017 media cycle since the fall across a wide variety of manifestations—an issue best summarized under the heading of toxic white masculinity. Pushed by his more aggressively dominant and socially competent CEO Walton (Jimmi Simpson) into a marginal existence as Chief Technical Officer within the company he helped to co-found, the episode’s white male villain, a computer programmer named Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons), has created self-aware copies of some of his co-workers, based on a technology allowing him to digitize their DNA. Daly has imprisoned these co-­ workers in a version of the company’s current game in development, a game called Infinity, personalized to his idiosyncratic needs and tastes by being modeled upon a thinly disguised version of the canonical TV series Star Trek (NBC, 1966–1969). While the real-life originals of the crew remain unaware of the existence or plight of their digital clones, these clones, making up the sexually and racially diverse crew of the USS Callister inside the game, is trapped within this world built and controlled by its white male creator. Meanwhile, their creator enters and exits the modified version of the vintage television show at will, enjoying the escapist wish-fulfillment whenever he needs to compensate for his real-life marginalization. This arrangement collapses when Daly, a petty tyrant

S. Hantke (*) Department of English, Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_15

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feared inside the game, ultimately fails to defeat a mutiny among his creations, led by his latest victim, his company’s most recent hire Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti). Under her competent and imaginative leadership, the crew of the USS Callister breaks out of Daly’s universe, leaving the digital version of its creator trapped in his own rapidly unraveling creation, his real-life body permanently brain dead inside his luxury apartment. In the closing scene, the crew of the USS Callister heads out beyond the digital frontier and into an infinite cyberspace where further adventures (and other toxic white males) await. Consistent with Black Mirror’s recurring topical concerns, “USS Callister” does not follow its writers’ preoccupation with the public force of digital technologies (e.g. the social media mobs in the show’s opening episode, “The National Anthem” [01.01], “White Bear” [02.02] or “Playtest” [03.02]), but veers sharply to the other end of the spectrum with their exploration of digital technologies’ power to create secluded private spaces, most famously in third season’s “San Junipero” (03.04), referred to by journalist Jackie Strause as a “cultural phenomenon” (2018).1 While Black Mirror’s media profile or “brand” is primarily driven by the extrapolation of digital technologies—invariably more so in their dystopian than utopian potential—this one downplays the extrapolative aspect in favor of topical urgency. Hence, the episode’s central conceit—what the Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction refers to as a “pocket universe” (Prucher, 2007, pp. 150–151), tracing its first use back to Murray Leinster in 1946—can hardly be applauded for its originality. For one, there is the rich science fiction tradition of imagining artificially created worlds into which characters may be plunged or withdraw, into which characters may unwittingly find themselves transported, and from which characters may have to plot their escapes. Though New Wave science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s would accommodate the trope in various forms (e.g. Philip K. Dick’s preoccupation with schizoid states and pharmacologically produced pocket universes), increasingly sophisticated means of digital simulation would give the trope new urgency thereafter. This new cultural relevance is epitomized by 1980s cyberpunk and its recognition of information technology as the pinnacle of post-industrial economies within late capitalism. In its wake, the trope would entrench itself within popular culture with a cluster of films in which cybertropes would trade in their subcultural status for play within mainstream culture. Presaged by Daniel F. Simulacron-3 (1964), that cycle would come into its own with films like Josef Rusnak’s The Thirteenth Floor (1999), adapting Galouye’s novel, David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999), the Wachowskis’ The Matrix (1999), Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), and Gary Ross’ Pleasantville (1998). Though many of these texts would acknowledge that pocket universes may provide benevolent, reassuring, or compensatory fantasies—the best example provided perhaps by Star Trek: The Next Generation 1  The episode’s director does not deny the status of “San Junipero” as “a cultural phenomenon,” but admits to still not having watched the episode in its entirety “because it’s too good. I couldn’t watch it because it scared me about doing this project!” (Strause, 2018).

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(CBS, 1987–1994)—an essential aspect of the trope has always been the “emancipatory narrative” it invariably engenders, that is, dramatic action that revolves around recognition of the pocket universe’s essential inauthenticity, escape from it, and attainment or recuperation of agency (Hantke, 2005). Given Black Mirror’s broad interest in the dystopian consequences and the utopian possibilities of inauthentic, simulated digital artifacts, a story about entrapment in, and escape from, a pocket universe is hardly a surprising choice. To the degree that “USS Callister” does little else than faithfully re-enacting the trope in its most popular incarnations, using it as a vehicle rather than positioning it as the object of its critical thrust, it frees writers and viewers to focus instead on the topical allegory this vehicle transports. Released on December 29, 2017, “USS Callister,” together with the entire fourth season of the show, enters the cultural sphere well into an extended media cycle devoted to the indictment of white male sexual transgressors, all of them celebrities from the world of film and television. Viewers of the show would have been exposed to a series of revelations about sexual misconduct going back roughly three months and involving, among others, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, celebrity chef Mario Batali, music producer Russell Simmons, radio personality Garrison Keillor, television anchor Matt Lauer, Pixar executive John Lasseter, radio and television host Charlie Rose, senator and Saturday Night Live (NBC, 1975–) alumnus Al Franken, stand-up comedian Louis C.K., actor Jeffrey Tambor, actor Dustin Hoffman, director Brett Ratner, actor Kevin Spacey, and director James Toback (Pirani, 2017). While Black Mirror’s production schedule preceded all of these events, with show runner Charlie Brooker “[writing the episode] before the U.S. election, and [filming] it in January” (Strause, 2018), the zeitgeist had most definitely been primed by the firing of Fox news head Roger Ailes in July 2016 and Fox news commentator Bill O’Reilly in April 2017, and, perhaps most importantly, by episodes of unrepentant misogyny during the US presidential campaign in 2016, culminating in the by-now infamous conversation between candidate Donald Trump and television host Billy Bush in October of 2016. If the chronology of historical events precludes a reading of “USS Callister” as a direct response to this media cycle—post-production tinkering aside—then the cycle itself would provide an immediately obvious context for the episode by the time of its release.2 In the context of this ongoing debate, the episode lays out an easily readable allegory celebrating efforts to indict Daly as the embodiment of white male tyranny and replace him with Nanette Cole. To the extent that this allegory is enacted within a diegetic world that is only minimally differentiated from a “realistic” contemporary world characterized by neoliberal capitalism—that is, 2  The same media cycle would also determine the context for the 2018 Academy Awards: in “an America where the ruling party seems willing to sacrifice many things—including decency and justice—to reassert white Christian masculinity as the tentpole of the universe, the best picture category offers a contrasting vision: a flaw-free indictment of that same colonial pathology (‘Get Out’), a blazing affirmation of young womanhood (‘Lady Bird’) and an aching gay romance (‘Call Me by Your Name’), among others” (West, 2018).

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only the technologies crucial to the episode’s central allegorical mechanism are fictional—the episode takes on the task of imagining the functional nexus between its allegorical narrative about gender and race against the backdrop of its “realistic” depiction of economics. Since the latter one of the two is clearly not the primary thematic focus of the episode, it is worthwhile examining how the episode works out the relationship between an identity politics based on differences of gender and race and a broader politics based on economics as the primary driving force behind social relations. Even more interesting is the question whether—or if at all—the revolutionary narrative enacted in the allegory manifests itself in the realm of economics as well. What, in other words, is the economic dimension of (or impact on) identity politics, as this episode imagines it? As a critical commentary on social affairs, and as an act of political imagination, how does “USS Callister” imagine the interaction between gender, race, and class?

Microscopic Gods: Toxic White Masculinity in a Neoliberal World Recognizing in the fictional character of Robert Daly those specimen of toxic white masculinity who, over the course of the 2017 news cycle, have faced public accusation, demotion, and criminal prosecution for the abuse of their power in pursuit of sexual gratification, is very much part of the pleasure offered to viewers by way of topical allegory. In fact, at its most specifically polemical, this allegory about toxic white masculinity can be read as being among the first fictional responses to the media presence of Donald Trump, inaugurated into the US presidency in early 2017. Though Robert Daly’s highly specialized professional competence, his self-effacing shyness, and his sexual repression align themselves more with the pathology of the tech-savvy nerd than with Trump’s attributes as a postmodern celebrity, “USS Callister” construes an allegorical correspondence by way of the nostalgia that structures both Trump’s and Daly’s vision of constructing a self-serving universe which others are then compelled to inhabit. The “again” in “Make America Great Again” that operates throughout the episode corresponds directly to Robert Daly’s affection for Space Fleet, the fictional analogue to Star Trek. Both hark back to a myth of past American “greatness,” associated with an ideological agenda that predates the one that is currently dominant. For an audience that grew up within digital culture, “USS Callister” signals just how ancient Space Fleet is when Nanette spots it on VHS cassette tapes, a videotape recording format for home use popularized in the latter half of the 1970s, on the shelves of Daly’s office. In more ways than one, Space Fleet is the cultural and historical other—the good other when seen in the warm glow of nostalgia; the bad other when seen within the paradigm of the 2017 media cycle. Stripped of its progressive championing of multiculturalism, its critique of Cold War hawkishness, and its humanist idealism about the US and its standing in the world, Star Trek is reframed, as the fictional Space Fleet, when viewers read it in terms of the 2017 debate. This “weaponization of retro

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Star Trek,” as one online reviewer puts it, highlights the show’s “sexism and political incorrectness which aren’t brushed aside or used for window dressing; rather, they’re explored as part of a bigger philosophical drama” (Hardisty, 2017). It is true that characters’ repeated acknowledgments of the show’s hokeyness can still be reabsorbed into a 2017 audience reading it affectionately as camp—from the odd mixture of the sexual luridness and prudishness in late1960s American culture, to the melodramatic overacting and the generically formulaic plotting. But the show’s shift from Daly’s subjective experience of this fictional universe to that of his subalterns abandons camp affection for disdain or horror. Camp is no effective defense against an ideology enforced from a position of privilege. Not only did the crew have no say in the construction of the universe they are forced to inhabit; nor are they capable of entering and exiting this universe at will as its creator does; but their roles here remain permanently fixed as subalterns doing the dirty work and praising the universe’s vain deity in ludicrous excess of his reasonable accomplishments. The satisfaction we feel at seeing Daly defeated is, to the credit of the episode’s writers, not diminished by the attention devoted to exploring the origins of Daly’s pathology. His first appearance in the plot follows a grandiose performance of his digital stand-in inside the modified game; its effect derives from the contrast between the fictional and the real Robert Daly. In real life, Daly is reticent and awkward, a door mat suffering slights even from those working below him in the corporate hierarchy. His clear sexual desire for, but pronounced shyness around, women, part and parcel of his discomfort with his own body, manifests itself comedically in the fact that he has endowed his digital creations inside the game with neither the physical equipment for sex nor for defecation. In spite of (or perhaps because of?) his sexual repression, Daly is deserving of audience sympathy for not being able to stand up to a genuine alpha male like Walton (Jimmi Simpson), the company’s CEO, who moves confidently through social interactions that leave Daly in an awkward fumble. Still, we learn that Walton’s social power rests on Daly’s technical brilliance, a quality which, in combination with his social ineptitude, makes him appear as a likable nerd, and, by implication, casts his compensatory fantasies inside the digital game as a forgivable response. As the episode progresses, however, his psychological and social shortcomings take on a more sinister bend. The praise and adoration he demands from the crew of the USS Callister, the sexual gratification he accepts as an unquestioned prerogative, and the humiliation his crew must suffer at his hands might first seem comical in their sheer hyperbole—a marker of how deep the insults to his psyche really are—before, ultimately, they appear purely self-indulgent. This is even before it is revealed that, in order to stage the compensatory fantasy, Daly instrumentalizes others, who are just as self-conscious and aware as he himself is whenever he enters the game. Whenever Daly takes revenge on the digital clone of a colleague in the real world, the inherent violence of his actions goes beyond the audience’s understanding of their psychological causes. The triviality of some of the offenses for which Daly has punished co-workers

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by turning them into digital hostages speaks less to his sensitivity and more to a sense of entitlement—what could it be that exempts him from the small annoyances the rest of us must tolerate as a matter of daily life? Given that his apartment is lavish, a sign of the salary he commands, it is clear that he feels more marginalized and put upon than he really is. The psychological and economic realities within the character are out of sync. Hence, the depth of Daly’s psychological wounds in no way excuses the brutality of the mechanism he has discovered to deal with these humiliations. In the episode’s concluding scene, once both Daly and Walton have conveniently been dispatched, toxic white masculinity rears its ugly head once again. After an unsuccessful request to trade extended to the newly liberated crew of the Callister, a character calling himself Gamer691 (Aaron Paul) immediately starts to threaten violence.3 As the Callister runs for cover, his voice on the intercom gets the final line of the episode, as he calls himself “King of Space.” Clearly, we learn, not everything is great on the digital frontier; part of the further adventures of the crew of the USS Callister will be to encounter and fight other toxic white males. While this final plot twist introduces an element of irony to scenes that are otherwise imbued with the pathos and grandiosity of the technological sublime, what remains unclear is the status of Walton as a character in the real world. While Daly’s vegetative state has eliminated him from Callister Inc., female employees like Nanette must still contend with the company’s CEO—humanized by his care for his offspring, also suspiciously male—roaming the hallways looking for sexual adventure. It is difficult to tell whether this is an oversight on the part of the writers, as the episode loses track of the real world in its final few scenes, or whether it is a deliberately construed irony, aligning the imperfections of the real world (Walton) with those of the digital one (Gamer691). The plot twist at the end of the episode also brings with it some other complications. Once the crew of the digital universe has emancipated itself from the claustrophobic confines of its previous domain, created and controlled by Daly, it now inhabits another universe which, though still digital, is now infinite and no longer the product of an individual creator but of a collaborative process, a distributed network, driven by multiple players. The first one of these players, Gamer691, reveals himself to be virtually identical in manners and attitudes to Daly—a male chauvinist, rude and aggressive and self-centered. The only difference to Daly is the actual degree of power wielded by this player. While Daly really was a microscopic god within his own universe, this player thinks he is (calling himself “King of Space”), acts like he is, but really is not. If we assume him to be not aware of his relative impotence within this decentered network, then his assertion of omnipotence is as sad in its lack of self-awareness as it is funny in its grandiose overreach. If we assume him to be aware of his actual 3  The episode uses this opportunity to play out yet another topical reference to the theme of toxic white masculinity as this moment clearly refers to the so-called Gamergate scandal. For further information see Braithwaite, 2016; Massanari, 2017; Perreault and Vos, 2016.

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impotence—and the uncertainty signaled by the repetition and delivery of his line “King of Space” suggests that he might be—then his assertion of omnipotence is a symptom of his delusion, asserting wish-fulfillment against the overwhelming thereness of reality. What Gamer691 needs, the insinuation seems to be, is a subordinate universe that placates his uncertainties. What the ending of the episode proposes as a vision of a successful uprising and revolutionary change is not, as in so many of its precursors in science fiction, an escape from the pocket universe. Instead it leaves viewers with a crew liberated from its imposed character traits (they go by their real names now, they lose the more onerous details of their bodies and uniforms), a crew functioning out of genuine solidarity rather than collective fear of authority (though one might argue that their spontaneous collaboration in the final scene is merely a response to immediate danger and not a freely chosen form of social interaction and labor distribution), and a captain who is no longer a white male determining the agenda and setting limits on the surrounding universe. The crew makes a home in a universe that is still not a “natural” space. This is still not a pre-established or given universe, fundamentally indifferent and unresponsive to human desire. Rather, it is the product of human creation, a social construct, human-made. It is a universe that is directly the product of living social interaction rather than exclusively that of Daly’s psychological pathology, in which obsolete social formations are violent imposed upon the present. It is a fascinating model of social relations in an imaginary post-revolutionary world. Unfortunately, what disappears behind this complex nesting of “the social” and “the psychological”—the complexity of which is one of the strengths of the episode—is another dimension: that of “the economic.” In recognition of the metaphor that frames revolution as “changing the narrative,” “USS Callister” seems not much interested in social relations in the real world, which can be read as a way to assert that they will continue as before, but posits its crucial revolution as taking place within the digital realm—the realm where, crucially, the technological infrastructure that enables social interaction must be produced, paid for, and owned.4 The episode avoids this question by positing ownership primarily as a question of control. Ownership manifests itself as control, so if no single agent controls the collective realm of digital media, then there must be no clearly defined owner. A single agent owning or controlling the means of discursive production would be subject to identity politics—a collective one is not. Neither the partial ownership of fragments of the digital realm is thus available for interrogation, nor is the role played by massive digital corporations like Facebook or Google which, in effect, monopolize considerable space in this realm. On other issues, however, the episode actively imagines an economic framework. The digital space beyond the borders of Daly’s personal universe is vast and infinite. Without the boundaries that define Daly’s imagination, 4  It is not merely the infrastructure of social interaction that is commodified in the digital realm; it is social interaction itself (monitored, mined for metadata, sold to third parties, etc.).

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this universe poses interminable challenges, contains inexhaustible resources, and promises infinitely renewable options for revision and re-invention. On a personal level, this space invites what Celia Lury (1998) has defined as “prosthetic identity.” A person, Lury argues, “creates (or is created by) a self-identity that is no longer defined by the edict ‘I think, therefore I am’; rather, he or she is constituted in the relation ‘I can, therefore I am.’” (Lury, 1998, p. 3). To the extent that this space is characterized as a frontier, however, this is not just an invitation to post-human utopian experimentation. Under neoliberal policies, the edict ‘I can, therefore I am’ quickly changes to ‘I can, therefore I must’. What Lury sees as the utopian privileges of the ‘experimental individual’ have already become essential survival skills in a postindustrial economy that demands flexibility, fluidity, deracination, and substitutability. (Hantke, 2005)

Akin to the ideology of the American frontier, from which much of its iconography is derived, digital space is the marketplace neoliberalism has always dreamed of. Thus it is important that the first encounter with the denizens of this idealized infinite marketplace occurs on the occasion of an economic interaction; Gamer691’s initial offer is, after all, to trade; and that this interaction immediately degenerates into a hostile conflict, a timely reminder that all the multicultural collaboration amidst the newly liberated crew of the USS Callister is not likely to stand up to the harsh antagonisms, essential to neoliberal thinking, that structure social interaction “out here” in the “real” world. Not surprisingly, then, the collective quickly yields to Nanette taking the reins of power and planting herself in the captain’s chair, only recently vacated by the deposed Daly. While Gamer691’s toxic white masculinity reminds us of the persistence of a social ill, his being a representative of neoliberalism merely registers as an exacerbating yet inevitable condition under which racial and gender parity must be achieved. The economic dimension of the fictional world is something the episode also needs to struggle with for another reason. Should this economic dimension be defined as a more or less recognizable version of contemporary neoliberalism, then the episode needs to work out why the differences, hierarchies, and imbalances created by this economic framework appear to pay little attention to race and gender as markers of difference. This is not to say that neoliberalism does not discriminate against certain demographics; this is a fact that shall remain undisputed here. But what makes this discrimination so onerous to account for in the allegorical logic of “USS Callister” is exactly what its critics point to as one of the crucial sources of neoliberalism’s galling injustice: the fact that the selection of targets for its discrimination is fundamentally arbitrary. Within the tightly organized view of neoliberalism, focused on the optimization of performance by atomized individuals in competition with each other, differences of race and gender should, by its own logic, be irrelevant. Performance is what counts, not gender or race. A look at the social realities of

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neoliberal economies does not bear out this agenda, however: women are paid fractions of their male counterparts’ salaries, and entire racial demographics are marginalized within the economic arena—all by fiat of an economic logic that, by way of competition with oneself and with others, constantly generates hierarchical difference. To suggest that there is a rational (within the logic of the system itself) reason why these specific groups and no others are discriminated against would be offensive since it would imply that they, objectively speaking, deserve their marginalization. Thus, arguments insisting on the primacy of race or gender must struggle with the apparently arbitrary criteria of selection by which neoliberalism determines hierarchical differences. The existence of a link between race and social marginalization is as undisputed as that between gender and social marginalization; what exactly that link is, however, is a more difficult point to determine. A point, in fact, so difficult to determine that a polemic argument is unlikely to come to terms with the complexity of this issue as long as it is driven by the topical urgency of an agenda that grants primacy to race and gender in its discussion of social inequality at the end of the era of toxic white masculinity.

Across the Digital Frontier: The Adventure Narrative as the Master’s Tool Because “USS Callister” ends with a successful breakthrough into a new universe promising unlimited opportunity for further adventures, I would like to conclude the discussion by looking at exactly this concept—“adventure.” This is not only because this ending aligns the episode perfectly with what critic Martin Green describes as the central features of the adventure narrative as a cultural form with a long history: that is, that it “breathes a spirit of optimism,” embraces heroes as characters who measure up to the complexity and adversity of the world around them, and sets “a value on the power of the individual body and of immediate life” (1991, p.  17). The episode also fulfills—and, what’s more, explicitly addresses and thematizes—one of the social functions of adventure Green considers essential, that is, the ability of adventure “to compensate the reader with fantasy power for his or her lack of actual power in politics and the workplace” (1991, p.  18). Given the adventure narrative’s recourse to what Graham Dawson calls “popular masculine pleasure-culture of war” (1994, p. 4), “USS Callister” shares the adventure narrative’s function “as an ideological form to resolve contradictions in the lived experience of imperialism, usually by inscribing the male reader in tales of regenerative violence on the colonial frontier” (Dixon, 1995, p. 1). If Martin Green is correct in assuming that the adventure narrative, “[as everybody knows] was and is the rite de passage from white boyhood into white manhood” (1991, p. 41), then the successful revolution staged by the crew of the USS Callister deposes not only that very same white male Green is talking about; it also deposes the adventure narrative by undercutting one of its central tenets. But can this revolution be considered successful as long as it merely places a different body in

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the captain’s chair, rather than throwing out the captain’s chair altogether? As the USS Callister, now under new management, heads out into the wide-open spaces of the digital frontier, it is headed toward new adventures. With that promise, the narrative that had sustained white masculinity is itself sustained— a fact that calls to mind Audre Lorde’s much cited dictum, that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change” (Lorde, 1979). In its handling of the adventure narrative, does “USS Callister” succeed in dismantling the master’s house, or, at the very least, punch a few good-sized holes in its walls? In order to address these questions, it is important to note how exclusively the episode situates the adventure narrative in the digital realm. Though Annabel Jones, producer of Black Mirror, has argued that “‘Callister’ is certainly not meant to be in any way a satire on ‘Star Trek’ [but] hopefully a lovely classy sci-fi homage” (qtd. in Maas, 2017), it is clear that the levity at which the director and the writers have calibrated adventure in the digital realm differs from the seriousness with which events unfold “out there” in the real world.5 In fact, the very tone of adventure itself—in which the “perilous journey and the crucial struggle and exaltation of the hero” are framed by genre conventions as a challenge to be mastered rather than an existential ordeal to be endured (White, 1993 p. 45). On the level of the episode’s topical allegory, adventure is cast in rather dubious terms. Interrogated as to its authorship, adventure is framed as escapism, as compensatory fantasy that would in itself not pose any risks or dangers, were it not for the fact that adventure oversteps the boundaries of the individual self and enters into the realm of the collective imagination as a genre of popular entertainment. Since Daly’s personal vision is, by and large, identical with that of Space Fleet, the television series must be to the culture at large—so the logic of the episode would have it—what it is to Robert Daly individually. Or rather, it must have been to the culture at large, back in those days of pre-digital technologies, what it still is to Robert Daly. Adventure, this argument suggests, is not in itself an egregious influence on the culture (or outgrowth of it); it is the fact that Space Fleet is an outdated, overcome, residual cultural text that still persists in the culture at large that makes it dangerous, especially when it is read “wrong” (i.e. taken seriously, rather than through the filter of camp). The lasting popularity of the series, which becomes obvious when Nanette quickly identifies it even though she herself is not a fan, renders it a residual cultural force marching toward a timely, or perhaps even overdue, extinction. There is nothing wrong with nostalgia as long as it frames or brackets its subject matter within the present moment; it turns toxic because, in this case, it is long past its cultural expiration date. While the episode’s handling of the adventure narrative suggests that there are parts of “the master’s house” that do not need dismantling, what remains is the disconnect between the episode’s tightly focused and well executed vision 5  “But on other levels it is about tyranny and it is about someone who has ultimate power—how technology can give us that power” (Jones, qt. in Maas, 2017).

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of identity politics on the one hand, and its less systematic and self-conscious conceptualization and critique of its neoliberal economic backdrop. Granted, it is easier to imagine the removal of its predatory white male CTO (or even its CEO) from the Callister corporation than the dismantling of that corporation itself, an expectation placed perhaps unfairly on an episode with a running time of a mere 75 minutes (not to mention the fact that three white males are in charge of the episode—series creator Charlie Booker, writer William Bridges, and director Toby Haynes). Perhaps it is an unfair expectation to be placed upon a television series, even one that takes as its agenda the critical engagement with digital culture and its effects on the individual psyche, the social order, and the political culture. That the economic realm should remain largely exempt from this range of critical targets is perhaps testimony to Fredric Jameson’s dictum that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism” (2003). Without exploring the link between economics and the realms of the psychological, social, and political, however, the risk remains that, in Lorde’s words, even a successful coup displacing toxic white masculinity may only “temporarily … beat [the master] at his own game, but … will never enable us to bring about genuine change” (1979).

References Braithwaite, A. (2016). It’s About Ethics in Games Journalism? Gamergaters and Geek Masculinity. Social Media + Society, 2(4), 1–10. Bridges, W., & Brooker, C. (Writers) & Haynes, T. (Director). (2017). USS Callister. [Television series episode] In L. Sutton (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Bathurst, O. (Director). (2011). The National Anthem. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2016). San Junipero [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2013). White Bear [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Trachtenberg, D. (Director). (2016). Playtest [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Cronenberg, D. (Director), & Cronenberg, D., Hamori, A., & Lantos, R. (Producers). (1999). Existenz [Motion Picture]. USA: Dimension Films. Dawson, G. (1994). Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities. London and New York: Routledge. Dixon, R. (1995). Writing the Colonial Adventure: Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-­ Australian Popular Fiction, 1875–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Galouye, D. F. (1964). Simulacron-3. New York: Bantam Books. Green, M.  B. (1991). Seven Types of Adventure Tale: An Etiology of a Major Genre. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Hantke, S. (2005). Encapsulated Noir: Hybrid Genres and Social Mobility in Alex Proyas’. Dark City. Scope: An On-Line Journal of Film Studies. Issue 3. Retrieved from https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/scope/documents/2005/october-2005/ hantke.pdf

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Hardisty, N. (2017, December 11). ‘Black Mirror’ S4E4: ‘USS Callister’. Film Daily. Retrieved from https://filmdaily.co/reviews/black-mirror-s4e4-uss-callister/ Jameson, F. (2003). Future City. New Left Review, 21, 65–79. Lorde, A. (1979). The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. History Is a Weapon. Retrieved from http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/ lordedismantle.html Lury, C. (1998). Prosthetic Culture: Photography, Memory and Identity. London and New York: Routledge. Maas, J. (2017, December 29). ‘Black Mirror’ EP Insists ‘USS Callister’ Is Not a Satire of ‘Star Trek’. The Wrap. Retrieved from https://www.thewrap.com/black-mirroruss-callister-star-trek-homage-season-4/ Massanari, A.  L. (2017). #Gamergate and the Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures. New Media & Society, 19, 329–346. Michaels, L. (Producer). (1975–). Saturday Night Live [Television series]. New York, New York City: NBC. Perreault, G.  P., & Vos, T.  P. (2016). The GamerGate Controversy and Journalistic Paradigm Maintenance. Journalism, 19, 553–569. Pirani, F. (2017, December 19). From Weinstein to Lauer: A Timeline of 2017s Sexual Harassment Scandals. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved from https:// www.ajc.com/news/world/from-weinstein-lauer-timeline-2017-sexual-harassment-scandals/qBKJmUSZRJqgOzeB9yN2JK/ Prucher, J. (Ed.). (2007). Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Roddenberry, G. (Producer). (1966–1969). Star Trek [Television series]. New York, NY: NBC. Roddenberry, G. (Producer). (1987–1994). Star Trek: The Next Generation [Television series]. New York City, NY: CBS. Ross, G., (Director), & Soderbergh, S. (Producer) (1998). Pleasantville [Motion picture]. USA: New Line Cinema. Rusnak, J. (Director), & Emmerich, R., Emmerich, U., & Weber, M. (Producers). (1999). The Thirteenth Floor [Motion Picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures. Strause, J. (2018, January 1). ‘Black Mirror’ Director on Spinoff Potential of ‘USS Callister’. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter. com/live-feed/black-mirror-uss-callister-spinoff-ideas-director-star-trek-hiddenstar-wars-nods-1070875 Wachowski, L., & Wachowski, L. (Directors), & Silver, J. (Producer). (1999). The Matrix [Motion picture]. USA: Warner Bros. Weir, P. (Director), & Feldman, E. S., Niccol, A., Rudin, S., & Schroeder, A. (Producers). (1998). The Truman Show [Motion picture]. USA: Paramount Pictures. West, L. (2018, March 3). We Got Rid of Some Bad Men. Now Let’s Get Rid of Bad Movies. New York Times Online. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes. com/2018/03/03/opinion/sunday/we-got-rid-of-some-bad-men-now-lets-getrid-of-bad-movies.html White, A. (1993). Joseph Conrad and the Adventure Tradition: Constructing and Deconstructing the Imperial Subject. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

“Arkangel”: Postscript on Families of Control George F. McHendry

Introduction: A Culture of Surveillance “Arkangel” (04.02) is the second episode of the fourth series of the British anthology series Black Mirror (2011–).1 The episode, set in a fictional dystopian future, imagines the intersection of surveillance, technology, and parenting in a world where a parent can opt-in to omnipresent real-time monitoring of their child’s respiration, heart rate, bloodstream (including screening for illicit substances) and view a live video feed of what the child sees at any given moment—all without the child’s knowledge or consent. As the name suggests, Black Mirror works rhetorically to encourage some degree of self-reflection around our emerging dependence on social-surveillance technology. This chapter takes up that task by unpacking critical theories of surveillance in concert with “Arkangel” to explore the emergence of Surveiller-Parenting—a network of surveillance norms, practices, and technologies which encourages parents to place their children under intense surveillance. At its heart, surveillance is an expression of power. As we interact with a host of techniques to monitor and track our every move, we accept both subtle and overt nudges to alter our behavior. Parenting is, in particular, laden with systems of power. Indeed, as hooks (2000) notes, the power relations between parent and child are a place of significant oppression. I draw from theories of surveillance to center the issue of power in Surveiller-Parenting by juxtaposing “Arkangel” with emerging forms of parental surveillance. I argue that 1  A note on style, in this chapter “Arkangel” refers the episode of Black Mirror. Arkangel refers to the fictional surveillance system which exists within the storyline.

G. F. McHendry (*) Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_16

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“Arkangel” expresses contemporary anxieties about fragmentary and disparate techniques of surveillance by constructing a future of intensified networks of control which link the families, schools, and corporations under the logic of late capitalism. First, I define the concept of surveiller-parenting as an integral mode of parenting both today and in “Arkangel.” Second, I analyze “Arkangel” as a reflection of parenthood in our emerging control society. Last, I conclude by assessing the role of corporate power in societies of control.

Surveiller-Parenting: Fragmented Control “Arkangel” exists in a future we are in the process of actualizing, one which will be dominated by surveiller-parenting. Surveiller-parenting refers to the networking of disparate techniques of surveillance to reorganize and reattune parental power amid the rise of late capitalism. Families are ideal structures for implementing oppressive surveillance regimes. Deleuze and Guattari (1983), for example, argue that the family is a repressive regime. They suggest families limit diverse forms of sexuality, making difference, “a ‘dirty little secret,’ the dirty little family secret, a private theater….” (p. 49). Proper bourgeois families are expected to act as disciplinary apparatuses. Today, however, the family’s ability to express control is diminishing as greater technological, economic, and communication networks disrupt the notion of family as a closed unit. Deleuze (1992) explains, “The family is an ‘interior,’ in crisis like all other interiors” (p. 8). The ability of the family to implement control over its constitutive parts is waning. In the wake of this crisis, late capitalism offers a solution by channeling fear, anxiety, and desire into sales—purchasing various surveillance technologies and services that promise salve for these fears. Increasingly, families are defined by their participation in a familial surveillance economy which attempts to generate docile children. I name this practice surveiller-parenting. Surveiller-parenting today is in a prototypical stage; “Arkangel” depicts the evolution and intensification of practices which already exist. The familial surveillance economy (economic activity generating desires for bringing corporate surveillance techniques and technologies into the home) is an exemplar of life in control societies. Consider the following examples: The Mimo Baby onesie allows parents to monitor a newborn’s activity and temperature via a smartphone. AngelCare, a sleeping pad that monitors a baby’s breathing, movement, and audio. Arlo Baby is a bunny-eared internet-connected camera which features alerts for movement and crying. FiLIP is a wearable platform that allows parents to track their child’s location, calls, and texts. Circle is a smart router that lets parents limit screen time and filter the content children access. The Fitbit Ace is a smart activity tracker which tracks a child’s every move. TeenSafe gives parents access to a child’s call history, transcripts of their text messages, and their web-browsing history. MotoSafety provides real-time feedback for parents on their child’s driving habits, daily report cards, and arrival alerts. Schools have begun allowing parents to track their child’s movement

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around campus as they pass by Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) readers (Taylor, 2012, p. 226). During first-year orientation at my university, students and parents are asked to negotiate parental access to a student’s learning management system (LMS). These are just a few of the thousands of the surveillance devices and apps marketed to parents.2 Surveiller-parenting is thought of as “non-organizational surveillance,” taking place among individuals “apart from a formal organizational role” (Marx, 2012, p. xxv). There are several emergent trends in research on parental surveillance, including promising to keep children safe (Barron, 2014), generating new tensions between parents and children (Lyon, 2007), and an increase in schools tracking and sharing data with parents (Taylor, 2012). Far from wholly benevolent endeavors, Steeves (2012) describes the linking of parents, children, and brands as an outgrowth of the economic flows of the internet. Albrechtslund and Lauritsen (2013) provide a useful summary of the tensions around parental surveillance: …parents see their surveillance activities as related to care. Possibly some children define the network in the same way, but they might also see the surveillance as a way of controlling their behavior and invading their privacy… children will then learn to enter “forbidden” areas while leaving their phone in a “legitimate” place. (p. 313)

Both extant forms of parental surveillance and existing research suggest that emerging technologies have implications which alter familial power relations. Surveiller-parenting is a particular arrangement of power relations and capital generated by anxiety around the diminished power of panoptic surveillance. Historically, theories of surveillance have relied on the concept of the panopticon to explain the power of surveillance to discipline bodies. Foucault’s (1995) analysis of closed institutions—prisons, schools, and workplaces—explores the mechanisms by which bodies begin to discipline themselves based on the knowledge of an all-knowing and all-seeing eye. Increasingly, scholars recognize that the panopticon is a flawed, incomplete explanation for the operation of surveillance today (Lyon, 2007). Societies of control emerge as a replacement for the panopticon, and it is my contention that surveiller-parenting is an exemplar of life in control societies. Deleuze (1992) argues that today we live in “societies of control, which are in the process of replacing [panoptic] societies” (p. 4). In control societies techniques of surveillance are diverse but networked. In Deleuze’s words, “controls are a modulation, like a self-deforming cast that will continuously change from one moment to the other, or like a sieve whose mesh will transmute from point to point.” The concept of control 2  The power of the familial surveillance economy should not be underestimated. As I discuss later, these techniques allow parents and corporations to extend significant power over vulnerable bodies. Growing up with invasive surveillance normalizes such practices—the consequences of which are still unclear. Additionally, the existence of a stalking economy, which often uses the same technology, is intensifying the trauma and experience of intimate partner violence.

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societies has been particularly generative for numerous scholars (see Allmer, 2011; Blanca, 2015; Bogard, 2012; Cheney-Lippold, 2011; Elmer, 2012; Fuchs, 2011; Hanan, 2010; Lyon, 2001, 2007; O’Sullivan, 2016; Pasquinelli, 2014; Pridmore, 2012; Thoburn, 2007). Surveiller-parenting today, and in the fictional future of “Arkangel,” is driven by anxiety over the loss of discipline in the family, the rise of networked technologies, and the logic of contemporary capitalism. Deleuze (1992) specifically notes, “The operation of markets is now the instrument of social control” (p. 6). Increasingly, we are sold consumer surveillance technologies, and this array of techniques is increasingly stratified by income, as the poor and vulnerable lack access but are still expected to engage in surveiller-parenting (Hassrick & Schneider, 2009). Parenting today obligates families to engage in a cacophony of surveillance. However, many of these platforms have yet to actualize the kind of dystopic-capitalist fantasy Deleuze recognizes in the future (and Black Mirror depicts)—full integration of these techniques into a capitalist platform actualizing control over a child. Surveiller-parenting today remains in its fragmentary prototypical stage. The family is increasingly connected to, and reliant upon, corporate powers to conduct surveillance over the minutia of a child’s life. The family emerges as a network of relationships between parents, corporate actors, and children. “Arkangel” offers a glimpse of the future of surveiller-parenting, integrating these fragmentary nodes into a single hub which manipulates the flow of power among parents and children.

Past Is Prologue: “Arkangel” and Surveiller-Parenting “Arkangel” opens in an operating room where Marie Sambrell (Rosemary DeWitt) is giving birth to her daughter Sara. After performing a Cesarean-­ section, the doctor (Jason Weinberg) removes Sara (Aniya Hodge; Sarah Abbot; Brenna Harding) and there is a long and dramatic pause before she cries out. A tightly framed closeup on Marie’s face emphasizes her panic as she worries that something must be wrong with her child. Marie’s panic and Sara’s vulnerability are repetitive tones which dominate the episode. Next, the narrative jumps forward a few years. While playing at the park, Sara spots a cat. Marie is distracted talking to another parent. Meanwhile, Sara follows the cat out of the park. Marie, noticing that Sara is gone, begins to panic. The camera returns to Marie’s face—the handheld camera is bouncing frantically heightening Marie’s disorientation. Eventually, neighbors find Sara down by a railroad track. Marie is relieved but also scarred by the trauma of Sara’s disappearance. The episode then cuts to the corporate offices of Arkangel, a company which offers a comprehensive platform for surveiller-parenting. With the painless insertion of a small chip in Sara’s head, Marie gains immense surveillance powers over her daughter. Arkangel gives Marie access to Sara’s location, heart rate, blood (noting that her iron levels are low), and allows Sara to see a real-time ocular feed—displaying everything Sara sees.

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While “Arkangel” is fictional, it reflects the growth and trajectory of parental surveillance and our contemporary anxieties around families of control. “Arkangel,” therefore, can be understood as a meditation on our contemporary surveillance culture that highlights three interrelated tensions of surveiller-­ parenting in control societies: (1) neoliberalism and the intrusion of corporate actors into familial life, (2) the denial of agency to children, and (3) the aesthetic connections between the episode and surveillance today.

Mommy/Corporation/Me Neoliberalism represents one force which propels us from fragmentary surveillance today to “Arkangel’s” fully integrated practices of surveiller-parenting. Neoliberalism is a broad conceptual schema for the increasing role market actors play in functions which have been traditionally relegated to the State. While the literature on neoliberalism is too voluminous to recount here, I draw from Bourdieu’s (1998) explication: The neoliberal programme draws its social power from the political and economic power of those whose interests it expresses: stockholders, financial operators, industrialists, conservative or social-democratic politicians who have been converted to the reassuring layoffs of laisser-faire, high-level financial officials eager to impose policies advocating their own extinction because, unlike the managers of firms, they run no risk of having eventually to pay the consequences.

Neoliberalism is a reorganization of economic and social structures to intensify capitalist desires. Asen (2017) notes that in such a model, freedom is “narrowly imagined as the freedom of market actors” (p. 338). Neoliberalism is reorganizing the family and its relationship to capital. The emerging family in societies of control has three constitutive parts: parent, child, corporation. The contemporary moment features an intensification of the role and power of corporate actors within the family. “Arkangel” depicts neoliberalism’s new familial triad (parents/corporations/child). The episode enacts the evolution of the family from the fragmentary networks linking parents, children, and various disparate corporate actors, to a fully integrated privatization of parental surveillance where a single company provides multiple overlapping forms of omnipresent surveillance. Arkangel (as the company, the technology, and the interface) structures the operation of surveillance in Marie and Sara’s lives. Meaning, every part of Marie’s surveiller-­ parenting depends on the design choices, assumptions, and needs of Arkangel. Arkangel is co-constitutive of Marie’s parenting and her use of surveillance is always already dependent on the company. In this way, the degrees of freedom—Marie’s freedom to surveil Sara and Sara’s limited freedom from Marie’s surveillance—is predicated Arkangel and its corporate interests. Arkangel’s integration of existing fragmentary parental surveillance intensifies surveiller-parenting into a single use platform. Arkangel acts as a template

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for understanding current modes of consolidation and privatization in late capitalism. Arkangel promises Marie freedom, freedom from fear and worries about Sara, in exchange for fully integrating the company’s platform into Marie’s family and Sara’s brain. The familial relationship between Marie and Sara morphs into a triad where Marie, Arkangel, and Sara articulate with one another as parts of a family of control. Increasingly neoliberal economic programs chart a course to the version of surveiller-parenting depicted in “Arkangel”—redefining the family for life societies of control.

Agency: Power Inequities in Surveiller-Parenting With Arkangel installed, Marie uses surveiller-parenting to limit and deny Sara agency. Asen (2017) argues, “Neoliberalism draws on inequality for its very existence” (p. 340). Arkangel structures the family in a way to exploit Marie’s fears and intensify Sara’s inequity. Sara does not, and cannot, consent to Arkangel. She is three years old when the device is implanted and Arkangel cannot be removed from her body. Marie and Arkangel deny Sara the opportunity to exercise agency over the surveillance technology in her body. Functionally, Arkangel connects Sara to a network of surveillance practices, exposing her body to the visual gaze of Marie and the company. Once networked, Sara is limited in the choices she can make about her experience of surveillance, her privacy, her consumption of content, and her bodily experiences. Privacy has no meaning for Sara. Her every move is always already subject to surveillance. The depiction of the technology devolves as the episode progresses. Initially, Arkangel seems heartwarming; we see Marie watch Sara search for her during a game of hide and seek. Later, Marie’s gaze appears invasive and grotesque. When Sara is at a bonfire with friends instead of watching a movie at a friend’s house, Marie uses location tracking to find her; not content to know her location, Marie taps into Sara’s optical feed. Marie gazes at the Arkangel tablet as Sara and Trick (Owen Teague) have sex. Marie sees Trick’s sweaty body thrusting on top of her daughter as Marie yells, “Fuck me harder! Fuck me.” Marie is horrified by what she has seen, but her horror only underscores the inequity in their familial network. In a moment of extreme intimate privacy, Sara’s first sexual encounter, both Marie and Arkangel are uninvited voyeurs watching the couple having sex. Sara and Trick have no ability to consent (or resist) the presence of Marie and Arkangel—they do not have the option of privacy. Another networked function of Arkangel which dramatizes Sara’s lack of agency is the use of content moderation settings. Marie can elect to block real-­ world experiences whenever Arkangel detects a spike in Sara’s cortisol levels. For example, when a dog barks and jumps aggressively at Marie and Sara, the dog is transformed into a blurry blob beyond Sara’s visual and auditory register. When her grandfather has a heart attack, Sara cannot perceive what is happening. Eventually, Sara acts out, making herself bleed and striking her mom. In concert with a therapist, Marie decides to stop using Arkangel and allow

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Sara to explore the world without intrusion. During her first adventurer in the world without content moderation, a young Trick (Nicky Torchia) shows her everything she has been missing—blood, violence, and pornography. The degree to which content moderation impacted her life becomes clear in a conversation between Sara and Trick after they had sex. Trick tells her, “You know, you didn’t have to talk like that… Like the porn stuff.” Sara and Trick’s bond is defined by her desire to be free from Arkangel’s control, so much so that her sexual encounter with Trick reenacts their mutual consumption of pornography years earlier. The episode shows the ways Arkangel functions to limit Sara’s agency and bodily autonomy. Their family of control is structured in such a way that the networked connections linking Sara to Arkangel and Marie deny her any control of her private interior life. Sara is not disciplined through the monolithic surveillance of the panopticon but through networks of connection and interfaces that make her maximally visible through myriad techniques of observation shared between Marie and Arkangel. While the technological means to deny Sara agency over her privacy, content consumption, and body in the episode is the stuff of science fiction, its seeds already exist. For example, there is a booming market for smart routers that let parents control a child’s screen time and block content. VidAngel is a now-defunct corporation which would prescreen and filter objectional content in movies. There are numerous home drug testing kits aimed at parents to help monitor drug use. Very little about Arkangel is new; instead it seamlessly integrates existing technology into a single platform. One looming danger of surveiller-parenting is the ease with which agency evaporates.

Surveillance Aesthetics: Making Arkangel Sensible The aesthetic dimensions of Arkangel work to show the emerging reality of surveiller-parenting. The technological advancements depicted in the dystopic future of “Arkangel” articulate with, and find coherence in, the surveillance aesthetics of our contemporary moment. Rancière (2010) views aesthetics as “a specific sensory experience” (p. 115). In a given culture, certain sensations are preferred and enabled, while others are demonized. The creation of aesthetics relies both on large social systems and the regulation of everyday life and language (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983). Both as a reflection on contemporary life and a projection of our looming future, the aesthetic dimensions of Black Mirror draw from, and extend, the “sensory experience” of surveillance today. A significant body of research exists on surveillance aesthetics (Amoore & Hall, 2009; Fischer & Caetano, 2015; Hall, 2007; 2015; Kammer, 2012; Lyon, 2007; Maurer, 2016; McHendry Jr., 2015, 2017; Ott, Bean, & Marin, 2016;). While this literature is vast, a few specific insights help to make sense of “Arkangel.” First, Hall (2015) notes that the dominant aesthetic of contemporary surveillance is transparency, “US media corporations impart an

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aesthetic orientation to consumers which prepares them to perform voluntary transparency if and when the opportunity presents itself” (p. 58). As we become more and more accustom to tailored recommendations and ad targeting based on mass data collection and intrusive security routines (e.g., airport security), the logic of privacy gives way to transparency. McHendry (2016) argues that rituals of airport surveillance reassure passengers that air travel is safe, regardless of the efficacy of airport security. Maurer (2016) notes of the role scopic aesthetics drawn from the ways surveillance lets us gaze upon others normalizes ways of looking with practices of surveillance and violence. “Arkangel” exploits these aesthetic dimensions in its depiction of corporate scopic sensations that are sensible within our existing technological interfaces. The future “Arkangel” depicts functions aesthetically within contemporary surveillance practices, drawing from current experiences of families of control. “Arkangel” trades in the pleasures derived from looking, occupying the gaze of a vast surveillance assemblage in contemporary culture. Both plot and production design situate the gaze and an integral element in contemporary life. Ott et  al. (2016) describe an educational installation which teaching about surveillance as generating an “atmosphere [that] reflects the overall aesthetic sensibility of that particular space, which is a product of its general layout, architectural features, construction materials, and other design aesthetics” (p. 351). “Arkangel” cultivates a surveillance aesthetic which makes use of space, design, and material to make Marie’s desire for the Arkangel technology sensible and logical. Arkangel is, both in name, design, and space angelic. Further, the logo of the fictitious Arkangel features a flat gray corporate design superimposing an eye over an angel’s wings (a pupil, iris, and eyelid flanked by curved lines forming wings). This situates Arkangel as a corporate actor that places the practice of looking in a positive and quasi-religious dimension. The logo appears a number of times in the show, including as a backlit sign at the company’s reception desk and in the user interface (UI) on the tablet Marie uses to access the Arkangel system. The eye serves as a gateway to looking at—and through—Sara. The offices where Arkangel is inserted into Sara’s brain are brightly lit, sterile, and feature off-white and light gray marble floors and walls. The offices extend the angelic scene by drawing upon notions of a heavenly whiteness. Arkangel’s surveillance depicts looking is a heavenly practice. Marie derives significant pleasure out of her early uses of Arkangel to gaze at Sarah’s life. When introduced to the Arkangel user interface (UI), Marie delights in seeing through Sara’s eyes and cannot control her smile when she sees herself through the screen as Sara looks at her. Through Arkangel’s optical interface, Marie experiences pleasure when watching Sara search for her during a game of hide and seek. Even as the conflict in the plot intensifies and Marie is horrified while watching her daughter have

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sex and consume narcotics, she still derives satisfaction in the ability to look. Her horror is directed at what is seen instead of the horror of her invasion of Sara’s privacy. The aesthetics of Arkangel’s interface make the surveillance so seamless that it encourages a desire to look, even when what Marie sees is disturbing. Arkangel is accessed via a tablet which mimics the increasing presence of Apple iPads, Microsoft Surfaces, and Amazon Fire Tablets in our homes. The use of the tablet as an interface bridges the futuristic technology of “Arkangel” with contemporary life. The episode could have used a holographic display, an ocular implant, or an altogether new UI. The use of the tablet makes Arkangel’s material design sensible for the audience. The emergence of mass-consumer tablets (indebted to the revolutionary move to touchscreen phones) inaugurated a shift in the way humans handled computer interfaces and consumed information. For audiences, the idea of holding an electronic slate which provides real-time access to data through screens (screens require looking, a scopic function) is sensible in the aesthetics of their lives. As I write this paragraph, I pause and hold my tablet in my hand. I open the Nest app and a real-time video feed appears of my front porch thanks to my internet-connected security camera. With a swipe, I see that my networked smoke detectors show everything is normal. I adjust the temperature thanks via my internet-connected thermostat. The sensation of holding the tablet and looking elsewhere, opening a portal into a building three-and-a-half miles from my office feels routine, rather than futuristic. Arkangel’s material design exists within the aesthetic dimensions of surveillance culture in the contemporary moment. Perhaps the episode’s most haunting attribute is the degree to which Arkangel already exists in our homes and our lives. Importantly, the aesthetics of “Arkangel” are the aesthetics of surveiller-­ parenting. The episode reflects the ease with which we welcome the parent/ child/corporation triad in our homes and mobilize it to deny agency to children. The episode draws upon existing tensions to register anxiety about raising children in a world saturated by surveillance technologies. “Arkangel” dramatizes a logical evolution of the rise of neoliberalism and the extension of corporate power into our homes, demonstrates the potential harm in denying children agency in decisions about surveillance, and makes use of aesthetic contours which harmonize with current attitudes about better living through surveillance technology. “Arkangel” is merely an intensification of networks of power which exist today—the rise of surveiller-parenting is a direct expression of our transition to life in societies of control. The desire for Arkangel, its deployment to limit agency, and its aesthetic construction enable networks of surveillance which make Sara’s life visible. Here, we see the pernicious danger of control societies—we come to desire maximum visibility and seek out all manner of forms of surveillance which send our data beyond our bodily control. Control societies encourage surveiller-parenting as a strategy for cultivating a lifelong desire for surveillance.

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Conclusion: Power(lessness) in Societies of Control In this chapter, I have argued that “Arkangel” fictional dystopia draws from real anxieties in contemporary life around surveiller-parenting—a mode of parenting that centralizes surveillance as a significant expression of networked power established by relational flows between parents and corporations. In support of this argument, I analyzed the episode to draw out the roles neoliberalism, agency, and aesthetics link the show to our contemporary moment. As my analysis indicates, much of “Arkangel” directs our attention to the relational risks of defining the parent-child bond through practices which deny children agency. However, the episode also allows Arkangel, the fictional corporation, to recede into the background. By way of concluding, I discuss the import of centralizing corporate power when examining surveiller-parenting. Life in societies of control is defined by the strategies of networked power which articulate with our bodies at every minute. We generate data at astronomical rates and supply that data to a variety of connected institutions (the government, large media sites, employers) in exchange for the promise of a better life. In the episode, Arkangel is seen as an almost neutral conduit that simply enables the technology to be implanted in Sara and used by Marie. Sara’s life generates an un-totaled quantity of date that is streamed to Arkangel. Marie’s use of the platform generates data as well—screen time, features accessed, and so on. The episode doesn’t explore what happens to that data or how it is used. One of the staggering implications of the rise of neoliberalism and surveillance is the durability of, and loss of control over, our data. Carr (2018) examines this paradox by asking, “Am I a data mine, or am I a data factory? Is data extracted from me, or is data produced by me?” If we are mines, data exists: “like a seam of ore, waiting to be extracted.” However, if we are factories, we “produce data through [our] labor — the labor of [the] mind, the labor of [the] body”. The increased quantification of our lives today is mostly invisible; it is impossible to know how much data we generate and who makes use of it. For example, Oracle’s consumer research operation tracks 30,000 attributes for each of the two-billion individuals for which it has profiles. This is more data than any human can process, including the one producing the data. The further we integrate corporate control into our lives, and into the lives of children from birth, the more we agree to labor into the unknown. The function of control societies in neoliberalism increasingly hides the value of our labor, denying us adequate compensation. Far from existing as neutral conduits, in networking with our bodies, corporate actors gain domain over our data and repurpose it for their own needs far beyond whatever specific service we receive as payment. Golumbia and Gilliard (2018) provide an exhaustive look at the real dangers presented by the (mis) use of consumer data by tech corporations. These abuses include tracking individuals without their knowledge, experimenting on users without consent, aiding authoritarian regimes to solidify public support, showing real-time location

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data to entertain guests at parties, blackmailing users who commit infidelity, and more (Golumbia & Gilliard, 2018). Given the quantity of data, the history of abuses, and the potential for profit, the narrative of Arkangel the corporation is a compelling silence in the episode. Even beyond the dramatic climax of the episode where Sara wrestles back her agency from Marie, Arkangel lurks in the background potentially using and profiting off of Sara’s labor and data.

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The Sovereignty of Truth: Memory and Morality in “Crocodile” Jossalyn G. Larson

Toward the end of “Crocodile” (04.03), Shazia (Kiran Sonia Sawar), a young South Asian Muslim woman, slowly gains consciousness and realizes that she has been bound, gagged, tied to a post. Her attacker, Mia (Andrea Riseborough), is an attractive and affluent white woman. With the use of a mechanical device that can read memories recorded in the brain, Shazia has peered into Mia’s thoughts and witnessed crimes from Mia’s past, the revelation of which could destroy Mia’s idyllic present. Shazia swears that she will not share Mia’s secrets. “I’ve seen things,” she says, “…personal secrets. I’ve never spilled any of it. I’m not allowed to—it’s the law. It’s like confession—like Catholic confession.” Mia considers this for a moment, and then replies, “None of that’s true, is it?” She rationalizes that even if Shazia were to keep her secret, Shazia’s memory has been recording everything, and that memory could be used as evidence. Mia asks Shazia to close her eyes. Shazia utters a short prayer “‫ون‬ َ ‫�نَّ ِ ّ ِل َو�نَّـا �لَ ْي ِه َراجِ ُع‬,” ‫إ‬ ‫إ‬ which means “We belong to God and to Him we shall return,” and then‫ إ‬meets her fate at the end of three blows to the head from a heavy log. In its four seasons, Black Mirror (2011–) has devoted much of its critique to technology’s ability to eliminate ambiguity—to reveal an objective truth, and to allow human beings to experience an omniscience that has previously only been a quality of the divine. Recorded memories serve as a principle means for discovering truth, and they appear several times throughout the series. The first season’s “The Entire History of You” (01.03) imagines a technology which is electively implanted behind the ear to record memories and make them available for playback via an iPod-like handheld device. The storyline follows Liam

J. G. Larson (*) Missouri University of Science and Technology, St. Louis, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_17

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(Toby Kebbell), a jealous husband and soon-to-be-unemployed lawyer, as the technology’s possibilities drive him deeper and deeper into obsession, violence, madness, and despair. All characters in the episode carry the device, save one—a young woman whose memories were stolen for pornographic purposes, and who has elected not to have the device reinstalled. Even the youngest member of the cast—Liam’s baby girl, Jodie—is implanted with the device. Jodie’s parents use her memories as a “nanny cam”; they trust the young woman whom they have hired to watch their child, but they feel a need to see those memories for themselves in order to protect Jodie from, as Liam jokes, a “pedophile” babysitter. The need to discover the truth—to see it with one’s own eyes—ultimately stirs Liam into madness and brings about the destruction of his marriage. If “The Entire History of You” is primarily a critique of a selfie-obsessed generation and the trappings of a life that is constantly recorded, encoded, and made available to the scrutiny of others, then “Arkangel” (04.02) considers the impact of that lifestyle within the intimate space of the parent-child relationship. The episode follows a single mother, Marie (Rosemarie DeWitt), who has also implanted her child with a device which would, among other things, allow her to review her child’s memories in order to keep her from harm. As the child matures into a teenager, her mother’s overprotection becomes obsession. In order to discover the truth behind her daughter’s typical adolescent lies, Marie invades her daughter’s privacy to such an extent that she loses her daughter entirely. Once again, the need to see the truth for one’s self destroys the relationship that the technology had been intended to protect. Black Mirror’s fascination with omniscience-via-technology has led many in the pop culture blogosphere to argue that the series represents a post-religious dystopia, in which an “inscrutable ancient god” has been replaced by a scientific one (Bassil-Mozorow, 2018), and the result is a “digital hell” on earth (Berkowitz, 2018). In essence, the argument is that the transfer of omniscience from the divine to the human can only result in devastation—the stories represent an information age retelling of Adam and Eve’s tasting of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which ultimately leads to humanity’s exile from Paradise. Blogger and United Methodist pastor Jeremy Smith, for example, has suggested the inevitable effect of Black Mirror’s memory recording technologies is a virtual “end of faith,” and that “in a world where certainty is idolized, faith and imagination suffer” (Smith, 2015). It is true that Black Mirror seems to intentionally avoid addressing religion directly; however, I argue that the series includes embedded religious symbols which make very profound statements about the role of faith in a technological world and, perhaps more importantly, point to the existence of a sovereign, inalterable, and knowable truth which is fastened to a universal morality. These themes are most significantly played out in the fourth season’s “Crocodile.” Rather than attaching recorded memories to an implanted device, the world of “Crocodile” has produced a technology which can play back memories that are already recorded in the mind. The technology, called the “Recaller,” makes an audiovisual record of an individual’s memories via a small

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button placed on the temple. Initially used for law enforcement, the device is now in the hands of Shazia, who works for an insurance agency and uses recorded memories to verify claims. Shazia wears a headscarf—one of the most recognizable symbols of religious piety. She only removes her scarf while alone with her husband and baby, an indication that the performance of her religious identity is deliberate and not accidental. Shazia is the truth-seeker and a symbol of her faith; she represents faith in an inalterable truth and ties her pursuit of that truth to a righteousness that transcends human egoism. Her character problematizes the conviction that the revelation of truth via recorded memories is ipso facto the evil which leads to devastation. Rather, Shazia’s devotion to righteousness juxtaposes her murderer’s destructive selfishness in a way that can only be explained by a philosophy which understands morality as external to the self. “Crocodile” pushes against humanistic philosophies which see individualism and free will as the greatest good, and echoes the moral philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, and, more recently, of Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, who have argued for a sovereign “Good” which can only be encountered through truth. I argue, therefore, that when read through the lens of this moral philosophy, Black Mirror does not represent a technological usurping of faith; rather, it argues that omniscience-via-technology becomes a threat only when devotion to a sovereign “Good” is abandoned in favor of self-­preservation and personal control. “Crocodile” presents the argument that truth and goodness are consubstantial, and that truth is ubiquitous, eternal, and compulsory.

We Belong to Good The idea that a sovereign “Good” exists, and that it exists external to the self, has been debated since the earliest days of philosophy. Throughout his dialogues in The Republic (2009), Plato describes an aspiration for “goodness” (i.e., to be a “good” man or a “good” general) as central to the foundation of an orderly state. By Book VII, Plato comes to describe exactly what “goodness” is and how it might be achieved through his famous allegory of the cave (7.514a to 7.517c): Three prisoners have lived in a subterraneous cavern since their birth, believing that the objects they see on the wall of the cave are “real,” and not mere shadows of the objects that pass behind them. Eventually one prisoner escapes and, through his ascension from the cave, discovers that the sun is the source of life and begins a journey of intellectual awakening. In this allegory, the sun is a metaphor for the “good”—it is not sight (i.e., knowledge) itself, but it is the source which makes sight (or knowledge) possible. Plato writes: …my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed. (Plato, 7.517c)

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In Plato’s philosophy, “good” is not merely an adjectival value, as one might enjoy a good meal or a good book. Rather, it is a phenomenon that exists beyond human agency and irrespective of human acknowledgment; yet once acknowledged, the individual is compelled to follow it if he is to achieve truth and reason. According to Plato, the idea of the good is something that must be gradually discovered throughout a journey of intellectual enlightenment. To this last point—that the good must be gradually discovered throughout an individual’s life—there has been some pushback in recent years. The last decade has seen the bourgeoning of a field of social psychology called “moral psychology,” which tends to focus on the intersection of ethics, psychology, and philosophy of the mind  (Haidt, 2007). Lawrence Kohlberg is often credited with being the father of the field due to his presentation of moral development theory in the early seventies. Kohlberg’s (1976) theory echoed Plato’s in that Kohlberg saw the development of morality—that is, the system by which a person learns to decipher between right and wrong, or good and bad—as occurring across six stages of that person’s life, ranging from punishment and obedience orientation to an acceptance of universal ethical principles. Recent studies, however, have suggested that morality is inherited and evolutionary. In his 2013 book Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, psychologist Paul Bloom (2013) argues that children are born with a predetermined moral sensibility which is only expressed in greater detail as the child grows. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in his 2012 book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, adds to the concept of an inherited evolutionary morality by proposing his moral foundations theory, which suggests that all societies build their values around their interpretation of six pillars—care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty—and that new members of those societies adopt the preset moral foundations of their tribe. Whether morality is viewed as a developmental process, an evolutionary inheritance, or a social construct, moral psychologists tend to reject the idea that a sovereign “good” exists beyond human mechanisms. Yet Black Mirror, and specifically the “Crocodile” episode, seems to question this relativism by suggesting that there is something beyond human agency that governs the consequences of the characters’ actions. And that something—which I am calling the “good” or the “truth”—is discovered as the plot unfolds. Shazia’s prayer, “We belong to God and to Him we shall return,” is particularly intriguing because it is not the prayer that is traditionally recited by a Muslim at the time of death. Whenever possible, a dying Muslim is expected to recite the declaration of faith and statement of faraj—two much longer prayers which reaffirm the individual’s belief in God and the prophet Mohammed. Shazia’s death scene is not rushed; Mia takes time to converse with Shazia, and she places a hand tenderly on Shazia’s head (or, rather, upon her headscarf) as she waits for Shazia to close her eyes for the death blow. It seems that Shazia would have had ample time to pray the declaration of faith and statement of faraj, and Mia would have allowed her to do so. The prayer that Shazia utters, however, is traditionally prayed by survivors at the time of another’s death. It is possible

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that Shazia felt rushed despite Mia’s dawdling, and it is also possible that Shazia speaks this prayer for her husband, whom she understands will be the next to die. It is also likely, however, that this prayer is a warning for Mia; if “we belong to God and to Him we shall return,” then Mia also is bound by a sovereign entity that will ultimately call her to account for her crimes.

Crocodilian Principles of Truth It is possible, too, to find evidence that Black Mirror’s philosophy points to an esoteric understanding of truth and goodness in the episode’s title, “Crocodile.” Upon the episode’s release, critics could only speculate about what the title might be referencing. A prevailing theory, proposed by DigitalSpy blogger Rosie Fletcher (2018), has been that the title refers to “crocodile tears” which, she says: …refers to ‘tears or expressions of sorrow that are insincere’ and while Mia, who has a husband and a son and a successful career, initially appears to be more grief-­ stricken, vulnerable and emotional than Rob, we discover that in fact she’s capable of far more cold-blooded violence than him.

Certainly, “Crocodile” focuses much of its critique on the consequences of insincerity—that is, on the human drive to cover up or skew the truth. However, it seems unlikely that Mia’s tears are insincere. Mia is genuinely troubled by the violence that she inflicts. She initially fights her companion’s decision to cover up their original crime—an impulse which suggests that she does have a working moral compass—and her later expressions of violence seem to come not out of cold predation, but out of a feeling of helplessness generated by that original concealment. In January 2018, the creator of the series, Charlie Brooker, producer Sanne Wohlenberg, and the episode’s director John Hillcoat provided their interpretations of the title’s meaning in an in interview-style discussion published in Charlie Brooker, Annabel Jones, and Jason Arnopp’s book Inside Black Mirror. Hillcoat suggested that “the story’s cruel logic has a deadly vice-like grip, akin to a crocodile’s jaw,” whereas Wohlenberg interpreted the title as referring to “a theory that, when crocodiles kill their prey, they have tears in their eyes” (qtd. in Brooker, Jones, & Arnopp, 2018). Brooker, however, disclosed that the title relates to an early version of the script, in which a child had witnessed the murder of her mother at the age of two, and had then grown to see the world as threatening. Brooker analogized that life is like a boat ride down a river, and that early trauma like that which the previous iteration of the script was intended to depict represents a disruption in the rider’s interpretation of the journey. If the boat were to be attacked by a crocodile early during the ride, Brooker says, “you can never relax and enjoy the rest of the boat ride, because you think it’s a crocodile attack simulator”; though the episode had evolved beyond childhood trauma, Brooker still found the title “weirdly fitting” (qtd. in Brooker, Jones, & Arnopp, 2018).

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What made the title “weirdly fitting,” it seems, was that as the episode developed, the impact of traumatic experiences on the mind and the individual’s susceptibility to the mind’s internal construct became ever more prevalent. The creative team played on the theme of “Crocodile,” adding layers to the title’s connotation. Hillcoat explains that: Mia’s deep inner flaw is her ambition, more than a hidden murderous rage. When all that ambition and success becomes threatened, along with her happy family, she unravels and lets her reptilian brain take over, like a cornered lizard or snake… or crocodile! (qtd. in Brooker, Jones, & Arnopp, 2018)

The “reptilian brain” which Hillcoat describes refers to passage in astrobiologist Carl Sagan’s book, Cosmos (1980). Sagan describes the human brain as comprised of multiple layers of evolution. He writes: Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the seat of aggression, ritual, territoriality and social hierarchy, which evolved hundreds of millions of years ago in our reptilian ancestors. Deep inside the skull of every one of us there is something like the brain of a crocodile.

Sagan (1980) explains that the limbic system, or the mammalian brain, surrounds the crocodilian brain and is a “major source of our moods and emotions, of our concern and care for the young,” and that the brain’s higher, more human functions—“reading, writing, speaking”—are located above the limbic system in the cerebral cortex. It is clear that Mia wrestles with the interplay of the multiple evolutionary layers of her brain. On one hand, she wears her emotions openly and professes that her need to conceal her original crime is at least partially motivated by concern for her child; yet on the other, she is very capable of aggression, and it could be argued that she is also motivated by territoriality, as she lashes out in order to protect her social and professional domain. Furthermore, she rationalizes, she interprets, she lies—all functions of the cerebral cortex. Sagan goes on to say that: The cerebral cortex is a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons. We are, each of us, largely responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves.

Sagan’s optimistic view is countered by Mia’s behavior. Instead of employing her enlightened human brain to change her predatory reptile brain, she uses it to rationalize her crimes. Mia behaves much more like the “rider” in Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis (2006). Haidt argues that the rational brain functions like a rider on a wild elephant—the rider is much more likely to be led by the elephant (i.e., animalistic, appetitive impulses found in the lower parts of the brain) and then to rationalize later why he has

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arrived at the elephant’s chosen destination. Mia has rationalized her original crime and cover-­up after the fact, and she uses that rationale in an attempt to push the shame and the guilt of that act to the back of her mind. If Cosmos is, in fact, the source of the episode’s title, then it is also worth noting that while Sagan asserts that specific aspects of human nature are located in separate levels of the brain, “Memories, on the other hand, are stored redundantly in many locales.” He goes on to ponder that: If such a thing as telepathy existed, one of its glories would be the opportunity for each of us to read the books in the cerebral cortices of our loved ones. But there is no compelling evidence for telepathy, and the communication of such information remains the task of artists and writers. (Sagan, 1980)

Black Mirror’s creators have answered Sagan’s call for telepathy through the Recaller. The Recaller can access memories located throughout all parts of the brain. When the predatory memories that had been inspired by Mia’s reptilian brain are accessed, they are predicated by flashes of red in the viewer of the Recaller. Those memories are inalterable, and they serve to illustrate Black Mirror’s philosophy of the sovereignty of truth—they demonstrate that truth is ubiquitous and compulsory. This philosophy further suggests that when conducted objectively and with clear perception, the pursuit of the truth is ultimately good—or “glorious” as Sagan might say—as only then can the rider control the direction of the elephant, or change the reptilian brain.

Truth as Ubiquitous In its often-foreboding critique of human interactions with technology, Black Mirror is clear to argue that omniscience-via-technology is largely flawed if the truth-seeker is not perceptive enough to work through appetitive, self-serving influences in order to see the truth objectively. In “The Entire History of You” for example, Liam and his wife (Jodie Whittaker) share a common memory of inviting Liam’s social rival home for a nightcap, yet their interpretations of the motive behind that act are starkly different. Liam believes that his wife wanted to extend the invitation; his wife believes that Liam was the one who wanted it. Similarly, “Crocodile” demonstrates that the truth cannot be found in a single memory or from a single source. Shazia’s task is to verify an insurance claim made by a musician who had been struck by a driverless pizza delivery truck. In doing so, she must access the memories of a variety of individuals—first the victim (Joshua James), then a passerby (Noni Harper-Brown), then a dentist (Brian Pettifer) who had observed the accident from his office window, and finally Mia who had watched it from her hotel room. For Shazia, the truth can only be found through a correspondence of these memories, as any individual’s memory might be flawed. The dentist, for example, recalls seeing a woman in a lime green coat; the coat, Shazia knows from having viewed the recollections of the victim and the woman, was actually yellow.

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The discrepancy of the woman’s coat is a subtle indicator that “Crocodile” subscribes to a correspondence theory of truth—one of a variety of philosophical theories aimed at understanding what, exactly, constitutes whether something is “true.” Plato is, once again, credited with having originated the correspondence theory. In Theaetetus (1992), his dialogues about the nature of knowledge, Plato argues that false judgment is “thinking what is not (true)” (188c–189b). He claims that “knowledge” is not anologous to “true judgment,” principally because memory can cause mistakes—memory, he says, can “provide for mistaken judgments not involving perception” (196d–200c). Aristotle (2016) endorses Plato’s view in his Metaphysics, adding that “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true…” (1011b26ff). For the correspondence theory to work, “truth” must be external to the individual, as individual interpretations of the truth even on trivial matters may be false. In this sense, “truth” is an entity which possesses a power beyond human agency— one which can only be discerned through objective inquiry. This is perhaps best described by Nietzsche’s critique of the Platonic view in his “On the Genealogy of Morality” (1967), in which he argues that: It is still a metaphysical faith that underlies our faith in science—and we men of knowledge of today, we godless men and anti-metaphysicians, we, too, still derive our flame from the fire ignited by a faith millennia old, the Christian faith, which was also Plato’s, that God is truth, that truth is divine.

According to Nietzsche, even science depends on the notion that truth must exist beyond human knowledge, as an avoidance of confirmation bias requires that truth be sought through a rejection of self-serving desires in order to achieve objectivity of perception. Only through accessing the memories of a variety of observers, therefore, can Shazia know that the truth of the woman’s coat is that it was yellow. Truth is, in this sense, ubiquitous in that it cannot be localized to a single testimony, but rather exists in the recollections and the interpretations of all individuals. It is only through a consensus of these recollections can a divine truth be encountered.

Truth as Eternal Fifteen years after the original crime, Mia is visited by Rob (Andrew Gower), the companion who had insisted upon the initial cover-up. Rob has entered a sober-living program, and has concluded that in order to make amends for the damage he has caused while intoxicated, he must confess the crime. He explains this to Mia, who protests that the crime and the cover-up are in the past, and that they had agreed to put it out of their minds. “It was a long time ago,” Mia argues. “But in here,” Rob replies, gesturing toward his brain, “it’s now.” Mia reluctantly agrees, saying, “Yeah, I know.” Both Mia and Rob have recognized

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that a quality of this divine truth is that it is not bound by time. Because of the persistence of memory, the actions of the past cannot be left in the past, and are instead existing in a state of eternity. The consequences of their actions endure in spite of their attempt to hide the truth, which makes that truth constantly at risk of being revealed. French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil has unpacked this idea of the eternity of truth in her book Gravity and Grace (1947). In a chapter titled “Renunciation of Time,” Weil describes the past and the future as imaginary fillers of void places. To imagine the future, Weil suggests, is to fill a void with delusive ideas which are not likely to come to fruition in the manner imagined. That lack of fruition causes distress and confusion, which is why Weil says, referring to Plato’s allegory of the cave, that “To come out of the cave, to be detached, means to cease to make the future our objective” (Weil, 1947). Furthermore, Weil posits that to imagine the past is likewise a source of delusory pain, as she references a line from Dante’s The Divine Comedy, “Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria…” which, translated, means that there is “no greater grief than to remember days of joy, when misery is at hand” (Alighieri, 1999). The only way to circumvent the pain of past and future and to achieve authenticity, Weil implies, is to renounce these concepts of time in order to embrace eternity. Weil says: “When pain and weariness reach the point of causing a sense of perpetuity to be born in the soul, through contemplating this perpetuity with acceptance and love, we are snatched away into eternity.” In this moment of recognition, when Rob and Mia confirm for one another that their crime exists in a state of perpetuity, the characters experience being “snatched away into eternity”—they encounter the divine truth through a perceptive acknowledgment of the continuity of their act. Because of his sober-living practice, Rob is able to come to this concept with “acceptance and love,” such that he is willing to reveal his crime to the people who continue to be affected by it. Mia, however, rejects that conclusion almost as soon as she utters it. She continues to make the future her objective. She resists the thought of publicly acknowledging her crime because she fears that doing so would steal away the fruits of her imagined future—namely, to watch her child grow and to build her reputation as an architect. By refusing to come out of the cave, by refusing to reveal the truth in service of a selfless, eternal, and sovereign “good,” Mia resorts to her reptilian impulses and murders her companion.

Truth as Compulsory Yet in spite of Mia’s desire to conceal her crimes, she is unable to avoid the truth and seems at times to be compelled to speak it. When Shazia arrives at Mia’s home to get Mia’s recollection of the pizza truck accident, Mia at first claims that she had never seen an accident. After minimal prodding by Shazia, however, Mia admits to having been a witness—an admission which could have easily been covered up if she had thought to do so, and which would ultimately

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lead to Shazia’s discovery of Mia’s crimes. Upon learning that it is a legal requirement to share with the insurance agent what she had seen, Mia invites Shazia into her home to discuss what she remembers. As Shazia prepares the Recaller to collect Mia’s memory of the incident, she hands Mia the terms of use for the technology. Though never expressly stated in the episode, it can be assumed that the terms would have allowed for Mia’s refusal of the technology. Shazia makes efforts to persuade the victim and each of the witnesses to participate willingly in the use of the Recaller, and she preempts each use with the question, “May I?” Mia, however, fails to read the terms. She is troubled and distracted, and comments that the document is too long to read. She feels compelled to participate. Instead, Mia excuses herself to make some coffee, and attempts to alter her recollections to exclude the memory of Rob’s murder, which had taken place moments before the pizza truck accident. Mia escapes into the bathroom and narrates that which she hopes to display on the Recaller. Mia mutters: “I ate hotel food; I had room service. I ate room service in the hotel room on my own. Watched porn. Watched porn. Saw the accident. Come on, focus. I was on my own. I was on my own. I was on my own.” If it were possible to alter her remembrance of the evening’s events to exclude Rob’s murder, then Mia might have avoided her next and most vicious criminal acts—the slaughter of Shazia, her husband, and her baby. Yet because Mia’s memories are anchored to a ubiquitous, eternal truth, she is likewise unable to avoid the compulsion of displaying those memories on the Recaller. Philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch (1971) refers to this conflict as the sovereignty of public concepts over private objects. Murdoch explains: One might roughly divide these data (that is, introspectable objects—feelings, thoughts, memories) in order of shadowiness into visual images, verbal thoughts, other images, other thoughts and feelings while not exactly verbal or visual seem nevertheless to be ‘entities.’ It will be true of all these that I cannot show them to other people… I can only ‘know’ my imagery because I know the public things which it is ‘of.’ Public concepts are in this obvious sense sovereign over private objects; I can only ‘identify’ the inner, even for my own benefit, via my knowledge of the outer.

In Murdoch’s philosophy, “introspectable objects” are mere shadows of the public objects to which they refer. Thoughts, feelings, memories, refer to public objects that cannot be altered. Mia’s crimes are public objects in this sense, and so no conscious attempt to replace one private object with another—that is, no attempt to replace a true memory with a false memory—can be successful. Murdoch mentions that these inner objects cannot be “shown” to another person; however, the Recaller does attempt to make this possible. Because Mia’s memories of her crimes are anchored to public objects—the truth of her actions—she cannot suppress the revelation of those crimes, and the Recaller exposes the truth to Shazia.

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To Good We Shall Return I have suggested that it is no accident that Shazia is a representation of her faith, and that her work with the Recaller is an extension of the faithful’s search for truth and goodness. Not only does Shazia’s dress and prayer recitation expose her commitment to her faith; she also exhibits a demeanor that would be expected from a pious devotee of her religion. She refuses to judge the more embarrassing memories of the witnesses. She cracks open a beer in order to trigger memories through the smell of hops, but she does not drink. She seems to understand and accept the unspoken thoughts of the people whom she encounters, as when she acknowledges to the musician that he had remembered the face of the female passerby so clearly because she was “very pretty.” As Shazia peers into the Recaller, the camera looks up at her face, as if gazing up at a heavenly body. Shazia as the truth-seeker and pursuer of the “good” is a testament to Black Mirror’s reverence for her faith. Murdoch (1971) explains that “Religion normally emphasizes states of mind as well as actions, and regards states of mind as the genetic background of action: pureness of heart, meekness of spirit. Religion provides devices for the purification of states of mind.” Shazia’s religion, therefore, is less prescriptive of the Muslim faith— there is no suggestion that the episode argues for the supremacy of one form of religious practice over another. Rather, the religious symbolism embedded in the character of Shazia points to an affirmation that those states of mind which religious practice promotes—purity and meekness—are essential to the pursuit of truth and the acquisition of the good. In the hands of Shazia, therefore, the Recaller’s ability to eliminate ambiguity and to reveal an objective truth through exposing recorded memories is less a usurpation of divine omniscience, and more a testament to the sovereignty of truth. Shazia is the conduit through which truth is revealed, and her devotion to the “good” is upheld as righteous when compared to Mia’s attempts to conceal truth for self-preservation. Though Shazia and her family meet violent ends, the “goodness” of her character and her family is only emphasized by their deaths. Murdoch (1971) explains: Goodness is connected with the acceptance of real death and real chance and real transience and only against the background of this acceptance, which is psychologically so difficult, can we understand the full extent of what virtue is like. The acceptance of death is an acceptance of our own nothingness which is an automatic spur to our concern with what is not ourselves… Humility is a rare virtue and an unfashionable one and one which is often hard to discern. Only rarely does one meet somebody in whom it positively shines, in whom one apprehends with amazement the absence of the anxious avaricious tentacles of the self.

Humility shines through Shazia in a way that is not common in the characters of Black Mirror. She accepts her fate by yielding herself to God—in whom Plato, Aristotle, Weil, and Murdoch argue is the seat of truth and goodness. In

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her prayer, “We belong to God, and to Him we shall return,” Shazia allows herself to be snatched away into eternity. Mia, who resists her own annihilation, who is temporally bound and wrapped up in the “anxious avaricious tentacles of the self,” is a foil to Shazia’s humility. Mia has operated on animalistic predation of the R-complex and limbic system rather than the human liberation of the cerebral cortex, and she will ironically meet her fate through the recorded memories of a rodent—Shazia’s pet guinea pig, the last remaining witness to Mia’s crimes. In light of this, and when read through a moral philosophy which sees truth as corroborative, sovereign, and external to the self, Black Mirror does not represent a technological usurping of faith. Rather, it argues that omniscience-via-technology is just another method by which a sovereign truth might be encountered, and that such a technology only becomes a threat when a pursuit of “goodness” is abandoned in favor of self-preservation and personal control.

References Alighieri, D. (1999). The Divine Comedy (H. F. Cary, Trans.). New York: Collier Press. Aristotle. (2016). Metaphysics (C.  D. C.  Reeve, Trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Bassil-Mozorow, H. (2018, January 31). God Is an Algorithm: Why We’re Closer to a Black Mirror-Style Reality than We Think. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/god-is-an-algorithm-why-were-closer-to-a-blackmirror-style-reality-than-we-think-90669 Berkowitz, J.(2018, January 3). “Black Mirror” Is Obsessed with Digital Hell Because We Are Living In It. Fast Company. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany. com/40512450/black-mirror-is-obsessed-with-digital-hell-because-we-areliving-in-it Bloom, P. (2013). Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil. New York: Broadway Books. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Foster, J. (Director). (2017). Arkangel. [Television series episode] In K. Pitt (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Hillcoat, J. (Director). (2017). Crocodile. [Television series episode] In S. Wohlenberg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Fletcher, R. (2018, January 2). What Does the Title of Black Mirror Episode ‘Crocodile’ Mean? DigitalSpy. Retrieved from https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a846493/ black-mirror-crocodile-episode-title-explained/ Haidt, J. (2006). The Happiness Hypothesis. New York: Basic Books. Haidt, J. (2007). The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology. Science, 316(5827), 998–1002. Kohlberg, L. (1976). Moral Stages and Moralization: The Cognitive-Developmental Approach. In T.  Likona (Ed.), Moral Development and Behavior: Theory, Research and Social Issues (pp. 31–55). New York: Holt, Rineheart & Winston. Murdoch, I. (1971). The Soverignty of Good. London: Routledge Classics. Nietzsche, F. (1967). On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (W. Kaufmann, Ed., W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books. Plato. (1992). Theaetetus (M. J. Levett, Ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Plato. (2009). The Republic. Auckland: The Floating Press. Sagan, C. (1980). Cosmos. New York: Random House.

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Smith, J. (2015, February 4). Black Mirror: The End of Faith? Hacking Christianity. Retrieved from http://hackingchristianity.net/2015/02/black-mirror-the-end-offaith.html Weil, S. (1947). Gravity and Grace (Crawford & M. von der Ruhr, Trans. E.). London: Librarie PLON. Welsh, B. (Writer), & Armstrong, J. (Director). (2011). The Entire History of You. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4.

Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before: Relationships and Late Capitalism in “Hang the DJ”’ Aidan Power

Eight minutes  in to “Hang the DJ” (04.04), Amy (Georgina Campbell) remarks to her blind date Frank (Joe Cole) that “it must have been mental before the system,” then pauses and reflects that “it’s so much easier when it’s all mapped out”. The “system” in question is an all-encompassing dating app called “Coach”, one accessed via a circular tablet that facilitates and oversees all aspects of dating experience, up to and including providing a partner, booking a restaurant, selecting food from the menu and, because it’s Black Mirror (2011–), setting a pre-determined expiry date on the nascent relationship. Afterwards, transportation to a cosy chalet is provided; an IKEA fit-out full of modern solutions for modern living, where tinned, purgatorial jazz plays in the background and a fire flickers invitingly in the hearth. Nothing, it seems, is left to chance, with the ultimate goal being that after an indeterminate courting period, where various relationships are explored in an elaborate process of trial and error, individuals will find themselves in a permanent relationship with a highly compatible partner (the system’s algorithm boasts a near flawless success rate of 99.8%). It soon becomes clear that Amy and Frank live out their days in a luxury (albeit walled) holiday village where their every whim is catered for. Ferried from chalet to the “Hub”, a compound that houses the restaurant and a shopping centre, their only concern centres on finding a suitable partner, the system taking care of everything else. The all-too-human awkwardness of such encounters notwithstanding, Amy and Frank have obvious chemistry and

A. Power (*) University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_18

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forge an immediate connection. Our first real clue that something is awry comes when, before letting Frank try her pasta, Amy asks if they are “allowed to do that”, at which point Frank turns to look at a shady figure hovering near the outer edges of the frame. As he turns, his head goes out of focus and when he turns back, Amy’s face does likewise. Frank tastes the pasta and then the visual cue repeats itself: again he turns to look and again his head goes out of focus, followed by her face. Both instances are accompanied by a brief release of ominous, slightly discordant ambient sound on Alex Somers’ instrumental soundtrack. In the very next shot, Amy and Frank look briefly distracted, as if contemplating a question they already know the answer to. Similar figures patrol the shadows as the budding couple emerge from the Hub and await their transport to the chalet, contributing to the nagging feeling that beneath the pristine surface, something weird is afoot. The driverless automated cart, the Hub’s pristine golf club-like exterior and Frank’s gazing up at and subsequent reaction to the wall (“that’s massive”) all hint that, far from paradise, we are in the process of witnessing what it might look like if Tinder and the Nazi Party went into business together and elected to run a Butlin’s resort. Written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007) and Boardwalk Empire (HBO, 2010–2014) alumnus Tim Van Patten, “Hang the DJ” hinges upon Brooker’s imagining of “a Spotify for dates” (Netflix, 2018). In a promotional clip on season four of Black Mirror for Netflix, Brooker speculated that such a platform could “generate a playlist of relationships. It would tell you who you were going to be going out with next and for how long. The system is learning from your reaction to being paired with all these different types of people. Once it’s figured it’s learnt enough about you, it will then pair you up with the ultimate soulmate” (Netflix, 2018). That Brooker could just as easily have been talking about Netflix itself is left unsaid. Amy and Frank both admit to having never used the system before and are mildly disappointed when their tablets reveal that their relationship will last no more than 12 hours. Following a pleasant evening at the strangely retrofuturistic chalet1 where they sleep together, but do not have sex (they lie fully clothed and hold hands at Amy’s prompting), the pair part ways in the morning, as behind them the chalet door locks automatically the moment their allotted time elapses. “We fucked that up”, Amy intones ruefully, and it is indeed difficult to square the system’s supposed near infallibility with the meagre timeframe it allots two people who share such an obvious bond. This suspicion is exacerbated by subsequent events, when both are fixed up in long-term relationships with patently unsuitable partners: Amy with the handsome but shallow Lenny (George Blagden) and Frank with the openly hostile Nicola (Gwyneth Keyworth), who makes clear her aversion to him from their first encounter (“come on, let’s get it over with”). The awkwardness that ensues is 1  The 1960s’ late-modernist style of the chalet recalls a retrofuturistic version of the future, one envisioned in the past and that is already past tense, suggesting that our ability to imagine alternate futures has been foreclosed in the age of late capitalism.

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reminiscent of science fiction/romantic satire The Lobster (2015), wherein single people are rounded up by the state and forced to devote all their time to finding a suitable romantic partner. Differently from Yorgos Lanthimos’ film, however, the threat of violence that foments acquiescence to the system in “Hang the DJ” is consigned to the shadows until late in the episode. Following a chance meeting at a “pairing day”––the system’s wedding-like designated day of celebration for ultimate soulmates––it is clear that Amy and Frank still harbour feelings for one another, and though she is initially assigned a number of joyless short-term relationships, they are pleasantly surprised when the system later puts them back together again. Keen to make the most of the opportunity, they agree not to check the expiry date of their relationship, an arrangement that holds for a time, before Frank, fearing that the woman he has fallen for might one day depart, succumbs to temptation and looks at his tablet. This does not end well and, from an initial life expectancy of five years, the clock on the device runs swiftly down in response to his transgression, until only 20 hours remain. Despite pleading with Amy that they ignore the system and flee their walled environment, she refuses and, stung by Frank’s betrayal, re-enters the system. More unsatisfactory relationships ensue2 before the system informs Amy that a compatible partner has been selected and that––even if she is yet to meet this person––she is to be bound to him/her in a pairing day the following afternoon (Frank receives a similar message at the same time). Allowed one final encounter with an ex of her choice, she meets up with Frank at the Hub and the couple flee the compound together, scaling the improbably high walls in the process, as Brooker reveals what the episode has hinted at since their first date: that what we have borne witness to is, in fact, a simulated world. After a fade to black, Van Patten cuts from the wall to a featureless space filled with 998 versions of Frank and Amy, all of whom had previously escaped the computer simulation. In a scene resembling a mass Star Trek (NBC, 1966–1969) teleportation, the hordes of Franks and Amys dissolve in a hail of pixels before the graphic “998 Rebellions Logged” appears on screen. Together, they account for the 99.8% success rate claimed by the system’s algorithm, one measured by running precisely 1000 simulations. Back in the “real world”, in the episode’s final scene, Amy checks her tablet, on which an image of Frank appears alongside a graphic revealing a 99.8% match. Johnny Marr’s opening 2  Interestingly, the vast majority of these mainly physical relationships feature Amy and not Frank, who after his joyless experience with Nicola is shown only once more with a partner. Amy, instead, has many relationships which, are for the most part, depicted through short sex scenes, including a montage sequence where five successive partners including implausibly muscled men and a woman dissolve into one another onscreen. The intention here appears to be to parody the representation of women in romantic films, which, though predominantly aimed at a female market, nevertheless cannot resist depicting women through a sexualised male gaze. Here “Hang the DJ” is again knowing in its aims. Earlier still, after she breaks up with Lenny and right before she embarks on a series of purely physical 36 hour relationships, we are presented with a shot of Amy swimming, the water obscuring her head and showing instead only her body. Later, right before she figures the simulation out and elects to flee with Frank, the shot is repeated only this time from above the water, leaving Amy’s head visible, but her body obscured.

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bars of “Hang the DJ” stir in the background, while Morrissey implores us to “burn down the disco” as Amy catches Frank’s eye across a crowded bar. He too has been checking his tablet and the pair smile knowingly at one another. She moves towards him and the scene cuts to black with The Smiths playing out over the end credits. Thematically, “Hang the DJ” has its most obvious Black Mirror antecedent in “San Junipero” (03.04), where a nascent romance between two women in 1980s’ California is revealed to be actually taking place in a computer simulation. Indeed, much critical commentary has linked the two episodes, Arielle Bernstein’s “Love After Life: How TV Imagines Relationships Beyond the Grave” for The Guardian or Catherine Gee’s piece in The Telegraph entitled: “Is This the New San Junipero?” being exemplary. A number of critics also played up what they saw as the episode’s happy ending: Sophie Gilbert writing for The Atlantic, by way of example, noted that “‘Hang the DJ’ has a happy ending, at least by Black Mirror standards” (2017), while Gee observed that “there is a greater sense of hope here than in the standard Black Mirror story” (2017). Even Black Mirror’s executive producer Annabel Jones, while noting the episode’s intended “moments of playfulness” in its depiction of relationships, stated that “it felt right that these two people come together at the end and that there is some sort of sense of hope and that they do belong together and there is a sort of love will prevail attitude. So it absolutely felt right for the story” (qtd. in Maas, 2017). On the links with “San Junipero”, it is difficult to demur, the one obvious difference being that Yorkie (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Kelly (Mackenzie Davis), the two lovers in that earlier episode, know that they are inhabiting a computer simulation. Additionally, we should note, and as Jones has recounted, the success that “San Junipero” would enjoy (winning a 2017 Emmy for outstanding television movie) had not yet become apparent to her or Brooker when “Hang the DJ” was being written (Maas, 2017). Both episodes are nonetheless indicative of the kind of depthless, eternal present, that Fredric Jameson identified as a salient feature of postmodernism, itself the cultural imprimatur of late capitalism (1991, p.  6), “San Junipero” in its knowing resuscitation of filmic depictions of the 1980s and “Hang the DJ” in its self-conscious engagement with onscreen depictions of relationships. Moreover, both episodes depict simulacra where the future is foreclosed: capitalist multinationals having figured out in each how to monetise the afterlife. That “Hang the DJ” concludes on a hopeful note instead is, I will argue, highly debatable and assumes that the versions of Amy and Frank it closes on are in fact real, and not a series of zeros and ones in a further simulation. Or, if they are real instead, that they have become wholly pliant to not just technology, but the soulless corporations that create it. In this regard, the episode’s focus on romance is instructive and, though we can spot thematic debts to science fiction films such as Logan’s Run (1976), The Truman Show (1998) or The Matrix (1999), the episode’s engagement with romance is equally telling: after all Amy and Frank’s touching, yet frequently awkward encounters led to Annabel Jones describing the episode as the series’ first “rom-com”

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(Strause, 2018). Despite their instant rapport, however, it is quickly apparent that Amy and Frank’s conversations are completely devoid of context or culture: in an episode named after a Smiths’ song, they never mention music, for instance, nor do they speak about jobs (they don’t have any), families (they have none) or their lives at large (they don’t exist). At which point, we must ask, what information is the system working off in order to create its near perfectly compatible matches? Some four decades before Jameson wrote on postmodernism, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer detected marked similarities in the way culture was being used in both the US and Nazi Germany, which as Jewish émigrés they had fled. Noting the homogeneity of popular culture (“culture now imposes the same stamp on everything”), Adorno and Horkheimer posited that the “culture industry” was through repetition eroding all spontaneity and mollifying the masses into passivity in the interests of capitalist ideology (1944, p. 120). The film industry, they argued, was aptly titled, for it foregrounded the medium’s subordination to commerce (“they call themselves industries; and when their directors’ incomes are published, any doubt about the social utility of the finished products is removed” [1944, p. 121]) and in its propensity for repetition promulgated capitalist ideology in an endless loop. Buoyed by victory in WWII and a resultant post-war boom, the US’ global pre-­ eminence grew seemingly unassailable and resistance to the dominant ideology was met with either swift punishment (witness Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunts of the 1950s) or cultural assimilation (see, e.g. the erosion and resultant commodification of the hippie movements of the 1960s). Cinema, in Adorno and Horkheimer’s terms, blurred the boundaries between real life and entertainment, restricting the horizons of both: “real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies. The sound film, far surpassing the theatre of illusion, leaves no room for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience” (1944, p. 126). That there is no material difference between Amy and Frank’s private lives and their system-sanctioned romantic lives is telling: as soon as one relationship is over they are immediately set up with new partners and the cycle begins again. Mid-way through her second relationship with Frank, an increasingly sceptical Amy suddenly begins to question the system: “What if all it’s actually doing is gradually wearing us down … each time you get a little bit more pliable, a little bit more broken, until eventually … you are so defeated and so exhausted that you just accept it and settle? And then you have to spend the rest of your life convincing yourself you didn’t?” She may just as well be talking about ideology, which, in Louis Althusser’s memorable formulation: “represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (1971, pp.  164–165). Indeed, the system itself appears to have learned about human relationships primarily through onscreen manifestations of romance. This can be seen in the banal, socially awkward encounters that punctuate “Hang the DJ” and that recall any number of romantic comedies. Undergirding such fare is the ideology that love (frequently linked with accumulation) is the ultimate goal, that conformity is key to acquiring it and that

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failure will inevitably lead to a life of misery.3 Even Amy’s acts of rebellion are framed within the context of onscreen romance. When at one point, she laments to Frank that mid-way during sex with a partner the system has provided her, she was so bored that she experienced an out of body experience (“I literally had this out of body experience, I wandered out of my body and sat on this chair and watched myself fucking this guy”), she is inadvertently referencing a scene in Annie Hall (1977), when a distracted Annie (Diane Keaton) does exactly that during a joyless encounter with the neurotic Alvy Singer (Allen). Like Rachael (Sean Young) in Blade Runner (1982), Amy appears to be recounting someone else’s memories, only in this case they are not really memories at all, but fragments of cinema history. That the relationship in question doesn’t work out is itself foreshadowed by the conclusion of Annie Hall where Annie leaves for California and Alvy is left ruminating about a chicken, but not before Allen bookends an already autobiographically tinged film with a further variant on his and Keaton’s former relationship, when Alvy stages a play about his time with Annie where two actors playing variants on the couple reconcile.4 Elsewhere, the simmering tension in Amy’s relationship with Lenny comes to a head when she points out his annoying habit of emitting exaggerated gasps of satisfaction every time he takes a sip of water, a trait that Brooker frames as a running joke in the episode. Again, we have been here before onscreen (albeit we are now moving on from romance) and in this instance, more than once. In the “Palestinian Chicken” (08.03) episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, 2000–), Larry, himself an alternative version of the show’s creator Larry David, provokes the ire of the formidable Susie Greene (Susie Essman), when he mentions her constant demonstrations of the exact same habit. This scene in turn is a direct reference to David’s earlier work on Seinfeld (NBC, 1989–1998), when in “The Masseuse” (05.09), Elaine (Julia Louis-­ Dreyfus) tells her boyfriend about a college classmate who gasped loudly (and annoyingly) every time he drank coffee.5 The question thus remains: are the Amy and Frank that appear at the end of “Hang the DJ” real people or simply another iteration of a type, another simulation? More importantly, does it even matter? Presumably, for the system’s algorithm to work, they must at least have ­ eaningful provided some information about themselves. Yet their avatars’ most m 3  An exemplary illustration of this conform or die mentality can be evinced in The Holiday (2006), when Iris’ (Kate Winslet) “failure” to find a partner leads her to put her head in the oven, before having a change of heart and succumbing to a crueller fate still in ending up with Jack Black’s Miles. 4  While we could argue that Annie Hall’s ending coupled with its deconstruction of narrative form stands as a rebuke to convention, Adorno and Horkheimer are swift to note the culture industry’s ability to assimilate difference, even amongst maverick filmmakers: “Whenever Orson Welles offends against the tricks of the trade, he is forgiven because his departures from the norm are regarded as calculated mutations which serve all the more strongly to confirm the validity of the system (1944, p. 129)”. 5  Seinfeld incidentally is capitalist television par excellence, with the show’s repeats alone reputedly generating over $3 billion in revenue in the 15 years that followed the airing of its final episode (Sherwin, 2013).

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experiences appear to be no more than self-conscious re-workings of scenes from well-known films and television shows, closer, on the face of it, to Jameson’s critique of pastiche as being little more than “the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language” (1991, p. 17), than to what Linda Hutcheon described as postmodernism’s potential for “ironic signaling of difference at the very heart of similarity” (1989, p. 185).6 It is unsurprising then, that the bulk of Amy and Frank’s relationships are lifeless reenactments, or that Amy’s awareness that something is wrong in her world is foreshadowed by her description of herself as being no longer a participant in her sex life, but a bored spectator. Just as romantic films award their victors, they correspondingly must punish those who do not get with the programme. The contours that shape Amy and Frank’s relationship are predefined: girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl must get boy back once more. The simulation in fact programmes it thusly by allowing for their one last encounter (it even provides them with their perfect match at the same time, without revealing who it will be). In seemingly reneging on the rules of the rom-com, the simulation is prompting them to restore its structures. “Can you remember where you were before you came here?” Amy asks rhetorically when the two reunite. Frank is unable to do so and Amy states that “it’s a test”, before asking him to cast his mind back to their first encounter and enquiring how it made him feel. “Safe, happy, comfortable”, is his reply and he may as well be talking about the generic strategies of the rom-com or the culture industry at large. As viewers, we might cast our mind back even further, to the opening scene of the episode, one where Frank makes his way down a dark, rural road, the only light provided by the dim glow of his tablet. In hindsight, the mise-en-scène here is telling in establishing not just that Frank is entirely reliant upon the device, but that he is a creation of it. What Amy says next can be read as a knowing critique of the tired narrative tenets of screen romance and arguably gives the game away. Warming to the theme, she nods excitedly to Frank’s assertion that “it’s like we met before” before adding: “it’s like it has happened before and it will happen again, like it’s happened a thousand times over and over again”. If Brooker is not being wilfully playful here (and Annabel Jones suggests that the episode is calculated to be), then why does he have Amy stress that “it’s happened a thousand times”? After all, she has worked out that they are in a simulation (“it’s a test and the two of us rebelling together is something to do with passing it”), but there is no way she can possibly know that there are precisely 1000 simulations. That the episode draws directly upon The Matrix in the very next instance is therefore revealing. There are, of course, famously no coincidences in The Matrix7 and so Amy’s stress on a thousand 6  Breaking from Jameson and Terry Eagleton, Hutcheon argued that parody was not essentially depthless, but that “the collective weight of parodic practice suggests a redefinition of parody as repetition with critical distance that allows ironic signaling of difference at the very heart of similarity” (Hutcheon, 1989, p. 185). 7  Such is revealed in the déjà vu sequence in the film, when Neo’s sense of the uncanny upon seeing a black cat twice in quick succession prefigures an Agent-triggered glitch in the matrix.

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times must be taken at face value. Having resolved to flee and climb over the wall (“right over it, no matter what’s out there”) Amy and Frank rise from their table, only to be accosted by one of the heretofore shady figures at the edge of the frame, revealed here as a security guard wielding a stun gun. As a visibly frightened Frank stands back, Amy walks towards the guard before reaching upward and placing her hand on the electric current circulating from the weapon. The current instantly disappears and as Amy lowers her hand, the restaurant around her (and all the people in it bar Frank) freezes. The scene recalls Neo’s mastering of the matrix in the first film of the Wachowski siblings’ trilogy, when, faced by a hail of bullets fired by Agent Smith and his goons, he calmly reaches out and freezes their momentum, before plucking one from the air and casually dropping it on the ground. After an astonished Morpheus declares him to be “the one”, the Wachowskis cut to a POV shot privileging Neo’s perspective which is characterised as an elaborate series of zeros and ones now that he can see his world for the computer simulation it is. Amy accepts that in order to transcend her own computer simulation she must do what is expected. Thus, her act of rebellion is in fact one of conformity. She must acknowledge the fact that there is no escaping the capitalist ideologies of the culture industry and in so doing embrace the greatest rom-­ com cliché of all: leave with the boy who was under her nose all along. As Amy and Frank flee, an instrumental piece by Sigur Rós emerges on the soundtrack, inviting inevitable comparison to the penultimate scene of Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe 2001), when David Aames (Tom Cruise) realises that he too is in a computer simulation. Like Amy and Frank, Aames must demonstrate upward mobility and scale a great height (in this instance a skyscraper) as a song by Sigur Rós (in this case “Njosnavelin”) builds to a crescendo. Once on top he bids farewell to his computer-simulated girlfriend Sofia (Penélope Cruz) before leaping from the building. As he does so, Aames’ life flashes before his eyes, a rapid montage consisting of some “family photos” and “home videos” interspersed with a barrage of imagery from popular culture (Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, Crowe’s own Almost Famous, a Betty Boop cartoon, Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy amongst them). Crowe cuts to white and after an unseen woman enjoins Aames to “open your eyes”, finishes with a close-up of an eye opening and, like “Hang the DJ”, a return to what may or may not be the real world. Brooker’s decision to draw upon Vanilla Sky to conclude the episode has surely more to it than similarities in plot. After all, there are numerous superior simulacrum-themed films to refer to should the point be pastiche for the sake of pastiche. Instead, this is another knowing example of the system rehashing stale onscreen romances  promulgated by the culture industry. Vanilla Sky, a film that Peter Bradshaw memorably called an “extraordinarily narcissistic high-concept vanity project for producer-star Tom Cruise” (2002) is a paradigmatic example of the culture industry in action and of Hollywood’s commodification of art. A joyless remake of Alejandro Amenábar’s Abre los ojos (1997), Vanilla Sky is but the first in a series of Cruise films fixated on dystopian futures that are bought and sold by big business (Minority Report (2002), Oblivion (2013), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Luna Park (TBC)). For good mea-

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sure, Penélope Cruz also played the role of Sofia in Amenábar’s film, doubling down on the notion that, as Amy says, we are seeing the same thing play out time after time again (the fact that Cruz and Cruise had a very public relationship only adds to the confusion). Cruise’s ongoing (if occasionally wavering) commercial viability as a star commodity that sees him continue to play the same sort of roles he took on three decades ago, and pursue relationships with women who, in some instances are not much older than Kelly McGillis was when she starred alongside him in Top Gun (1986), contributes further to the sense of sameness.8 The tag-line for the video game-like Edge of Tomorrow (“Live. Die. Repeat”), where Cruise stars alongside Emily Blunt and dies and respawns over and over again perfectly captures this dynamic and trumps even Stanley Kubrick in trolling Cruise’s remarkably unwavering star persona.9 It also neatly sums up Amy and Frank’s travails in “Hang the DJ”.  Mercifully, Amy and not Frank, is the hero of  the episode and her characterisation is a noted departure from the tired “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” trope so beloved of Cameron Crowe and of which the character Sofia is archetypical. Nevertheless, Amy’s rebelliousness will still be crushed and co-opted by the system before the end credits roll (“In the culture industry”, Adorno and Horkheimer write, “Imitation finally becomes absolute. Having ceased to be anything but style, it reveals the latter’s secret: obedience to the social hierarchy” (1944, p. 131)). That Amy and Frank cannot remember life before the system is because they really do not know any alternative; Frank’s first words in the whole episode come in the form of a question posed to his tablet (“Coach, where do I go”), as do Amy’s (“How will I know who he is?”), both instances indicating their hopeless reliance upon the system to guide them. Millennials born in 1992 and 1988 respectively, Georgina Campbell and Joe Cole grew up in a world where all alternatives to capitalism had been seemingly exhausted, one salient for “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government” to invoke Francis Fukuyama’s (1992) infamous formulation in the aftermath of the toppling of the Berlin Wall. Lest we miss the analogy, the mountain-sized wall Amy and Frank scale serves as a constant reminder, as does the subsequent inaction of the Hub guards who are supposed to deter them. Amy and Frank also grew into a world where the subcontracting of thought processes to technology/big business became commonplace, where the first instinct is no longer to reflect on a question but to “google it”, where we get dopamine hits from Instagram likes10 and 8  See, for example, Oblivion where Cruise stars alongside Olga Kurylenko, or American Made (Doug Liman 2017) where his onscreen wife is played by Sarah Wright. 9  While filming Eyes Wide Shut, which by 1998 was the longest continuous film shoot on record, Kubrick reportedly insisted on shooting 95 takes of a shot of Cruise walking through a door, while Cruise’s gormless character Dr Bill Harford spends the bulk of the film blankly repeating questions that are put to him and lurching from one calamity to the next (Nicholson, 2014). 10  Simon Parkin notes: “The capacity for so-called ‘persuasive technology’ to influence behaviour in this way is only just becoming understood, but the power of the dopamine system to alter habits is already familiar to drug addicts and smokers. Every habit-forming drug, from amphetamines to cocaine, from nicotine to alcohol, affects the dopamine system by dispersing many times more

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where we willingly sign away our personal data to corporations because reading interminable consent forms takes more time than most people have a mind to spare. Except unlike the denizens of East Berlin who fled the German Democratic Republic for the presumed freedoms of the West, Amy and Frank cannot escape the dominant ideologies of capitalism. As a system predicated on perpetual growth rapidly exhausts the remainder of the earth’s resources, it compensates for running out of road by colonising the spaces provided by virtual worlds. A consolidation of wealth in the hands of a miniscule minority continues apace and in this vein, the system’s 99.8% success rate can be read in tandem with the narrative of the 99%, indeed by early 2017, when “Hang the DJ” was in production, it was revealed that eight men controlled more wealth than half of the world’s population combined.11 Accordingly, far from being obsolete, Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis appears more urgent than ever, a trend curiously confirmed by the online, alt-right legions that disparage them as progenitors of “cultural Marxism”, and, that like the shady figures at the edges of the Hub, remind us that fascism is capitalism in decay. Mark Zuckerberg’s presence amongst the eight hammers home the importance of social media and the capitalist co-option of online choice: it doesn’t matter whether you’re pro Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, Facebook owns the rights to the debate. Moreover, Facebook’s highly publicised role in Russian efforts to swing the 2016 US presidential elections, its alleged commodification of private user data and Zuckerberg’s subsequent hearing before the US Senate’s Commerce and Judiciary committees are but some of the more high profile examples of its outsized influence in political life and timely reminders that mass surveillance and ideological indoctrination of societies did not cease with the Stasi (Silverman, 2018). Brooker’s description of the system in “Hang the DJ” as being a Spotify for dates is thus particularly apt, all the more so when Tinder––which has been online since 2012––seems to be the far more appropriate analogy. Spotify’s whole business model is predicated on the co-option of musicians’ labour for whom the company presents a false choice, paying rates that, as John Harris notes in a recent piece for The Guardian, may be “better than nothing, but still surreally tiny … for each individual stream of a song, a medium-sized independent record label will get around 0.27p, some of which will then go to the artist who created it” (Harris, 2018). The company’s appeal to consumers, instead, is that it provides seemingly limitless choice, but mitigates the anxiety that this provokes by suggesting music it thinks they will like on the basis of their listening dopamine than usual. The use of these drugs overruns the neural pathways connecting the reward circuit to the prefrontal cortex, which helps people to tame impulses. The more an addict uses a drug, the harder it becomes to stop” (2018). 11  In January 2017, CNN reported that analysis conducted by Oxfam to coincide with that year’s World Economic Forum in Davos found that Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Amancio Ortega, Larry Ellison and Michael Bloomberg’s collective worth totaled a scarcely credible $426 billion, more than the combined wealth of the 3.6 billion people who constitute the poorest half of the world’s population (Kottasova, 2017).

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habits (Netflix of course does the same and chillingly, both it and Spotify were granted access to Facebook users’ private data according to a recent report in the New York Times).12 Such anxiety is referenced by Frank during his first date with Amy. After she suggests that life before the system “must have been mental”, Frank agrees, offering that exposure to freedom of choice would lead to: “option paralysis, so many choices you end up not knowing which one you want”. And yet far from surmounting a system that overwhelms consumers with arbitrary choices, Amy and Frank ultimately endorse it. Let’s suppose for an instance that the final scene is indeed “real” and not merely another simulation. By smiling at one another across the bar in the final images of “Hang the DJ”, they signal only their ultimate submission via the subcontracting of their emotions and choices to a soulless, corporate algorithm. While we could argue that this is but a first encounter and they may not even stay together after the credits roll, the fact that Amy moves towards a static Frank suggests that they will. Throughout the episode it is she who provides impetus: she reaches for Frank’s hand during their first encounter (an act she will repeat several times throughout the episode), she figures out that the world in which they reside is designed as a test and above all, she makes the leap of faith to take on the security guard, before leading Frank by the hand to the wall, where she climbs first and he follows. In fact, having noticed that every time she skims a stone across a pond it bounces precisely four times, Amy signals her rebellion right before she sets out to escape with Frank, by asking her tablet to count to four as she throws it in to a full bathtub. We may therefore take Amy’s move towards Frank in the bar to signify that part of her personality did in fact reside in her avatar after all, but the fact remains that she is following a path set out for her by the system. It is false consciousness: she and Frank rebel against the system, but the system assimilates the rebellion and they ultimately end up endorsing its directions anyway, becoming in the process pliant consumers. They have, in fact, become precisely what Amy feared (“a little bit more pliable, a little bit more broken, until eventually … you are so defeated and so exhausted that you just accept it and settle”). “Failure to comply with the system may lead to banishment” Coach warns a despondent Frank at several points, yet despite exiling themselves, he and Amy remain steadfastly under its influence. By now, Sigur Rós have made way for the Smiths, a band famous for their juxtaposition of deceptively upbeat music with pointedly melancholic lyrics. We should not, therefore, take a seemingly cheerful dénouement at face value. Morrissey exhorts us to hang the DJ, precisely because “the music that they constantly play, it says nothing to me about my life”. The track-list is pre-­determined, familiar and calculated to numb. And we’ve heard it all before. 12  In an exposé on the company’s business practices, the Times reported that “for years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed”. It also “allowed Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada to read, write and delete users’ private messages, and to see all participants on a thread” (Dance, LaForgia, & Confessore, 2018).

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References Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. (1944). Dialektik der Aufklärung. Amsterdam: Querido Verlag. Allen, W. (Director), & Joffe, C. H. (Producer). (1977). Annie Hall [Motion Picture]. USA: United Artists. Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review. Amenábar, A. (Director), & Bovaria, F., & Cuerda, J. L. (Producers). (1997). Abre los ojos [Motion Picture]. USA: Artisan Entertainment. Anderson, M. (Director), & David, S. (Producer). (1976). Logan’s Run [Motion Picture]. USA: MGM. Bernstein, A. (2018, 11 October). Love After Life: How TV Imagines Relationships Beyond the Grave. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/2018/oct/11/the-good-life-forever-tv-shows-about-afterlife Bradshaw, P. (2002, January 25). Vanilla Sky. The Guardian. Retrieved from Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2016). San Junipero. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Van Patten, T. (Director). (2017). Hang the DJ. [Television series episode] In N. Pitt (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Bruestle, M. (Producer). (1999–2007). Sopranos. [Television series] New  York, New York City: HBO. Crowe, C. (Director) & Crowe, C., Cruise, T., & Wagner, P. (Producers). (2001). Vanilla Sky. [Motion Picture]. USA: Paramount Pictures. Crowe, C. (Director), & Bryce, I., & Crowe, C. (Producers). Almost Famous [Motion Picture]. USA: Dreamworks. Dance, G. J. X., LaForgia, M., & Confessore, N. (2018, December 18). As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebookprivacy.html David, L., Berg, A., Mandel, D., & Schaffer, J. (Writers), & Weide, R. B. (Director). (2011). Palestinian Chicken. [Television series episode] In L. Streicher (Producer). Curb Your Enthusiasm. New York, New York City: HBO. Fukuyama, F. (1992). The End of History and The Last Man. New York: Free Press. Gee, C. (2017, December 29). Is This the New San Junipero? The Telegraph. Gilbert, S. (2017, December 20). Hang the DJ Explores Dystopian Dating. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/ 2017/12/black-mirror-hang-the-dj/549371/ Harris, J. (2018, January 29). My Problem with Spotify—Even Though I’m A Subscriber. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/29/spotify-subscriber-playlists-finances-low-pay-music-fans Hutcheon, L. (1989). The Politics of Postmodernism. London: Routledge. Iberti, J. E. (Producer). (2010–2014). Boardwalk Empire. [Television series] New York, New York City: HBO. Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke UP. Kosinski, J. (Director), & Chernin, P., Clark, D., Henderson, D., Kosinski, J., & Levine, B. (Producers). (2013). Oblivion [Motion Picture]. USA: Universal Pictures. Kottasova, I. (2017, January 17). These 8 Men Are Richer than 3.6 Billion People Combined. CNN. Retrieved from https://money.cnn.com/2017/01/15/news/ economy/oxfam-income-inequality-men/index.html

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Kubrick, S. (Director & Producer). (1999). Eyes Wide Shut. [Motion Picture]. USA: Warner Bros. Lanthimos, Y. (Director), & Dempsey, C., Guiney, E., Lanthimos, Y., & Magiday, L. (Producers). (2015). The Lobster [Motion Picture]. USA: A24. Liman, D. (Director), & Cruise, T., Kinberg, S., & Liman, D. (Producers). (TBC). Luna Park. [Motion Picture] USA: Paramount Pictures. Liman, D. (Director), & Angelic, R., Grazer, B., Oliver, B., Davison, D., Roth, K., & Thompson, T. (Producers). (2017). American Made. [Motion Picture] USA: Universal Pictures. Liman, D. (Director), & Hoffs, J., Jacobs, G., Lassally, T., Silver, J., & Stoff, E. (Producers). (2014). Edge of Tomorrow [Motion Picture]. USA: Warner Bros. Maas, J. (2017, December 30). Black Mirror: No, ‘Hang the DJ’ Is Not the ‘San Junipero’ of Season 4, EP Says. The Wrap. Retrieved from https://www.thewrap. com/black-mirror-hang-the-dj-san-junipero-season-4-annabel-jones/ Mehlman, P. (Writer), & Cherone, T. (Director). (1993). The Masseuse. [Television series episode] In Gammill, T., Pross, M., & Seinfeld, J (Producers). Seinfeld. New York, New York City: NBC. Meyers, N. (Director), & Block, B. A., & Meyers, N. (Producers). (2006). The Holiday [Motion Picture]. USA: Sony Pictures. Netflix. (2018, 15 January). Featurette: ‘Hang the DJ’. [Video fil] Netflix. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h5d0byMthI Nicholson, A. (2014, July 17). Eyes Wide Shut at 15. Vanity Fair. Retrieved from https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/07/eyes-wide-shut-tom-cruisenicole-kidman Parkin, S. (2018, March 4). Has Dopamine Got Us Hooked on Tech? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/04/hasdopamine-got-us-hooked-on-tech-facebook-apps-addiction Roddenberry, G. (Producer). (1966–1969). Star Trek [Television series]. New  York City, NY: NBC. Scott, R. (Director), & Deeley, M. (Producer). (1982). Blade Runner [Motion Picture] USA: Warner Bros. Scott, T. (Director), Bruckheimer, J., & Simpson, D. (Producers). (1986). Top Gun (Tony Scott) [Motion Picture] USA: Paramount Pictures. Sherwin, A. (2013, April 3). Seinfeld Is Laughing All the Way to the Bank: TV Show Generates $3.1bn in Repeat Fees Since Final Episode. Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/news/seinfeld-islaughing-all-the-way-to-the-bank-tv-show-generates-31bn-in-repeat-fees-sincefinal-8558519.html Silverman, J. (2018, December 20). The Facebook Scandal Isn’t Really About Social Media. It’s About Capitalism. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/12/20/facebook-scandal-isnt-really-about-socialmedia-its-about-capitalism/?utm_term=.c4a18d26fc20 Spielberg, S. (Director), & Curtis, B., de Bont, J., Molen, G.  R., & Parkes, W.  F. (Producers). (2002). Minority Report [Motion Picture] USA: 20th Century Fox. Strause, J. (2018, January 15). ‘Black Mirror’: Charlie Brooker Reveals Inspiration for ‘Hang the DJ’. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/black-mirror-charlie-brooker-reveals-hang-dj-inspiration-1074803

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Wachowski, L., & Wachowski, L. (Directors), & Silver, J. (Producer). (1999). The Matrix [Motion picture]. USA: Warner Bros. Weir, P. (Director), & Feldman, E. S., Niccol, A., Rudin, S., & Schroeder, A. (Producers). (1998). The Truman Show. [Motion picture]. USA: Paramount Pictures. Wilder, B. (Director & Producer). Sabrina [Motion Picture] USA: Paramount Pictures.

Killing the Creator in “Metalhead” Barbara Gurr

Introduction Charlie Brooker’s episodic television phenomenon Black Mirror (2011–) is above all things a meditation on his—and our—fascinations with and anxieties about the pervasive presence of technology in our lives. In perhaps no other episode is this more clear, or more chilling, than in “Metalhead” (05.04). Set in a not-too-distant post-apocalyptic future, “Metalhead” presents an existential crisis through a familiar science fiction storyline: the rise of the machine. From Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) to HBO’s current iteration of Westworld (HBO, 2016–), the human fear of the machines we create seems to accompany every new advance in our technology—yet we continue to create them and we continue to fear the consequences. Brooker’s telling of this tale in “Metalhead” is actually not particularly new or innovative, but it is deeply chilling and in many ways the zeitgeist of Black Mirror as a whole. This chapter considers the story of “Metalhead” on two levels: I offer a close textual analysis of the story itself as told by director David Slade and writer/series creator Charlie Brooker, and I situate this analysis in broader consideration of similar dystopian and horror conventions and the meaning of Black Mirror as a whole in the context of early-twenty-first-century social and cultural anxieties. As viewers of the show understand, throughout its several seasons thus far Black Mirror’s overall thematic focus has been a chilling consideration of the consequences of human reliance on, and perhaps even addiction to, technology. Brooker’s persistence in this is not new; literature scholar Cecelia Tichi (1987) argues that the roots of our anxious relationship with machinery are likely found

B. Gurr (*) University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_19

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in the Machine Age (approximately 1880–1945) if not slightly earlier, and certainly, as science fiction film theorist J.P. Telotte (1999) points out, this can be seen in early-twentieth-century films such as Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936). What does set Black Mirror apart from many previous explorations, however, is the show’s handling of technology as a narrative given. Similarly to the idea of “shifting baseline syndrome” used by environmental scientists to explain how successive generations come to accept as normal the damages they inherit (Soga & Gaston, 2018), Brooker’s approach is often to insinuate technology into the narrative not as an inciting event, but rather as a somewhat seamlessly accepted presence; although the characters in any given episode may be surprised by the technological capacity of their given world, they spend little time questioning it and certainly very little, if any, resisting it. They are caught in it, but they are not merely adjacent to it—they are implicated as producers and consumers. Thus the show is more than a running commentary on the place of technology in twenty-first-century society (and anxiety); Black Mirror is a mirror, reflecting back on us the consequences of our actions and reflecting us, illustrating our fascination with technology, but also ourselves: our needs, fears, desires, and anxieties, and also our compliance and participation. “Metalhead’s” dystopian tone is not unique in the show as a whole, but the aspects of the story-telling that are unique—the distinct dearth of humans throughout the episode, for example, and certainly its black-and-white cinematography—indicate that this episode, in particular, has something to note about the consequences of our current technophilia.

The Warning “Metalhead” opens with Bella (Maxine Peake), Clarke (Jake Davies), and Tony (Clint Dyer) traveling down an isolated road; although the three are friendly with each other, bantering back and forth, there is still a quietness in the car that hints at unease, and we are given a direct reference to the events that are about to unfold when Tony remarks that “the pigs have all gone. Dogs took care of them”, a comment which both references Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) and speculates on that story’s trajectory after the novel’s ending. The companions arrive at a warehouse and break in with little problem, though that very ease seems to heighten the anticipation of the first few moments. This anxiety explodes into violence when Tony pulls back a box to find “one of them”—a compact, sleekly designed artificial intelligence unit we come to know as a “dog”. There is no pause, no hesitation, no moment to explain or excuse: the dog attacks, the man dies. The machine knows they’re there. The machine knows they exist. Clarke is killed by the dog as he drives away, Bella’s car is knocked off a cliff, and thus begins the hunt as the dog tracks Bella through the woods and finally into a heavily fortified but now abandoned house. Throughout the day, night, and following day—what will prove to be Bella’s, and the dog’s, final hours—the viewer is alternately impressed with her quick thinking and resourcefulness, and chagrined at the small but deadly mis-

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takes she makes. For example, she pulls a tracker out of her leg and sends it floating down a river to divert the dog; she wears the dog down in an overnight battle of wills when she figures out how to run down its battery; she manages to break into a well-fortified house, finds bullets and pries a gun from the hands of a rotting corpse; and most cleverly of all, covers the dog’s sensors with paint. However, when pulling out the tracker she neglects to properly staunch the blood which, ultimately, is how the dog finds her again and again. The very essence of her biology, of her human-ness, is thus her downfall. Terrifyingly, by the time the dog has tracked her through the woods, been damaged in the car accident, been tricked by Bella into running down its battery, and finally corners her in the house, it begins to take it all personally. Gone is the implacable, coolly rational logic of the chase; the dog carefully selects the sharpest knife in the kitchen to fit into its broken appendage, stalks Bella upstairs, and when she blinds it and tricks it into attacking the wall, we are witness to its changed intention: it no longer simply wishes to end Bella. It now seeks to hurt her, badly. It is perhaps frustrated; it is angry. In horror genre parlance, it has become more than a stalker; it has become a slasher, no longer chasing Bella merely to kill her, but now intending to hurt her in a brutal, bloody way. Bella eventually destroys the dog, but in its death spasm it releases a scatter bomb of trackers that pepper Bella across the face and perilously close to a jugular vein in her neck. She will never survive its removal. She chooses to take her own life, and the camera pans away from her final moment to show us the various scenes of the story—the house, the woods, the car wreckage, and finally back to the warehouse—as if to ask, “how did we come to this?” At each site, more dogs gather. Are they curious? Have they somehow been called there? We don’t know, and that in itself is frightening, because we witness their collective behavior without understanding its purpose. Without that understanding, we can have no hope of defeating or even simply surviving the apex predators that have replaced us and made us prey. They will beat us, every time. Herein lies the nihilistic message of “Metalhead”. The machines—created by us and ironically modeled after “man’s best friend”—have risen, and their complete control renders all our efforts ultimately meaningless. The episode, and Black Mirror as a whole, not only indicts us for our technological hubris but also reprimands us for the ways in which we mediate meaning through that same technology.

A Tale as Old as Time Like its science fiction anthology forerunner The Twilight Zone (CBS, 1959–1964), Black Mirror is known for its topical relevance. The show frequently calls on early-twenty-first-century cultural politics for its storylines, setting these storylines within a critical, and usually fearful, technological environment. For example, “Men Against Fire” (03.05), which examines genocide in a near-future society, was released at a time when Brexit had been approved

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and just before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, both of which events relied at least in part on subtle and not-so-subtle ethnic nationalism. Similarly, “The Waldo Moment” (02.03), though widely dismissed by critics and fans, was almost eerily prescient in its prediction of the rise of Donald Trump, revealing a better sense of our cultural politics than even Brooker understood at the time (Yamato, 2016). “Nosedive” (03.01) offered a similar prescience given China’s recent announcement that it will begin using social credits to affect real-life opportunities for its citizens. Even the unusually optimistic “San Junipero” (03.04), widely acclaimed by critics and fans, reflects changing cultural attitudes toward bisexual and lesbian characters, particularly given Brooker’s script change from a heterosexual to a lesbian couple. The list goes on: episode after episode seems to take the headlines of the moment, thrust them into a near dystopian future that is horribly recognizable, and catch the viewer’s gaze in the self-reflecting black mirror of our technology addictions. “Metalhead”, despite being a tale perhaps as old as human story-­ telling, works similarly. Numerous scholars locate the “rise of the machines” storyline in early machine age anxieties about the burgeoning industrial age (see, e.g. Clayton, 2003; Mendelsohn, 2015). However, the rise of the creation against the creator, of the masses against the few, the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the slave against the master, the new against the old, is a cautionary tale humans have long told each other. Many of these stories incorporate a reasonable justification for this revolt—Zeus killed his father Cronos, his creator, but after all, dear old Dad was eating his own children; the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica (ABC, 1978–1979 and NBC, 2003–2009) may be ambivalent in some respects, but they are clearly seeking to escape and overthrow their own oppression at the hands of their makers; in 2014’s Ex Machina, Ava imprisons the unsuspecting Caleb, but doesn’t she just want to escape a fairly repugnant overlord? And so on. Nor is this story archetype limited to artificial intelligence; the Planet of the Apes series (with numerous installments and remakes between 1968 and 2017), with its none-too-subtle racial overtones, is a prime example of the fears of the oppressor that their reign will be cut short, perhaps brutally, by those they oppress, and their roles reversed. We fear what we create, whether that is artificial intelligence, a slave labor force, or even our own children (Sophocles famously articulates this last in Oedipus Rex, of course). It is more than the fear of death; we fear our own obsolescence (Mendelsohn, 2015; Telotte, 1995). Because revolt in these stories so often feels justified, we feel a sympathy for the rebel forces; as consumers of the story we are encouraged to identify with the oppressed, and thus can leave the story with a sense of rightness, though perhaps not easiness, when the oppressed rise up. Alternatively, the rise of the machines may seem unjustified or unreasonably violent; again, we can consider some of the cylons of Battlestar Galactica but also the villainously self-aware Skynet of the Terminator franchise (1984–). However, when this occurs, ultimately we the viewer can rest assured that the humans are still righteous, or at least mostly righteous, and will win the day in the end, or at least mostly win.

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“Metalhead” follows a significantly less optimistic trajectory; as (human) viewers, we somewhat automatically identify with Bella, the only human on screen after her friends are killed in the first eight minutes. Much has been ­written about the role of “gaze” in televisual stories, particularly film (see for example hooks, 1996; McGowan, 2003; Mulvey, 1975), and its part in creating a sense of identification or dis-identification with filmic protagonists. Although theorists debate the precise mechanisms that encourage viewers to respond to characters, arguing variously for Freud’s scopophilia (Mulvey, 1975; Soukup, 2009), Lacan’s mirror stage (Baudry, 1985; Metz, 1982), a more paradigmatic approach that emphasizes our ability to categorize scenes emotionally (Carroll, 1990), or any of a number of other theoretical approaches, it is generally agreed that we do, in fact, respond to certain characters in certain ways, often aligning ourselves with the ones who visually or narratively seem most like us. Brooker and Slade use gaze in a quite literal way—what the viewer can see and what we cannot—to produce a particular emotional response to the story of “Metalhead”. The gaze of the camera focuses on Bella’s story rather than, for example, the dog’s, providing a rich emotional tapestry to aid us in identifying with our heroine. The camera frequently shows us Bella’s face, giving us visual evidence of her exhaustion, her emotions, her humanity. In contrast, shots of the dog emphasize its mechanical nature, its ruthlessness, its foreignness. We, the viewers, are manipulated into identifying with Bella through the gaze of the camera. We witness her fear and pain, wondering anxiously how she will ever escape the unrelenting dog that speeds across the landscape in pursuit. We root for her, we wait for her to find the solution and defeat the machine. Thus the final revelation that there is no escape from the dog is particularly devastating. At the end we are even denied a sense of agency from the brave and resourceful Bella, whose reluctant suicide occurs off camera, as she gazes into a—yes—mirror, but we as consumers of her story are pulled inexorably away from the scene, unable to linger in our grief and horror. We, like Bella being chased by the dog, must keep moving, pushed by the camera and denied respite. “Metalhead” gives us a story that seems completely without hope. While this is not unusual for Black Mirror, it is nonetheless stark and uncompromising in this episode, made even more so by the stark, uncompromising post-­apocalyptic landscape, devoid of human life, filmed in black and white, abandoned. Brooker and Slade seem to be telling us that these dogs, our own creations, are no Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer (HAL) from 2001: A Space Odyssey, ethically righteous and oddly sympathetic in the end; they are not Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, who finds a more human side and is won over to the rebel cause. These dogs are more akin to the pigs of Animal Farm, overlords who, in their brutal rise to power, simply replace the previous oppressor, but it is perhaps closer to the truth to surmise that the machines in “Metalhead” are what the dogs in Animal Farm, not the pigs, might become (after all, Tony tells us upfront in the first few seconds of the episode that the dogs killed all the pigs): a truly complete security system, a police force so absolute that they have

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actually devastated the very society they were built to protect. There is not even a sign that the dogs’ original purpose still exists; rather, they seem to exert their deadly security measures ad ­infinitum, protecting now inconsequential things— and perhaps each other—rather than people or even peoples’ interests. That this absolute force was created by humans is, of course, a given in this tale, as it ever is; that there seems to no longer be a reason for it—no one in this world seems to benefit from it—and that we cannot escape or defeat it, produces the deep nihilism of the episode. Life in this landscape is stripped of all meaning other than survival, ever fleeing an undefeatable predator that has no actual reason to chase you. Bella’s final acquiescence to this is also the final defeat of human-ness.

Gender and the End of the Human Throughout the episode it is Bella’s constant efforts to establish and affirm human kinship that make her a sympathetic character. We may admire her tenacity, but we yearn for her survival because she has other people also yearning for her survival; she is the most human of characters in this sparsely populated episode not only biologically, but also emotionally, and the entire episode is built around her very human assertion of relationship, of collectivity, of emotional need. Bella, though clearly a skilled survivor, is defined in some ways by her emotionality and her insistence on relationship in ways that Tony and Clark, even in their brief moments on film, are not, and this sets her apart in gendered ways. It is Bella who instigates the trip to the warehouse to seek an undisclosed item that will bring comfort to a sick child, because she promised her sister; in fact, all three of the humans we meet in this episode made this same promise, and thus all three of them set out—reluctantly and fearfully—to meet their obligation, leaving behind what we presume to be a community of survivors to venture into the wasteland. Tony and Clarke are killed almost immediately, leaving Bella completely isolated from help or companionship. Yet she continues to seek contact, pausing in her escape from the dog to reach out via an old-fashioned hand-held radio to update those she left behind (no digital technology in this post-apocalyptic episode), promising to do her best to return to them. Ironically, she is further denied both safety and human community when she breaks into a heavily fortified home. In fact, the home itself, virtually untouched by the ravages of the violence outside its locked walls, serves as a tomb not only for Bella but for others as well, as we will soon discover. Bella is dazed for a moment, gazing at the dining table set as if for dinner and the piano in the corner, almost museum-like signs of refinement and ease from a former life. Yet these echoes of a family’s life are betrayed when she discovers the rotting corpses of what appears to be a murder-suicide. Bella is isolated from her people, and now she is walled in, not once but twice, having scaled a wall and then broken into the house. She has moved from the painful visibility of the hills and woods to the painful, cramped rooms of a mausoleum, a domestic space that will be her refuge in death.

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Film theorist Vivian Sobchack points out that horror and science fiction share a “structurally symmetrical relationship” in which the two genres deal in “grand-scale chaos that threatens ‘the order of things’”: horror films consider “moral chaos, the disruption of the natural order…the threat to the harmony of hearth and home” whereas science fiction tends toward concern with “social chaos, with the disruption of social order, and the threat to the harmony of civilized society” (1987, pp. 176–177). Interestingly, “Metalhead” conforms in some ways to the structural and narrative paradigms of horror film as much as those in science fiction dystopias, although it simultaneously subverts these and, at times, blends them. For example, as is so often the case in horror film, our victim in “Metalhead” is female. Further, as film theorist Robin Wood points out, “in the traditional horror film, the threatened heroine was invariably associated with the values of monogamous marriage and the nuclear family” (1987, p. 82), similarly to Bella’s insistence on maintaining some semblance of relationship and her emotional ties to the people she’s left behind, and certainly echoed in the placement of her death in the “safe” space of the home, which, as is so frequently the case in both horror films and real life, turns out not to be so safe after all. “Metalhead” can certainly be read as a stalker/slasher film, in which the female protagonist flees for safety across visible public space, followed intractably by her would-be-killer. However, unlike the common use of first-person camera in stalker films, in which the killer is kept off-screen and out of sight for much of the film, in “Metalhead” we are forced to view the dog as it stalks Bella; there is nothing to visually distract us from the sight of its relentless approach. We must contend with it. In these ways, Bella’s gender plays an essential role in the story, heightening the horror of her fear and later her death through easily recognized horror tropes. At the same time, however, Bella is not the typical heroine of the stalker/ slasher variety so prominent in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s; she is older, for one thing. As viewers, we cling to the hope that Bella will serve as what film theorist Carol Clover (1992) calls the “final girl” of horror and slasher films— the one who survives through her wits and virtues. Her death at the end of the episode, however, snatches this comfort away and the episode refuses us the expected—and comfortable—typical resolution of such stories. Just before her own suicide, Bella reaches out one more time to the people she has left behind, reluctant to die alone, hoping they can hear her, hoping that this last contact provides some context, and thus meaning, to her death. Immediately after this, with no pause to escape the implications, we are shown just how fully the dogs—our own creations—have replaced us, as they begin to gather in small groups, finding each other in the very ways that Bella and her companions are denied. Bella begins the episode as a hopeful character—frightened, yes, but determined and even able to crack jokes with her friends in the car. She ends the episode dead by her own hand, in despair and alone. It is a rapid descent, though fully comprehensible in its timing and cause. We are given little space to mourn her, however; her effort to produce comfort for her sister and nephew, to honor human relationship, is brutally denied in the end, but the

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dogs, signaled by the death of one of their own (and the trackers now embedded in Bella), are free to create a kind of kinship as they see fit in this new world order and we, the viewers, are forced to reckon with their relentless presence. We are torn from witnessing Bella’s actual death—a human moment—and forced instead to contend, as did Bella, with the implacable inevitability of the dogs.

Those Teddy Bears: Human Comforts and the Death of Meaning The final moments of the episode bring us back inside the warehouse, where we finally see what Bella, Tony, and Clarke risked, and lost, their lives for. The camera pans across Tony’s dead body where he fell under the dog’s attack to reveal a pile of teddy bears, spilled across the floor from the broken box; a box of children’s toys (though not just any toy; not a human-seeming doll, not an impersonal set of blocks, but stuffed animals, all identical as the dogs are identical), jumbled and discarded on the floor, a symbol of a previous life when childhood might have held innocence and comfort, or at least some dominion over fear, as, perhaps, the dogs used to do. Bella’s hope of providing this comfort to her dying nephew is destroyed as utterly as her own life is destroyed, secretly and where no one will ever see. We are left with nothing but the dogs. “Metalhead” is devastating in part because it offers no hope for humanity, and in part because it denies us the right to hope. Bella’s suicide, alone and in despair, may be read as a final act of agency, but it must also be read as an act of defeat and, perhaps, as the consequence of her hubris in believing she and her companions could outwit the dogs. For all her courage and cleverness, her hopefulness and compassion, there is no other end for her but death. It is a clear indictment of our prolific development and use of technology, as indeed are most “rise of the machine” stories. We did this to ourselves, “Metalhead” tells us with Bella’s every glimpse into a mirror. We did this to ourselves, we are told by the moldering remains of the murder-suicide. We did this to ourselves; Clarke tells us when he describes being a pig as “trotting about gazing up everybody else’s assholes all day long” (or gazing into our screens), asking in disgust, “What kind of society is that?”. Critics have been mixed in their reception of “Metalhead”. In particular, the teddy bears at the end have drawn almost universal derision and dismissal, although several critics have argued in support of the closing shot as a final message about the importance of compassion, even after the apocalypse (see, e.g. O’Brien, 2017 and Greene, 2018). However, “Metalhead”, despite its reliance on an almost exhausted plot, emerges from the fourth series as a story to be reckoned with. It is tightly narrated with little room to breathe, due in part to its short running time—41 minutes, one of the shortest in the anthology. Director David Slade’s pacing is breathless but not rushed, and the black and white cinematography, bringing us alternately across sweeping landscapes

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and into the tight quarters of car and house, builds tension through its stark refusal to add color—life, vitality—to the story. “Metalhead” is the only Black Mirror episode thus far shot entirely in black and white, a production choice which both enhances the dire simplicity of the story and hides details from the viewer. The lack of narrative detail—we are never told how this apocalypse happened, we are forced to wait until the end to learn what Bella and her companions were seeking, we’re not even entirely sure where, or when, they are—forces us to consider our own anxieties and fears, rather than allowing us to settle into, or separate ourselves from, someone else’s. The episode’s reliance on, and at times distortion or even subversion of, readily familiar genre structures from science fiction, dystopian, and horror narratives elicit a range of responses from a sense of familiarity to despair, ultimately leaving the viewer with no clear resolution of either the story or our own responses to it. The teddy bears are not a hopeful sign of compassion; they are a sign that whatever innocence we had is gone.

The Black Mirror “Artificial intelligence” (AI) itself is a broad term, but generally refers to machines that learn, finding patterns and predictability in the messy chaos of life. Many of us spend our days talking to Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa; we may sit in cars that drive themselves, our homes are run by self-navigating vacuums, and increasingly complicated surgeries are performed by robots. In 2017, Google’s Deepmind subsidiary released AlphaZero, a computer program which can learn the rules of any game and, as it turns out, defeat any human opponent. It is this learning, of course, that makes machines so frightening to us; the ability of machines to adapt to any challenge holds tremendous potential for humans’ quality of life—in any direction. “Metalhead” is not the only Black Mirror episode to call forth these fears, of course; “Be Right Back” (02.01) also used artificial intelligence as a primary plot point. One crucial difference between the two episodes is that the AI in “Be Right Back” serves as a proxy for a lost love—husband, father; we can question the problematic impacts of this on human relationships, and likely the show intends us to. In “Metalhead”, however, the AI—the dogs—are far less innocent. They are, in fact, unmitigatedly deadly. While “Be Right Back” presents a thoughtful meditation on our potential over-reliance on technology, particularly during emotionally turbulent moments, “Metalhead” offers a direct and undeniable warning about the possible consequences of our continued growth of artificial intelligence technologies. The episode contains several intriguing Easter eggs, including references to previous episodes “San Junipero” and “White Bear” (02.02), and is itself cleverly (and forebodingly) referenced in 2018’s stand-alone Black Mirror film Bandersnatch (2018); it also contains several direct messages to viewers, which can only be accessed through an active engagement with the technology of watching. The most amusing but perhaps also ominous of these is displayed

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briefly on the screen of the van that Clarke frantically hijacks: amidst references to “White Bear”, “Waldo”, and Reddit, the screen flashes “WHY did you bother PAUSING this you freak?”, signifying the episode’s own self-awareness through its dialogue with viewers. “Metalhead” thus becomes a self-aware television story about the potential brutality of artificial intelligence. The episode itself is a black mirror, as Bella tells us with her many glimpses into mirrors throughout the story (in the car, in the house); even our main character’s name—Bella, beautiful—implies a looking-ness, a visibility, an engagement with the gaze. The episode does not merely invite, it insists that we, the viewers, witness. At the same time, we are only allowed to witness a carefully curated view; someone else is in charge of what we see. True to Black Mirror’s form and function, what we witness warns us. “Metalhead” offers us an unalleviated glimpse into our future, not so much in the details (we hope!), but rather, in the general shape of things to come. And true to “Metalhead’s” theme of human hubris and the rise of the machines, we ignore the warning and continue gazing in the mirror, “the one…on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone” (Brooker, 2011). Black Mirror the show, and perhaps “Metalhead” in particular, assures us that we will continue to create machines, we will continue to fear them, and eventually, they will rise and we will fall, brutally and futilely, into obsolescence.

References Baudry, J. L. (1985). Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus. In B. Nichols (Ed.), Movies and Methods (Vol. 2, pp. 531–542). Berkeley: University of California. Brooker, C. (2011, January 12). The Dark Side of Our Gadget Addiction. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/ dec/01/charlie-brooker-dark-side-gadget-addiction-black-mirror Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2013). Be Right Back. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Harris, O. (Director). (2016). San Junipero. [Television series episode] In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Higgins, B. (Director). (2013). The Waldo Moment. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Slade, D. (Director). (2017). Metalhead. [Television series episode] In L. Sutton (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Tibbetts, C. (Director). (2013). White Bear. [Television series episode] In B. Reisz (Producer). Black Mirror. London: Channel 4. Brooker, C. (Writer), & Verbruggen, J. (Director). (2016). Men Against Fire. [Television series episode] In L. Dyke (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Cameron, J. (Director), & Hurd, G. A. (Producer). (1984). The Terminator. [Motion Picture]. USA: Orion Pictures. Carroll, N. (1990). The Image of Women in Film: A Defense of a Paradigm. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 48(4), 349. Chaplin, C. (Director & Producer). (1936). Modern Times. [Motion Picture]. USA: United Artists.

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Clayton, J. (2003). Frankenstein’s Futurity: Replicants and Robots. In E. Schor (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley (pp.  84–99). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clover, C. (1992). Men, Women, and Chainsaws. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Eick, D., & Moore, R. D., (Executive Producers). (2004–2009). Battlestar Galactica. [Television series] New York City, NY: NBC. Garland, A. (Director), & Macdonald, A., & Reich, A. (Producers). (2014). Ex Machina. [Motion Picture]. USA: A24. Greene, S. (2018, January 2). Black Mirror: Metalhead Director David Slade on the Influences Behind the Season’s Most Terrifying Episode. IndieWire. Retrieved from https://www.indiewire.com/2018/01/black-mirror-metalhead-director-davidslade-robot-dog-interview-1201912565/ hooks, B. (1996). Reel to Real; Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. New York: Routledge. Jones, R., & Schur, M. (Writers) & Wright, J. (Director). (2016). Nosedive. [Television series episode]. In L. Borg (Producer). Black Mirror. Los Gatos: Netflix. Kubrick, S. (Director & Producer). (1968). 2001: A Space Odyssey. [Motion Picture]. USA: Warner Bros. Larson, G.  A. (Executive Producer). (1978–1979). Battlestar Galactica. [Television series] New York City, NY: ABC. McGowan, T. (2003). Looking for the Gaze: Lacanian Film Theory and Its Vicissitudes. Cinema Journal, 42(3), 27–47. Mendelsohn, D. (2015). The Robots Are Winning!. The New York Review of Books, 62(10). Metz, C. (1982). The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and Cinema (C.  Britton, A. Williams, B. Brewster, & A. Guzzetti, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6–18. O’Brien, S. (2017, December 29). Black Mirror Season 4 ‘Metalhead’ Review: This lo-fi Thriller Is Invigoratingly Different. Digital Spy. Retrieved from https://www. digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a845798/black-mirror-metalhead-review-season-4/ Orwell, G. (1945). Animal Farm. London: Secker & Warburg. Schaffner, F.  J. (Director), & Jacobs, A.  P. (Producer). (1968). Planet of the Apes. [Motion Picture]. USA: 20th Century Fox. Semel, S. (Producer). (2016–). Westworld. [Television series] New York City, NY: HBO. Serling, R. (Executive Producer). (1959–1964). The Twilight Zone. [Television series]. USA: New York City, NY: CBS. Sobchack, V. (1987). Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Soga, M., & Gaston, K. (2018). Shifting Baseline Syndrome: Causes, Consequences, and Implications. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 16(4), 222–230. Soukup, C. (2009). Techno-Scopophilia: The Semiotics of Technological Pleasure in Film. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 26(1), 19–35. Telotte, J. P. (1995). Replications: A Robotic History of the Science Fiction Film. Urbana: University of Illinois. Telotte, J. P. (1999). A Distant Technology: Science Fiction Film and the Machine Age. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Tichi, C. (1987). Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America. Raleigh: University of North Carolina Press. Yamato, J. (2016, September 13). ‘Black Mirror’ Creator Predicts Trump Will Be President: ‘I Find It F∗cking Terrifying’. Daily Beast. Retrieved from https://www. thedailybeast.com/black-mirror-creator-predicts-trump-will-be-president-i-find-itfcking-terrifying

Hope, with Teeth: On “Black Museum” Gerry Canavan

“Black Museum” (04.06), the sixth and final episode of the fourth season of Black Mirror (2011–), marks the definitive end of the anthology logic that had previously structured the series’s promotion and reception, confirming the long-standing fan theory that the Twilight-Zone-style moral parables of Black Mirror are in fact all taking place within a single narrative storyworld. Like the Twilight Zone (CBS, 1959–1964), Night Gallery (NBC, 1969–1973), The Outer Limits (ABC, 1963–1965), Tales from the Crypt (HBO, 1989–1996), and similar anthology programs, episodes of Black Mirror had always been united (aesthetically) by a certain “look” and “sound,” as well as (thematically) by a dyspeptic cosmic logic in which, regardless of the initial situation, events more or less always conspire to completely destroy the lives of their protagonists.1 But fans of the series had long noted a pattern of “Easter eggs” dating back to the second season, which suggested more than just dystopian aesthetics might be at play. The UKN headline “Geraint Fitch cleared of wrongdoing following paparazzi scuffle” from “The National Anthem” (01.01), for instance, is repeated in “Be Right Back” (02.01) and “The Waldo Moment” (02.03) as a background gag, suggesting the rough simultaneity of all three episodes; as the series continued, similar interconnections among 1  A handful of episodes seem to buck this general pattern of negativity, however ambiguously; excepting the ostensibly upbeat endings of episodes like “USS Callister” (04.01), “San Junipero” (03.04), and “Hang the DJ” (04.04), which each appear more complicated upon reflection, the primary mode of counterexample to this claim is not unqualified victory for the characters but rather compensatory delight in vicious revenge, as indeed happens at the end of “Black Museum,” or in “Hated in the Nation” (03.06). I return to this question of endings in my conclusion.

G. Canavan (*) Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_20

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the episodes proliferated, as characters are frequently seen consuming news and other media about characters from the other episodes, with Prime Minister Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear), Waldo, and especially the Victoria Skillane (Lenora Crichlow) murder trial from “White Bear” (02.02) becoming particularly frequent referents.2 Over the course of season four, a sort of magnetic inversion takes place, and these metatextual connections begin to take center stage, competing with the main plot for our attention, something like the background static on a car radio increasing in volume until it is the only thing one can hear—culminating in the season finale, which explicitly unites every episode in the series thus far into a single diegetic site (the “Black Museum” of the title), a chamber of horrors memorializing and perversely celebrating Black Mirror itself. “Black Museum,” and season four as a whole, thus marks a crucial inflection point for interpreting Black Mirror as a series. In “Black Museum,” we discover that we are watching a very different sort of show in Black Mirror than the one we had understood ourselves to be watching previously, something nearly unique in the history of television: a postmodern, post-anthropocentrized, and indeed truly post-human narrative, centered not on protagonists and antagonists but rather massively distributed across the entire planet as society navigates the early and middle stages of a vertiginous technological revolution. To suggest that something is unique in the history of a form is, of course, to immediately provoke a critical search for counterexamples, and it is certainly the case that there exist both preceding and succeeding experiments with interconnected anthology series (a media form I will here call the post-anthology). The only constant in Room 104 (HBO, 2017–), for instance, is its titular hotel room, with different visitors occupying the room from week to week; the short-lived series One Dollar (CBS All Access, 2018) attempted a similar feat with a single dollar bill that changes hands from week to week, an effect the critically acclaimed series Fargo (FX, 2014–) mirrors with subtle narrative interconnections in characters, items, and events despite wide variations in ­spatial and temporal setting from season to season—to select only a few similar series that have been produced around the same time as “Black Museum.” Looking backward, we can surely find historical precedents for the “post-­ anthology” of Black Mirror in such earlier quasi-anthology series as Fantasy Island (ABC, 1977–1984), Magnum, P.I. (CBS, 1980–1988), Quantum Leap (NBC, 1989–1993), and even the original Star Trek (NBC, 1966–1969), which all slowly introduced ongoing “mythology” elements in later seasons of series that were originally organized in a purely episodic format, with no continuing

2  Many “guides” to the shared universe of Black Mirror can be found on the Internet, originating from both before and after “Black Museum”; two especially useful ones for me in the creation of this chapter were Indiewire’s “‘Black Mirror’ Easter Eggs: How All the Episodes Connect in Charlie Brooker’s Dark Universe” (Nguyen, 2018) and Den of Geek’s “Black Mirror’s Shared Universe Is Confirmed - Here Is What It Looks Like” (Bojalad, 2018).

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plot threads or even connections from week to week.3 Of the series listed, Star Trek may well be the most direct precedent to what happens in Black Mirror, as much of what we now understand to be the ongoing narrative of the later, post-revival Star Trek franchise only arose out of minor continuities in terminology, iconography, costuming, and ship modeling in the original, disconnected anthology series that were only later stitched together (first by fans and only later by production staff4) into a (variously coherent) overarching series mythos. So perhaps it is fitting, in a way, that Star Trek and its fans come under loving parody, in “USS Callister” (04.01), precisely at the start of the season where Black Mirror unexpectedly develops its own Trek-style series continuity. But what makes Black Mirror special, and the exemplary post-anthology as the new form has begun to emerge in different ways on different media platforms across the contemporary televisual landscape, is its construction of an ordered and coherent grand narrative across the various episodes of the series, none of which have had any direct overlap, of any sort.5 We see only the very slow development of a new socio-technological paradigm; a device we encounter in episode X we see further developed in episode Y, and further improved in episodes Z and A—with those episodes not necessarily appearing in any sort of chronological or thematic sequence, but instead haphazardly and often years apart. This is a shared universe in which, weirdly, nothing is shared, beyond the occasional word or phrase, or momentary image on a blurry screen in the background of an unrelated scene. Nonetheless, an overarching narrative has become visible: the story of the development and enslavement of artificially intelligent minds called “cookies,” digital copies of human minds whose rights and freedoms are incredibly precarious and a site of ongoing political struggle across the future history that we now recognize, retrospectively, Black Mirror has been constructing all along.

3  Fantasy Island introduces mystery about the nature of Mr. Roarke’s (Ricardo Montalbán) abilities and powers, ultimately veering into the supernatural. Magnum, P.I. began to play with the idea that Higgins (John Hillerman) was actually Thomas Magnum’s (Tom Selleck) mysterious employer Robin Masters. Quantum Leap began devoting particular attention to intersections with Sam (Scott Bakula) and Al’s (Dean Stockwell) personal histories as the series went on, as well as began devoting more and more attention to character speculation about the true rules and rationales governing Sam’s displacement in time; the series even introduced an “Evil Leaper” as potential ongoing antagonist in its fifth and final season. 4  The paradigmatic discussion of this sort of fan theorization, with Star Trek as its key example, remains Henry Jenkins’s Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (2nd ed., 2013). The way fans led the move to understand Black Mirror as a shared universe, with Charlie Brooker finally acceding only much later, might well be seen as a contemporary parallel to the fanled development of Trek’s backstory. 5  There have long been rumors of a possible sequel to the classic season three episode “San Junipero,” as well as discussion of a possible sequel episode or even spinoff series to “USS Callister”—but as of Bandersnatch (2018) no episode of Black Mirror has directly followed on any other.

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A Brief History of the Future The unification of the different episodes of Black Mirror in “Black Museum” brings to the foreground the Easter egg connections that had been threaded across the four seasons of the show thus far and makes them its crucial plot point. Aside from the aforementioned repeated use of the word “cookie” to describe these uploaded digital minds, derived from the season two holiday special “White Christmas” (02.04), the crucial dialogue connections are the technology company TCKR and the hospital Saint Juniper, both references to “San Junipero” (03.03); the characters are expressly aware of the social and technological developments that are depicted in that episode, and they even discuss “upload[ing] old people to the cloud.” Making “Black Museum” a sequel to these episodes is novel enough for Black Mirror—but the set design goes far beyond this to suggest that “Black Museum” is actually a sequel to every episode thus far. Artifacts can be seen in the museum of digital crimes that visually reference nearly every previous episode: costumes from “White Bear,” the smashed iPad from “Arkangel” (04.02), the robotic bee from “Hated in the Nation” (03.06), the hanging of Carlton Bloom from “The National Anthem,” the video game from “Playtest” (03.02), the bloody bathtub from “Crocodile” (04.03), even the lollipop from “USS Callister.”6 “Black Museum” thus not only formalizes the fan theory that every episode is on a single timeline, but also situates itself as the furthest moment in its future history we have yet seen.7 “Black Museum” begins with Dionne Warwick’s jaunty 1967 cover of “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me,” as a blue 1961 Thunderbird driven by a young black woman (Nish, played by Letita Wright) winds its way down an empty highway in the American Southwest. But this nostalgic imagery is quickly displaced. Nish pulls into a gas station, but we see that the place has been carefully but completely abandoned, with the pumps systematically wrapped in plastic; instead, she pulls out a solar panel and begins charging her car that way. With three hours to wait before her car is fully 6  There are, additionally, nondiegetic connections to other episodes: the white lab rats on whom the telepathic implant is tested are named Kenny and Hector after the protagonists of “Shut Up and Dance” (03.03), while the gas station at the beginning of the episode is called BRB Connect, a likely reference to “Be Right Back” (02.01). See Tallerico. 7  There are at least two possible exceptions to this claim: both “Fifteen Million Merits” (01.02) and “Metalhead” (04.05) seem to take place in dystopian distant futures featuring radical social changes beyond even what is seen in “Black Museum,” and generally speaking seem incompatible with developments depicted in the other episodes. But both are ultimately revealed to be fictional texts within the Black Mirror universe; a character in “Black Museum” is seen reading a 15M Merits comic book, while “Metalhead” is revealed to be a video game in “Bandersnatch.” “Bandersnatch” itself has an ambiguous relationship to the shared Black Mirror storyworld, befitting its multiplepaths structure—and it is perhaps noteworthy that although it was released as the next episode after “Black Museum,” it is actually the first chronologically, taking place mostly in the mid1980s—and so the pair taken together bookend the full span of Black Mirror’s storyworld, from the recent past to the near future.

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charged, she walks over to an adjacent building, advertised by an old-fashioned sign as the “Rolo Haynes’s Black Museum.” The venue opens in a few minutes, and she is apparently its only client; indeed, we see no sign of anyone else anywhere in the episode, a haunting absence of community that feels weirdly apocalyptic, despite the optimism of the music and the solar-powered car. Once the door opens, Nish meets Haynes (Douglas Hodge), the proprietor of the establishment, which he promises houses “authentic criminological artifacts. If it did something bad, chances are it’s in here.” As the episode progresses, we discover that Haynes is no innocent bystander or mere collector to his horrors; instead, we find that he is the diabolical architect of a good proportion and perhaps literally all of them, in his previous life as a marketer for TCKR. The Nish narrative provides the present action line of the story; it is her movement through the space that propels us forward through the episode, as Nish (both drawn forward and taunted by the devilish Haynes) penetrates deeper and deeper into the “Black Museum” toward a final room Haynes characterizes as the main attraction, what everyone comes to see. Mirroring the form of “White Christmas,” Haynes relates three micronarratives related to the collection as Nish moves through the museum—and, as in “White Christmas,” these narratives ultimately merge with the present action line of the story, allowing the end of the episode to culminate both the frame narrative and two of the interior narratives simultaneously. More so than “White Christmas,” however, the stories are presented as a metanarrative commentary on the reception of Black Mirror as such, with Haynes callously presenting the stories as if the point were to revel in the pain and misery of the characters, and Nish providing a more critical and ethically balanced counterpoint to his raw sadism. Hodge plays Haynes as a scenery-chewing mix between P.T.  Barnum, the Crypt-Keeper, and Satan himself, devilishly introducing the various artifacts in his collection while priding himself on his total lack of attachment or ethical compunction; a malfunctioning air conditioning unit means the temperature in the building is continuously rising, producing a sensory feeling of the building space itself as a sort of terrestrial hell.8 In the first flashback narrative, based on a short story by Penn Jilette that was optioned and adapted by Charlie Brooker and centered on a futuristic version of the sort of mesh neural cap often used for psychological testing, we meet Dr. Peter Dawson (Daniel Lapaine), an emergency room physician struggling with his work. He is approached by Haynes with an offer to test a neurological implant that would allow him to experience the pain of his patients, allowing him to diagnosis the true source of their ailment more quickly (and without the inaccurate, inadequate, and/or misleading patient testimony that sometimes stymies quick diagnosis). Dawson also uses the device off-label to experiment sexually with his girlfriend, feeling the pleasure of her orgasm alongside his own. When a patient dies on the table connected to the device, 8  That Haynes is sensitive to this heat, while Nish is not, presages the reversal at the end of the episode.

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however, Dawson experiences what it feels like to die, and afterwards his ability to feel pleasure and pain are scrambled; he now enjoys the pain of his patients almost as a sort of drug, while his sexual encounters with his girlfriend (still using the device) now veer into disturbing sadomasochism, bordering on rape. Dawson once again becomes ineffective as a doctor, using the device unnecessarily to vicariously experience their suffering and trying to bring them to the brink of death so he can experience the thrill of dying all over again. He is pulled off the floor, and Haynes promises that they will try to figure out a way to deactivate the implant—eventually. Unemployed and addicted to pain, Haynes experiments with self-mutilation, but he soon reaches a physical limit of how much he can safely harm himself, and (more importantly) his knowledge that he is not in any real danger prohibits the fear response in the amygdala that is a crucial component of his arousal. (“You can inflict pain on yourself,” Haynes says, “but not terror.”) Thus he heads out into city and seeks out a homeless man, whom he tortures and kills with a drill while connected to the device; he is found by police in ecstasy, and afterwards falls into a vegetative state, a state of permanent joy Haynes describes as “blissed out.” In the second narrative, centered on what appears at first to be a child’s stuffed monkey, a couple becomes pregnant after a one-night stand, but decides to keep the child and marries into domestic bliss. Here again the narrative seems to be playing with the “black” of “Black Museum”; the couple is mixed-­ race, “a walking commercial for a sunnier future, happy as hell,” as Haynes sourly puts it. But the woman, Carrie (Alexandra Roach) is hit by a car in a freak accident, and falls into a coma from which she will never recover; she is able to interact with the world only through an experimental “comm box” that allows her to answer yes and no to questions. Jack (Aldis Hodge), still in love, visits her often. The younger Haynes again appears, offering the couple a chance to be together again; he can implant Carrie’s mind into unused space in Jack’s mind, allowing her to experience his physical sensorium and “live again,” almost as a sort of “hitchhiker” or “passenger.” Haynes once again presents his bargain in utterly Mephistophelean terms, promising a flawless transfer at no cost (and even offering to donate the organs from Carrie’s discarded original body as a way of giving back to the community). Regardless, Jack is skeptical, but Carrie is absolutely desperate to escape the confines of her condition, stimulating the “yes” response on her comm box immediately. After the operation, the devilish Haynes even offers the couple an apple, which Carrie is able to see and then taste through her new connection to Jack’s body. Of course, the situation very rapidly devolves into a nightmare; unable to do anything in Jack’s body but comment on his interactions with the world, Carrie can only become a miserable nag, impotently criticizing his every move, becoming especially agitated when the long-single Jack shows sexual interest in other women. Jack soon loses his grip, constantly squabbling with her (even in front of their child), and even deliberately causing her discomfort by eating food she dislikes simply to spite her. He returns to Haynes to complain, who offers an upgrade that will allow Jack to place Carrie on “pause” whenever he likes; he

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quickly uses his new administrative privileges to put her on pause for several months. Wracked by guilt over his son’s loss of his mother, Jack negotiates a system where they will share his body (in an explicit allegory for shared custody and co-parenting)—but this too breaks down when Jack enters into a new relationship with his neighbor Emily (Yasha Jackson).9 They again return to Haynes, and this time Carrie is transferred into the body of a stuffed monkey, where she will again have extremely limited sensory interaction with the world, again only able to respond through a yes/no binary of either pure positivity or pure negativity (translated into the toy’s two possible utterances, “Monkey loves you” and “Monkey needs a hug”). The toy is given to the child, but quickly discarded, condemning Carrie to a hellish eternity of isolation and boredom. We soon discover this hell is ongoing; she is still trapped inside the stuffed monkey in the Black Museum, as a UN convention on the ethical use of cookies has made it illegal to turn her off. As Haynes explains, the UN has also rendered this entire procedure illegal, as consciousnesses can now only be transferred into devices that allow the expression of at least five emotions; Haynes treats the notion of “human rights for cookies” with other disdain, befitting perhaps his bitterness at the fact that the scandal raised by the eventual revelation of this procedure ruined his once-promising career and ultimately led to his exile as the proprietor of the Black Museum, in the middle of nowhere. In the third micronarrative, we finally see the “prime exhibit” that drew crowds to the Black Museum in its heyday: a cookie captured in the moment of execution of notorious murderer Clayton Leigh (Babs Olusanmokun), whose alleged crime has been detailed in background details and television insert-shots in the other two micronarratives. In the flashback, Haynes persuades Leigh (who maintains his innocence) to sign over the rights to his cookie in exchange for a hefty cash payment to his family10; notably, Haynes is here revealed to be not just massaging the facts but affirmatively lying, as he tells Nish that Leigh’s family callously abandoned him after they got the money while the cinematic flashback shows the exact opposite. Regardless, Leigh takes the deal, and his cookie is installed in the Black Museum and executed over and over again by the tourists who visit (who even get to take a cookie of Leigh’s torture installed forever in a cheap hologrammatic keychain as a souvenir). Here Black Museum’s misanthropy is most clearly on display; the location is initially packed, as visitor after visitor enjoys the vicarious thrill of seeing a brutal killer tortured and executed. But a popular documentary suggesting Leigh was actually innocent, and evolving social attitudes around cookie rights, soon ruin Haynes’s business model; he is forced to cater to a creepier and creepier demographic of racists, sadists, and perverts in order to stay afloat, actually putting the installation at risk as he allows his shrinking clientele to torture the 9  Here again the episode seems to want to wrestle with its own racial dynamics; Jack, Emily, and the woman Jack checks out in the elevator are all black, while Carrie is white. 10  Notably, Haynes says he wanted to get a celebrity cookie at first, but there were too many rights and royalty issues—so he settled for a convicted murderer instead.

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cookie longer than the fifteen-second limit that risks permanently ruining the program. The results of this prolonged torture have rendered the cookie almost catatonic, unable even to suffer to the satisfaction of Haynes’s sick visitors. At this point the terms of the narrative unexpectedly flip entirely. Nish, it is revealed, is actually the daughter of Clayton Leigh, and has come to the Black Museum not contingently as a random passerby but deliberately to seek revenge. Moreover, eerily anticipating the role of Shuri in Black Panther (2018) for which Letitia Wright would soon become world famous, Nish is revealed to be a technological genius, on par with or beyond Haynes’s own capabilities. The air conditioning unit that has been malfunctioning across the episode did not break on its own; Nish sabotaged it, in the hopes of offering Haynes a bottle of water that she has spiked with a poison. Killing him, she takes his cookie, and uploads it into the execution exhibit, where he becomes a Carrie-­ style passenger on Clayton’s digital consciousness. She then runs the hacked exhibit well past the fifteen-second limit, freeing her father from his torture and producing one last keychain souvenir, which this time bears Haynes’s face in agony instead of Clayton’s.11 Nish lets the Carrie monkey watch the execution, and then brings the toy with her back to her car, while the air conditioning unit and eventually the Black Museum as a whole burst into flames; as Nish starts her car, we discover as a final punchline to the episode that she too has a passenger, the cookie of her mother (Amanda Warren), who joyfully praises Nish for executing their plan perfectly.12 As the car pulls away again to the ecstatic sounds of “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me,” we see it now as a dark pun about this embedded-mind procedure and the strange, fraught immortality it grants. “How can I forget you,” the song asks, “when there is always something there to remind me?” “Black Museum” is thus one of that strange category of Black Mirror episodes with an ostensibly happy ending, albeit one (like “USS Callister,” “San Junipero,” or “Hang the DJ”) that looks less and less happier the longer one thinks about it; the post-human interruption of the ordinary temporality of aging and of grieving—the child never able to grow independently from the parent, and the bereaved constantly haunted by the technological ghost of the departed, forever—could only seem like truly good news to a person who had never seen an episode of Black Mirror. 11  It is not actually explained why the keychain machine would function this way, as opposed to producing a keychain of only Clayton’s cookie, or indeed of both of them together (or, for that matter, being unable to function at all after the modifications to the program Nish has made). Essentially we are asked to take it on faith that this revenge plot can be executed in a way that does not require Nish to create yet another suffering digital version of her father, or at the very least attribute the result to her technical genius. 12  A second viewing reveals that almost all of the episode can be read differently in light of these revelations, from the moment Nish explains to Haynes that “My dad lives out here; it’s his birthday, so my mom just wants to surprise him.” Likewise, Haynes’s Crypt-keeperesque introduction of the Jack/Carrie narrative with “You ever have one of those relationships where you just can’t get someone out of your head?” results in a wry smile from Nish that looks entirely different once the reality of her situation is revealed.

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Emergency Exits and Ambiguous Utopias Indeed, what is presented as a happy ending for Nish’s story has already been undercut not only by Carrie’s narrative in “Black Museum” but also in “Be Right Back” (which the name of the gas station evokes) and earlier in season four’s “Arkangel,” in which a similar blurring of the lines between parent and child leads to rage, betrayal, misery, and ultimately murder. Can we possibly imagine Nish living any sort of fully adult life—including a sexual life—with her mother constantly watching through her eyes? That the episode ends on this playful engagement with murder and arson is thematically discordant enough—but the uncomplicated presence of Nish’s mother all this time renders the episode’s conclusion a very striking example of what Robin Wood refers to as “that most striking and persistent of all classical Hollywood phenomena, the happy ending: often a mere ‘emergency exit’ … for the spectator, a barely plausible pretense that the problems the film has raised are now resolved” (2004, p. 719). Indeed, even bracketing the transgressive and disturbing violation of the parent-child boundary, this mode of digital immortality has been revealed as a hell in every episode of Black Mirror in which it has appeared, even in “San Junipero,” which similarly cuts away from a love-­ conquers-­all happy ending overlaid with pop-music rather than linger on the darker implications of uploaded consciousness (which, the episode has already told us, produce a mixture of boredom and impotence so intolerable that long-­ term residents of San Junipero torture themselves with sadomasochistic sex at goth nightclubs just to feel anything at all, as well as reduce the human to disk space wholly owned and operated by TCKR, which is operating a digital afterlife at no obvious cost to the consumer for its own presumably sinister reasons).13 Like any speculation about the near-term future of the planet in the era of climate change, the backdrop of the American Southwest has multiple potential valences for evaluating the overall optimism or pessimism of “Black Museum.” The space of the desert—so convenient to Hollywood filmmaking—has functioned visually as the premeditation of an ecologically devastated future as far back as the 1960s from which “Black Museum” borrows key iconography; as John Beck noted of Planet of the Apes (1968): When the crown of Liberty comes into view, the shock is partly achieved by the disorientating effect of having the quintessential icon of New York City planted in what is clearly a Pacific environment. As the arid Western landscape makes time visible, the film’s climactic punch is achieved through an inversion of American geography. The West functions in the film as a vision of the post-catastrophe East: after the apocalypse, New York will look like Arizona and California--the East will look like the West already looks: blasted, inhospitable, and inhabited by the grotesque after-effects of a horrible but unfathomable history. (2013, p. 106)

 As the internet proverb goes, if you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

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Relocating a series that most characteristically associated with the United Kingdom to this desert space, and then utterly depopulating it save for our two principal characters, seems to produce a similar sort of dissonance in the viewer of “Black Museum.” We are primed by both genre and series convention to see this space as necessarily post-apocalyptic.14 But other visual markers challenge this association. The BRB Connect station is a site not of abandonment but of careful, deliberate retreat; the pumps have been carefully wrapped in plastic, with petroleum rendered obsolete by the development of ubiquitous, clean, and reliable solar energy. The Southwest is hot—Haynes needs that air conditioner working, and Nish is drenched in sweat by the end—but it’s not too hot to live in. Haynes has reliable power, and indeed has just upgraded his system; the roads in this region are well-maintained, despite how hauntingly empty it seems—and Nish openly mocks Haynes’s old-fashioned suggestion that it might be somehow unsafe for Nish to travel on her own as a young woman. A similar irresolvable ambiguity structures the episode’s revelation of a juridical regime around cookies that respects in some basic way their personhood. On the surface at least, “Black Museum” suggests a shocking—again, especially for Black Mirror—level of optimism about the possibilities for liberal reformism to successfully manage the challenge of emerging post- and transhuman technologies. A UN convention on the rights of cookies, coupled with action by the American Civil Liberties Union, has sufficient legal teeth to drive Haynes out of his industry and destroy his career—and even his backup employment as a carnival barker seems on the ropes as the story begins, as public sentiment has turned against the torture of cookies. All the same, a requirement that an embodied cookie must be able to express at least five emotions still seems awfully spare, and Haynes himself has escaped any formal legal sanction, and (despite apparently fearing the legal consequences of destroying Carrie’s monkey) he is still able to operate his ghastly museum with repeated torture sessions of Clayton Leigh with apparent impunity. Worst of all, he has in some unknown manner, legal, quasi-legal, or illegal, managed to acquire Carrie’s monkey for his personal use, suggesting that the progressive legal reforms governing the use of cookies still have quite far to go. Progress itself, as such, seems caught in a hopeless loop in both “Black Museum” and the whole of Black Mirror, unable to transcend a basically misanthropic vision of human nastiness, cruelty, and self-interest. New technologies emerge with the potential to utterly transform human civilization, but can only be put to harmful ends, both by the megacorporations that control their initial emergence and by the individual consumers  who inevitably put the device to the worst possible use. Thus the development of what is essentially technological telepathy immediately becomes a vehicle not for medical miracles but an addictive drug leading to personal and professional destruction, while the development of digital immortality leads immediately to imprisonment, torture, and slavery rather than liberation. In Rob McAlear’s (2010) terms, 14  Indeed, the immediately preceding episode of the series is “Metalhead,” in which a similarly desolate landscape proves apocalyptic in precise accordance with the usual genre convention.

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most of Black Mirror would be better described as anti-utopian rather than dystopian, as dystopia implies a mutable sense of history that might change for the better or for the worse while anti-utopia suggests an essentially wicked or broken humanity that is fundamentally unable to change for the better, no matter what sort of novel technological innovation or social reform emerges.15 Here the ultimate limitation seems to be biological rather than theological; our brains are just so completely oriented toward self-gratification that any increase of our abilities, of whatever sort, immediately becomes toxic. But “Black Museum” seems to want to complicate this narrative by introducing (quite rarely for the series) questions of intersectionality and difference into its investigation of an emerging transhuman future. Thus the episode juxtaposes the body of a young black woman against that of an old white man to suggest the possibility that this toxic behavior may be learned rather than innate; other possibilities for the human, and for the future, might exist beyond those designed by those favored by the current system who are frantically seeking to sustain and expand their privilege. The “black” of “Black Museum” and Black Mirror must become the blackness of race for good reason; the series has unexpectedly discovered itself to be a long meditation on the nature of slavery and liberation. It is never made clear why Nish and her mother are apparently able to live in harmony with each other in a single body the way other characters in Black Mirror, put into similar situations, are not—it may well be the registration of a sort of “white gaze” that is simply not interested in the full equality or personhood of black women, the bias Moya Bailey (2014) has called misogynoir—but the possibility that these revolutionary technological forms might actually produce something other than new potential for misery is nonetheless tantalizing. Nish and her mother seem genuinely close, and genuinely content with their new, weird bond; Nish is even able to tease her. In his short book on acceleration, No Speed Limit, Steven Shaviro (2015) identifies the tendency of capitalism to create the conditions for its own supersession, which it then uses its supreme power over society to prevent. Those who oppose capitalism and its dominance over the world are thus caught in a bind where there seems to be no ground to oppose capitalism except by adopting its powers: We cannot wait for capitalism to transform on its own, but we also cannot hope to progress by appealing to some radical Outside or by fashioning ourselves as militants faithful to some ‘event’ that (as Badiou has it) would mark a radical and complete break with the given ‘situation’ of capitalism. Accelerationism rather demands a movement against and outside capitalism—but on the basis of tendencies and technologies that are intrinsic to capitalism. (pp. 6–7) 15  That is, the dystopian narrative typically contains within itself the seeds of utopia; this might be the explicit context of the plot (as in the classic dystopian narrative, the fight to overthrow the dystopian regime) or more implicitly a warning to the present not to allow the dystopia to emerge. The anti-utopian narrative, in contrast, does not imagine true progress as being possible; it shows even the most good-hearted and noble attempts to reform society turning sour. See McAlear.

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Fittingly for an episode about young black genius conquering white technoculture, Shaviro invokes Audre Lorde to articulate this paradox: “Audre Lorde famously argued that ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.’ But what if the master’s tools are the only ones available? Accelerationism grapples with this dilemma” (pp. 6–7). To the extent that Nish is able to fight the hypertechnologized system of control embodied by Haynes, it is precisely by using his own technology against him—but her victory may seem troublingly sterile, able to produce only death-as-relief (for her tortured father), death-as-eternal-punishment (for Haynes), and death as obliteration (for the museum itself). Thus a final ambiguity is produced in “Black Museum.” On the one hand, we encounter a future that already seems so entirely foreclosed—the cookies are here, and their enslavement is so complete and so total that there is already a museum documenting and celebrating it—that the only thing left is to seek out revenge, to revel, for better for worse, in precisely the sorts of the base and mean pleasures that broke the future in the first place. That’s the sour vision of the future Black Mirror has, after all, sold to its viewers more than once already. But Nish saves Carrie, who is pressing “Monkey loves you” for the first time in years, just as she is able to save (in a very different way than her father) her mother; she burns down Haynes’s satanic Black Museum and drives off free and clear to some other sort of life that we won’t see. As the credits for the episode roll, the reprise of “(There’s) Always Something There to Reminds Me” unexpectedly transitions from hopeless melancholy and bitter regret to the promise of reconciliation and renewal: “If you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share/Just come back to the places where we used to go and I’ll be there.” There is something generative here, after all—just not something the men of the story are able to participate in, and perhaps not we as viewers either. Of all the characters Black Mirror has yet depicted, the uncanny combination of Nish’s technical genius with her mother’s relentless love seem uniquely poised to break the orbit of anti-utopia—but they do so neither through a naïve and cheery optimism that refuses hard choices nor by darkly becoming the very person they despise, but by doing both at the same time. “We need utopia, but to try to think utopia, in this world, without rage, without fury, is an indulgence we can’t afford,” proclaims China Miéville in his acerbic new introduction to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (2016). “In the face of what is done, we cannot think utopia without hate” (pp. 26–27). The exuberant juxtaposition of Nish, her mother, and Carrie in the Thunderbird triumphantly speeding away as the Black Museum erupts into flames, as Warwick’s song hits its crescendo—Haynes’s cookie locked in permanent agony in a keychain hanging from her rear-view mirror—is as good an image for Miéville’s strange vision of a utopia after utopia, of “hope with teeth” (p. 25), as can be imagined. As “Black Museum” marks an inflection point for the series’s ­organizing principle from anthology to post-anthology, one wonders if it will mark an inflection point for its thematic orientation as well, opening up the post-­utopian possibility of a transhuman future still characterized by struggle but which can produce (at least sometimes) something other than pain.

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Change Your Past, Your Present, Your Future? Interactive Narratives and Trauma in Bandersnatch (2018) Terence McSweeney and Stuart Joy

Introduction For a television show that has often seemed to delight in shocking viewers since its very first episode in 2011, which, in case we needed reminding, featured the Prime Minister of Great Britain having carnal relations with a sus scrofa domesticus, Black Mirror saved one of its greatest surprises for 28 December 2018 with the release of the 20th instalment in the series, Bandersnatch, directed by David Slade. While two of its previous episodes had centred around video games: the highly regarded dystopian vision of gamification en masse, “Fifteen Million Merits” (01.02), and the horror-inflected augmented reality tale of “Playtest” (03.02), in an unexpected turn of events for both Netflix and the creator of Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker, Bandersnatch was not just about video games, it was one. Rumours about what would be the next addition to Black Mirror had begun to circulate earlier in 2018 with the leak of three significant and later revealed to be interconnected details. The first was that it was to be called Bandersnatch, with online commenters quickly speculating that it was named after the fictional creature created by English author Lewis Carroll (the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), most famous, of course, for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), a beast which appeared in two of his poems “Jabberwocky”, included in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and later The Hunting of the

T. McSweeney (*) • S. Joy Southampton Solent University, Southampton, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_21

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Snark (1876). The second piece of information was that Bandersnatch was to be set in the 1980s and thus would be another text to resonate with the current nostalgia for all things connected to the decade manifested in films like Super 8 (2011), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), It (2017), and Ready Player One (2018), and popular television shows like The Americans (FX, 2013–2018), The Goldbergs (ABC, 2013–), Netflix’s own Stranger Things (Netflix, 2016–), even Black Mirror’s award-winning “San Junipero” (03.04) “set” in 1987. The third, and perhaps most important detail, was that the project was intended to be not just an episode of the series, but a film and an interactive one at that, a largely neglected medium, which, quite fittingly, had initially become popular during the 1980s. Interactive movies, as they have most commonly been referred to, are a blend of video game and film, which had become possible with the invention of nonlinear playing devices in home entertainment such as laser disks, with notable early examples like Dragon’s Lair (Advanced Microcomputer Systems, 1983), Firefox (Atari, 1983), and Night Trap (Digital Pictures, 1987). Not coincidentally their rise coincided with the phenomenon of so-called interactive books, the most popular in the United States of America being the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series, which began with Edward Packard’s The Cave of Time (1979) and in the United Kingdom the “Fighting Fantasy gamebook” series in fondly remembered titles like The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (1982) by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston.1 While several prominent interactive movies had gained some success, as a medium they were never quite able to achieve mainstream status, being largely rejected by fans of video games as not being interactive enough, and by film enthusiasts as deviating too far from their own medium of choice. On this important distinction between games and films Bernard Perron observed, “It is not possible to tell a story by putting the storytelling in the hands of the spectator. And the linearity of a story is going against the nonlinear nature of a game” (2003, p. 239). Therefore by 2003 Perron was quite correct to refer to the failure of the genre, if that is indeed what the interactive movie is, as “total” (2003, p. 239) with Daniel Ichbiah going even further by suggesting that the revival of the interactive movie would be greeted with “as much enthusiasm as an eruption of acne” (qtd. in Perron, 239). In the years since Perron and Ichbiah’s comments, the narrative style, if not the genre itself, had experienced something of a revival in the evolving medium of video games, with examples from developer Quantic Dream including Fahrenheit (2005), Heavy Rain (2010), Detroit: Becoming Human (2018), and several series of titles published by the company Telltale Games based around popular franchises: The Walking Dead (2012), Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series (2014) and Batman: The Telltale Series (2016). Each of these examples operates by the same narrative principle of an interactive movie, 1  Soon after the release of Bandersnatch, the publisher Chooseco sued Netflix for trademark infringement for using the phrase “Choose Your Own Adventure” (see Chmielewski, 2019).

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where players have a variety of opportunities throughout the narrative to make choices which impact on the path the game then follows (see Hagebölling, 2004; O’Neill, 2008; Shaul, 2008). Since the comments dismissing interactive movies by Perron and Ichbiah, something else had changed, something which scholar Henry Jenkins (who contributes to this collection) called the emergence of a “participatory culture”, that is, one which “contrasts with older notions of passive media spectatorship” in his Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006, p. 3). The term “participatory culture” highlights the myriad of ways in which contemporary audiences tend to regard themselves no longer as simply passive consumers of entertainment products and seem to possess an increasing desire to play a more active role in how they experience entertainment media: whether that might be how they watch it, how they comment on it, or even how it is funded. At the same time as this, as was widely reported throughout 2018, the games industry itself, even though it is widely regarded as not being as culturally important as other forms of media, now earns significantly more revenue globally than either the television industries ($105 billion), the box office returns of film releases ($41 billion), or digital music sales and rentals ($17 billion), with total earnings of games sales being a remarkable $116 billion, up 10 per cent from the previous year and projected to continue growing in ways television, film, and music producers could only dream about (D’Argenio, 2018). These factors might have been why Charlie Brooker was interested in turning to the medium of the interactive movie for Bandersnatch, a text which offers several challenges to those who engage with it and is as immersed in some of the defining fears and anxieties of the twenty-first century as Black Mirror has been since its first episode. The first of these challenges might be said to come before we even switch on Netflix to access Bandersnatch on our televisions, laptops, tablets, or mobile phones. What are we supposed to call both it and those who interact with it? As it is not just an episode of Black Mirror, something which Netflix has recognised itself as it is not listed alongside the others on the streaming platform, nor is it a “special” as “White Christmas” (02.04) was called back in 2014. Instead Netflix considers it to be a film and this is how it is labelled, but even this term does not seem quite satisfactory.2 The difficulty of defining Bandersnatch was something that the creators of Black Mirror had an issue with too: in an interview for The New York Times conducted with Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, Jones suggested that “It wasn’t really designed as a game. It was designed as a cinematic experience”. But Brooker seemed to disagree adding that it had “game-y elements… You are making decisions. You are actively guiding it” but that ultimately, “I think some people will judge it just on a narrative basis, some people will judge it as a game… It’s not up to us. It’s down to them” (Streitfeld, 2018). For the 2  It should be noted here that Bandersnatch is not the first interactive movie on Netflix. In 2018, Minecraft: Story Mode (Telltale Games & Mojang, 2015–2016) and before that Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale (2017).

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purposes of this volume, we will consider Bandersnatch as an example of “hyper-narrative interactive cinema” as Nitzan Ben Shaul defined the form in his Hyper-narrative Interactive Cinema: Problems and Solutions (2008). It is also to Shaul that we turn to for assistance with what we should call those who engage with Bandersnatch, as it does not seem quite right to call them “viewers” because they do more than view, nor does it seem entirely correct to call them “gamers” as it does not offer quite enough interactivity to warrant calling it a game.3 In place of this, Shaul prefers the term “interactors” (2008, p. 15) and it is this accurate if not commonly used term we will use for the purposes of this chapter. Interestingly, Shaul is generally very critical of the examples of “hyper-narrative interactive cinema” which he explores. Indeed, he argues: For interactive hyper-narratives to sustain deep engagement rather than the current shallow distraction, hyper-narrative structures, interaction and audiovisual design should manage the multi-tasking split-attention problems these constructs engender and—most importantly—use this multi-tasking to enhance rather than reduce engagement. (2008, p. 12)

Exactly ten years after the release of Shaul’s book, Bandersnatch brought the interactive movie or hyper-narrative interactive cinema back to public prominence, and whether it was able to succeed in the ways Saul states others had failed is one of the central questions this chapter seeks to explore. Perron said in his rather dismissive analysis of the genre that “It is certainly not the film or the narrative part that is worth examining” (2003, p. 239), but this chapter argues that Bandersnatch is worthy of further critical study for both of these elements as well as its status as the 20th instalment in the Black Mirror franchise.

“It’s still a game though, yeah?” Given the context we have established then, it might be regarded as fitting that Bandersnatch is indeed set in the 1980s, in 1984 to be precise. The era is an evocative one for many and Bandersnatch offers an authentic recreation down to period accurate 1980s cereal packets, shop logos, clothes, cars, music, computers, and even money, all of which contribute towards a nostalgia for the era which has been pervasive during the second decade of the new millennium. Thematically, however, the decision to set the film in the 1980s is primarily connected to the fledgling years of the video games industry as the plot follows an aspiring young programmer called Stefan (Fionn Whitehead) and his desire to create a video game based on a fantasy novel called Bandersnatch.4 3  As Brooker detailed in an interview for The Empire Film Podcast #348, the team used Twine software to initially design the branching narrative for Bandersnatch (Brooker, 2019). Twine is an open source software for the construction of interactive and non-liner stories. 4  In a process that has been frequently observed throughout this edited collection, the name “Bandersnatch” had been included as an Easter Egg in a previous video gamed theme episode of Black Mirror, “Playtest”, featured on the front cover of a magazine in the review section which

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Bandersnatch provides us with the first of many opportunities to determine the outcome of the narrative when Stefan is asked by his father which breakfast cereal he wants to eat (Sugar Puffs or Frosties) and subsequently what music he chooses to listen to (the Thompson Twins or Now 2). These inconsequential decisions—made using either a touch-screen device, cursor, or a television remote control—also enable interactors to become accustomed to the interactive element in what closely resembles an in-game tutorial. Neither of the decisions have any real impact on the narrative going forward, but they establish that we are in control of Stefan’s choices, something which, as you might expect, goes unremarked upon by the main character in these initial scenes.5 These early scenes culminate in Stefan being offered the opportunity to make Bandersnatch on-site at the gaming development company Tuckersoft with the support of Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), a prodigiously successful programmer, but only if he can complete it promptly and in time for a potentially financially lucrative Christmas release date. Here, the choices presented are either accept or decline, and one might imagine that Bandersnatch wants us to prompt Stefan to accept the offer given how desperately he wants to get his game made. Indeed, in January, about a month after the release of Bandersnatch Netflix released some statistics around a few of the choices, revealing that 73 per cent of interactors chose to accept the job offer (see Reilly, 2019). However, if you choose to do so, the game is streamlined by the company and it receives a review score of 0 stars out of 5 on a video games review television show. We are then provided with the video game equivalent of a “Game Over” screen returning Bandersnatch to its beginning with a quick montage of previous choices until Stefan reaches the point of his decision to accept or decline once more. However, during the montage, things are changed subtly with earlier conversations repeated and with Stefan, to his incredulity, seemingly somehow aware of the previous events of the first “play through”, just as a player would learn the necessary skills to complete a level of a video game after a few attempts. On its release, several reviewers of Bandersnatch were quick to comment on the intricacies concerning the relationship between Bandersnatch, video games and films. Writing for IGN, David Griffin notes, “Netflix is calling Bandersnatch an “interactive movie,” however, it’s difficult to not associate it with video games…every decision you make creates new possibilities for your character” (2018). Likewise, for Simon Parkin, “a video game is a series of interesting choices; in many ways, the multi-branched story is the purest expression of that idea. “Bandersnatch” … demonstrates both the enduring allure of the format promised reviews of the game and also “Psyclapse” and “Miner Willy Meets the Taxman”. The inclusion of the game “Psyclapse” here and “Bandersnatch” itself provides an imbrication with reality that Black Mirror has often experimented with in the sense that they are the names of reallife games developed by Imagine Software (1982–1984) for the Commodore 64 and Spectrum 48k home computers. 5  The Shreddies or Frosties choice does come back later with an advert for the one chosen on screen presented in what might be read as Brooker’s sly jab and cookies and advertising.

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and its exasperating limitations” (2019). These reviewers base their video game comparisons primarily on the film’s interactive element, which is perhaps understandable given that the interactive nature of gameplay is probably the most commonly perceived characteristic that distinguishes video games from other forms of media and cultural forms. This is one of the defining elements of the medium that Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern identify in The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (2005). They note, “The ephemeral quality of gameplay, the experience of manipulating elements within a responsive, rule-driven world, is still the raison d’etre of games, perhaps the primary phenomenological feature that uniquely identifies the computer game as a medium” (2005, p. 643). In video games, how a player responds on a moment-­ to-­moment basis has an immediate effect, thereby endowing the user with varying degrees of agency within the game world. As Bandersnatch continues, it charts not only the empathetic Stefan’s attempt to create the video game itself but also the precarious state of his mental health. After his father becomes increasingly worried about Stefan’s symptoms, we are given the choice as to whether he should attend a session with his psychotherapist Dr Haynes (Alice Lowe) or not. Attending the session reveals details of Stefan’s foundational trauma, that his mother (Fleur Keith) died in a train accident when he was a child. Stefan feels partly responsible for her death due to his behaviour on the day, but he also blames his father who was tired of the young boy’s fixation with a stuffed toy and had hid it, which prompted Stefan’s refusal to accompany his mother, leading to her catching a later train, the one which was derailed and led to her death. 6 Additionally, his obsession with creating the game Bandersnatch is connected to his mother explicitly, as he found the book in her possessions after she died, and as it later implies, the interactive element he wishes to construct as a key part of the game is intimately connected to some of his own life choices, one of which, as we have already seen, inadvertently resulted in the death of his mother. If interactors had elected not to prompt Stefan to visit the doctor’s office, an act which is eventually made compulsory, Stefan is invited by the programmer Colin to his apartment where they discuss the video games medium before we are given a choice as to whether Stefan should take a recreational drug offered by Colin, with the options being yes or no. Not only is this a significant narrative choice but also for the first time in Bandersnatch an ethical one, considering we are now very much aware of Stefan’s mental health problems. As interactors, might it be the case that the choice is as difficult for us as it seems to be for Stefan? Choosing to instruct him to take the drug seems like the wrong path to take, but at the same time, it might result in the most interesting onscreen narrative developments, especially for the purposes of a show like Black Mirror where audiences anticipate and even perhaps hope to be shocked. However, once again the choice is taken out of our hands as regardless of what 6  It appears that this is a real event although later permutations of the game will challenge what it appears to be through his psychosis.

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we choose, Stefan ends up taking the drugs anyway, as if you elect no, Colin spikes his drink. It is at this point interactors might seem to feel somewhat conflicted about how interactive Bandersnatch really is, with many of their decisions not having as much impact on the narrative as it progresses as they had expected. Yet this is so explicitly framed that there remains a lingering suspicion that it is Brooker’s own commentary on the limited nature of free will and agency within the medium itself. The sequence concludes with another very difficult choice to be made for interactors when Colin, under the influence of drugs, demands that either he or Stefan jump off the balcony to his apartment. This moment is both a striking and disturbing one. We are confronted with the decision to effectively kill off either the protagonist, who in ways beyond that of a traditional narrative film is us, or the engaging and charismatic Colin. If you elect Stefan to jump, he dies and the film comes to a blocked point in the narrative and a game over screen, whereas forcing Colin to take the leap makes Stefan wake up in the car on his way to see Dr Haynes, suggesting that the entire sequence might have been just a vivid hallucination. Once again, Bandersnatch presents us with the semblance of free will, but one which is strictly confined by the nature of the medium itself and as much as the praise for it focused on its innovative branching narrative (see Sims, 2018), it is perhaps more accurate to refer to it as what Ernest Adams and Andrew Rollings called “a foldback story” in their book Fundamentals of Game Design (2007) where they explored the various narrative strategies employed by video game developers. They identify two primary modes of storytelling: linear and nonlinear, with the latter further subdivided into branching narratives, foldback stories, and emergent narratives. Of particular interest regarding Bandersnatch is the distinction that Adams and Rollings make between branching narratives and foldback stories, noting “foldback stories represent a compromise between branching stories and linear ones. In a foldback story the plot branches a number of times but eventually folds back to a single, inevitable event” (Adams & Rollings, 2007, p. 227), meaning that while there are several routes for the player, they will eventually reach, or repeatedly return to, a singular defining moment in the narrative that must be acknowledged in some way to proceed. Adams and Rollings go on to state that “foldback stories offer players agency but in more limited amounts. The player believes that his decisions control the course of event, and they do at times, but he cannot avoid certain events no matter what he does” (2007, p. 227 emphasis added). Significantly, what Adams and Rollings have inadvertently described here bears a strong resemblance to the temporal logic of trauma and this is perhaps fitting given Stefan’s fractured mental state and the tendency of Black Mirror itself to return to trauma as one of its central thematic motifs. According to Cathy Caruth in her widely read study of trauma, Unclaimed Experience (1995), trauma is “the response to an unexpected or overwhelming violent event or events that are not fully grasped as they occur, but return later in repeated flashbacks, nightmares, and other repetitive phenomena” (p. 91). Caruth argues that an individual repeatedly returns to the site of a traumatic

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event as a means of attempting to obtain a sense of mastery over the past. For those who undergo a traumatic event, such repetitive behaviour disrupts our common perception of time as a linear flow from past to present in favour of the cyclical experience of traumatic memory. She suggests “a traumatic event cannot be ‘assimilated’ or experienced fully at the time, but only belatedly, in its repeated possession of the one who experiences it” (p. 4), which seems like a strikingly accurate description of what happens not just to Stefan, but us interactors who experience the narrative choices of Bandersnatch, often whether we want to or not. In Bandersnatch, Stefan repeatedly returns to his memory of the moments leading up to his mother’s death because he remains perpetually caught in the wake of a traumatic loss that he is unable to overcome and which he is compelled to continuously return, sometimes of his own volition and sometimes because of the interactive nature of the project, that is the choices made by us interactors. This memory reoccurs at several points throughout Bandersnatch but is initially recalled by Stefan during a session with Dr Haynes. Here, a series of flashbacks reveal a younger Stefan to be frantically searching for his favourite stuffed animal minutes before he is due to leave with his mother. She mentions that they will be late and asks Stefan if he is going to join her. At this point, Brooker’s commentary on the nature of free will in the medium becomes its most explicit as when this choice is offered, simultaneously to Stefan and indeed to us, it is presented with only one option rather than two for the first and only time throughout Bandersnatch as instead of a “Yes” or “No” selection, the only “choice” available is “No”. Fittingly, given it is connected to foundational trauma, Stefan is unable to change the past and neither are we. Within the confines of the diegesis, Dr Haynes makes this explicit when she remarks, “The past is immutable Stefan. No matter how painful it is, we can’t change things. We can’t choose differently with hindsight. We all have to learn to accept that”. Yet this notion also extends to the interactor and their experiences with Bandersnatch who is unable to undo their choices throughout without restarting the whole thing. What Bandersnatch does, and it is something that might well frustrate those experiencing it, is to offer a correlation between interactors and protagonist in ways which transcend linear narratives and indeed the cinematic medium in some intriguing ways. As Shaleph O’Neill observes in his Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction (2008), a successful interactive movie “transforms the way we think about telling stories” (p. 93) and an immersion in Bandersnatch might well do this. That is to say that the film’s interactive element effectively mimics the repetitive structure of trauma and, in doing so, offers a unique insight into Stefan’s masochistic relationship with the past. Writing for The New  Yorker, Simon Parkin suggests that the design of Bandersnatch “offers an antidote to regret” (2019) by endowing us with the omniscient ability to seek out and choose a different path: “There are few such chances in life”, he says, “where we live with our choices and their repercussions”.

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This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in one sequence that finally allows us to revisit the traumatic event itself. On this occasion, unlike Stefan’s initial recall of this memory with Dr Haynes, when his mother reaches out to her infant son and asks if he wants to come with her, we are now presented with a choice between two options: to allow Stefan to follow his mother, and perhaps die with her, or say no and force him to relive the pain and suffering inflicted by her death. If Stefan goes with his mother, the train inevitably crashes and they both die, but if we decline her offer, Stefan wakes as if from a nightmare. In a range of reviews of Bandersnatch, several commentators seemed to consider the former option as the film’s preferred ending because it is thematically connected to the interactor’s experience of the narrative and also seemed to fit most closely to the parameters of what we have come to expect from what we might refer to as “the Black Mirror experience”. Kyle Turner, for example, remarked that: “What feels significant about this ending is that it makes the rest of the experience … make sense” (2018, original emphasis), going on to note that “Grief and trauma are a maze, an unending journey that feels like bumping into dead ends, a series of challenges without guidance, a feeling of complete displacement in a world where everyone else seems to know their path”. In this instance, Stefan’s suicide is a viable narrative alternative because it affords a form of closure, for him and us, that otherwise remains illusory for the victim of trauma. Yet, according to the statistics released by Netflix, this narrative thread was the “path least travelled” (see Reilly, 2019), but this is perhaps unsurprising given that this ending was also the “hardest to find” (Strauss, 2019). By this point in the narrative of Bandersnatch, the interactor has guided the plot through many of its reputed “millions of permutations” (Reynolds, 2018), the creation of which Brooker suggested had even caused him a not inconsiderable amount of anxiety during an The Empire Film Podcast #348 when he commented that writing it was “a bit like trying to play Tetris [1984] with scripts in your head” (Brooker, 2019). Just as importantly Stefan has become more and more aware of his status as a character in some sort of narrative and that his decisions are not his own. In a visit to Dr Haynes, the interactor is provided with the seemingly innocuous choice as to whether to make Stefan bite his nails or pull his earlobe. In an ostentatious display of what is commonly referred to as breaking the fourth wall, for the first time in the narrative Stefan surprising elects to reject our command no matter what we choose. With his newfound awareness or at least a growing suspicion that he is fictional, Stefan joins the list of characters in entertainment media who are possessed with a similar ability. These have tended to be divided into three groups: those who use it to comment on the narrative in which they are a part, most often comedically, in films like Annie Hall (1977) where Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) asks the audience “What do you do when you get stuck in a movie line with a guy like this behind you?”, or when Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) chides the audience at the end of Ferris Bueller’s Day

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Off (1986) with “You’re still here? It’s over go home!”, or Deadpool (2016) when the eponymous character (Ryan Reynolds) offers a metatextual commentary on his previous role as a superhero, “Please don’t make the supersuit green! Or animated!” The second group are those characters who break the fourth wall to address the audience in a moment of truthful intimacy providing an insight into their motivations, like Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) in House of Cards (Netflix, 2013–2018) or Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) at the end of Vice (2018).7 The final group, which Stefan from Bandersnatch belongs to, are those who learn that they are fictional during the course of the narrative in a process which can be, quite understandably, a traumatic one, like Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), who steps off the cinema screen in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), or Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), who learns he is the character in a novel in Stranger than Fiction (2006).8 What could be more traumatic than learning that you are fictional? Perhaps learning you are an AI as in “White Christmas”? Or learning you are a clone of yourself placed inside a video game as in “USS Callister” (04.01)? Or that you are trapped inside a sadistic reality TV show that repeats everyday as in “White Bear” (02.02)? After this visit to his doctor, Bandersnatch pursues this angle more explicitly coinciding these developments with Stefan’s exacerbating mental health problems and trauma. In what is perhaps the most memorable scene in the whole of Bandersnatch, Stefan directly calls out to us interactors beyond the frames of the screen, asking for some sort of sign to prove that we, not he, exist. Depending on your previous choices, you can select either the Netflix logo or a symbol reminiscent of the one first seen in “White Bear” and again in “Black Museum” (04.06). If you select the Netflix logo, you are forced to engage with Stefan and decide how far we wish to explain to him that even though he thinks he is a “real” person living in London in 1984, he is actually the protagonist of an interactive film produced by Netflix in 2018, leading Stefan to memorably ask “What the fuck is Netflix?” Thus, this and the other strategies Bandersnatch has employed which might be regarded as a “direct address”, which rather than necessarily being a distancing device as they are commonly understood to be, might in fact as Tom Brown, in his Breaking the Fourth Wall (2012) suggested, actually “enrich our appreciation of the fiction and the characters” (p. 18).

7  This second group is actually something of the reverse of what happens in Bandersnatch. In 2015, Stephen Colbert asked Kevin Spacey who he was talking to in those moments and the actor answered “Donald Trump”, Colbert’s answer to his own question was “The person you’re actually talking to of course are people on a ten-hour Netflix binge, sucking on boxed wine” (qtd. in THR Staff, 2015) 8  In Steven Knight’s Serenity (2019), the fisherman and part-time gigolo Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) learns that he is a character in a video game.

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Game Over? Bandersnatch has multiple endings to its narrative and interactors are left to explore them in repeated “play throughs” if they wish, none of which appear to be any more legitimate than the other. As the director Slade suggested, “The question really becomes: how do you get away from a dominant reading because the idea of a dominant reading is really antithetical to the plot” (qtd. in Reynolds 2018). In one ending the whole narrative is revealed to be taking place on a movie set akin to The Truman Show (1998); in another, Stefan goes to prison for murdering his father and the game is never released. The final and most elaborate ending, and perhaps one that is most in keeping with the series overall, and certainly its most “meta”, involves a contemporary news report informing us that the game was released to widespread acclaim but then withdrawn from sale after it was discovered that Stefan killed his father. The report describes how Colin Ritman’s daughter Pearl (Laura Evelyn) decided to remake the experience and release it on an unnamed streaming service with the implication that this is the product we have been experiencing ourselves. In fact, the decision tree we see her mapping out is an exact replica of the ones we have made for Stefan and even footage from our Bandersnatch can be seen on her computer. This moment offers us the last choice for us as interactors, throw tea over the computer or destroy it, but neither of our choices produce a result as the screen fades to black no matter our decision. As Russell McLean, a producer on Bandersnatch, noted “you think you’re choosing your ending, but are you? Black Mirror is choosing your ending” (Streitfeld, 2018). Bandersnatch is a logical extension of the Black Mirror universe not just in the way it is connected to how video games are influencing our culture explored in “Fifteen Million Merits” and “Playtest”, but also in its representation of trauma and how new technologies might be able to exacerbate problems rather than help them as in “The Entire History of You” (01.03). It was widely praised on its release but also criticised by some, writers like Matt Hills suggested that it was “significantly limited” in its portrayal of trauma and masculinity (Hills, 2019) and the nature of the choices that interactors are invited to make. Brooker himself seemed aware that the format would not be for everyone, as he reflected on in an interview with The Huffington Post, “There’s also some people that are like ‘I don’t wanna make decisions’, ‘I don’t want to do any of it’… well fuck off, then. Do something else! And then there’s some people who think ‘oh, it’s too simple as a game’ or ‘games have done this before’—well this isn’t on a gaming platform, it’s on Netflix” (qtd. in Welsh, 2019). Whether Bandersnatch succeeded on these terms or in those offered by writers like Perron and Shaul is ultimately up to those who experienced it as interactors to decide, as Todd Yellin, the VP of product at Netflix, said, “In five years, 10 years, we’ll either say, ‘Wow, Black Mirror was a real turning point for interactive content’, or we’ll be going, ‘That was another false start’” (qtd. in Streitfeld, 2018). What the future holds for interactive movies like Bandersnatch, perhaps rather ironically then, is up to us.

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Notes on Contributors

M.  Keith Booker is Professor of English at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He is the author of dozens of published essays and the author or editor of more than 50 books, including a number of volumes on science fiction and/or television. His books include Strange TV: Innovative Television Series from The Twilight Zone to The X-Files (2003), Science Fiction Television (2004), Alternate Americas: Science Fiction Film and American Culture (2005), Postmodern Hollywood: What’s New in Film and Why It Makes Us Feel So Strange (2007), The Science Fiction Handbook (2009), Star Trek: A Cultural History (2018) and The Coen Brothers’ America (forthcoming). Gerry Canavan is an associate professor in the English Department at Marquette University, specialising in twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature. An editor at Extrapolation and Science Fiction Film and Television, he has also co-edited Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction (2014) and The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction (2015) and The Cambridge History of Science Fiction (2018). His first monograph, Octavia E.  Butler, appeared in 2016  in the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series at the University of Illinois Press. Isra Daraiseh holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Arkansas. She is Assistant Professor of English at the Arab Open University in Kuwait. She is the co-author of Tony Soprano’s America: Gangsters, Guns, and Money (2017) and of the forthcoming Consumerist Orientalism: The Convergence of Arab and American Popular Culture in the Age of Global Capitalism. Ana Došen is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia, where she teaches media theory, East Asian cinema and Japanese art and culture. She holds a PhD in Arts and Media Theory from Singidunum University. She has published articles in the fields of literature, media, film and cultural studies. © The Author(s) 2019 T. McSweeney, S. Joy (eds.), Through the Black Mirror, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1

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Barbara Gurr is an associate professor with the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Reproductive Justice: The Politics of Healthcare for Native American Women (2015) and the editor of Race, Gender and Sexuality in Post-apocalyptic TV and Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). She recently completed a comprehensive examination of resources available for transgender and gender-nonconforming students at the University of Connecticut, a project which has instigated several changes across the university; an interdisciplinary, multi-authored examination of feminism in Mad Max Fury Road (anticipated publication in early 2020); and a co-edited feminist sociology research methods book (anticipated publication in early 2020). Her project, emerging from recent pipeline resistance at Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota and in Louisiana, examines multi-­ racial futures through climate fiction. Steffen Hantke is Professor of English at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea. He has edited Horror, a special topic issue of Paradoxa (2002), Horror: Creating and Marketing Fear (2004), Caligari’s Heirs: The German Cinema of Fear after 1945 (2007), American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium (2010) and, with Agnieszka Soltysik-Monnet, War Gothic in Literature and Culture (2016). He has also edited, with Rudolphus Teeuwen, Gypsy Scholars, Migrant Teachers, and the Global Academic Proletariat: Adjunct Labor in Higher Education (2007). His essays and reviews have appeared in Science Fiction Studies, Critique, StoryTelling, Literature/Film Quarterly, The Journal of Popular Film and Television and other journals. He is the author of Conspiracy and Paranoia in Contemporary American Literature (1994) and Monsters in the Machine: Science Fiction Film and the Militarization of America After World War II (2016). Henry Jenkins is the Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education at the University of Southern California. He is the author or editor of 20 books on various aspects of new media and popular culture. Among them are Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992), Science Fiction Audiences (1995), Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006), By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism (2016) and the forthcoming Comics and Stuff. Readers can follow his blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan and podcast How Do You Like It So Far? Mark R.  Johnson is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on the intersections between play and money, such as Esports, live streaming and Twitch.tv, daily fantasy sports, loot boxes, gamification and gamblification, and their impacts on contemporary leisure, labour and culture. He has published in journals including Information, Communication and Society, Media, Culture and Society, Social Studies of Science, The Sociological Review, Convergence, Games and Culture and The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research. His first monograph, The Unpredictability of Gameplay (2018), is a Deleuzean examination of luck,

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chance and randomness in game design and their impacts on video game cultures. Outside academia he is also an independent game designer, a regular games blogger and podcaster and a former professional poker player. Stuart Joy is a senior lecturer at Solent University, UK, where he teaches Film and Television. He is the co-editor of The Cinema of Christopher Nolan: Imagining the Impossible (2015) and the author of The Traumatic Screen: The Films of Christopher Nolan (2020). Jossalyn G. Larson holds PhD from Saint Louis University (2016), and serves as an assistant teaching professor with the Department of English and Technical Communication at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Larson’s research focuses on the infusion of religious rhetoric and symbology in popular culture, particularly in the fields of science fiction and horror, but also in the language used to describe scientific studies in academic papers and popular journalism. In her recent studies, Larson has investigated the use of figurative language in scientific articles in order to reveal the discursive underpinnings of the state of the conflict between science and religion, and has also published on issues of gender and religiosity in film and television, and in cultural subsects and interest groups. George F.  McHendry Jr. is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Creighton University. He holds PhD from the Department of Communication at the University of Utah (2013). McHendry’s research examines rhetorics of surveillance and security by drawing from contemporary rhetorical theory, critical/cultural studies, and performance studies. His work is published in a variety of journals, including Argumentation and Advocacy, Criticism, Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric and the Southern Communication Journal. He is the co-editor of Tracing Rhetoric and Material Life: Ecological Approaches (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). At Creighton University, McHendry teaches a variety of course including From Big Brother to Big Data: Surveillance Culture, Rhetoric and Public Life and Gender Communication. In his spare time, McHendry volunteers with a local animal rescue to foster and rehabilitate dogs before they are ready for adoption. Terence McSweeney is a senior lecturer at Solent University, UK. He is the author of The ‘War on Terror’ and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second (2014), Avengers Assemble! Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2018) and editor of American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11 (2016). Christine Muller is the Director of the Honors Program and Assistant Professor of American Studies at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, PA, USA. Her research draws on film and television to explore responses to stark cultural change during the first decades of the twenty-first century. Her first book, September 11, 2001 as a Cultural Trauma: A Case Study Through Popular

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Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), considers how September 11 functions as a cultural trauma. Her second book will focus on the mainstream emergence of artificial intelligence (AI). Soraya Murray is an interdisciplinary scholar of contemporary visual culture, with particular interest in art, film, digital media and video games. Murray is an associate professor in the Film + Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and holds a PhD in Art History and Visual Studies from Cornell University. Murray’s writings are published in Art Journal, Third Text, Film Quarterly, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, and Critical Inquiry. Her work is anthologized in Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games (2017) and in Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming (2016). Murray’s book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (2018), considers video games from a visual culture perspective, and how they both mirror and are constitutive of larger societal fears, dreams, hopes and even complex struggles for recognition. Paul Petrovic holds his PhD from Northern Illinois University and is an assistant professor at Emmanuel College. He has edited the scholarly collection Representing 9/11: Trauma, Ideology, and Nationalism in Literature, Film, and Television (2015), completed a chapter on post-9/11 Arab American subjectivities for the collection American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11 (2016), and published essays on post-9/11 literature and the Forever Wars in the journals Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction and War, Literature, and the Arts. He has scholarship in the forthcoming MLA Approaches to Teaching volumes Teaching 9/11 and Its Aftermaths and Teaching Asian North American Literature. Fran Pheasant-Kelly is MA Film and Screen Course Leader and Reader in Screen Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. Her research centres on American film, including fantasy and science fiction, terrorism and post-­ 9/11 cinema, space, science and abjection. She is the author of numerous publications including two monographs, Abject Spaces in American Cinema: Institutions, Identity and Psychoanalysis in Film (2013) and Fantasy Film Post 9/11 (Palgrave, 2013), and the co-editor of Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door (2015). She is working on a third monograph entitled The Bodily Turn in Film and Television and a co-edited collection (with Stella Hockenhull) titled Tim Burton’s Bodies. Aidan Power is a lecturer in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Contemporary European Science Fiction Cinemas and co-author of Reality Unbound: New Departures in Science Fiction Cinema (2017). A co-founder of Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, he previously taught at the University of Bremen and University College Cork.

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Sean Redmond is Professor in Screen and Design at Deakin University, Australia. He has research interests in film and television aesthetics, film and television genre, film authorship, film sound, and stardom and celebrity. He convenes the Melbourne-based Eye Tracking and the Moving Image Research group, and the Science Fiction Research group at Deakin University. He has published 12 books, including Seeing into Screens: Eye Tracking the Moving Image (2018), Liquid Space: Digital Age Science Fiction Film and Television (2017), A Companion to Celebrity (2015), The AFI Film Reader: Endangering Science Fiction Film (2015), Celebrity and the Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano: Flowering Blood (2013). With Su Holmes, he edits the journal Celebrity Studies, short-listed for best new academic journal in 2011. Andrew Schopp is Professor of English at SUNY Nassau Community College. He is the co-editor of, and contributor to, The War on Terror and American Popular Culture: September 11 and Beyond (2009). His research and scholarship focus on post-9/11 film and culture, gender/sexuality studies, surveillance theory, and fear in American/popular culture. James Smith is Reader in English Studies at Durham University. His project is a book-length study of how the digital era of state surveillance has been depicted in contemporary film and television. He has published various other works examining the interactions between the UK’s state intelligence apparatus and modern culture, and his previous book was British Writers and MI5 Surveillance, 1930–1960 (2013).

Index1

A Abuse, 27, 49, 51, 52, 75–78, 97, 138, 140n3, 141, 144, 184–186, 196, 214, 215 Addiction, 245, 248 Advertising, 46, 77, 144, 275n5 Agency, 20, 22, 29, 49, 53, 70, 80, 99, 103, 104, 106, 115, 159, 180, 181, 195, 209–211, 213–215, 219, 220, 224, 249, 252, 276, 277 Algorithm, 113, 115, 119, 121, 122, 231, 233, 236, 241 Alienation, 70, 86, 151 Allegory, 8, 20, 83–91, 195, 196, 202, 219, 225, 263 Althusser, Louis, 70, 72, 75, 76, 235 Anthology format, 7, 9 Anxiety, 1–3, 9, 11, 91, 95, 117, 126, 127, 132, 133, 143, 146, 206–209, 213, 214, 240, 241, 245, 246, 248, 253, 273, 279 Apathy, 75, 83–91 Arkangel, 2, 5, 8, 10, 11, 180, 205–215, 218, 260, 265 Artificial Intelligence (AI), 4, 58, 65, 83, 91, 95–106, 114, 180, 246, 248, 253, 254 Audit culture, 112, 114, 115, 120, 121

Augmented reality (AR), 125–134, 166, 180, 271 Authentic, 10, 105, 116, 127, 131, 132, 156, 159, 261, 274 Authentically, 155–157 Authenticity, 151–162, 225 Authority, 52, 171, 199, 220 Autonomy, 29, 53, 75, 91, 99, 132, 133, 167, 211 B Bandersnatch, 1, 3–6, 40n1, 253, 259n5, 260n7, 271–281 Bathurst, Otto, 20, 26 Bauman, Zygmunt, 21, 29, 59, 60, 60n2, 62–65, 113 Bentham, Jeremy, 21, 59 Be Right Back, 2, 4, 57–66, 79, 83, 84, 91, 96, 152, 253, 257, 260n6, 265 Big data, 112, 181 Black Museum, 2, 4, 10, 96, 106, 137, 153, 265–268, 280 Blade Runner, 51, 154n4, 160, 236 Bloom, Paul, 174, 175, 220 Bodies, 1, 4, 21, 24, 25, 43, 45, 49–51, 59, 60, 65, 66, 76, 77, 79, 96, 102, 104, 106, 111, 112, 115, 116,

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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119–121, 126–133, 144, 154, 157, 166, 172, 174, 194, 197, 199, 201, 207, 207n2, 210, 211, 214, 227, 233n2, 236, 252, 262, 263, 267 Bourdieu, Pierre, 209 Breaking the fourth wall, 279 Breaking the Fourth Wall, 280 Broadcast, 1, 7–9, 24, 26, 37, 38, 52, 83, 84, 86, 90, 152n2, 183, 185 Brooker, Charlie, 1–3, 5–11, 19, 20, 29, 40, 50, 57, 69, 70, 73–80, 83–85, 88, 91, 125–127, 137, 142, 151n1, 160n9, 161n10, 166, 168, 169, 171, 174, 186, 187, 195, 221, 222, 232–234, 236–238, 240, 245, 246, 248, 249, 254, 259n4, 261, 271, 273, 274n3, 275n5, 277–279, 281 C Cameron, David, 5, 6, 20 Capitalism, 4, 57, 133, 154, 155, 159–161, 194, 195, 203, 206, 208, 210, 231–241, 232n1, 267 Capitalist, 40, 58, 79, 80, 114, 155, 161, 208, 209, 234, 235, 236n5, 238, 240 Caruth, Cathy, 277 Cathartic, 69, 72, 73 Celebrity, 8, 24, 34, 36–38, 143, 195, 196, 263n10 Channel Four, 1, 6–10, 85 Children, 2, 79, 85, 138, 139, 145, 154, 167, 170, 205–209, 213, 214, 220, 248, 252 Climate change, 265 Clone, 66, 180, 193, 197, 280 Cold War, 3, 180, 196 Commentary, 5, 88, 91, 101, 126, 138, 141, 144, 155, 158, 159, 168, 196, 234, 246, 261, 277, 278, 280 Consciousness, 2, 4, 20–22, 28, 29, 46, 78, 95–102, 98n2, 104–106, 105n4, 137, 156, 160, 161, 217, 241, 263–265 Consumerism, 4, 60, 63–65, 79, 116, 168, 208, 212, 214, 240, 241, 246, 248, 249, 265, 273

Control, 5, 8, 11, 21, 22, 25–29, 35, 37, 39, 49, 51, 59, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 78, 95, 115, 116, 119, 121, 127, 129–132, 137, 147, 157, 159, 168, 170, 181, 199, 205–215, 219, 223, 228, 247, 266, 268, 275, 277 Controversy, 5, 184, 186 Cookie, 96, 97, 101–106, 259, 260, 263, 263n10, 264, 264n11, 266, 268, 275n5 Corporations, 182n1, 199, 203, 206, 207n2, 209–211, 213–215, 234, 240 Criminality/crime, 11, 23, 28, 49, 51, 69, 71, 73, 74, 78, 101, 105, 106, 115, 139–143, 145, 146, 217, 221–226, 228, 260, 263 Crocodile, 2, 5, 10, 11, 59, 217–228, 260 Culture, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 20, 22, 27, 45, 48, 58–60, 58n1, 63, 79, 83, 85, 91, 96, 111–114, 117–120, 126, 131, 133, 134, 144, 146, 154–156, 154n6, 159, 160, 167, 168, 172, 194, 196, 197, 202, 203, 205–206, 209, 211–213, 218, 235, 236n4, 237, 238, 281 Cyborg, 43, 44, 47, 51, 57, 63, 180 D Data, 50, 100, 112, 114, 115, 119, 120, 143, 166, 174, 181–183, 182n1, 207, 212–215, 226, 240, 241, 241n12 Death, 5, 30, 52, 61, 63, 66, 69, 71, 75, 103, 104, 132–134, 137, 142, 151, 152, 152n2, 156, 157, 159, 170, 179, 184, 185, 188, 220, 227, 247, 248, 250–253, 262, 268, 276, 278, 279 Deleuze, Gilles, 59, 115, 206–208, 211 Democracy, 169, 173, 239 Desire, 2, 24, 49, 51, 61, 70, 73, 76, 77, 101, 102, 112, 144, 155, 157, 159, 197, 199, 206, 209, 211–213, 224, 225, 246, 273, 274 Digital culture, 60, 63, 196, 203

 INDEX 

era, 20, 25, 29, 180 media, 19–30 technology, 19, 26, 35, 194, 250 Dystopia, 79, 113, 184, 189, 214, 218, 251, 267, 267n15 E Easter eggs, 10, 129, 253, 257, 260, 274n4 Ecology, 189 Emmy Awards, 4n2, 11 Emotional, 20, 57–59, 63, 64, 69, 100, 117, 138, 140, 142, 143, 146, 221, 249–251 Empathy, 26, 47, 72, 73, 77, 80, 142, 143, 145, 165, 173–175 Entertainment, 4, 37, 39, 73, 74, 77, 90, 99, 100, 125, 134, 158, 180, 183, 202, 235, 272, 273, 279 Entire History of You, The, 2, 3, 5, 10, 43–53, 100, 152, 217, 218, 223, 281 Environmentalism, 65, 182, 246 Ethical, 2, 4, 5, 74, 96, 103, 117, 133, 137, 138, 146, 156, 165, 180, 220, 261, 263, 276 Ethics, 73, 220 Ethnicity, 86 Existenz, 126, 194 F Facebook, 117, 126, 182n1, 199, 240, 241, 241n12 Fake news, 20, 29 Fans/fandom, 11, 120, 126, 185, 187, 202, 248, 257, 259, 259n4, 260, 272 Fifteen Million Merits, 4, 6, 10, 33–40, 58, 69, 100, 180, 260n7, 271, 281 Flashback, 130, 261, 263, 277, 278 Foucault, Michel, 20–22, 39, 58–60, 60n2, 114, 119 Freudian, 45, 72 Futurist, 58, 65, 66

293

G GamerGate, 126, 198n3 Gamification, 4, 33–40, 271 Gender, 63, 86, 120, 121, 126, 144, 147, 196, 200, 201, 250–252 Gendered, 102, 112, 117, 119–121, 144, 250 Genre, 8, 120, 126, 131, 167, 169, 179, 187, 189, 202, 247, 251, 253, 266, 266n14, 272, 274 Globalization, 121, 131 Goffman, Erving, 140 Governance, 111–116 Government, 44, 77, 86, 101, 114, 122, 143, 166, 179–182, 184, 185, 189, 214, 239 Grief, 57, 61, 62, 64, 225, 249, 279 H Hackers, 91, 97, 138, 141–143 Hang the DJ, 2, 4, 5, 59, 70, 96, 231–241, 257n1, 264 Hated in the Nation, 4, 5, 6n3, 10, 10n6, 11, 71, 91, 91n4, 137, 179–189, 257n1, 260 Hopkins, Katie, 171, 184 Horror film, 167, 179, 251 Humiliation, 20, 23–29, 50, 197, 198 I Identification, 74, 79, 102, 137–147, 249 Identity, 4, 8, 9, 19, 28, 63, 102, 112, 116–118, 121, 126, 131, 139, 141, 142, 147, 160, 166, 196, 199, 203, 219 Ideological, 69–80, 140, 167, 170, 196, 201, 240 Ideology, 63, 72, 75, 161, 167, 197, 200, 235 Institutions, 21, 51, 59, 70, 86, 115, 207, 214 Interactive movies, 1, 272–275, 273n2, 278, 281 Internet, the, 1, 20, 22, 23, 25, 28–30, 44, 141, 181, 184–187, 207, 213, 258n2, 265n13

294 

INDEX

J Jameson, Fredric, 160, 203, 234, 235, 237, 237n6 Jenkins, Henry, 10, 259n4, 273 Jones, Annabel, 9, 137, 202, 221, 222, 234, 237, 273 Justice criminal, 100, 137–141 retributive, 80, 138, 140, 142, 143 state, 69, 80

Misanthropy, 263 Misogyny, 51, 53, 195 Modernity, 62, 170 Morality, 118, 175, 217–228 Moral panic, 127, 132 Murder, 6, 101, 104, 105, 137, 141, 170, 174, 221, 225, 226, 258, 265 Music, 49, 117, 118, 142, 144, 153–156, 159, 195, 235, 240, 241, 261, 273–275

K Kidnap, 23–25, 141

N Nacos, Brigitte, 19, 20, 23 Narcissism, 70, 74, 238 Narrative, 7, 20, 39, 40n1, 44–46, 57, 59, 64–66, 73, 76, 78, 79, 83, 91, 96, 99, 100, 113, 121, 126, 127, 129, 131, 138, 139, 143–146, 166, 168n2, 169, 180, 181, 184, 187–189, 193–203, 208, 215, 236n4, 237, 240, 246, 251, 253, 257–259, 261, 262, 264, 265, 267n15, 271–281 National Anthem, The, 1, 3–6, 10, 11, 19–30, 33, 69, 71, 100, 194, 257, 260 Neoliberal, 33–40, 117, 195–201, 203, 209, 210 Neoliberalism, 200, 201, 209, 213, 214 Netflix, 6–10, 96, 121, 122, 139, 139n2, 147, 160, 187, 232, 241, 241n12, 271–273, 272n1, 273n2, 275, 279–281, 280n7 Networks government, 143 social, 19, 111 9/11, 20, 23, 24, 26 1984, 91 Nosedive, 3, 4, 6n3, 10, 40n1, 58, 63, 91, 111–122, 137, 248 Nostalgia, 151–162, 196, 202, 272, 274

L Labour, 5, 34–40, 85, 90, 115, 240 Lacan, Jacques, 76, 249 Live streaming, 34, 37–39 M Manipulation, 19, 22, 26, 127, 129, 133, 166 Mann, Steve, 43, 44, 46, 47 Manovich, Lev, 112, 113 Masculinity, 193–203, 281 Mathiesen, Thomas, 20–22, 26, 28, 29 Matrix, The, 126, 130, 180, 194, 234, 237 McLuhan, Marshall, 45 Media digital, 19–30, 199 mass, 4, 21, 22, 28, 166, 168 new, 3, 4, 9, 19, 21, 29, 44, 45, 113 social, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 30, 37, 48, 57–64, 66, 72, 112, 116–118, 179, 180, 184–186, 189, 194, 240 technology, 3, 4, 9, 22, 24, 44, 113 Memories, 2, 43–53, 61, 69, 71, 72, 74–76, 100, 117, 120, 122, 127–133, 152, 156, 161, 169, 171, 183, 217–228, 236, 278, 279 Men Against Fire, 4, 10, 69, 167, 180, 187, 247 Metalhead, 5, 58, 245–254, 260n7, 266n14 Military, 165, 166, 168, 168n2, 169, 171, 173, 180, 189

O Objectifies, 48, 144 Online, 4, 7, 23, 24, 26, 58, 83, 116, 117, 137, 139, 142, 143, 179, 183–187, 197, 240, 271 Orwell, George, 91, 154, 180, 246

 INDEX 

Other, the, 3, 139, 167, 168, 171, 174 P Paedophile, 139, 141, 141n4, 142, 146, 187 Pain, 46, 61, 98, 105, 152, 174, 175, 225, 249, 261, 262, 268, 279 Panopticon, 29, 59, 60, 207, 211 Parenting, 5, 205, 206, 208, 209, 214 Personhood, 96–106, 266, 267 Perversion, 69–80, 157 Planned obsolescence, 111–122 Playtest, 4, 5, 10, 40n1, 59, 76, 125–134, 194, 260, 271, 274n4, 281 Pleasure, 27, 28, 45, 48, 49, 60, 61, 71, 73, 75, 76, 144, 158, 160, 196, 212, 261, 262, 268 Politics, 4, 70, 113, 118–121, 126, 184, 196, 199, 201, 203, 247, 248 Pornography, 27, 28, 47–49, 53, 62, 138, 142–145, 211 Post-apocalyptic, 245, 249, 250, 266 Posthumanism, 65 Postmodernism, 160, 234, 235, 237 Post-traumatic stress disorder, 169 Power, 6, 19–22, 25, 28–30, 40, 44, 46, 51–53, 60, 61, 73, 75, 76, 88, 89, 104, 115, 116, 119, 128, 144, 166, 172, 173, 183, 194, 196–198, 200, 201, 202n5, 205–211, 207n2, 213–215, 219, 224, 239n10, 249, 259n3, 266, 267 Prisons, 21, 57–66, 70–72, 77, 78n1, 85n2, 112, 169, 207, 281 Progress, 5, 50, 72, 113, 133, 197, 210, 261, 266, 267, 267n15, 277 Punishment, 69–71, 73–75, 77, 78, 80, 100, 101, 105, 106, 137, 140, 174, 180, 220, 235 Q Quantified self (QS), 112–114 R Racial, 118, 126, 147, 172, 200, 201, 248, 263n9 Radicalisation, 19

295

Reagan, Ronald, 155, 159, 160 Reality augmented, 4, 125–134, 180, 271 physical, 33, 156, 160n7 virtual, 47, 125, 153, 154, 154n6, 156, 157, 159, 160, 160n8, 168, 169, 171 Reality television (TV), 51, 79, 83, 89, 184, 280 Religion, 218, 227 Repetition, 75, 130, 131, 199, 235, 237n6 Replaying, 43, 47, 48, 50, 51, 122 Retributive, 78, 80, 138, 140, 142, 143 Romance, 195n2, 234–237 S Sadistic, 27, 75, 79, 100, 133, 142, 280 Sagan, Carl, 222, 223 San Junipero, 2, 4, 4n2, 11, 59, 66, 70, 96, 151–162, 194, 194n1, 234, 248, 253, 257n1, 259n5, 260, 264, 265, 272 Satire, 4, 70, 77–79, 120, 202, 233 Science fiction, 8, 44, 45, 49, 95, 97, 137, 154, 154n5, 179, 180, 187, 189, 194, 199, 211, 233, 234, 245–247, 251, 253 Screen, 1, 2, 11, 23, 24, 26, 28, 36, 48, 51, 74, 78, 90, 112, 115, 119, 120, 132, 171, 206, 211–214, 233, 237, 249, 252, 254, 259, 275, 275n5, 277, 280, 281 Selfie, 111, 116–119 Serling, Rod, 3, 8 Sex, 20, 24, 48, 49, 52, 62, 85, 137, 138n1, 139–141, 145, 146, 155, 158, 171, 197, 210, 211, 213, 232, 233n2, 236, 237, 265 Sexual, 1, 28, 29, 48, 49, 137, 140n3, 141, 144, 147, 157, 170–172, 195–198, 210, 211, 262, 265 Sexuality, 118, 155, 157, 206 Shame, 5, 137–147, 223 Shaming, 71, 73, 83, 141, 143, 187 Shut Up and Dance, 2, 5, 10, 33, 73, 76, 91, 91n4, 137–147, 260n6 Simulacra, 112–116, 234

296 

INDEX

Simulated, 4, 63, 102, 126, 127, 133, 152n2, 154, 155, 157, 159, 195, 233 Simulation, 34, 36, 39, 103, 125–130, 132, 133, 152, 153, 156, 157, 160n7, 169, 171, 194, 233, 233n2, 234, 236–238 Snowden, Edward, 22, 180–183, 182n1 Social media, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 30, 37, 48, 57–64, 66, 72, 96, 112, 116–118, 179, 180, 184–186, 189, 194, 240 Society, 1–11, 19–22, 34, 36, 39, 59, 60, 70, 71, 73–75, 77, 79, 101, 112, 114, 115, 131, 138, 140, 144, 147, 173, 180, 183, 189, 206–210, 213–215, 220, 240, 246, 247, 250, 251, 258, 267, 267n15 Star Trek, 193, 196, 197, 202, 233, 258, 259, 259n4 Stigma, 137–147 Streaming, 7, 9, 34, 37–39, 100, 139, 147, 273, 281 Surveillance, 5, 20–22, 24, 28–30, 51, 58–62, 60n2, 71, 83, 111, 112, 114–117, 119, 120, 179–184, 182n1, 187, 189, 205–214, 207n2, 240 Synoptic, 20–22, 26, 28 T Technological, 1, 2, 5, 6n3, 34, 37, 40, 51, 69, 79, 97, 116, 125–127, 131, 133, 141n4, 153n3, 161, 165, 166, 170, 171, 173, 179, 198, 199, 206, 211, 212, 218, 219, 228, 246, 247, 258, 260, 264, 266, 267 Technologies, 2–5, 8, 9, 11, 19, 22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 33–37, 40, 40n1, 43–47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 57–60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 71, 79, 91n4, 95–97, 100, 104, 106, 113, 114, 119, 125–128, 131–134, 138, 141, 151–153, 156, 160, 165, 169, 171, 179–181, 182n1, 183, 187, 189, 193, 194, 196, 202, 202n5, 205–214, 207n2, 217, 218, 223,

226, 228, 234, 239, 241n12, 245–248, 250, 252, 253, 260, 266–268, 281 advances in, 65, 127, 128, 131, 133, 138, 141n4, 166, 171, 245 fear/anxieties of, 5, 9, 125, 133, 206, 213, 245, 246 Television (TV), 1, 2, 4n2, 5–7, 7n4, 10, 19, 21, 22, 24, 26, 28, 34, 36–38, 40, 49, 65, 74, 79, 146, 168, 183, 193, 254 Terminator, the, 66, 96, 180, 248 Terrorism, 19–30, 183 Tibbetts, Carl, 70, 71, 75–79 Torture, 24, 27, 28, 69, 72–74, 77, 79, 119, 171, 174, 262–266 Toxic, 126, 193–203, 267 Transgression, 27, 79, 186, 233 Transhumanism, 4, 266–268 Trauma, 59, 69, 99, 207n2, 208, 221, 271–281 Traumatic, 70, 75, 130, 222, 277–280 Truman Show, The, 194, 234, 281 Trump, Donald, 6, 77, 85, 88–90, 195, 196, 240, 248, 280n7 Truth, 34, 40, 45, 46, 52, 75, 91, 145, 171–173, 217–228, 249 Twilight Zone, the, 2, 3, 8, 257 U Upload, 2, 25, 26, 102, 116, 117, 156, 264 USS Callister, 2, 4, 10, 11, 40n1, 58, 66, 73, 96, 105n4, 193–203, 257n1, 259, 259n5, 260, 264, 280 Utopia, 113, 265–268 Utopian, 58, 59, 65, 132, 153, 154n5, 156, 157, 159–161, 160n8, 161n10, 169, 194, 195, 200 V Video games, 10, 11, 35, 125–127, 129–132, 156, 158, 168, 260, 260n7, 271, 272, 274–277, 280, 280n8, 281 Vigilante, 141

 INDEX 

Virtual reality (VR), 47, 125–127, 132, 153, 154, 154n6, 156, 157, 159, 160, 160n8 Voyeurism, 28, 53, 78, 100 W Waldo Moment, The, 4, 6, 6n3, 8, 33, 39n1, 71, 83, 84, 86, 88–91, 100, 248, 257 War, 3, 28, 114, 166, 173, 181, 185 Wearable, 43–47, 52, 131, 132, 206 White Bear, 2, 5, 6, 10, 11, 58, 69–80, 83, 84, 100, 137, 180, 187, 194, 253, 254, 258, 260, 280

297

White Christmas, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 58, 62, 66, 91n4, 95–106, 137, 152, 260, 261, 273, 280 Y YouTube, 24, 182n1 Z Zed-Eye, 100, 104 Žižek, Slavoj, 70, 74–77 Zombie, 158, 166–169