Black Mirror and the Fear of Technology
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Janssen, 11926430/ 1 Master thesis Television and Cross-Media Culture Black Mirror and the Fear of Technology Pim Janssen 11926430 First reader: Dhr. Dr. S.M. Dasgupta Second reader: Dhr. Dr. J.A. Teurlings Date: 28-05-2018 Word Count: 19370 Janssen, 11926430/ 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 3 INTRODUCTION 4 CHAPTER 1: “ARKANGEL” AND THE TECHNOLOGIES OF PARENTAL CONTROL 10 1.1 “ARKANGEL” 10 1.2 PARENTAL CONTROL DUE TO FEAR 11 1.3 “ARKANGEL” PREMEDIATING FEAR 15 1.4 AESTHETICS 18 CHAPTER 2: “NOSEDIVE”, PUBLIC APPROVAL, AND ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA 21 2.1 “NOSEDIVE” 21 2.2 PUBLIC APPROVAL AND ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA 22 2.3 “NOSEDIVE” PREMEDIATING FEAR 28 2.4 AESTHETICS 31 CHAPTER 3: “CROCODILE” AND THE FEAR OF SURVEILLANCE AND TRACEABILITY 33 3.1 “CROCODILE” 33 3.2 FEARS OF PRIVACY INVASION AND TRACEABILITY 34 3.3 “CROCODILE” PREMEDIATING FEAR 39 3.4 AESTHETICS 42 CONCLUSION 45 BIBLIOGRAPHY 49 Janssen, 11926430/ 3 ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on how Black Mirror premediates fears of the effects of technology around issues of censorship, social media, and surveillance. This is based on Richard Grusin’s concept of premediation, which he uses as a tool to explain how a familiar underlying level of anxiety can prevent the shock of future trauma’s. Grusin’s notion of premediation focuses on the effect being beneficial to the State and how it can be used to control its citizens. In the case of this thesis, Grusin’s notion is reimagined to do the opposite; not to spark fear about future events to control the masses, but to spark fear about dystopian futures to criticize the amount of control being exercised (through technology). Through a textual and visual analysis of three different episodes (“Arkangel”, “Nosedive”, and “Crocodile”) and their accompanying themes of parental censorship, social media dependency, and surveillance through data traceability. Each chapter focuses on a different episode, as to have a broader grasp of Black Mirror’s premediative qualities. After summarizing the plot, the subsequent themes and their tradition of fear are discussed. The two are then combined to analyze if any of the fears and issues with the themes can be detected or suggested in the specific episodes and their aesthetics. The conclusion drawn from this analysis is that, through different plots and imagery about the possibility of the dystopian futures, the series attempts to spark a discussion about these impending issues. The episodes always seem to keep their foundation in reality to make the audience recognize how the issue is similar to something going on in current day society. The aesthetics of the three episodes definitely strengthen the premediative message, as well. This is done through low-fi recognizable imagery, vast contrasts between the image and the storyline to reinforce the message, and cold and violent imagery to strengthen the seriousness of the problem. Still, future studies could further analyze the effectivity of this reimagined use of premediation on top of analyzing more episodes and doing an audience research to actually see people’s reaction to the premediated messages instead of purely basing it off of theory. Janssen, 11926430/ 4 INTRODUCTION “Someone I know actually decided to delete his Facebook account after watching this episode,” my friend told me after we finished watching a Black Mirror episode called “Nosedive”. It is apparent that the series plays into people’s fears they may have when it comes to technological developments and the influence it has on society. The title Black Mirror refers to a telephone screen turned off; a black mirror. This can be connected to Charlie Brooker’s vision for the television series, as it is an anthology series about the dark side of technology and a reflection of society depicted in dystopian visions. Due to the program’s concept it often emanates a dark and satiric tone that invites the audience to reflect on societal and technological developments. This reflective quality and the dark stories and imagery have caused audiences to critically asses the issues addressed in the episodes. Since Black Mirror is an anthology series it has the ability to cover a broad scape of issues, as every episode can have a very different theme or discussion. The series is often categorized as a thriller, meaning the issues addressed in the episodes are often depicted through the use of chillingly imaginable plots and visuals. It is likely that the terrifying nature of the show is more successful in planting a seed of fear in people’s minds in order to have them realize and contemplate on how they want to approach technology and its growing societal influence. Whereas the series used to air on British television channel Channel 4, it now has a larger reach and audience after Netflix purchased the rights of the series in 2015 and started streaming new episodes from 2016 onward. This lifts the message of technology’s dark side to a digital and global level. The Netflix episodes continue this underlying eeriness, which could be seen as a premediative tool meaning that, in the words of Richard Grusin, it prevents “citizens of the global mediasphere from experiencing […] systemic or traumatic shock” (2). Grusin illustrates this concept though the events of 9/11 and the repercussions. The term shares characteristics with ‘remediation’, which he claims to be the way media correct or modernize earlier mediums (1). An example of this could be how older films are remediated into newer television shows. Premediation, on the other hand, corrects media before instead of after the fact. The two concepts do coincide, for Grusin utters that “[p]remediating the future entails remediating the past” (8). In other words, by keeping a constant subtle layer of a familiar fear, citizens may be less traumatized or shocked if the fear becomes a reality (2). Premediation Janssen, 11926430/ 5 can therefore be seen as a preemptive procedure. Regarding 9/11 he states that “premediation characterizes the mediality of the first decade of the twenty-first century as focused on the cultural desire to make sure that the future has already been pre-mediated before it turns into the present” (4). In the example of post-9/11 mediation it is clarified that premediation is to prevent the unexpected shock the media and the US citizens experienced at the time of the tragic event (4). In this view media has now become ‘self-aware’ in the sense that it alters whatever they are setting out to transmit. This can be connected to an important part of Grusin’s theory; affect and mediality. This means that, as Grusin says, the focus is on what the media does instead of what it represents (7). What the media does after the case of 9/11 is that “post-9/11 mediality mobilizes affect according to a logic or trajectory of premediation that resembles, or serves to remind us of, or traces its origins to, the event of 9/11” (Grusin 10). That in combination with “the repetitive structure of the everyday built into televisual programming, the repeated premediation of future disasters or catastrophes works to guard against the recurrence of a media trauma like 9/11” (Grusin 16). Grusin uses examples from cinema to explain this affective post-9/11 reaction. One of his examples explains how War of the Worlds by Steven Spielberg does not obviously discuss 9/11, but does sensationalize the affect and theme of a post-catastrophic situation (18). The science fiction movie references a disastrous future that leaves the city it takes place in rubble similar to the aftermath of the events of 9/11. Since War of the Worlds was not the only disaster movie to come out since the events a repetition of this tragic imagery emerges in people’s daily lives. Grusin claims that, besides these films, the strongest premediative exhibition can be found in the media coverage in the year after the events of 9/11 (41). The anthrax scare, is used to exemplify this exhibition, as the danger of a number letters containing deadly bacteria sent to a couple of organizations seems to be minute in comparison to “the magnitude of the AIDS epidemic, or to genocides in Darfur and elsewhere, which continue to receive only sporadic coverage in the US media, [though] the post-9/11 news media devoted an inordinate amount of attention to premediating potential attacks,” (Grusin 41) such as the ‘anthrax attacks’. This shows that instead of just commenting on what had happened, the media is now also commenting on what could conceivably happen next. Grusin exemplifies that in the case of the Bush administration’s misleading campaign for the War against Iraq the public was fooled into blatantly supporting the war straight after the events on the 11th of September (42). Premediation thus also has a governmental function. In this case, “by premediating the war Janssen, 11926430/ 6 before it ever happened, the formal structure of US new media effectively supported US military doctrine, participating in the pre-emptive remediation of a future (premediated) war” (Grusin 45). Even though Grusin uses this theory to discuss media after the 9/11 terrorist events it could also be a useful tool to analyze the fear Black Mirror exudes. Even though there are distinct differences between a horrible non-fictional event and an eerie fictional television series, premediation is, as Grusin claims, “not about getting the future right,” (46) but about preventing possible future events. However, in Grusin’s case the premediative effect is related to the state and government control. He explains this using Michel Foucault’s idea of ‘governmentality’, which holds that there is a dominant form of surveillance practiced by the state to be able to control its citizens (73).