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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). Premediation, then, is a way to control the security that society desires and strengthen the power of the state at the same time (Grusin 125). Grusin states that this “proliferation of media transactions or interactions […] help (as Foucault says of governmentality and the state) to ‘vitalize’ the political formation of securitization” (126). This vitalization of political securitization is a reaction to (what seems to be) a threatening media environment, which is counteracted by preemptive media “maintaining low levels of affective intensity that provide a kind of buffer or safe space” (Grusin 126). Grusin uses the US Air Force as example of the secure safe place premediation creates, because their branding campaign creates a fear by acknowledging the possibility of them becoming a reality while also assuring that they are the power that will protect the public from these fears (50 & 51). The anxiety for future terrorist attacks that Grusin writes about can then also be traded with the fear of technology and its influence on people’s daily lives.

Premediation can therefore also be used as a tool to display what Black Mirror does, for the episodes include unnerving possible future events tied to technology in a way that sparks conversation among viewers. Conversation about the issues dealt with in the anthology can be seen as part of the prevention, as creating awareness is the first step to realizing the problems people may encounter due to developments in the technological field. In this case the premediative qualities of the series may not necessarily be underlying but can nonetheless still be preventative of imminent complications tied to the role of technology in society. Black Mirror, being a highly reflexive series, combines premediation and awareness as a form of preemption. That is not the only difference between, what can be seen as, Brookers form of premediation and Grusin’s concept of premediation. Whereas, Grusin’s idea of premediation Janssen, 11926430/ 7 is a way to control an ideology of increased security to reinforce the power of the state, Black Mirror has nothing to do with the state. If anything, Brooker’s series goes against the security the state tries to reach through premediative media. The content of the episodes warn people about how technology has the ability to create capitalist surveillance and ideology conditioned by anxiety. The relationship between these two ways of premediation is fascinating, for they are similar yet have completely varied aims. On the one hand, it can be a tool of the state that uses surveillance to control the public, while on the other hand in Black Mirror the premediation can also be used to critique the state’s use of technology to regulate surveillance.

Grusin stresses the importance of the “interactions among humans, technology, and media,” (100) and how “humans co-evolve with technology and always have” (92). Technology therefore has an important role in the concept of Grusin’s premediation as it has caused people to be connected to media at an almost constant level through smart phones, laptops, and other devices. This can then, in turn, make for an even more constant layer of low level fear. This is how technology can be used to premediate and control the masses. In the case of Black Mirror, there is an interesting reversal of this notion, for the series premediates the dangers of these technologies how they control people’s daily lives. This serves as an interesting oppositional use of Grusin’s concept to go against that same concept, which could be symbolized by fighting fire with fire.

For Grusin premediation takes on a sort of Big Brother type role of reminding the public of their surveillance, which should make them feel safer. However, Black Mirror battles this Big Brother type surveillance, by displaying its consequential dystopian futures. The results of the affect that comes out of the two different manners of premediation is then also dissimilar. The one is understated and aims to numb people for shock, whereas the other is fear-driven, which causes a more intense affective reaction, and aims to raise awareness among people. Before deleting Facebook, my friend’s friend would have used the medium on a daily basis as people “are determined not to miss anything [and] are always in high alert when we pay continuous partial attention” (Grusin 130). There is an automatism that upholds this “artificial sense of constant crisis [which] is more typical of continuous partial attention than it is of multi-tasking” (Grusin 130). This automatism (strengthened by technologies such as smart phones) is numbing in the sense that people are part of a constant flow of low level calamity. Janssen, 11926430/ 8

Before my friend’s friend deleted Facebook, the medium was a conditioned part of their daily live. This means that they probably did not think twice about using its services. According to Grusin, “all of these everyday technologies help to train the human sensorium to protect us from the shocks of modernity” (104). He explains that “[s]ocially networked media technologies, like other practices of mediation, help to maintain the security regime both by enabling or encouraging mobility […] and by promoting or proliferating everyday media transactions” (125). After watching Black Mirror, this changed, as premediation was turned around and used to highlight how the same services could also be detrimental to the person’s idea of security and the regime around it. So, where the state uses Facebook and other technologies to maintain the public though surveillance, Brooker uses premediation to concretize and critique the dangers of the control the state has over the public through surveillance via technology.

It is not strange for society to fear technological developments, for this is a common matter that even has a name; technophobia. The rapidly changing face of the technological landscape, as Emilio Mordini states, “challenge basic implicit and explicit moral assumptions and legal norms” (546). He continues by claiming that this creates a sense of discomfort in people, as they cannot handle the rapid transformations and naturally question its safety (546). The basic moral assumptions that are challenged then incite an unsure attitude to how the developments are going to affect standards in human lives and lawmaking (Mordini 544). It can be hard to keep up with the newest technologies and how they may affect people’s norms and values. Mordini believes this is because people cannot get used to the integration of new technologies anymore and therefore cannot make sense of the meanings and accessory risks that come with these technological developments (546). He claims that this tradition of anxiety based on technology has been part of the human psyche even since the Baroque age (Mordini 546). These risks may include areas such as privacy, censorship, surveillance, and online relationships. People that grow up with these new technologies may not initially see these issues, in which case Black Mirror takes on the role of whistleblower in the shape of television entertainment. This is where the premediative aspect comes into play as well, for the series makes the audience aware of the risks that accompany certain technological advances. Instead of this form of premediation numbing the viewer for these technophobic fears, it uses these fears to spark a more intense affective reaction in order to expose how the dangers of these technologies and their governmentality. Janssen, 11926430/ 9

This thesis is asks: How does Black Mirror premediate fears of the effects of technology around issues of censorship, social media, and surveillance? Each of these three issues is tied to a different episode of the anthology series. Consequently, there will be three chapters that set out to examine how Black Mirror premediates the fear that relates to the episode. To do so, each chapter sets out to critically define the concept which covers the theme of the episode. The textual analysis of the episode will include a close reading of the plot as well as the stylistic elements of the episode in order to connect it to how the show premediates the specific fear and is critical of the technologies behind them. This will uncover how these fears about premediative technology are tackled with the use of premediation itself.

Chapter one will be based on an analysis of the second episode of Black Mirror’s fourth season; “Arkangel”. The episode revolves around a mother terrified to lose her daughter and has the child implanted with a new technology that tracks her child and can censor any images or sounds deemed inappropriate. This can be connected to the issue of censorship, especially in the case of parental supervision. The chapter will set out to argue how “Arkangel” premediates the fear of (parental) censorship that comes with technological development.

Chapter two is intended to analyze the first episode of the series’ third season; “Nosedive”. This episode follows a young woman who lives in a world where people rate others based on their online and in-person communication. This rating seriously effects people’s statuses in society in a way that a certain score is needed to qualify for, for example, accommodation. This second chapter looks at how the fear of social media and its growing importance in modern day and future societies is premediated by “Nosedive”.

The third chapter will have the third episode of the fourth season, “Crocodile”, as the main source of analysis. “Crocodile” is about a woman whose criminal past comes up when a law enforcer uses a machine on her that can read memories and visualize them on a screen. The issue here is the misuse or anxiety of surveillance and privacy either by anyone including the government. How does this episode premediate the anxiety of the law or other people invading on someone’s privacy as a means of surveillance? The answer to this question, along with the findings in the other two chapters, will clarify how Black Mirror premediates these fears of technology through its plot as well as visual representation.

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CHAPTER 1: “ARKANGEL” AND THE TECHNOLOGIES OF PARENTAL CONTROL

1.1 “ARKANGEL”

As claimed before, Black Mirror is known for its controversial and critical view on technology and society. The episode “Arkangel”, which is the second episode of the fourth season, is a fitting example of this view. The episode, released on the 29th of December in 2017, is directed by acclaimed actor and director Jodie Foster. She directed a story about an overprotective mother, which is a very relatable topic with parents. It would not be a Black Mirror episode if this did not turn this issue into something intense and eerie, yet frighteningly relatable with regard to modern technology. Marie, a single mother, almost loses her child at birth, which causes her to be extremely protective of her daughter, Sara, as she is growing up. When a new experimental technology called “Arkangel” allows parents to track their children and censor any upsetting images or sounds, she is quick to sign up for the program. The implant that allows her to do this also gives her the ability to check on Sara’s health on top of being able to monitor her location and the censoring function. While at first the technology censors intimidating dogs and pornography, it falters when Sara’s grandfather goes into cardiac arrest and blurs the image and sound for being distressing. It causes her to be bullied for not having experience with any stress and therefore being at an underdeveloped mental state for her age. Sara starts rebelling against it and Marie decides to deactivate the application, which has already become controversial and on the verge of becoming illegal. After this Sara’s friends show her everything she has been ‘missing’, such as pornographic and violent imagery. A couple of years later she is out with friends and lies to her mother about being at her friend’s place. When she does not come home on time, Marie finds out her daughter is not where she says she is and reactivates the app to find out she is having intercourse with a guy. This causes Marie to become suspicious of Sara and starts using the app again, though which she also finds out her daughter trying drugs and confronts the guy who handed Sara the drugs. On top of that, the medical monitoring shows that Sara may be pregnant. Marie slips a contraceptive in Sara’s drink to get rid of the pregnancy, but after she throws up she notices the box and figures out her mother has been monitoring her again. She beat Marie with the tablet used to control the app but does not see how bad she is hurting her due to the censoring of violent imagery. After the tablet breaks, she realizes what she has done and flees. Ironically, the Janssen, 11926430/ 11 extreme measures Marie has taken to not lose her daughter end up being the reason she ‘loses’ her daughter.

This technology is an idea of what the future of parental control my become, if people do not combat this. Black Mirror takes a current issue and plays it out a tad more developed and dystopic to wake the public from their numbness by using the same concept that is used to make them numb; premediation. Black Mirror sets out to start a mindful conversation about topics like how technology has invaded parenting to gain surveillance, but how the same thing can turn out to be negative. Control and censorship are a clear part of parenting technologies, only “Arkangel” shows a different side of how these technologies may develop if people are conditioned and not mindful about the use of them. The subsequent paragraph sets out to discuss some of the major issues that are connected to these technologies and their anxious motives.

1.2 PARENTAL CONTROL DUE TO FEAR

Developments in technology have created many opportunities for parents to control their children and censor what they can or cannot watch. However, this is not a very recent change. Stephen Groening explains the emergence of Raymond Williams’ idea of ‘mobile privatization’, which entails that technologies promise “new freedoms and forms of mobility in the seclusion of the domestic space” (1332). This concept displays how people are becoming more mobile while being in the privacy of their own home. For example, in the case television this means that people are able to watch images from afar in the comfort of their own house. Groening pulls this concept to a more modern perspective as he claims that cellular phones now also are adopted “as television platforms [which] presages a changing role for television in the public/private divide” (1333). Public and private spheres are merging, as people use portable technologies that allow them to take their private lives with them in public. This allows people to control their private lives in areas they would not have been able to before. These new technologies, thus strengthen the amount of control people can exercise. The notion of parenting is always about control. Even before the smartphones and tablets, technologies already gave way for parents to go further in this control. This would then take away from the privacy of the children in question. An example of this is the nanny- cam; a hidden camera to secretly watch the children and anyone with them. It is called the nanny-cam because this way the parents can also check on the nanny, in fear of what the nanny could possibly do to their child. On the other hand, it also allows them to constantly Janssen, 11926430/ 12 monitor their children and punish them for what they saw on the footage. This kind of parenting is often referred to as helicopter parenting, as the parents ‘hover’ over their children and watch them on a distance to be able to prevent anything bad from happening to them. Laura M. Padilla-Walker and Larry J. Nelson analyzed helicopter parenting and claim that it is a form of over-involved parenting that “represents parenting that is high on warmth/support, high on control, and low on granting autonomy” (1178). They state that the fear behind this has ties to “certain forms of psychological control that are driven by parental separation anxiety […] and are specifically aimed at limiting adolescents’ increasing separation and independence” (1178). The overprotective attitude can become a burden rather than something positive, especially since technologies offer easier way to contact, track, and check on their children. This idea of “[o]versolicitous parenting has repeatedly been linked with maladaptive outcomes (e.g. anxiety-related problems, social withdrawal/shyness, peer difficulties)” (Padilla-Walker and Nelson 1178). Yet, this is because the parents fear that their child may land in distressing situations where something terrible might even happen to them. It is understandable that parents want to protect their children from any physical, emotional, and moral threats, but, according to Padilla-Walker and Nelson, “it appears that parental oversolicitous behavior is a problem because it reflects parental involvement, or control, when it is either developmentally or contextually inappropriate” (1179).

Especially in the case of older children that are close to reaching adolescence, as research has shown that psychological control by parents can negatively affect the parent- child relationship and lead to them participating in hazardous behavior (Padilla-Walker and Nelson 1179). On top of that a study confirmed that children with parents who are controlling in both behavior and psychology are more likely to be anxious, depressed, impulsive, have a lower self-image, and tend to be less close to their parents (Padilla-Walker and Nelson 1179). These issues may only surface later in life, though that does not take away the severity of the problem. The problem is that helicopter parenting is done out of sheer concern for the success and health of the children, though it can often end up detrimental to the success or health of the children. The role that technology plays in this grants parents countless other ways to carry out this type of parenting. That relation between parenting and technology may then also strengthen the possible negative outcomes of oversolicitous parenting brought up by Padilla- Walker and Nelson. This is taken from the idea that these technologies may cause parents to monitor their children even more in addition to granting them even less autonomy. Janssen, 11926430/ 13

An example of this may be the V-Chip, as discussed by Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist and Ibo van de Poel. They explain the V-Chip to be “an electronic device that can be built into television sets to block programs that are violent or otherwise deemed unsuitable to children” (286). They add another interesting facet to control-based parenting, which is the issue of responsibility. The reasoning behind the ways of parenting analyzed by Padilla-Walker and Nelson is very much based on the feeling of responsibility parents have towards the health and success of their offspring. Technologies may help parents with these protective responsibilities, though this also allows them to easily become overprotection. This is where there is an interesting overlap between Padilla-Walker and Nelson’s analysis and Fahlquist and van de Poel’s analysis, which is a the a core point of discussion within this issue explained by Fahlquist and van de Poel when they mention that “[t]he tendency to want to protect one’s child is quite natural and it is likely that parents will use available technology if they can afford it. It is, of course, another question whether it is right or wrong to do it” (286). In the case of the V-Chip they differentiate between the parents using it to have more control and responsibility over what their children watch, but on the other hand it may also be away to give away responsibility to the V-Chip instead of exercising it themselves (291). This means that technologies may increase the level of control and security parents implement, but also take part of the responsibility of this control and security away from the parents. In a way, if the V-Chip were to be a part of helicopter parenting, the parents would be in constant control even if they are giving away part of the control and responsibility to a technology. This not only causes the children to possibly disconnect with their parents due to the amount of control they are introducing, but also because the parents themselves disconnect with a certain responsibility that is now controlled by a technology. Ironically enough one of the reasons behind the invention of the V-Chip is “to help the child grow, to protect her from harm and to not let fear and anxiety affect her negatively. To watch violent movies may cause fear and inhibit the child’s development” (Fahlquist and van de Poel 296 and 297). This is where the two different theories on parenting break, for Nelson and Padilla-Walker believe that excessively protective parenting can actually be the cause of the anxiety and negative affect the V-Chip tries to battle. Where van de Poel and Fahlquist claim that “children who watch violent programs become fearful and anxious to a greater extent than children who do not consume violent media,” (297) Padilla-Walker and Nelson provide evidence for the argument that “as children get older […] high levels of both support and control have been found to predict risky peer context and problem behaviors” (1179). The divergence of these two points makes the issue harder to clarify and formulate a strong solution, however if we Janssen, 11926430/ 14 are to believe that the V-chip “is a way of increasing parent’s control, i.e. to give them the opportunity to exercise their responsibility,” (Fahlquist and van der Poel 298) this goes hand in hand with Nelson and Padilla-Walkers findings that “[t]here is emerging evidence suggesting that, indeed, psychological and behavioral control are related to negative outcomes” (1179). Technologies like the V-Chip could amount to parents handing off a part of their responsibility to said technology. This then creates an even greater level of parental control over censorship, surveillance, and consequential behavior. Yet, it remains vital to keep in mind “how particular technologies affect responsibility” (Fahlquist and van der Poel 299).

Responsibility taken out of parents’ hands can also be a fearful experience, as there is a certain control that cannot be fully supervised by them, though they may still feel liable for letting go of that responsibility. Dallas attorney Joe Zopolsky states in this case of censorship and responsibility “parental or like figures are charged with the awesome responsibility of monitoring Internet user by those in their charge” (2). Zopolsky addresses the issue of censorship as well, but instead of television he zooms in on the internet. This shows the broadness of parental control and, thus, how much the life of children can be monitored in modern society. Whereas before parents found ways, such as the nanny-cam, it is now much easier for them to do so. Even though Zopolsky believes that this censorship may sometimes be a necessary protective tool, he does realize that children raised “in a sheltered environment […] will always cry for more protection, and request that more decisions be made on their behalf [while] [o]thers champion the freedom to make their own choices” (8). The latter can be connected to Padilla-Walker and Nelson’s point made about children rebelling against their parents’ controlling behavior.

In these cases, there is no initial fear about the technologies. Contrastingly, there seems to be an initial acceptance of the technologies as they can be used to enlarge the range of parents’ monitoring and controlling behaviors. Even more so since parents seem to feel responsible to go these lengths to gain control over their children. The internet ‘filters’ and the V-Chip are some of the examples of the ways parents exercise their ‘helicopter parenting’. Strangely, as opposed to Emilio Mordini’s statement on the history of initial anxiety of technology (546), these parents are not afraid of these technologies, but about what may happen to their children if they were to not make use of them. They fear losing their child or any negative affect they may encounter when encountering what their parents prevent them from coming across. Zopolsky states this is because some parents “distrust strangers, generally fear things unknown, and raise their children in a sheltered environment” (8). That Janssen, 11926430/ 15 is what technologies like internet ‘filters’ and the V-Chip do; they shelter children from the real world. As Padilla-Walker and Nelson stated this sheltering looks like “[an aspect] of ‘good’ parenting, [which] leads to the question of when and whether a parent can give too much of a ‘good’ thing” (1178). This overprotective “psychological control and behavioral control appear to be destructive to children” (Padilla-Walker and Nelson 1888).

The concept of ‘mobile privatization’ displays that people are able to watch the outside from the comfort of their home, but also watch their home from any public space. This allows parents to monitor and consequently control their children. This overprotective attitude can be detrimental to the children, for it can cause social, anxiety, and peer problems (Padilla-Walker and Nelson 1178). Most parents will use the technologies available to them to protect their children from possible threats to their physical and mental well-being. The V-chip, for example, is used to monitor and limit what children can watch on TV. This poses the problem of the parents putting a technology in control of a specific responsibility. Besides the maladaptive outcomes of this sheltering behavior, the parents also have to blindly trust the technology to work for them while they are absent. Ironically so, both the older and more newly developed technological measures may lead to the detriment they were primarily trying to shield their offspring from; damage to their well-being. The following paragraph will connect the previous two paragraphs to analyze how the episode premediates the parental fears of technology.

1.3 “ARKANGEL” PREMEDIATING FEAR

There is a clear interconnectivity between the Black Mirror episode and the issues on oversolicitous parenting and the role technology plays in this. The bigger issue of overprotective parenting is the cause of dysfunctionality in children in the form of anxiety, social defects, and peer problems (Padilla-Walker and Nelson 1178). This is a very clear theme in the plot of “Arkangel”, for Marie’s controlling parenting causes Sara to eventually lie to her and have peer problems in the way that she hangs out with the wrong people. Marie clearly would not have wanted her daughter to do drugs and lie to her about where she is, which shows that this kind of parenting can have ironically twisted results. Marie definitely cares for her daughter, so she is loving but high on control, which makes her style of parenting fit with the description of ‘helicopter parenting’ (Padilla-Walker and Nelson 1178). This strict control and censorship causes Sara to stab her hand with a pencil to see what blood Janssen, 11926430/ 16 looks like, which immediately gets blurred out for being disturbing and consequently shields her from seeing how bad she is injuring herself. This is exactly what Zopolsky mentioned in the case of children growing up in a highly sheltered setting; some children may rebel against their parents to gain freedom over their own decisions (8). From this it is clear that Sara has had enough of her mother/the technology deciding what she is able or unable to see, which is the cause of her hurting herself. This may even be seen as a larger symbolic image in parenting and how, as Padilla-Walker and Nelson claim, heavy parental control can negatively affect the child and lead to them to exercise harmful behavior (Padilla-Walker and Nelson 1179). “Arkangel” uses this plotline to critique how their excessive controlling behavior and surveillance through premediation. Even in an aesthetic sense of the image, Marie, while thinking she has control over the situation, watches her child slip into rebellion and harmful behavior (Figure 1). In the shot she is in the dark background watching it happen.

Figure 1 Sara stabbing her hand with a pencil from "Arkangel" https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/mbb55y/breaking-down-the-cryptic-new-black-mirror-teaser-vgtrn Without the ‘helicopter parenting’ in addition to the technology that strengthens it, this horrific event may never have happened. The shock this image induces can be seen as causing an affective (premediative) reaction in the parents in the audience. This premediative strategy therefore has the ability to spark a discussion about how far one can use technology to control and surveil over their offspring and if it may actually be more detrimental than it may initially seem. The outcome of the dystopian future regarding parenting technology coincides with Padilla-Walker and Nelsons research as they claim that children with parents who are controlling in behavior and psychology tend to be more prone to impulsive behavior and being more distanced from their parents (1179). The connection between that evidence and the episode is that Sara ends up impulsively trying sexual acts and drugs on top of ending up running away from home and distancing herself from her mother. This can be taken as a criticism on the role of technology in parenting, but also as a general criticism on ‘helicopter Janssen, 11926430/ 17 parenting’ outside of the technological tools available to strengthen this type of control. According to Alex Brannan, who reviewed the episode for CineFiles, the episode uses the neurotic form of parenting and accessory technology to premediate the fear of losing one’s child (Brannan).

Whereas the previous issue was more based on parents, there also are some critiques that are based more on technologies that are evidently tied to Fahlquist and van der Poel’s views on censorship and responsibility. They believe that it is possible that technologies take control over certain responsibilities that parents can then disregard, however the technologies may not always recognize certain issues parents would (299). There is a very clear moment in “Arkangel” that criticizes the responsibility parents give away, through which they blindly rely on the quality of the technology. In this case, the implant Sara has is able to censor any disturbing images and sounds to prevent her from experiencing any trauma, very much like Grusin’s concept of premediation as a numbing instrument in a way. Marie has the ability to switch this mode on and off, however when the mode is on the technology has control over what it censors and what it does not censor. Now, to premediate the danger of this the show has a shocking but appropriate example of how the protective measure is controlled by an unfeeling technology that is seems to calculate censorship in a very ‘black and white’ manner. In this example the technology approaches Sara’s grandfather going into cardiac arrest very unsympathetically in the way that it sees it as a shocking image that could be traumatic and does not differentiate between censoring the person being her grandfather or a random strange man on television (Figure 2). Sara is so shielded from the world and what goes on that she just carries on with her day, which almost causes her grandfather to pass away.

Figure 2 Sara's grandfather's cardiac arrest is censored from "Arkangel” https://www.netflix.com/watch/80131566?trackId=200257859 Even though the use of the microchip is a decision made by Marie, the “Arkangel” chip, similarly to the V-Chip, “redistributes responsibility in a way that wrongly reduces parental Janssen, 11926430/ 18 responsibility” (Fahlquist and van de Poel 287). The shock of Sara’s grandfather almost dying is used to premediate the fear of how technology may not fully understand situations like humans do. Consequently, it sets out to shock the viewer into rethinking their ideas of who has the responsibility to surveil children and how technology may wrongly take away from parents’ concern towards their children. The episode does this effectively, for it first shows the positive effects of this device that drive parents to use every means available to them. It shows the chip blurring out an aggressively barking dog in a similar way to the effect in Figure 2. The sound of the barking is also muffled, so she is unbothered by the dog and safely continues her way to school. She is shielded from a possibly traumatic experience, which is the reason why some parents might instinctively use a technology like this. Any parent watching the episode may recognize themselves in Marie who uses all means to protect her child. However, it later goes on to show how the same censor-technology can also be detrimental in certain situations. Now it may seem unrealistic since this is a fictional futuristic device, though it symbolizes how a child would not understand certain situations if they are always safeguarded from them.

Padilla-Walker and Nelson also illustrate this issue when they argue that this type of overprotection “may inhibit children’s ability to develop the skills and abilities needed to act on one’s own,” (1187) and “is particularly harmful in the development of a child’s psychological self” (1180). It premediates the fear of technology undermining the mental development of children through over-censoring, especially when the censoring is done by a technology that takes over the censoring duty from the parents. As reviewer Sophie Gilbert states in her review on “Arkangel” for The Atlantic, “parents who deny their children the freedom to experiment will end up losing them” (Gilbert). That may seem like a very extreme comment, but in this case, it perfectly illustrates the way the episode tries to premediate this message; by making confronting parents with the worst that could happen either with future technologies or current technologies that are already leaning towards what “Arkangel” displays.

1.4 AESTHETICS

The fusion of future and today in the episode strengthens the message as it becomes more relatable and easily comparable to currently available technologies (e.g. internet ‘filters’, the V-Chip, tracking devices, etc.). The aesthetics of the episode support this fusion, for the imagery is not overly futuristic and set in a neighborhood that looks very contemporary. The only way one could argue that it is futuristic is through some of the Janssen, 11926430/ 19 technologies they use, though they are not unrealistically futuristic. The concept may be ‘futuristic’ but the look of the tablet used to control the chip, for example, looks exactly like any tablet one could be using nowadays (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Marie using the "Arkangel” tablet from "Arkangel" https://www.netflix.com/watch/80131566?trackId=200257859 The clear reasoning behind this is to create a recognition with the images, which becomes increasingly eerie as the plot worsens. The recognizability of the images causes the shock of the negative outcome to ‘hit closer to home’, which consequently evokes a more intense affective reaction that sparks doubt about current technologies comparable to “Arkangel”. Gilbert observers that the low-fi aesthetic displays an unnerving familiarity with the imagery used in “Arkangel” (Gilbert). The ‘low-fi’ aesthetic she mentions is what creates a more real and less ‘expensive’ look that makes a more familiar impression of human life rather than using expensive shots and effects to create an extraordinary and show-stopping picture. This low-fi look makes everything seem very ordinary, which would be detrimental to the quality of a major blockbuster movie but creates the desired recognizability in the case of “Arkangel”. In a way, by ‘weakening’ the complexity of the aesthetic and making it very understated, there is more room for the plot and its message to be strengthened. This understated look also translates to the setting of the episode.

The town or city the story is set in is never named and has no identifiable landmarks that set it apart from other towns or cities. Gilbert sees this as being “deliberately muted, set in a nondescript EveryTown USA rather than […] shiny, isolated glass mansions” (Gilbert). The muted EveryTown is another choice made to create a look that could be anywhere, again making it recognizable and possibly ‘literally’ close to home. The bleakness of the episode and the issue it raises is premediated in a way that a viewer can almost imagine themselves or someone else in the same situation. By being more muted, the episode speaks louder than it Janssen, 11926430/ 20 would have if it was not visually muted. Even though the aesthetics are not spectacular, they are strong in their simplicity and ordinariness. This shows how aesthetics can strengthen a series premediative qualities to a great degree, which “Arkangel” is a clear example of. Through its aesthetics this episode strengthens its premediative critique on parental control through technological censorship and surveillance by not having a specific place or time, so that it becomes an issue for every place, every time, and everyone. By creating a nondescript town and having technological devices similar to the ones people currently use, connections between our world and the world of “Arkangel” can be made easily. For this exact reason the episode premediates the distressing nature of these fictional technologies that are grounded in technologies that are already available to anyone.

This is thus how the episode premediates the dangerously ambivalent nature of parental control. Just like Black Mirror in general, the criticism is not just on the technologies or on the people; it demonstrates a critique of both. Parents’ choice to monitor and control their children adversely affect them, as they are shielded from the difficulties in real life. This parental behavior can lead to rebellious behavior. In the episode this is shown through Sara becoming more and more interested in the threats her mother is keeping her from. This choice is made with the best intentions, but could have the opposite effect if it is taken too far. Technology is one of the things that enables these parents to take their level of overprotective control too far. The Arkangel technology enables Marie to, concurring to the concept of ‘mobile privatization’, monitor her child from her home on top of being able to censor any possibly threatening imagery or sound. The combination of human behavior and the controlling power technology enables is what invites overprotection, which, in turn, can decrease the development of the child. The commonplace and low-fi aesthetic “Arkangel” strengthens the dystopian future it premediates. As Grusin explains, premediation of the future asks for the remediation of current and past issues that are similar (Grusin 8). By showing an eerily impending dystopia about extreme parental control technologies, “Arkangel” controls the present from this possible future threat.

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CHAPTER 2: “NOSEDIVE”, PUBLIC APPROVAL, AND ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA

2.1 “NOSEDIVE”

Since Black Mirror is an anthology series there is no clear coherence between the episodes and their respective themes. Therefore, this episode is not about the same technological fear as “Arkangel”. “Nosedive”, the first episode of the third season, is very different in both story and style. The only similarities between this episode and “Arkangel” is that they turn their respective issues into something horrific, which then creates an eerie connection to modern day technologies that we already use.

The episode follows a woman named Lacie (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) in a near future where the ratings they get on social media actually affect their social status in real life. As these ratings are crucial, Lacie is preoccupied with making sure people give her high ratings. People have technologies such as phones, tablets, and eye implants to share their daily lives and use the same technologies to rate others. Even one-on-one interactions can be rated, which consequently affects their total ‘score’. Lacie is even seen practicing her interactions and laugh in the mirror, to make sure people give her high ratings. She is seeking to live in a more comfortable apartment but needs a score of 4.5 to achieve a discount for the place she has her eye on. A suggestion is made that she needs people with high ranks to rate her 5 stars to make her current rank of 4.2 grow to 4.5 or more. She digs up an old teddy bear she made with a friend who now has a high score and posts a picture of it. Through this her friend contacts her and asks her to be her maid of honor, which Lacie sees as a great opportunity to enhance her rating. She even practices fake crying, so she can use it as a tool to gain sympathy during her speech. After a fight with her brother, who does not care about the fake interactions and consequent rating, she misses her taxi and is given a low score by the driver. She comes to find out that her flight is cancelled and that she cannot afford a transfer with her current score. She gets angry to which security drags her away and gives her a penalty that takes one whole point off her total score for 24 hours as well as increasing the impact of any future low ratings by others. Due to the deducted points she can only afford to rent an old car, which breaks down and causes her to hitch a ride with a woman that has an extremely low score. As they get to talking the woman tells her that she and her husband once had an extremely high score, but not high enough for her husband to be chosen for a cancer treatment. This made her realize she felt at liberty when not being preoccupied with her score. Janssen, 11926430/ 22

Lacie gets a call from her friend telling her not to come due to her currently low rating, which causes Lacie to be furious and go to the wedding to give her a piece of mind. She gives an aggressive and emotional speech with a knife in her hands to keep the guards away, but everyone at the wedding scores her so negatively that she reaches a score of zero. This results in her being locked up in prison. She even gets into a cursing war with a man in a cell across from her without any worries or consequences regarding ratings.

In “Nosedive” the technology that allows for this dystopian future seems to be an exaggerated version of current social media. On Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, for example, people share their daily activities, which peers then decide to like or not to like. The YouTube platform even enables users to dislike content. Likes and followers are an increasingly crucial part of the lives of this generation and generations to come. As a result there is a lot of (social) anxiety surrounding social media and its connection social status. This episode of Black Mirror sets out to display a future society that may be the result of the increasing importance of online status. There is a reason why my friend’s friend decided to deactivate his Facebook account after watching “Nosedive”. Before discussing the effect of the episode, the following subchapter will first look at the fear of social media in general.

2.2 PUBLIC APPROVAL AND ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA

Technology has enabled us to be able to socialize with others regardless of time and space, which initially does not seem particularly harmful. Nowadays, one can be social without any other people actually being around. This also allows for people to construct their own online identity in a way, for when no one is around it is easy to put up a front or selectively share only one’s best moments with peers. These ‘status updates’ can ironically determine a person’s social status and can therefore boost or lessen their confidence. Patti M. Valkenburg, Jochen Peter, and Alexander P. Schouten researched adolescents’ well-being and self-esteem issues as a result of these online social platforms. They claim that, especially during adolescence, people “tend to overestimate the extent to which other are watching and evaluating and, as a result, can be extremely preoccupied with how they appear in the eyes of others” (585). Social media technologies particularly strengthen this as it gives people more ways to construct a view of how they want to be perceived. It also includes the idea that there is peer pressure to have accounts on these platforms. Valkenburg, Peter, and Schouten argue that social self-esteem causes a particular effect on a person’s well-being, which means that Janssen, 11926430/ 23 self-esteem is a major part of someone’s general happiness (585). Their research has a strong focus on this relationship and analyzes it by taking into account the effect of the amount of relationships formed on these platforms, the amount of reactions people may get on their pictures and posts, and the negative or positive tone of these reactions on adolescents’ self- esteem and consequential well-being (586). This analysis seems highly plausible, for the number of friends and likes may indicate higher self-esteem and consequential happiness. This would also mean that, on the other hand, negative exchanges on these public platforms may have an opposing effect on someone’s confidence (Valkenburg, Peter, and Schouten 586).

The fact that all this happens in a public medium also indicates that everyone can see these interactions, which likely puts a certain amount of pressure on individuals who deem the amount of reactions and connections to be significant. This has to do with how a large amount of (in this case) adolescents care about how they present themselves in others’ eyes. Therefore Valkenburg, Peter, and Schouten also found that “users of social networking sites are quite able to learn how to optimize their self-presentation through their profiles” (589). According to them, the focus with these technologies lies more on self-presentation and the tone of the reactions and connections rather than the number of friends, followers, likes, or reactions (589).

However, it also seems plausible that a large number of followers, friends, and likes indicates a certain amount of popularity that many would strive for. The idea of status cannot be disregarded, for this may also be an important variable in shaping a person’s self- confidence and related contentment. Negative or positive comments on a profile or picture may be a more direct cause of change in someone’s social self-esteem. The number of followers or friends and the frequency of responses, however, definitely amount to self- esteem as well. Large amounts of followers, friends, and feedback equal a large amount of popularity and possible higher status in social circles. Mark D. Holder and Ben Coleman would agree with this statement, for they analyzed popularity’s relation to happiness and claim that, in both children and adults, “status relative to [someone’s] peers is positively correlated with well-being” (281). This is taken from, for example, the notion that suicidality among adolescents is often associated with a lower level of popularity, but also how bullied children tend to be less popular and less happy (Holder and Coleman 281). This can then be connected to the idea of cyberbullying as well, which means that online bullying may also tend to be exercised towards less popular users. Holder and Coleman found that attractive Janssen, 11926430/ 24 children are often thought to be more popular (281). This translates to online popularity as well, however in the online sphere it is based on how a person presents themselves on their profile.

As mentioned before, users of these technologies can easily manipulate the way people think about them through shaping their personal image into how they want to be seen by others and grow in popularity. Popularity in itself can be seen as an affirmation of positive characteristics of a person. This means that the number of friends, followers, and likes would be a pronouncement of the same positive effect as the positive reactions on one’s profile. Popularity could, in this case, equal the idea that someone has successfully created their online image. As claimed before this popularity can also signify influence, which leads to the idea that the feedback does not necessarily have to be positive.

Some likes and comments may definitely be a sign of appreciation, but in other cases popularity has more to do with attention and influence. For example, it is easier to leave positive feedback on a selfie, rather than a post about a controversial political debate. If a post like that reaches a lot of people, it does show a great amount of online popularity, however it does not mean the person who created the post is appreciated on a personal level. Therefore, this type of online popularity may not directly lead to someone feeling appreciated through positive feedback in the form of flattery. It may rather lead to the person’s image as based solely on the debate and not on themselves. It may even lead to them creating a more controversial online image, which is not necessarily positive and may cause people to yearn for the more positive and appreciative response.

The issue that technologies such as Facebook and Instagram create is that rejection, acceptance, and consequential popularity become statistics that are visible to the public. This may be one of the reasons why Holder and Coleman found students who valued personal image and the accessory popularity “spent more time being unhappy, had lower levels of general happiness, and spent less time being happy” (281). Ironically, the amount of time spent on popularity may result in eventual unhappiness. In the case of the technological development of social media, this may be strengthened even more because the platforms are fundamentally based on putting out one’s personal image. On top of that, popularity can now be measured extremely easily through the use of the publicly available numbers of likes, followers, friends, and reactions. Even though Holder and Coleman did not specify offline from online popularity, it can still be said that in both cases the issues can be traced back to a fear of social rejection (297). Janssen, 11926430/ 25

When regarding modern society and the concept of portable technologies, social media can be accessed anywhere and anytime and on any device. This generation’s children are already growing up accustomed to these devices and social media. Amanda Lenhart, Kristen Purcell, Aaron Smith, and Kathryn Zickuhr analyzed social media and mobile internet use among young adults and teens and found that, whereas 55% of American teens used social networking sites in 2006, in 2010 this had already increased to be 76% of teens (2). On top of that, they also found that, in 2010, “three-quarters (75%) of teens and 93% of adults ages 18- 29 […] have a cell phone” (3). Cell phones now are even more developed, since they became ‘smarter’. Now, everyone can check their Facebook or Instagram anytime they want. The sheer amount of people that own smart phones and are able to update their profiles whenever they desire can be seen as peer pressure. This may not directly seem like a negative kind of pressure, but many users may claim they started using social media because all their friends were using social media too.

According to Katerina Lup, Leora Trub, and Lisa Rosenthal there even are distinctions between active and passive use of social media, as “there is evidence of both positive and negative consequences of social networking for well-being, with passive use in particular being linked to negative consequences” (248). They claim that “passively looking at others’ profiles displaying photos of vacations or social event to which one was not invited often triggers resentment, envy, and loneliness” (248). This can not only be lead back to a fear of rejection, but also to a concern often referred to as the ‘fear of missing out’. What more can people without social media or online popularity be missing out on?

Social media has grown so much it can now even be regarded as a career opportunity for some. There are many companies with social media accounts and since this is a very universal medium of communication they use it to their advantage to advertise their products. Companies on Instagram, for example, recruit users with a lot of followers to promote their products to their followers and peers. These users are paid and receive free products, which is in indicator of online popularity defining some sort of rank; popular Instagram users get more advantages than unpopular users. The commercialization of social media profiles leads to the financialization of that person’s image or lifestyle. This financialization happens after a person has created an image, which means that said person can ‘choose’ the lifestyle or image they want to make money with. This idea of being able to financially benefit from one’s online presence can then also be seen as yet another reason for people to strive for online popularity. Instagram eliminates the ‘friend’ category and replaces it with ‘followers’, which Janssen, 11926430/ 26 means that the people one follows do not have to be actual acquaintances. To gain followers, some people make use of hashtags; categories through which strangers can find others’ pictures related to that category.

Alice E. Marwick, who analyzed ‘Instafame’, claims that, “while the most followed users are primarily celebrities […] to many Instagram users, gathering thousands, or even hundreds, of followers can be a motivating force” (137). She calls this microcelebrities, which can be categorized as a rank under ‘regular’ celebrities. Marwick continues this thought by uttering that this allows for ‘niche celebrities’ to reach their audience through ‘self-branding’ on Instagram (140). This brings up the idea of self-presentation again, but this time as a “strategy that requires viewing oneself as a consumer product and selling this image to others” (Marwick 140). These microcelebrities are seen as successful Instagram users, who, through their ‘Instafame’, are able to enjoy the benefits of free products and job opportunities. The lives of these people seem exciting and careless, however, just like other users, they go through a process of selecting their finest moments to share. Lup, Trub, and Rosenthal agree with this view as they claim that the “image-driven nature of Instagram encourages presentation of only the most positive and polished characterization of one’s life” (248). This could then end in the person being negatively affected, because they assume “that these photos are indicative of how the people in them actually live” (248). This negative affect is described to come from “the nonreciprocal and public nature of sharing enhanced photos on Instagram [that] may represent a combination of features likely to trigger negative feelings about the self, particularly for users that follow large numbers of strangers” (248).

In conclusion, this can then be tied to the previously discussed self-image, for comparing one’s own life to a successful Instagram user can create insecure feelings about the self. Popularity also seems to be a recurring issue on social media technologies. Jolene Zywica and James Danowski distinct some differences within this online popularity for they utter that “some interpret popularity to mean ‘widely liked,’ or accepted by one’s peer group members [while] others see it as being ‘socially dominant’” (2). They connect the idea of popularity to the fear of rejection and accessory self-confidence by showing how social networking sites become media of enhancing one’s status in order to become (more) self- confident and popular (5). This becomes an even bigger issue for, as Marwick adds, “social media allows ‘average people’ to reach the broad audiences once available only to those with access to broadcast media” (157). Successfully reaching that audience, public number of followers, likes, comments, and friends means that they successfully augmented their personal Janssen, 11926430/ 27 image and became more popular. Through this they may therefore even gain certain advantages from companies that use their popularity as an advertising strategy.

Though people who highly value their online image and popularity may be less happy, this generation is accustomed to these new technologies. Their ever-presence and the concept of online status may seem like an effective way to combat the fear of rejection by peers or the fear of being a ‘nobody’. In addition to the fear of rejection some may also create social media accounts out of the fear of missing out; another peer-related issue. This may be the same fear that causes people to be affected negatively when they see pictures of an event they were not invited to. Thus, it can be said that social media technologies give more reasons for people to fear being insignificant or rejected by peers, which is why the sheer number of friends, followers, likes, and comments can help someone feel more confident about that. The public nature of these statistics allows for people to compare themselves to others in detail, which is why popularity becomes a sign of success, significance, and rank. The same technologies even allow for people with a large following to benefit from the opportunities their high social media status has enabled. This, in turn, pushes people to strive for the same popularity as well as being negatively affected by comparing more popular people to themselves. They may, however, not notice the artificiality of these peoples’ online ‘lives’ and how social media make people search for validation through social media and therefore becoming focused on the self and self-presentation rather than the social aspects of the technologies.

2.3 “NOSEDIVE” PREMEDIATING FEAR

This particular episode of Black Mirror mocks modern day society’s obsession with social media status. Since people have become very accustomed to social media and its usage, they may not realize the inner workings and previously discussed issues with the technologies. Criticizing through mocking makes more room for comedic elements in contrast to episodes like “Arkangel” that are inherently dark. Satire may, in this case, be a smart decision to create an underlying layer of eeriness through which the problems with social media surface.

As discussed before, social media allows for people to construct their own self-image in a way that makes them more self-confident. They are called social media, yet the self seems to have become more important than the social part of the technologies. That is one of Janssen, 11926430/ 28 the things “Nosedive” is trying to get at. Everyone in the episode is shown looking down at their devices instead of looking at each other. Interactions also become more about the self than about the other, which premediated through scenes of insincere encounters. An example of this is how Lacie practices her laugh in front of the mirror, so her self-image is more likable in meetings with others. When she meets an acquaintance in the elevator to work, it becomes clear how self-centered social media makes people. Both Lacie and the acquaintance are excessively polite and nice to each other in order to maintain a high social score and likeability (Figure 4).

Figure 4 Lacie and Bethany having a friendly conversation from "Nosedive" https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888 After the encounter, however, their faces immediately revert to a soberer and almost unhappy state (Figure 5). This can be related to how, for example, Instagram personalities are artificial in that they only tend to show pictures of positive moments, as those are the more lucrative than reality.

Figure 5 Lacie's face after being friendly from "Nosedive" https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888 Janssen, 11926430/ 29

This is what they go through to make sure the other person gives them a five-star rating. This is exactly what Valkenburg, Peter, and Schouten meant when they claimed that, in today’s society, social media users are highly capable to augment their self-image (589). Instead of the number of positive reactions on a social media profile, “Nosedive” shows a similar rating system that enables anyone to access these statistics as well. Having a low score in “Nosedive” would mean that one would be rejected from society, which is shown by Lacie ending up in jail after getting to a score of zero. As Holder and Coleman’s proved, the rejection of peers in modern day society is surely related to a person’s happiness (297). Black Mirror premediates this fear of rejection to focus the audience’s attention on the unnerving similarity of “Nosedive” to current society. Through the dark satirical message, the audience may realize how much people already are obsessed with likes, followers, and their online self- presentation. For this reason, the episode’s fictive dystopian future has close ties to current technologies and the way they are used. Gilbert, who reviewed this episode of Black Mirror as well as “Arkangel”, states that “Nosedive” “aims squarely at the anxiety stoked by a modern obsession with quantification” (Gilbert). Lacie does not want to be rejected by society and her peers, so she obsesses over her score and putting out a perfect self-image to increase it.

To do this Lacie, and the other characters who value their ranking, overstress their compliments and positive attitude towards others hoping they will do the same. Not only does this show the peer-pressure issue in which everyone pushes each other into being that way online it also shows how social media can be a façade. Façade meaning that people create a digital image of themselves that may not specifically be how they behave in the real world. “Nosedive” then exaggerates this to a level where technology and social media have taken over peoples’ daily lives even more than they currently already have. This causes the people in the episode to show this crafted image of themselves constantly, for they have almost become these exaggeratedly positive versions of themselves or at least act that way. The episode therefore takes the existing idea of ‘liking’ and transforms it into a dystopia where these ratings become a real-time experience instead of being more distant to real life. Even though the importance and the merging of social media and real life is exaggerated, the viewer may still realize how social media already have an enormous influence on many people’s lives. It premediates the fear that social media may become so important to people and their social status that it takes over their life. Janssen, 11926430/ 30

This overlap of people’s online lives and real life can be seen in a scene near the end of the episode. The moment when Lacie has a breakdown at the wedding, she actually sees peoples’ disgusted and negative reactions and them giving her a low score online. Both the real and virtual aspect of these reactions happen at the same time, which indicates how (dis)approval has become something extremely public. Instead of thinking about how people may perceive Lacie, she experiences their perceptions in real life. When real and virtual realms mix, interactions become more public. These public outings of online disapproval lead to real life consequences for Lacie, which signifies the idea that this online (dis)approval is increasingly affective as it becomes more public. The scene signifies how people’s virtual expressions of (dis)approval affect the real lives of the receiver on top of these reactions being publicly visible to everyone. The portability of current technologies already merges public and private to a certain extent, which only vows for the idea that the virtual is a public sphere that has effects in reality. The exaggeration of this issue in the scene at the wedding is used as a symbol to premediate possible future mishaps regarding the real effects of social media approval and its publicness.

Approval can also be related to the idea of online popularity. The idea of scores in this episode can be related to the idea of the number of likes, positive comments, and followers a popular person on social media would have. The issue with popularity can, again, be traced back to Holder and Coleman’s idea of social rejection (297). Something that society is already is experiencing now is that popular users can benefit from certain advantages in life that ‘normal’ people cannot. The idea of microcelebrities only shows more layers in ranks, which drives people to aim for the same popularity. This can be related to how Lacie wants to be like her friends with high scores, who seem to have perfect lives and big houses. Lacie is even told that she cannot afford a bigger house with her current score, similarly to how, for example, an ‘Instafamous’ person gets preferential treatment over people who do not have ‘Instafame’. This is interconnected to the fear of rejection and fear of missing out as it forces Lacie to focus on her self-image even more to get to where her popular friend is. This is why she takes the opportunity to be her famous social-media friend’s maid of honor in order to augment her status. Gilbert states that it is these “recognizable parts of Lacie’s story that sting: feeling excluded, feeling disliked, feeling downgraded and categorized as a second-class citizen” (Gilbert). This illustrates how the episode tries to premediate this message; by relating to the audience and confronting them how these fears are created and amplified by the obsession with the self on social media technologies. Again, this can also be connected to how the Janssen, 11926430/ 31 episode exaggerates it themes, for these situations may not yet exist but they do expose the danger of where social media may be heading. Exaggeration is thus used as a premediative tool to uncover the dangers of social media and the behavior it may incite before a similar future may come.

2.4 AESTHETICS

In the case of this episode, the aesthetics are not as dark as most other Black Mirror episodes. Those darker and nondescript visuals helped the audience to relate to the story in “Arkangel”. It is not a strange tactic to have “Nosedive” have a distinctly different look and feel than “Arkangel”. The pastel-aesthetic seems happy and almost inviting, which is where it’s strength lies (Figure 6).

Figure 6 Lacie in the beautiful neighborhood ‘Pelican Cove’ from "Nosedive" https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888 Instead of having the aesthetics being bleak they are bright and happy, which is a perfect way to perform satire. Satire is mostly humorous with a dark undertone, so, this episode being satirical, means that the bright and humorous visuals allow for there to be a stronger reaction to the dark undertone of the story. Gilbert claims that “the lush, calming visuals of ‘Nosedive’ clash nicely with the mounting anxiety” (Gilbert). This, in turn, can be seen as an illustration of people’s ideas about how perfect the online lives of others are, when in reality they may be much drearier than the surface displays. This can be seen as mirroring something a lot of users of, for example Instagram, do; using filters. The beautiful and happy imagery “Nosedive” displays is similar to how people use filters to make their mundane reality appear picture- perfect. Everything in “Nosedive” seems (literally) rose-colored and bright, but in the end the reality behind those visuals is dark and depressing. The episode strengthens its premediative Janssen, 11926430/ 32 message through that heavy contrast and sets out to spark a discussion on how social media controls a significant part of a large number of lives. However, Gilbert still found the ending of the episode, where Lacie and a fellow prisoner are freely insulting each other, to be too happy and optimistic (Gilbert). On the other hand, she may not have noticed how this strengthens the message, as it shows that, without the constraint of obsessing over social media scores and self-presentation, humans feel more freedom. Black Mirror uses premediation to expose how social media may keep people from experiencing a greater freedom without worrying about their online reputation.

Thus, whereas social media technologies premediates the fear of rejection, Black Mirror reverses this and displays how this fear of rejection is the result of these social media technologies. The bright visuals reinforce this premediation due to the strong contrast with the dark story. That is how “Nosedive” exposes its audience to an anxiety based on the grip of social media on self-esteem and consequential well-being that is a part of today’s generation. The fictional dystopian future can thus be easily compared to our world. It shows us how we already may be partially on our way to losing ourselves in social media technologies and how our self-confidence, happiness, and self begins depends on them.

Janssen, 11926430/ 33

“CROCODILE” AND THE FEAR OF SURVEILLANCE AND TRACEABILITY

3.1 “ CROCODILE”

The third episode of the dark anthology’s fourth season confronts a common fear with many different new technologies. The anthology aspect of the series allows for major changes in theme, which is why this episode is, again, different from the others discussed before. Similar to the previously discussed episodes, however, is how the horrible events that take place in the episode are unnervingly relatable to current technologies.

“Crocodile” starts with the main character, Mia, drunkenly driving home with her current love interest, Rob, after having gone to a club. They crash their car into a bicyclist and decide to throw his body into a lake and never speak of it again. Around fifteen years after the events, Mia has a different love interest, a child, a nice house, and a great career. While on a business trip, Rob shows up at her hotel room. He tells her about an article about the man they killed and how he wants to write the man’s family an anonymous letter, so they no longer have to wonder what happened to him. Mia thinks the letter could be traced back to them and they get into an intense argument, which ends up with her taking Rob’s life. After that happens, she sees a pizza delivery van crash into a man. She rents and adult film, so she has an alibi as she is getting rid of Rob’s body. The story continues with the man that was hit by the pizza delivery van discussing the event with insurance investigator Shazia. She uses a device, called the Recaller, which is used to examine and visualize people’s memories. In his memories, she sees some witnesses and performs the same Recaller ritual on them to. No one actually saw what happened but happened to be present when it happened. When Shazia is examining a dentist’s memories, she sees that a woman, Mia, actually saw it all happen from her hotel window. Shazia hopes that Mia can testify for her, so she can make a clear case against the pizza company and help the victim. When Shazia shows up at Mia’s residence she believes Mia’s unwillingness to take the test is due to embarrassment of the adult film she watched in her hotel room that night. Mia tries to block out any memories of the murder before taking the legally required test but cannot help thinking about it when she is connected to the Recaller. When Shazia tries to leave she is attacked and tied up by Mia who knows what Shazia saw. Shazia tries to convince Mia she would not tell anyone and delete the footage, but her begging is futile. Right before Mia takes Shazia’s life, she scans her memory to see if she told anyone she went Janssen, 11926430/ 34 to see Mia. That is when Mia notices Shazia told her husband, so Mia goes over to their house to kill him too. As she is killing Shazia’s husband, she notices their baby son has seen her face and grudgingly decides to take his life as well. Mia flees and goes straight to her son’s school play. While Mia is watching the play in tears, the police are examining the crime scene and decide to use the Recaller on Shazia’s guinea pig. The episode ends with the police standing at the back of the theater Mia is at.

The technology in “Crocodile” seems to be extremely futuristic and not something that is close to a technology that exists or could be invented today. However, there are still striking similarities between the Recaller and some modern-day technologies. These similarities lie in the fact that people feel technology sometimes invades one’s privacy as to improve surveillance. Black Mirror has been playing with this theme and similar technological fantasies in other episodes as well. The third episode of the first season, “The Entire History of You”, involves an eye implant that allows people to access their memories and even share them, which eliminates a lot of privacy. This episode, as well as “Crocodile”, share the theme of traceability. Current technologies are already used to trace people’s online actions, so the episodes are eerily recognizable in today’s society. For example, a lot of collected data on someone’s smartphone or computers (browser history) can be traced back to them, thus when people are online they often leave traces of their activities in cyberspace. In the age of Big Data everything seems to be readily available to everyone, including what some may see as personal information. Other may feel that it can be positive to surveil the public this way, for it is a means of safeguarding society. An argument from that side of the discussion may be that they do not have anything to hide. On the other hand, people who do not have anything to hide are sometimes still fearful of the capacity of memory and invasion of privacy that Big Date entails. Before discussing the premediative effect of this Black Mirror episode, the next subchapter is set out to create an understanding of the fear of modern day technologies that invade privacy as a means to surveil and secure society.

3.2 FEAR OF PRIVACY INVASION AND TRACEABILITY

One of the biggest issues with today’s (social) technologies has to do with surveillance, for some people feel their privacy is invaded too much. In the case of social networking, for example, Bernhard Debatin and Jennette P. Lovejoy claim that there are privacy concerns regarding “inadvertent disclosure of personal information, damaged reputation due to rumors and gossip, unwanted contact and harassment or stalking, Janssen, 11926430/ 35 surveillance-like structures due to backtracking functions, use of personal data by third parties, and hacking and identity theft” (83 and 84). As discussed in the previous chapter, having accounts on social networking platforms has become a norm in this society. This, in turn, means that the owners of these accounts may also face one or more of the issues brought up by Debatin and Lovejoy. They noticed this as well but claim that, even though platforms like Facebook risk the privacy of their users, the users “continually negotiate and manage the tension between perceived privacy risks and expected benefits” (87). However, these benefits encourage users to post or provide “specific personal data that most of them would immediately refuse to reveal in other contexts, such as a telephone survey” (Debatin and Lovejoy 88). This can be tied back to the previous chapter as well, for it includes the idea of gratification through positive feedback as a result of the fear of rejection. The ordinariness of having one or more social media accounts in today’s society and the gratification people gain from them may cause a certain disregard for the effect this may have on their privacy. Debatin and Lovejoy interviewed some people with Facebook accounts, who claimed they understood the privacy settings of the platform but turned out to have slanted idea of what these settings really demand (100). This is all personal information that people decide to publish online themselves, which feels so integrated to them that they may not realize the privacy issues. It is, however, when these issues are brought to light that people start to question them.

Therefore it can be said that the sub-theme within surveillance that is relevant in this case is the idea of ‘memory’. The digital space has a memory that includes traces of people’s past activities. For example, people’s browsers keep track of the pages they visit and create a ‘browser history’. In other words, they leave traces of their past floating in cyberspace. A clear example of these traces is how Facebook makes use of something they call memories, which shows people the anniversaries of their (tagged) posts. Even though this is not something a lot of people would see as being negative, it does clarify the notion of how technologies like Facebook memorize their users’ past activities. On the other hand, these traces can become a problem when they are easily accessible and could possibly be misused. This would mean their privacy is invaded through the easily traceable past of their past actions. For example, when someone is searching the internet for a certain type of product, they are confronted with their activity being tracked as suddenly commercials of the same product start appearing on their screens. The realization of this issue may cause people to fear these technologies, as they may feel as if they are never truly alone and ‘Big Brother’ is constantly keeping track of everything they do. Even though it can be used sparingly to Janssen, 11926430/ 36 positively securitize society, the easiness of accessing this memory of traces by third parties may cause concern.

In the beginning of 2018, there was news coverage about a misuse of these traces. Facebook had harvested the data of American users for political advances without any sense of consent. Maya Mirchandani claims that these issues “of privacy, consent and data security – highlight perhaps the biggest challenge of the 21st century – that of governing the internet” (3). When the news came out that the data Facebook had collected was used to push political agenda’s many people were shocked. People’s online lives were traced, and these traces were used to reinforce their political views through propaganda (Mirchandani 3). Mirchandani, along with many others, debated deleting their Facebook accounts as they felt their privacy was violated. The way Mirchandani views this problem is similar to how Debatin and Lovejoy view it; she believes that “Facebook dulled [its users] into complacent comfort, consenting without reading the fineprint or understanding the ramifications of giving up so much of ourselves each time voluntarily tagged photos, did random personality quizzes and checked into different places” (3). These events could certainly spark a certain kind of anxiety in people, for they may be unsure of the privacy of their personal information. Where at first it may have seemed ordinary to provide social media accounts with personal information, it may now seem as if people were slowly handing companies and political parties their information to be used against them. Isioma Elueze and Anabel Quan-Haase prove that the ordinariness of this is definitely a part of this generation as they “found that middle-aged respondents (45-60) perceive more privacy risks online and have a greater fear of privacy invasion compared to younger people (25-44)” (8).

An example of this, on a broader scale, is the concept of cookies. Cookies are online data that usually require users to accept their data being shared before they can continue browsing that specific site or application. These cookies can be uses to create an online profile for what a certain person likes or dislikes. This information can then be uses by companies to effectively approach the person in question with their commercials. Steven Englehardt, Jeffrey Han, and Arvind Narayanan found that, in the case of companies tracking clients’ email addresses, “a large network of third parties also receive this information, and it is linked to users’ cookies, and hence to their activities across the web” (109). This shows that the issue of privacy and the idea of using private information for commercial use is broader than just Facebook and signifies the cruciality of the traceability of past activities. As mentioned by Englehardt, Han, and Narayanan this information is also provided to third parties outside of Janssen, 11926430/ 37 certain companies’ clientele or the Facebook platform (109). This links all these issues together, as “the practice enables onboarding , or online marketing based on offline activity, as well as cross-device tracking, or linking between different devices of the same user” (Englehardt, Han, and Narayanan 109). This almost creates a Big Brother idea where people are being watched, or in this case tracked, wherever they go. All these traces can then be used to create a profile of these people and their interest and activities.

This can cause people to be anxious when they are using technology. It is not only on social networking sites that (third party) companies can collect personal data, e-mail and generally surfing the internet does this as well. Englehardt, Han, and Narayanan explain that through clicks on links personal information (cookies) are leaked, which can then be linked to a person’s account or e-mail address and sent through to third-party companies (109). Not everyone may know this, so when issues like these make their way onto the news it is likely that many people start to distrust the digital realm and its technologies. Elueze, and Quan- Haase even claim that “users who evaluate their digital skill level as ‘high’ report concerns, despite being better equipped to prevent privacy threats than uses who report having ‘low’ skills” (7). They mostly look at older adults, for older adults are less needful of digital media than young adults (3). They claim this means that there is a more substantial level of fear for digital media among older adults, however it may be riskier for young adults that expose themselves to these issues by using digital media on a daily basis (3).

Elueze and Quan-Haase do realize that “young adults have consistently been shown to rely on digital media despite having numerous privacy concerns, a phenomenon described as the privacy paradox or dilemma” (3). This is a crucial issue in the debate about internet privacy, for the reliance on digital media seems to outweigh the concern about privacy invasion. Even though a lack of knowledge about digital media can cause a person of any age to disregard privacy setting, the risk of dependency on these media may be just as significant (Elueze and Quan-Haase 4). This only proves how these are issues people take seriously, though still seem to be dependent on their digital media. Mirchandani then claims that her motivation for not deleting her account is that we have already come to the point where much of our private information has already been harvested (8). If we are to add this to Englehardt, Han, and Narayanan’s research, this harvested information is also users’ digital accounts, e- mail addresses, other devices, and online as well as offline activities (3).

Public coverage of these issues may create the fears of privacy invasion in all generations on top of keeping some older adults from making use of these technologies in Janssen, 11926430/ 38 general. Mirchandani herself experienced this fear as she proclaims that “this seamless synching of our virtual world with the real world was creating a Frankenstein’s monster that could turn on us” (3). The way she describes this issue as a monster that could turn on society says enough about the fear this online governance entails. This online surveillance may make it harder for anyone to keep their private issues in the ‘shadows’, which is what makes this issue such a paradox. On the one hand, it secures many people from possible on- and offline criminal injustices, because, for example, these rules combat hacking but also allows for the government to trace terrorists and their tactics. On the other hand, people have to surrender their privacy and become more vulnerable in the way that they have to subject their online (and sometimes even part of their offline) lives to these organizations. Big brother has become a ‘massive brother’ that makes even more of the private publicly available to companies and the government. This is all done in the name of justified surveillance and the safeguarding of society. However, as Mirchandani states regarding the Facebook affair, when this faith in justice is breached it is “unclear how long it will take to re-establish trust in their motives even if companies pledge to improve their data security systems and guidelines” (7).

These issues all boil down to the digital surveillance paradox of the balance between privacy and security. Tamara Dinev, Paul Hart, and Michael R. Mullen think of surveillance as referring to “any collection and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for purposes of influencing or managing those whose data have been garnered” (214). When is the government surveilling and when are they intruding? Dinev, Hart, and Mullen find that even though society understands that giving up privacy could turn out to increase security, however “the public is anxious that certain initiatives pose threats to individual privacy” (228). This duality within society is what makes the topic problematic, for there is no clear balance between privacy intrusion and security yet. Dinev, Hart, and Mullen researched this duality and found that, for example, people approved of wiretapping to fight terrorism, however “when the same question was asked, but stripped of any mention of terrorism, the majority of the respondents said they disapproved” (228). This illustrates the paradoxicality of the situation very well, however this research was done in 2008, which means that people may be more skeptical of digital surveillance ten years later. For example, after more coverage of privacy breaches people are even more undecided about the issue than before. This proved from the Dutch government’s referendum about the ‘sleepwet’; a law that gives the government more governance over private digital data in order to improve security. M.P.C. Scheepmaker and Constant Hijzen explain that this referendum was requested by several Janssen, 11926430/ 39

Dutch citizens that did not agree with the law after it had already passed the house of representatives (5). Even through the law already passed, Dutch citizens were still asked to vote for or against this law and the outcome was almost fifty-fifty with a slight majority voting against the ‘sleepwet’. This majority may result from the negative news coverage, but also from the idea that the law allowed for unfocused wiretapping meaning that anyone’s online activity could be monitored at any time (Scheepmaker and Hijzen 5). This also means that the government could act on what they monitor, which may cause people to become paranoid about the idea that the government is constantly tracking their history and keeping an eye on them.

This illustrates the fear of privacy invasion and traceability as a means of surveillance. On the one hand, it is understandable that making more data publicly available could lead to more security; e.g. tracing terrorist threats. On the other hand, people would normally not give up that much of their private information in other situations, while they do provide this information online. Therefore, the fear of intrusion and tracking of someone’s past is reasonable in the way that this information could also be used against oneself. This dichotomy is especially interesting in the way that digital activities have become crucial in a majority of human lives. Some of these people do have concerns about these privacy issues, yet they are so accustomed to these technologies that they keep on using them. Others may overthink or keep themselves from these technologies out of fear that their privacy may be breached or that they become victim of a cyber-crime. Even with scandals like buying data and using it for political gain, knowledge on how everything one does online can be sold to third party companies for commercial gain, people cannot seem to make up their minds. Because of these breaches it does appear that one’s private online activities can easily be accessed legally and illegally. Though many fear how easy privacy is invaded and past activities are easily traced in this digital age, they are still dependent on the same technologies. It is as if this is just part of living in today’s society in which there is a fear that one’s private online actions and behavior is traced and could easily be used against them while they simultaneously hope that it improves security.

3.3 “CROCODILE” PREMEDIATING FEAR

The main theme in “Crocodile” is privacy as well as the nightmare of other people being able to directly access one’s private experience, because the technology within the episode is able to even trace people’s memories. The main character is just living her life until Janssen, 11926430/ 40 she realizes everything she did can be traced back to her, which means that her life was not as private as she thought it was, However, in contrast with “Nosedive” and “Arkangel”, this episode plays with the duality of issue instead of the events turning out to just be negative. This could also mean that the premediative qualities are subtler in this case. Where the other two episodes from the past chapters were more on the side of criticism about the theme, this episode seems to be more on the side of conversation about the theme.

This conversation is created by showing the different sides to the arguments behind technologies being able to track and access someone’s private memories. This dichotomy of surveillance is displayed in “Crocodile” through the wavering balance between the negative and positive consequences of privacy tracing and intrusion as a means of surveillance. On the one hand, our main character is a criminal, who ends up murdering multiple people. This can be connected to Dinev, Hart, and Mullen’s idea of how people respond positively to privacy intrusion being used to combat crime (228). This type of surveillance would give the government more power in the way that this would make it easier for them to control society while protecting them. On the other hand, just as Dinev, Hart, and Mullen state as well, the idea of unfocused privacy intrusion invokes a negative response in people who are anxious of threats on their individual privacy (228). This dividedness also shows in some of the episode’s characters, as the respond differently to having to take the Recaller test. A lady that witnessed the man being hit by the pizza delivery truck was willing to do the test and cooperated completely. When Shazia goes to test another witness, a dentist, he is hesitant to do so as he claims that his memories about that night are embarrassing. Shazia tell him not to worry because she has ‘seen it all before’.

Another indication that symbolizes how our lives are becoming increasingly public and traceable is when Shazia uses the dentist’s memory of Mia standing her hotel window and is able to easily run the picture through a database and find a match. This traceability in the episode is comparable to the concept of the Dutch ‘sleepwet’, for when Mia declines the offer to take the test she is told by Shazia that it is a legal requirement. The ‘sleepwet’ is similar to this because it is also a law that creates more opportunities for the government to invade people’s private information. Even through this episode may be the least dystopian of the three discussed in this thesis, there still are strong ties to how online privacy is increasingly overseen by the government with all due positive and negative consequences.

Mia’s willingness to do anything to keep her secrets from everyone can be seen as a reflection of the group of people that are opposed to privacy invasion for security. Strangely Janssen, 11926430/ 41 enough, the episode paints the picture of a criminal being captured through the seemingly successful technology. If that is the case, then where do Black Mirror’s premediative qualities come to the forefront? A majority of premediation comes from the governmentality of surveillance control and how this strengthens the power of the state that is displayed in this episode. This episode points at the current issue of the government gaining more power over data and, consequently, people’s private lives. Where Black Mirror episodes usually combat this control of individuals through surveillance by the state, this episode premediates this issue by showing the audience a representation of the state as Big Brother. It does not necessarily tackle this idea but seems to question its stability. The audience is then faced with this question as they watch the episode; where does one draw the line? When does the State have too much power? What may have strengthened this discussion is the timing of the episode, as it was released right before 2018 when these issues were covered in the news.

Outside of the questionable idea of making the technology successful in this episode, there also is an idea, as brought up by reviewer David Sims, that the episode may “suggest that intense surveillance creates crime as much as it stops it” (Sims). As Big Brother is growing, people who like their privacy have to take more drastic measures keep them from being surveilled by the State. This could be tied to the episode’s gruesome and gory nature, as the violence is shown very clearly. The intensity of these scenes where Mia is driven to extreme extents to secure her privacy are shocking enough to spark a visceral reaction in the audience. This is how this episode is still able to premediate the question of how fare surveillance should be able to go. When taking into account Sims’ reading of the episode, this adds to the question that is premediated towards the audience. It could be that, since this episode cannot premediate its message through an unnerving negative side of technology, it creates a sense of eeriness through its violent imagery.

On the other hand, this violence creates an certain amount of intensity but it is not necessarily the dystopian aspect of the plot. Even though the duality of “Crocodile” makes it seem like a conversation rather than a critique, current developments in technology are still being criticized through the plot of this episode. Mia is a criminal, yet there is still a premediative aspect of the danger that comes with the digital memorization and tracing of data. The fact that she has committed crimes is not how the episode premediates these dangers. “Crocodile” hints at the possibility of others, including companies and the State, may be able to access people’s private past experiences. As discussed before, the terrifying part of technologies making accessing private information easy is that one is unknowing about this. Janssen, 11926430/ 42

Shazia already had her eyes on Mia and where she was that evening without Mia having the slightest idea about this. By publicly accessing people’s memories she found these traces of Mia’s past.

It can thus be said that the significant technological aspect of the episode lies in the fear of the rights people may get or already have when it comes to accessing the most intimate aspects of one’s past experiences. It is this type of surveillance that the episode is based on. The conversation this sparks bases itself on the function of the technology in “Crocodile” rather than the result of the technology. Mia is rightfully arrested, but should others (including companies and the State) be able to go these lengths to access all these private past experiences to fight crime? The State even accesses the private memories of a guinea pig, which is a good example of questioning how far they could go. So, having the main character be an antagonist may actually be a clever decision in this case, for it strengthens the conflicting arguments within this issue. The viewer may initially agree with the technology that seems to do its job, while, on the other hand, the same people would also have the right to access the deepest aspects of everyone’s past actions and behavior. This would all be regardless of someone being a criminal or not, for, note, that Mia was traced thinking she was an innocent eyewitness. The dentist in “Crocodile” even exclaims how he is very uncomfortable about Shazia having the legal right to access his memories. This conflict about the right to access private aspects of past experiences (of both people and animals) is the aspect of surveillance that is premediated by “Crocodile”.

Still, the episode’s displays Black Mirror’s concept of not only criticizing the dangers of technology, but also how these technologies create a certain kind of behavior in people, too. In this case, it shows how the technology affects Mia’s behavior, as she becomes paranoid and goes as far as taking the lives of an entire family. It premediates the discussion that Somini Sengupta wrote about for The New York Times. In the article, Oakland City Council member Libby Schaaf, claims that the high crime rate is the reason why it would be responsible to use any tool available, however this would also enable the state to “paint a pretty detailed picture of someone’s personal life, someone who may be innocent” (Sengupta).

3.4 AESTHETICS

Since the aesthetics of this episode are very bleak, it is very fitting for how it portrays the main character. The landscapes are very cold, which, according to Sims, “only serves to Janssen, 11926430/ 43 make the mood even more grim” (Sims). This stark and cold scenery sets a serious tone through which both the cold-heartedness of Mia and the surveillance issue are strengthened (Figure 7).

Figure 7 The scenery from "Crocodile" https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888 Another aesthetic advantage of the snowy landscape is that the houses are all very secluded. Mia’s house seems to be in the middle of nowhere, which enhances the idea that even the most hidden information about past memories can be dug up by the state if they wanted to. No matter how far she removes herself from her past, surveillance is so strong and intrusive that it can easily be traced back to her. This is done through the memories of people as well as animals, which lifts the episode’s focus to an even larger degree of complexity. As the audience experiences Mia’s anxiety rising the fear that privacy is decreasing, which means that one’s actions will never be really safe.

Thus, this episode of Black Mirror premediates the unnerving duality of surveillance through technology. The episode suggests that capitalist companies, such as Shazia’s insurance company, as well as the State, who are investigating the murders, can go extremely far in breaking into someone’s private memories to further surveillance. However, as the different reactions to the Recaller show; there is no agreement over the right balance. The episode could also possibly hint at, what Sims explains as, surveillance driving people to go far to hide their actions in a world where privacy is slowly dissolving (Sims). Especially after news coverage on Facebook using user’s private date for commercial and even political advances, there is a lot of backlash against how surveillance is used against people. However, out of the three episodes discussed in this thesis, “Crocodile” may have been the only episode Janssen, 11926430/ 44 where the character is no longer relatable to the audience. Sims claims that he finds Mia too purely evil and lacking in compassion for the audience to truly feel that surveillance drives people to be more cunning in their criminal activities (Sims). He converses about this with Gilbert, who agrees with him but hits the nail on the head when she states that “the spurring factor was clearly supposed to be the psychological destabilization of having your memories be accessible” (Gilbert). This, along with the stark and cold aesthetic, fuels the way “Crocodile” premediates the fear of questionable surveillance though the accessibility of traces of anyone’s private experiences. This episode therefore sparks a conversation about those issues in a time where the complications with encroachingly expanding surveillance are ironically released into the public as well.

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CONCLUSION

Through looking at “Arkangel”, “Nosedive”, and “Crocodile” this thesis illustrates how Black Mirror premediates fears based on technologies and their repercussions.

Grusin conceptualizes the idea of premediation as guarding citizens from (re)experiencing traumatic shock, by keeping a persistent low level of anxiety that they may already be acquainted with (2). This would then make sure their reactions to a traumatic experience is less bad then when they first felt it (Grusin 2). Grusin used this concept to discuss media coverage after the attacks of 9/11, however it could also be a useful tool to analyze how Black Mirror exudes a fear of technology. In the case of Grusin’s premediation the effect of premediation is related to the State and the amount of control it has (125). Black Mirror, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the government, neither does the show use premediation to empower the state. In the case of Black Mirror, the contrary happens, as the series tries to make the audience realize how far the state could go with using of technology to surveil and control the public. Whereas Grusin’s concept of premediation is used as a Big Brother type system, Black Mirror uses premediation to combat this method by creating anxiety about a possible dystopian future. So, both Black Mirror and Grusin’s idea of premediation spark a level of fear about possible future events based on current or past events that bear similarities, yet the two have opposite aims.

To display the type of premediation that Black Mirror seems to use, this thesis looked at three different episodes with different themes as to get a broader idea of how this method of premediation works. The aesthetics of the specific episodes turned out to play a large role in creating this level of fear as well as criticizing the technological issues at hand.

“Arkangel” premediates the dangers of extreme parental control. It does so by playing up the fear of losing your child, which is relatable to practically every parent. The episode displays a dystopian version of, what Padilla-Walker and Nelson call, ‘helicopter-parenting’; the constant monitoring of one’s children (1178). The technology in the episode allows the mother, Marie, to track her daughter as well as, see, hear, and censor what she hears and sees. Parents would use these technologies as they would do anything to safeguard their child. These choices are made with the best intentions, but, as the episode shows, this amount of control can be detrimental to the physical and mental health of the child. The thing that is premediated is how the power of technologies that are used monitor, censor, and control one’s Janssen, 11926430/ 46 children can easily be abused or lead to the opposite of why one would use it; the loss of a child (whether that be physically or emotionally). The low-fi aesthetic makes that the episode is “deliberately muted [and] set in a nondescript EveryTown USA” (Gilbert). This is beneficial to the premediation, for it looks recognizable in the way that it could be set anywhere and that, if they do not change thing, this may actually be the viewer in the future. This is how the simplicity and ordinariness of the episode’s look actually strengthens the dystopian future it depicts, especially since the technology in the episode is just a more extreme version of parental control and censorship technologies we can already access (e.g. the V-chip, nanny-cam, and tracking devices.).

“Nosedive” premediates the dangers of social media technologies by playing with the fear of rejection as well as our enormous dependency on social media technologies. It does this by exposing how social media is becoming increasingly important to people’s self-esteem and well-being. The end even shows the main character, Lacie, feeling free of any obsession over online reputation and popularity while she is physically locked up. “Nosedive” premediates the danger that many people are already starting to lose themselves in social media technologies that actually affect their happiness and self-image. It shows how the online personalities they take on are only the positive and perfect parts of themselves, as to seem more likable to others. This is cleverly mimicked in the aesthetics of the episode, for the imagery is very bright and pastel-colored. Ironically this is what many social media profiles (on e.g. Instagram) look like; picture-perfect and happy. However, the look stays the same as the episode progresses, but the viewer is made to realize the stark difference between the imagery and the plot. This helps reinforce the premediative message as well as intensify the increasingly terrible situations Lacie goes through. Whereas Grusin’s idea of premediation would use social media to control citizens, Black Mirror uses premediation to criticize how citizens’ self-image and happiness as become very dependent on these some media technologies.

“Crocodile” premediates the dangers of surveillance in the form of traceable private memories. To do so, it plays on the duality of the issue. Privacy breaches by people, companies, and the State could be used positively to battle crime. That is why the episode has an antagonistic main character, Mia, who is a murderer that gets caught through the use of the Recaller; a device to read and trace memories. On the other hand, it shows Mia’s fear of having her memories be accessible to who knows how many people. The critical point of the conversation this episode is aimed to spark is the possibility that anyone could access a Janssen, 11926430/ 47 person’s private online behavior without them even knowing. This could even be used against them, such as what happened when people’s online behavior was tracked through Facebook and used against them in the form of personalized political propaganda (Mirchandani 3). This only shows the relevance of the topic, as it is already a much-discussed issue. Therefore, it can be seen that the episode premediates the possible dangers of these kinds of technologies by hinting at how some the State, or some companies and people may already have some rights to access one’s past doings through traces in cyberspace. Here, the premediative fear is based on the function on the technology rather than the outcome and what happens to Mia. Actually, having Mia be a criminal strengthens the duality of the issue; Shazia’s company and the law enforcers go extreme lengths to combat crime by invading people’s memories. When relating the Recaller, a device that tracks actual memories, to (e.g.) browser history, a function that creates and tracks a ‘memory’ of what someone does online, the similarity to real life shows. This eerie connection is only strengthened by the intensely violent imagery and cold scenery that sets a serious tone around Mia as well as the surveillance issue at hand. Another advantage of the icy scenery is that all the houses are very secluded, signifying that all data could be traced back to a person, whether they are innocent or not. Whereas Grusin’s idea of premediation would track data to secure citizens, Black Mirror uses premediation to criticize how this would mean no one’s actions will ever be safe if this would be the future of surveillance.

This is how Black Mirror premediates the dangers of issues regarding the possibilities of parental control and censorship leading to negative results in children’s well-being, dependency on social media for happiness and one’s self-image, and having one’s private memories publicly accessible for who knows to see and possibly abuse. The episodes create compelling dystopian cases that still have their foundation in reality, as the issues can easily be related to technologies already available now. That makes it easy to realize and fear the possibility of future technologies and their complications as depicted in one of the episodes. The different themes in these episodes are accompanied by different aesthetic styles that strengthen the premediative effect. They do so by making the episode seem recognizable, creating a vast difference between the imagery and the plot as to reinforce the episode’s message, and being harsh and cold to fortify the seriousness of the issue as well as creating a landscape that accompanies the critique.

The limitations of this research may be related to the idea that this thesis focused on only three episodes out of the nineteen (and counting) episodes. Another limitation may be Janssen, 11926430/ 48 that Grusin’s concept of premediation was not thought of to discuss the opposite of what Grusin explained premediation to do. This makes the use of premediation from the perspective of Black Mirror more of a postscript reconstruction of the concept to fit this specific research. This remediated concept of premediation therefore may have certain shortcomings because there is no research on the validity of the concept being used this way. However, it cannot be deemed as insignificant, for it still bares vast similarities to the original concept. Furthermore, for future research, it would have been interesting and possibly beneficial to do an audience research to see how they react to the critical messages of the Black Mirror episodes instead of solely basing the arguments on theory.

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