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Black Mirror BLACK MIRROR Zeynep Aldemir Advanced Communication Theory - COM 470 Prof. Peter Sarram December 5th, 2016 Baudrillard believes that the digital age which we live right now represents his third order of simulacra which means that the representation precedes and determines the real, masks the absence of a basic reality. Within the new technologies, information going back and forth to people, with TV and news, there is no longer any distinction between reality and representation; there is only the simulacrum. Black Mirror is a TV show written by Charlie Brooker, which displays the dark sides and unanticipated consequences of new technologies, within a dystopian society. Even though almost all of the episodes seems over exaggretad how technology will effect our lives, somehow it makes us believe that it can happen. Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and simulation works very moderated within the idea that Black Mirror burries within itself. Baudrillard quotes that “we live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning”. Within the technologies that Black Mirror is showing or the system change in the society by the new media, communities became more artificial as interaction and relationship aspects. We will get to see further information through out this paper about how people start to have less meaning of their interactions. This essay will portray an analysis of Baudrillard’s theory of “Simulacra and Simulation” using as an example of Black Mirror’s two episodes: “Nosedive” and “Fifteen Million Merits”. Since these episodes also supports other theories such as commodity fethishm, capitalist society, hegemony and consumer culture, it will be mentioned through out the paper in order to support Baudrillard’s ideas. The name Black Mirror itself as a title is trying to give a message to the viewers saying that the mirror no longer reflects the reality of the truth but portraying something darker then the real that is known. “The paradox of the real in Brooker’s dystopian vision is that feeling what is real depends more and more on images of the real, rather than experience itself.” (Rose, 2013) Baudrillard argues that the signs and the reality became blurred and hard to distinguish between each other with the hyperreal symbols and signs. In the episode “Nosedive”, it introduces us in a world were everyone is ranked by a program used in our cellphones. In this situation we can see the mobile phones as a commodity, the ranking program looking like Instagram seen as a sign and the “reality” which in this case the hyperreality can be seen as the world that they live in with rankings. The episode shows us that the society living there is based on a hyperreal world were everyone is ranking eachother with their uploads, their attitudes and their current ratings. These rankings affects the social standing of a person and if you are above 2.5 out of 5.0, people consider you from a lower class. The openning scene of the episode starts with Lacie who is the main character uploading a photo of her cookie and coffee trying to get likes and ranks. We see that rather enjoying the taste of coffee and the cookie she is more interested in showing herself to people with what she is doing and if people will like it (except it) or not. From that moment we understand that the virtual reality is more important for people in that society than the real experiences. After this scene, Lacie goes to her work and sees this women in the elevator. They have a very basic and a fictitous conversation were both of them do not enjoy but try to be nice to eachother in order to get good ranks. This is a great example of a simulation; Baurillard argues that “the simulation threatens the difference between “true” and “false” between “real” and “imaginary”. Since the simulator produces “true” symptoms, is he ill or not” (Baudrillard, page 3) In this scenerio, people are trying to simulate a reality by making others believe that they are trying to be nice and kind. When they “try” to simulate, or pretend to be nice, the person infront of them understands and ranks them with low starts, however if they simulate it then they make the person infront of them believe in the simulation and the imaginery becomes the reality. In this episode, this virtual life takes over the value of money or to be wealthy. It does not matter if you are rich or poor, royal or working class but the importance is that can you simulate to be a nice person, a positive person who has a fancy life? It is shown that even the friendships in this episode is based on the hyperreal worl of the rating application. Among the episode we get to meet with Naomi, who is Lacie’s childhood friend which they did not talk for a long time and it turns out that her rating is 4.8 living in an exclusive and idyllic island. When Naomi asks her to be her bridesmaid for her wedding, Lacie sees this as a great opportunity to raise her ratings to 4.5 because both her and her friends are from upper class. By the end of the episode, we learn that Naomi only invited Lacie to her wedding as a bridesmaid because at that time Lacie had 4.2 rating which was also a favor for Naomi. We see that both of the characters are so obsessed with this rating system that they create fake relationships, pretending to be real. With the advantage of virtual world, people like to be more careful while they are portraying an image of themselves, they have more time to contruct a real “representation” of themselves. Living more and more in a virtual world suggests in general, we creep closer to the edge that demarcates our fundamental perceptions; our notions of truth, reality, existence, and humanity itself. At the end of the episode, Lacie’s ratings go slowly to 2.0’s and this affects her in a level that she goes insane. The question is that does she really goes insane or she had an awakening of how this system is destroying her realities and priorities in life? Baudrillard would consider this system as the third phase of the image where “it masks the absense of a basic reality”. The basic reality is that this system is a simulation where manipulates the society to use it in order to fit in to the society. However, the system masks this absense by simulating this rating system as being the only truth. Lacie gets arrested at the end of the episode because she starts to insult Naomi and she threatens Naomi’s new husband with a knife. While she is arrested, the authorities take her phone away and she has no more ranking system in the prison. At the end, she sees another prisoner and tries to down rank him but she can’t. All is left with her is her verbal insults and their mutual anger transforms. They realize that the prison is more free than outside world. This ending proves the fact that we are more free in the prison than we are out because there is always people watching us, judging us or “ranking us”. The ranking world becomes the truth, the reality where as the actual reality is in the prison and outside is just an imaginary world. In another episode of Black Mirror, “Fifteen Million Merits” there is a future dystopian world imagined where the vast majority of people must ride stationary bycycles that provide power for the society. “They earn merits that allow for their sustenance but if they pedal extra time or with increased speed, they have disposable income with which they can purchase virtual luxiries. (Kline, 2016) All they know is that they have to ride bikes to earn merits, which they spend on advertising, food or for consuming products in general. The only way out to get out of this simulation and return back to the ‘real world’ is to attend to a talent competition called “Hot Shot”. Baudrillard and many other theorists like Marx argues that before people use to work in order to help to one another or create something new, or even to survive but the modern world changed this system. Nowadays and also in this episode people only work in order to buy and consume new products. Our societies job is to consume not going to work. Not only this episodes supports Baudrillard’s theory of hyper- reality but it also touches a lot the idea of consumer culture theory analyzed by Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson. “Consumer culture is viewed as "social arrangement in which the relations between lived culture and social resources, between meaningful ways of life and the symbolic and material resources on which they depend, are mediated through markets" and consumers as part of an interconnected system of commercially produced products and images which they use to construct their identity and orient their relationships with others.” (Kozinets, 2001) Basically it persuades that buying more and more products will bring happiness and fulfilment to an individual. In the world of Fifteen Million Merits people only interact with each other only if they buy products or to show, prove that they are better than one another. For example, there is an aggressive man biking next to Bing who is the main character of the episode, and he is fully immersed in the media, always trying to show that he has a lot of money, and his purchases are the best.
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