After watching the sixth season of Black Mirror that was launched on the fifteenth of June, it is abundantly clear that the collection is transferring in a very new route. This season departs from its integral premise of delving right into a technological dystopian future, but it surely retains its sense of psychological horror and iconic mind-bending sequences. The primary episode of the anthology is most just like their earlier tales however as a substitute of coping with radical technological penalties of the longer term, there’s a substantial connection to current applied sciences and points. The remainder of the episodes are both set up to now or have an amazing connection to it. This shift from the longer term to the previous and current is basically what achieves the season’s sense of “otherness,” and likewise facilitates the present’s exploration into different genres like fantasy horror and the supernatural. When the collection was first launched, it was a lone traveler treading into unknown territory and invited us to query every thing — Black Mirror Season 6 goes again to its roots and is as soon as once more introducing us to unfamiliar methods to understand acquainted ideas.
‘Joan is Terrible’ Displays Current Points
Because the season progressively steps again additional in time, the primary episode, Joan is Terrible, begins within the current and incorporates present applied sciences like synthetic intelligence, streaming companies and superior deep fakes. Reasonably than counting on their conventional premise of what author Charlie Brooker fears it was, the “technological-horror-story-of-the-week,” this episode invitations us to critique the present media panorama. Joan (Annie Murphy), a reputation that’s paying homage to “Jane Doe” or simply “common Joe,” is a mean lady who has had one of many lousier choices of her life broadcasted on a well-liked streaming service: Streamberry. Taking a playful jab at how individuals typically do not learn the phrases and situations web page, the present highlights how she had basically signed away her life whereas the actor that portrays the Streamberry model of Joan, Salma Hayek Pinault, signed off the rights to her picture.
With a comedic tone, the episode performs on the worry of surveillance whereas additionally taking an overt stance towards Netflix — ironic contemplating Netflix is streaming the present. It introduces an incomprehensible “quantum laptop” that’s basically synthetic intelligence so superior, it writes scripts, creates deep fakes and streams a present all in real-time. This technique that replaces writers inherently displays the present plight of the author’s strike towards studios that underpay and undercut them. Coupled with the fonts and colour palette of Streamberry being the identical as Netflix’s, this episode particularly stands up towards streaming platforms which can be devoid of humanity, rooting the episode into right now’s world as a substitute of the longer term.
‘Black Mirror’ Season 6 Steps Into the Previous
With the fifth season of Black Mirror being produced and launched pre-COVID, it was unclear how Brooker was going to deal with with the prolific technological developments since then. In an interview with Den of Geek, he shares: “I’m pondering what if I set it up to now, after which that makes it far more contemporary?” Episodes like Past the Sea and Demon 79 are overtly located into the previous and focus extra on the intricacies of the human situation and psyche fairly than the expertise itself. Past the Sea did revisit the darker sides to expertise, particularly a tool that would ship the consciousness of a person in house to an android reproduction on Earth, however its main discourse was round grief and identification. The Nineteen Sixties context makes the episode a lot extra intriguing, particularly with the nuclear household best and patriarchal norms so enforced throughout that point. These contextual influences make the commentary behind the work that rather more fascinating whereas additionally including to the Black Mirror-esque psychological confusion.
In distinction, the remaining episodes, Loch Henry and Mazey Day, alluded to the previous fairly than being set in it. Loch Henry follows the journey of two coupled-up filmmakers returning to one in all their hometowns, which conjures up them to make a true-crime documentary a couple of previous incident that had haunted the city. Brooker throws one other jab at Netflix with Pia’s (Myha’la Herrold) joke in regards to the inflow of true-crime documentaries on Streamberry, particularly related in gentle of the controversy surrounding Netflix’s callous dealing with of the Dahmer collection. Though the episode itself would not actually add a lot to the homicide thriller style, it’s by way of long-standing methods of discovered footage and the older expertise of VCR that the ultimate revelation is made. As compared, Mazey Day would not essentially have outdated expertise, and it additionally would not add a lot to the fantasy horror style, but it surely contains paparazzi working round, relentlessly attempting to trace down a lacking movie star with cumbersome cameras. Though the paparazzi are nonetheless current and nonetheless as parasitic, with the fashionable age of social media and the rise of citizen journalism, the best way the photographers are depicted on the present is a barely older mannequin. That is particularly distinct when evaluating it to a earlier Black Mirror episode, White Bear, which includes seemingly common individuals overtly pointing their telephones and recording.
However what’s most surprising about each these episodes is the marked absence of futuristic, mind-boggling expertise. This extra experimental season opts for older expertise, step by step departing from its conventional premise and shining a lightweight on human conduct, voyeuristic fascinations and its ramifications. This allusion to the previous additionally invitations us to take a step again and look at this time, significantly into the dearth of humanity and empathy pervading the present media realm.
‘Pink Mirror’ Is the Twist ‘Black Mirror’ Wanted
The ultimate episode, Demon 79, deftly introduces us to Black Mirror’s reinvention of itself. With the brand new Pink Mirror branding, its clear Brooker is redefining the parameters of the present and pioneering a Black Mirror-adjacent style that, judging on the standard of Demon 79, is prone to succeed. The season’s ultimate episode is wholly set up to now — not simply contextually but additionally chronologically within the Black Mirror universe, the place we’re launched to Michael Good (David Shields) who facilitates lots of the technological developments and occasions in previous Black Mirror episodes. Entrenching itself into the previous, this season offers the present the rebranding it wanted to proceed to shock audiences and preserve us ready for extra. And though it would not seem like these tales will garner the identical love earlier gems have elicited, it guarantees us that future seasons won’t develop into stale. By setting its sights into the previous and current, Black Mirror is evidently increasing its horizons and turning the mirror from the misuse of expertise to humanity and ethics itself.
