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

This edited collection charts the first four seasons of Black Mirror and beyond, providing a rich social, historical and political context for the show. Across the diverse tapestry of its episodes, Black Mirror has both dramatized and deconstructed the shifting cultural and technological coordinates of the era like no other. With each of the nineteen chapters focussing on a single episode of the series, this book provides an in-depth analysis into how the show interrogates our contemporary desires and anxieties, while simultaneously encouraging audiences to contemplate the moral issues raised by each episode. What if we could record and replay our most intimate memories? How far should we go to protect our children? Would we choose to live forever? What does it mean to be human? These are just some of the questions posed by Black Mirror, and in turn, by this volume. Written by some of the foremost scholars in the field of contemporary film and television studies,Through the Black Mirror explores how Black Mirror has become a cultural barometer of the new millennial decades and questions what its embedded anxieties might tell us. 

Introduction: Read that back to yourself and ask if you live in a sane society, Terence McSweeney and Stuart Joy.- Part I.- “The National Anthem”, Terrorism and Digital Media, Fran Pheasant Kelly.- “Fifteen Million Merits”: Gamification, Spectacle, and Neoliberal Aspiration, Mark R. Johnson.- Enhanced Memory: “The Entire History of You”, Henry Jenkins.- Part II.- Making Room for Our Personal Posthuman Prisons: “Be Right Back”, Andrew Schopp.- Charlie Brooker’s “White Bear”: Ideological State Apparatuses, Perversions of Courtly Love, and Curatorial Violence, Paul Petrovic.- Political apathy, the ex post facto allegory and Waldo’s Trumpian moment, Terence McSweeney.- We Have Only Ourselves to Fear:  Reflections on AI through the Black Mirror of “White Christmas”, Christine Muller.- Part III.- The Planned Obsolescence of “Nosedive”, Sean Redmond.- Augmented Reality Bites: “Playtest” and the Unstable Now, Soraya Murray.- Shame, Stigmaand Identification in “Shut Up and Dance”, Stuart Joy.- Unreal City: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and Posthumanity in “San Junipero”, Isra Daraiseh and M. Keith Booker.- Deviating The Other: Inspecting the Bounds of Progress in “Men Against Fire”, Ana Dosen.- On Killer Bees and GCHQ: “Hated in the Nation”, James Smith.- Part IV.- Dethroning the King of Space: Toxic White Masculinity and the Revised Adventure Narrative in “USS Callister”, Steffen Hankte.- “Arkangel”: Postscript on Families of Control, George F. McHendry, Jr..- The Sovereignty of Truth: Memory and Morality in “Crocodile”, Jossalyn G. Larson.- Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before: Relationships and Late Capitalism in “Hang the DJ”, Aidan Power.- Killing the Creator in “Metalhead”, Barbara Gurr.- Hope, with Teeth: On “Black Museum”, Gerry Canavan.- Change Your Past, Your Present, Your Future: Interactive Narratives and Trauma in Bandersnatch, Terence McSweeney and Stuart Joy.