Comment by addicted
9 days ago
The part you’re misunderstanding about black mirror is that it’s about how technology will strip the humanity out of people.
Also, the name of the show is BLACK mirror. Besides the iPhone symbolism by which the name is inspired, the whole point of the show is to hold up a mirror to the dark side of society.
This may lead to a show that is without nuance or is less interesting, but thats the point of the show.
Every conversation about art runs into this problem: you can't criticize art without someone saying that the critic simply doesn't understand the art. Maybe in some cases this is true, but I don't think that's what's happening here. It seems pretty clear that OP understands Black Mirror's point perfectly and still thinks that unrelenting pessimism devoid of nuance is a bad point—they understand what the art is saying and don't like it.
I understand that is the goal. I just don't think it succeeds.
To show darkness you have to have light. You can't cast a shadow if its pitch black.
In terms of black mirror, they show a society devoid of humanity, true. But in most episodes (there are probably some exceptions) it feels like the lack of humanity is not because of technology, but because the world of the show is populated by monsters. As a result, it doesn't effectively show the dehumanizing power of technology.
When watching an episode - ask yourself, would these characters still do monsterous things without the tech premise? If the answer is yes, then its not really about the tech.
> it feels like the lack of humanity is not because of technology, but because the world of the show is populated by monsters.
But...that's always been the case. Technology is a tool, and a tool is neither good nor evil; it's how you choose to use it. That gets repeated here all the time. Tech grants powers to people that we didn't have before, so people with a propensity to perpetrate evil can do it at efficiently at scale. The same goes for people who want to do good but aren't aware of the consequences of their actions. We can learn a lot more from the failure cases than the happy path, and it makes for more entertaining stories.
That may or may not be the case, but either way it's still valid to criticize that approach, in favor of a more nuanced and potentially more effective one.
Like, maybe that's the show the creators wanted to make. I'm not certain about that, but it's a valid premise. But then maybe I would prefer if the show was a bit different regardless of that. That's always allowed.