Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror...no other introduction needed

I know I’m getting to this, as usual, several years after everyone else.  But here we are, my impressions, without access to anyone else’s opinions and hype, no reviews read.  For anyone not English, Charlie Brooker is an English satirist – they would do that weird thing they do nowadays and call him a Broadcaster-slash-Comedian-slash-Columnist or whatever, you know, the thing where you can’t just have one or two jobs.  Anyway.  He moans and rants and commentates the news, the pop culture elements that get pushed at us via media of all kinds.  He clearly worries about everything as only a child of the 70s can.  He has a real way with words in his books, columns and his various news shows (currently, the UK is screening the latest series of Weekly Wipe, his news and film/TV review).  Black Mirror is his latest lot of satirical dramas (the one everyone else remembers being ‘Dead Set’, the mini drama series that married our love of zombie horror with our inexplicable love of very jaded reality TV shows).  I missed all the Black Mirrors when they first aired.  People talked too much, so I ignored them, as I often do, when people talk too much about something on TV.  Fry has been nagging me to get to them, so I did, and bloody hell, they were good.  So…

Oooooooo, now here was some class.  Very very very worrying and disturbing class.  On reflection, I think there was only one slightly weaker than the others episode in all of this, and that was only because I felt the ending lacked a little something [The Waldo Moment].  All of them had cracking and scary ideas.  All about what could, would, may happen if we aren’t careful with the direction our technologies go.  In a personal sense – facebook, Twitter, the over reliance and over use of technology to live our lives and help us, and cut us off from each other.  Absolutely every single story had something very thought provoking and DISTURBING to worry me about.  Also, it wasn’t afraid to be almost relentlessly downbeat…a bit 70s, a bit Doomwatch in a way, Survivors.  A drama about thinking and consequences, and all the consequences are bad.  I LOVED this throwback TV with the totally up to date concerns.

**MASSIVE SPOILERS IF YOU'VE NOT SEEN THESE!!!!**

Black Mirror, Series 1

There was, in order, the one I don’t know how on earth they got made about the pig [which was to worry us about the fickleness and rather English love of humiliation in public perception of important people], which had the unlikely end of being about art, of all things…I spent all of that one wondering why no one was concerned with the poor PIG.  Were they going to tranquilise it, give it…lube?  I mean, Jeez, surely a short speech from animal rights people was an opportunity missed here, in this very humanocentric story.

Then there was the one about the people who had to cycle all day while watching awful things on TV, and their only escape was to be able to be on a talent show.  The actor I adore, Daniel Kaluuya, ran off with this episode entirely.  He has a crush on a girl and pays for her to enter the awful talent show with the killingly cringey Rupert Everett as one of the judges [what a triumph of nastiness he was].  She sings a beautiful sad song and you imagine she might be about to have a better life…but she is coerced into another show, ‘Wraith Babes’, a porn show, where she is to have medicated sex forever and never be herself again.  AWFUL.  Daniel is understandably very upset about ‘this outcome’, and gets himself on the show to…he knows not what, but he makes a speech with broken glass to his throat so they won’t cut the film of him till he’s finished telling them off.  They end up giving him his own channel, so he becomes one of the hideous things the cyclists watch on TV, still with the now gimmick of the glass at his throat – he’s a sort of satirist, venting and complaining and shouting about how crap everything is, that you listen to while you get on with the crapness everything is.  Bit like…Charlie Brooker.  Daniel ends up alone, in a slightly bigger cell room, with orange juice [wahey, such a treat] looking out at a huge green forest.  Is it real?  Or another picture on his computer illuminated walls? If it’s real – why can’t anyone go outside?  If it’s not – why can’t he have friends over, why must everyone cycle and cycle and be alone forever and watch the awful things on TV, or be the awful things on TV?  I thought and thought…this was my joint second favourite one.

Then, to end series 1, there was the one that seems to be everyone else’s favourite, about the memory implant that you can get in your head so you can rewind your life constantly and overanalyse everything like a 15 year old on the phone to her best friend.  Or like a depressed anxious person with even more incipient mental health problems. Fry and I looked at each other during this and knew that it was of supreme importance that should such a device as this ever be invented, it’s absolutely vital that we never get one, we are bad enough as it is.  The actor Toby Kebbell was the one who ran off with this episode.  I don’t know if it’s because I am constantly worried what people think of me and if it might be true [there’s a waste of time, trying to synthesise one piece of unimportant info to get the other, when you have no idea if the first is correct!], but his performance as the worried and jealous boyfriend [who ends up being quite correct in his suspicions] was both very funny and totally spot on, painfully spot on.  I wanted him so badly to be wrong.  The scene where he and his girlfriend have sex and both are viewing memories at the same time – he of earlier her, her of…who?, is really chilling.  No real closeness at all. Fantasizing during sex is one thing; but actual physical viewable memory…hmmm.  Again, an absolute ton of food for thought here, the moral issues, the mental health issues of a device like this.  Well explored.  And their eyes look very creepy when they are viewing the memories.

Black Mirror, Series 2

On to series 2, which begins with the very worrying one about not letting people go when they die.  It’s bad enough already, mourning a dead person – when my dad died, I was a mess for a long time; its now, what?, seven years later and I am just starting to make peace with this…and in the world of this story, you can have a cheat version of your dead loved one, constructed from online data.  For however long you like. You can talk to them by text, or by phone, and if you are really rich – by actual fleshly robot that can even have sex.  The point I thought of here, as well as the obvious, this is as bad as fake mediums and the like, as they may comfort you, but they really inhibit your ability to live in the world and try to go on without the dead person; the other point is: how did the woman in this AFFORD the robot??  He himself [the dead loved one] said it was pricey.  They already lived in a remarkable beautiful country house.  What did he do, apart from playing on facebook?  She did have a work at home job, where she seemed to move things about on her enormous computer screen all day – some kind of graphic designer, or graphic illustrator??, but I felt this story fell into exactly the same trap as a lot of the 70s stuff I grew up with: unintentionally incredibly middle class, and giving me the odd and totally untrue idea, that I could have a vague sort of a job doing something or other that looks a bit interesting and is unlabelled – and from this, I can have a really comfortable lifestyle and lovely country house with really big garden.  In the old days, this would have come complete with decanters and the G&T after work which the wife offers the husband – which I DID grow up seeing on the God That Is TV so I am convinced must somewhere somehow be true….…Oh…I’ve lost my track.  Anyway.  That.  All these stories are very middle class, just thought I’d point that out.  A lot of dinner parties and such.  Having grown up with a tray on my lap, alone in the living room with My God The TV, I struggle with the cognitive dissonance of all this.  Didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the episodes though.  Just in this case, really wanted to know how the hell they afforded their lives.  Credit card debt??

Next there was my joint favourite episode, the one about what do you do with criminals who commit those awful and gratuitous crimes against children, the ones you hear about on TV and you think “oh bloody hell, these fuckers should be dead, or tortured to death” and you come over all Old Testament-y. The thing is, despite much Quakerliness in my earlier days, and much discussion with Stanley and various others about why there should NOT be capital punishment, when I hear about exactly these sorts of cases, I usually do come over so massively overemotional and unreasonable that I totally got the point of the twist at the end of this episode [Jamie Bulger – all you need is that one picture.  You know the one.…I can’t think straight just thinking of the picture].  I don’t know if I could have ‘enjoyed myself!’ as instructed, since I am more along the lines of execute the feckers, single shot to the head, that’s it, rubbish disposed of, use as fertiliser, walk away…I am not of the lets have fun with this punishment school, at all.  But I got the point.  The point was to make the killer suffer as much as the victim – by making them as innocent and terrified and confused as the victim must have been.  Absolutely fiendish idea.  Really cruel, because the killer is mindwiped; and becomes An Innocent.  You aren’t punishing the same person as the one who did the crime, you are just torturing another innocent person, and doing more violence.  Unhelpful.  Also unhelpful to encourage the public to buy tickets and enjoy – children included.  Terrifying idea.  Also – the mindwipe thingy could have been used to start the killer onto the rehabilitation track, surely?  It could have been used for good…I was really chilled at this one.  Because half of me bought the idea whole. Even though it was NOT justice.  *Gulp*.

Lastly was the one where a very crude and shouty blue cartoon stands for Parliament and is a better prospect than the jaded and senseless politicians.  Worryingly, and as I am sure the point of this one was, Fry whole heartedly endorsed the shouty penis flashing cartoon, and said if anything could make him vote, it was Waldo.  That really does sum up this one.  My politically apathetic and nihilistic son would have voted for the blue cartoon bear with no policies, who was also incoherent in his criticism, but caught just enough of the sheer anger and disillusion we feel toward our politicians to be relevant, and moreso than them.  HMMM.  I was scared.  Amazing, that these were actually like horror, but not horror.  Again, it’s that Doomwatch vibe.

Christmas Special

And very lastly, and joint bestly, the Christmas Special.  Fry and I were very happy to see one of our favourite actors, who really should be in everything [like Olivia Coleman of course]: Rafe Spall, and oh my god, does he suffer in this.  This was constructed perfectly, like an old style 70s portmanteau horror, you know the ones – there are usually around 3 story segments, the first is good, the second is a bit silly, and the third is the kicker.  This one distinguished itself by virtue of worrying me with the silly second segment moreso than the genuinely scary other segments, because I felt a terrible sense of the length of time for the poor poor Cookie Girl with nothing to do.  Rafe Spall was on the button, it was slavery – and torture.  And how could the woman who contributed herself not think of the life of her clone tiny self, buttering her silly under toasted bread etc.  Cow.  Why couldn’t they give the poor Cookie Girl some books, a TV, a pretend little world of some sort, a cyber cat or dog for company.  A program that sophisticated and they didn’t think to keep their little slave workers contented??  That’s humans for you.  Huh. I was disgusted and terrified by the plight of Poor Cookie Girl.  If it was me, I’d have gone mad in less than a couple of days, I am more or less certain.

Anyway, the first bit was how to Game women [a la Neil Strauss and all those other imitators] to a date, to bed etc, in this case, with a shy boy who has a gamer speaking in his ear and an online community shouting encouragement from the cyber sidelines.  Creepy.  The boy gets his comeuppance [as portmanteau horrors used to specialise in, they were comeuppance poetic vengeance films – punishment fits the crime] by not realising that he has landed a girl who also hears voices, but they are all hers and she wants to mercy kill him, and herself. So she poisons him.

And the last bit was where the gamer from the first bit, who was talking to Rafe Spall at the beginning – that first bit was his story…it’s how HE gets his comeuppance.  But then, so does Rafe Spall, who I felt very sorry for. The American gamer [where do I know him from? Funnily enough, I just checked, and it’s not from the EVERYTHING he’s been in, it’s from a lone episode of Charmed ages ago…] has to find out what is going on in Rafe Spall’s head, and via technology and some empathic gaming, does so.  It’s a story about facebook and the awesome power of The Block.  This is relevant, as for the first time in 3 or 4 years, I had to block someone a few days ago, after much attempts at explaining to them privately and publicly, why they were inappropriate

 /unkind /mean /cruel /pissing off everyone I know as well as me.  If you’ve never blocked anyone on facebook, what it is, is…you get tired of deleting their trollish comments, or of tailoring your status updates so they just can’t see them, and you make it so they cannot see you, At All.  To them, once they are on your blocked list, it appears as if you have vanished.  They cannot communicate with you.  This story was - what if you could block people in real life?  They chose to do it not as a disappearance, but as making the person a grey shape.  You can see they are there [and they can throw a vase of flowers at you, as demonstrated, which was a bit of a flaw, I thought], but you can’t hear them properly and they can’t see or hear you properly either.  Rafe Spall got blocked by an ex girlfriend, which led to a terrible misunderstanding [I actually won’t spoiler that bit], and he pays for that once he confesses to what happens next.  The gamer, who imagined he would go free from prison once he got Rafe Spall to confess, does not.  [As he covered up that poisoning in the first segment because that gaming thing he was doing with shy boy was illegal if technologically aided, not to mention, gamer was the bastard who had to break the will of tiny cloned Cookie Girl as his day job.]  No, he gets a terrible punishment that is both very chilling, plus I have no idea how it would actually work.  If he is blocked by absolutely everybody, and they only see him as a red blob [which I presume means dangerous], then…how does he go shopping to buy toilet paper [or food, obviously], as no one will be able to hear him properly??  I suppose he will have to do Tesco ordering online.  Forever……That was actually the kicker, and a terrible punishment for a very amoral man…but I am still more distressed by Cookie Girl.  Oh yes, and by Rafe Spall who had to listen to Christmas No 1’s on a loop, forever, and couldn’t break the radio.  That was harsh, as I think his crime was facilitated by the girl blocking him and not simply having a conversation with him and explaining WHY she didn’t want to stay with him once she was pregnant.  So I got the point here being that The Block makes us lazy [and quick to punish], because in real life we couldn’t do such a thing and would have to deal with the person.

In fact, all these tales were about the ways we don’t just deal with people face to face or correspondence to correspondence, at least.  The memory implant allowed us to just loop continually getting paranoid and not living.  Twitter and facebook allow us too much input into the ever changing lives and fates of celebrities when we could be living our own lives.  Mindwiping allows us all to become tortures of criminals if we choose, instead of living our own lives.  Satire is great, but you have to be the change you want to see, not just laugh at the way things are. Etc. Etc.  All most relevant and most worrying. 

For a few days after these, which I did see in a massively addicting 12 hour clump of horrified screen stare-age I walked about feeling disturbed by them.  They stayed with me.  I started to worry about Charlie Brooker’s head, as he must be in a state of worry and disquiet having all these terrifying consequences in his head…not to forget weird stuff about pigs. [I mean, obviously the pig thing was in your face shock value, but…you know…poor pig, unsung and uncared for pig…]

Hmm.  I’ve wound down now.  That’s it.  These were brilliant, I hope he intends to worry, disturb and horrify me for another doom laden series at least.

Hmm.  How to finish?  Oh yeah…

And now, as Charlie Brooker would say: “Go away.”