Black Mirror, 3: The Entire History of You

The final episode of the Black Mirror trilogy wasn’t written by Charlie Brooker but by Jesse Armstrong, whose CV includes Peep Show and Fresh Meat. Here the topic was memory. In The Entire History of You, we entered a world where our memories are captured by an implant called a ‘grain’ (not unrelated to a pod). We can then scroll through these (how they are sorted into files is left to the viewer to imagine) and select memories to replay: install recall at a click. It is a neat way of taking the world we already have, where we are already familiar with vast internet memory caches, tablets  and memory sticks, and looking a little further down the road.

The Entire History of You touched in passing on various possibilities created by this technology: memories scanned and checked when we travel; the chilling prospect of ‘retrospective litigation’, where parents are prosecuted for their children’s lack of earnings; and the idea of memories being stolen, manipulated, sold. In the end, the story explored the idea that instant access to memory stores could (already does?) lead to obsessive behaviour, as a young husband pursues his suspicions of his wife’s infidelity until their relationship is destroyed, and memory itself has become toxic. Most of the action in fact lay in the relationships of the key figures in this triangle, the technology being worked into a familiar jealousy story. As the story unfolded, it was clear that the perfect availability of the past was eroding the value of the present: this was suggested in the sleek, soulless houses and the oddly empty green spaces between them. There were a few quirks, perhaps: wouldn’t the wife know her husband was the jealous type? Is it plausible that his behaviour could be suddenly triggered at a moment he feels vulnerable about his career? And why does he drive such an old car? Are those who voluntarily don’t have a grain -  it doesn’t seem to be a compulsory ID marker, yet - not able to travel? The main character of Borges’s greart story ‘Funes el Memorioso’ remembers everything but as a result he cannot really think, because thinking involves constantly abstracting from particulars. In The Entire History of You the protagonist drowns in a sea of particulars, until he comes to realize that living must involve forgetting. In a world where we recreate ourselves on Facebook, blogs, and in digital info of all kinds this is worth, well, remembering. A strong end to this interesting series.

Black Mirror, 2: 15 Million Merits

A much better effort, I thought, than the first programme in this trilogy. Without an against-the-clock storyline we were able to enter more fully into the world depicted and muse upon its verities. So here we are, in a world where humanoids (or at any rate the young good-looking ones) are locked away underground, pedalling on gymn bikes to build up credits / merits (the creatrors seem to take a dim view of gymns), and fed a Matrix-like world of videogames and streamed TV junk (porn being in heavy supply). There do not seem to be  books, or any other source of real culture, and language has decayed to the point where conversation is denuded into almost nothing.  Individuals are locked away for some time in individual cells made of screens where video is beamed from all sides and watching appears to be compulsory. The only way out of this inferno seems to be to spend 15 million merits to have a chance to appear on the talent show 'Hot Shots', an amphitheatre of cruelty and all things synthetic, there to perform to the boos and yelps of an artificially generated audience. Before you go on stage, you have to drink 'Compliance'. Thus a promising singer can be recruited to a porn channel (it's either that or back to the bikes). In the story her champion manages to appear himself on the show and speak out angrily against the tat, the packaging, the fakery ... but the system, as total systems do,  immediately co-opts all opposition, and the would-be rebel is rewarded for his 'passion' with a penthouse, a more attractive artificial reality to look at, and regular slots as a show protestor on another 'stream'. (A neat acknowledgement by husband-wife writers Brooker-Huq here that their attack on TV is also TV entertainment).

Regular dystopian tropes, then, but beautifully observed. The 'Hot Shot' judges (led by a brilliant Rupert Everett) were amusing but also sinister, and touches like the bored-out-of-their heads staff and the awful Scouse contestant ('singing is my destiny') gave it all a credible air. Most memorable of all was the picture of human nature itself melting into something else, as endless junk, grey uniforms, and the vanquishing of the past by media tat did their work. We sensed that tender relationshiops like the one between the two protagonists did not have long to go. Not Orwell's totalitarianism, but late post-humanist capitalism triumphing over the human spirit. This one really did hang together, and will linger in the mind.

TV: Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror 1: National Anthem

After getting my weekly fix of Southland on 4od I watched the first episode of Charlie Brooker’s satire Black Mirror, a none-too-subtle title for a series clearly meant to hold up a mirror to the darkest aspects of our collective self. This episode was called National Anthem,  in which a contemporary artist (the shocking antics of contemporary  art , tick) kidnaps a 'princess' (celebrity culture, tick)  and demands on a YouTube video (viral media, tick) that the prime minister (politicians, tick) performs a bestial act live on TV (degrading effects of (a) opinion polls and (b) modern media, tick tick), all of which is covered gleefully by TV stations (the hysteria of 24-hour sensationalism, tick) and  - initially - cheered on by a demented population (brain-sapped plebs, tick).

I did watch to the end, but I didn’t find it a particularly effective satire. It ticked all the boxes (see laborious parentheses above) too knowingly, but didn’t seem to be coming from any engaged position. It didn’t seem that we were really being warned about the lobotomising powers of media culture. Instead we were invited to admire the cleverness of the creators as they referenced Facebook, Twitter etc.  As we noticed actors who had been in The Thick of It etc. we found ourselves in the self-congratulatory world of TV shows alluding archly to each other. In other words, the programme was itself a case of the kind of media-obsessed world it was supposedly satirising, and as so often it was more than half in love with the technology (cf a Spooks-style raid) it was holding up to the, well, mirror. It just seemed lacking in insight and fresh angles: Nothing was said here about art / politics / YouTube etc. that we didn’t know already. The plot in particular seemed to be begging for notoriety, but was let down by massive implausibility (eyes, not a DNA test, would normally be enough to distinguish a male from a female finger.  A contemporary artist who is an IT genius + mad + depressed + capable of kidnapping a Kate Middleton-figure from security guards? Please.) It was unsure of its tone: was the scene with the ‘performer’ standing in for the PM meant to be funny? If not, what was it meant to be? Most of the charcterisation was thin. The PM and his wife needed more screentime together for us to get interested in their relationship. There was very little sign of characters with any moral conflict, which might have given the isuues human depth.

So, it was all a bit of a disappointment, especially since Brooker is one of our best observers of pop culture: his Screenwipes and Newswipes are an absolute must. He has also written extremely well: Nathan Barley and Dead Set are strong satiric works.  National Anthem had its moments: there were some comic touches (the idea of a police team surrounding a house in … Truro); the change of mood as crowds watched the PM’s humiliation did go beyond the simplified crowd portrait we had seen up until then; and the very end contained some sharp points about the dynamics of public and private life. But there weren’t enough of them. Having said that, as a Brooker fan I shall certainly give the next episode a go.