Just Watched the Latest Black Mirror Episode

[skull_bearer]

It's basically like if someone tried to make Soylent Green and Gattica into one film. It doesn't work, there's no real connection between the two, the story is split on it's two driving forces, there's no connection to reality and the characters are so underdeveloped 2D would be a compliment. Which is a real shame because I thought the first was very clever. Turns out this one was made by both the director and his wife, which makes sense, it has the feel of a collaborative work which didn't quite come off and eneded up being less than the sum of its parts.

So, in short; should have been two episodes, the reality tv one, and the kill-all-fatties one. Still haven't a clue what the reality tv one was actually trying to say, so maybe they cobbled together the kill-all-fatties out to fill in the gaps?

Comments

[delkaetre-ni.livejournal.com]

I read it more as a critique of the current constant media culture - that includes the "kill all fatties" bit, thanks to the way we demonise anyone who dares to have squidgy bits. It's the horrible slide into nothingness as we buy shinier and shinier tech so that we can be constantly connected, absorb more and more of our perceptions from the media, see more and more 'reality' shows and all the while lose our creativity and humanity toward others. We shower growing levels of hate on the overweight, the poor and the 'scroungers', we idolise constructed pop entities, and everything seems to be getting more and more porny-looking with no clear stopping point.

But massively exaggerated, obviously. Reminded me of playing Paranoia rather a lot - the colour coded citizen levels from yellow to grey to privilege, the abhorrence of anyone further down the ladder, the use of drugs and propaganda/distractions to keep people well behaved, the total and utter lack of any hint of a world outside the Complex, and the fact that every single tiny little thing appears to be run or arranged by a Computer that doesn't have the individual citizen's best interests at heart.