Black Mirror review

Black Mirror review

Black Mirror is a television anthology series that shows the dark side of modern day life and technology from the view of multiple different people throughout the seasons. The show first came out in 2011 and was created by Charlie Brooker. In episode 1 of Black Mirror titled 'The National Anthem' the entire country comes to a stand still when the princess is kidnapped and a video is posted online stating that her life will be spared if the prime minister has sexual intercourse with a pig on live TV.

The first thing this episode teaches us is that media can be spread anywhere in a very short amount of time as one of the PM's associates tells him the video was uploaded to YouTube and in the 9 minutes it took them to remove it, it had been downloaded and spread and there was a potential 50,000 views already. This comes as a shock to the prime minister who wanted the information to remain between the people who had showed him. He also understands the newsrooms will soon be broadcasting to the entire world. Later in the episode it is revealed that the original video had 18,000,000 views on YouTube.

Next, the show tells us that the world is full of corruption and blackmail, firstly when one of the women working for the local news sends revealing images to one of the PM's associates hoping for some inside information in return. The news company also try to pull the wool over the eyes of the public by not revealing details of the ransom put forward by the kidnapper, they also push people to believe that a terrorist group is behind the kidnapping even though they are unaware of their identity. This leads the general public (who we see throughout the episode) to spread rumours and group up in the workplace and in pubs to watch the situation unfold.

Lastly, the episode shows how powerful technology can be when the kidnapper brings the entire nation to a standstill when the broadcast begins and no one even notices that the princess is returned safely before the broadcast even begins, it is now revealed that the kidnapper was proving a point about how easy it is to control people's lives using the media. The show puts a message across that technology can be dangerous if used in this sort of way and that is the message the kidnapper leaves us with before he hangs himself at the end.

The first episode of Black Mirror shows us representations of issues regarding corruption . This shows us that the government will do whatever they can to hide details of incidents like these and will leave the public with leaks and fake news to influence the way they view the situation. Also representation of national identity as whilst the event was unfolding many British citizens took to the pub (a common British pastime) to watch the events unfold from there. The last representations are Ethnicity and Gender as the PM and the majority of his associates are generally from the dominant ideology: White, middle class, middle aged men.

In conclusion, I enjoyed the first episode of Black mirror because the idea of technology being potentially dangerous and the media taking over the world interests me, I also enjoyed the strange but intriguing storyline and I think that important lessons can be learnt from watching this show.