Last week, Netflix debuted three new episodes of its groundbreaking show Black Mirror, which explores all of the ways technology has impacted our lives. Nearly every plot posits a future where a new technology has become socially accepted, and—surprise!—everything has gone wrong. It’s easy to see the show as technophobic and cynical, and that’s hard to argue with, but the show is so much more than just a “texting will kill us all” screed. Sci-fi at its best creates a believable future world, but uses that world to expose something true about the present. Unlike the Walking Dead or Game of Thrones, Black Mirror doesn’t need violence or zombies to be absolutely terrifying. Ultimately, the point of most episodes isn’t that technology is inherently bad, but to highlight the slippery slope that comes with utilizing technology in order to appease the compulsive human desire to control the uncontrollable.
Here are some of the most powerful episodes and the messages they communicated over the past five seasons of Black Mirror.
- Me, You, and Ashley Too. AKA the one with Miley Cyrus, this episode is a sly critique of empowerment feminism. As Vox notes, what the episode does best is show that the positivity mandate isn’t just bad for the people churning out the content; it has repercussions for the audience too. Imagine subjecting yourself to a constant flow of exhortations from a beautiful and glamorous and wealthy superstar (or someone with a glossy lifestyle brand on Instagram) to Value Yourself! and Go After Your Goals! and Get What You Deserve! and Be Awesome! when you really just feel like all you want is someone to sit with you at lunch. Now you’re not just lonely and miserable; you feel like a failure. You might even be a failure.
- Hang the DJ. As Esquire calls out, not only is this episode a love story, it’s got a happy ending. Following a couple matched by an extraordinarily authoritarian dating system, the two move through relationship after relationship, always longing for that spark of attraction the first felt together until finally revolting against their world. The ending reveals “Hang the DJ” to be an impressive conception of the life inside technology, as well as a romantic vision of what it means to find “the one.”
- Be Right Back. This episode sets up a future where a widow can have her late husband’s personality, aggregated from social-media accounts, uploaded into a new body. But just as the people we date to replace lovers we’ve lost inevitably disappoint, so too does the clone develop bugs that underscore the futility of trying to hold on to what’s already gone. Packing a lethal emotional gut punch, “Be Right Back” offers deep wisdom about the hazy intersection between human innovation and the elemental forces of life itself.
- This episode is both dystopian fiction and acute social satire. Lacie lives in a version of America where every tiny interaction is ranked by the people involved on an app that syncs with augmented-reality contact lenses (or retinal implants, it’s unclear). The minute you see someone you can also see their ranking, meaning that reality has morphed into a pastel-colored nightmare of aggressive cheeriness, as citizens attempt to out-nice each other and bump up their ratings. When her rating drops below 4.2, and her flight to the wedding is canceled, an airline representative can no longer book her on another flight because her number is too low. It’s at this point that “Nosedive” truly descends into nightmarish territory, but it does so without scares, or psychological horror. Rather, it’s the recognizable parts of Lacie’s story that sting: feeling excluded, feeling disliked, feeling downgraded and categorized as a second-class citizen.
