Charlie Brooker is known for his glum social commentary, and his latest creation Black Mirror is no different. The three part series explores many areas of pop culture, from politics to the X Factor phenomenon, and forces you to question the accepted aspects of our lives.
The first instalment The National Anthem followed to actions of the Prime Minister as he was blackmailed into fornicating with a pig in order to save a Princess Susannah. At the beginning of the episode the Prime Minister discovers that the princess has been kidnapped, and the only ransom her captor asks for is that the Prime Minister has sex with a pig on television. Out of the whole series, the message of this episode was arguably the hardest to pinpoint, but the public’s acceptance of such a lewd act says a lot about how accustomed we are to seeing shocking images on television. You are forced to draw parallels between the fictional characters and real life public figures, which makes this episode even more thought provoking.
15 Million Merits focuses on the culture of X Factor, discussing how far a person will go to achieve success. This episode is set in a strange futuristic world where you must exercise to earn money, which makes for a rather mundane undertone. However, the excitement begins to pick up when the main character, Bing, buys his love interest, Abi, a ticket to enter the talent show ‘Hot Shot’ as a romantic gesture. Unfortunately this backfires and she is cajoled by the judging panel to become a porn star. Bing then returns to the show because the guilt had got too much for him, he intends to change people’s attitudes towards this mind numbing form of television. The episode ends with a speech from Bing on his own television show, which felt like Brooker almost shouting at the audience to wake up and realise how low television shows such as X Factor really are. This episode seemed to drag on more than the others, but to some extent this could have been the intention, to make us think about how we accept the mundane aspects of our lives as long as we have an exciting television show to look forward to.
The final episode, The Entire History of You, with contribution by Brooker, but written instead by the makers of Peep Show, predicts how we would cope if we could relive every moment of our lives just by pressing a rewind button on a remote. The reaction of the main character actually seems reasonable; he focuses on minute details such as peoples facial expressions and body language, making inferences about his wife’s relationship with an ex boyfriend. Possibly the most interesting of all the episodes, you question how you would change if you could watch your life back like a DVD, and the reality is that most of us would become obsessed with our past.
This series explored many areas of modern culture which many writers wouldn’t dare to, and it was refreshing to see a television programme unlike any other around currently. Although we shouldn’t expect any different from Charlie Brooker than a cold hard look at ourselves, instead of his usual in-your-face rants, he subtly makes us question our culture without making it too blatant.
