2023-06-25 13:12:55
In favor: the portrait of a fragmented society
Brenda Petrone Veliz
The sixth season of Black Mirror premiered on Netflix on June 15. For many, this new installment moved away from its axis and left behind those dystopian environments that so fascinated the public. However, with the development of these new stories, the series marks the least expected dystopia of all.
Today, technological advances are getting closer and closer to the follies portrayed by Black Mirror (without going any further, the Apple Vision Pro was recently launched). Although television production takes them to the extreme, the central ideas come out of the most common things. The first episode of the new season (“Joan is horrible”) talks regarding the terms and conditions that are signed without reading and also addresses the multiverse.
From the satire, Netflix laughs at itself and its users, but also warns that the fear of being heard through artificial intelligence is real?
Realizing that we are really screwed as a society, not because of technology but because of the way we use it, leaves the viewer stunned. The problem is that the premise is so popular that at first it seems bland.
This social treatment carried out by Charlie Brooker is intensified in the second story: “Loch Henry”. The chapter arrives in the midst of the furor for true crime and makes it clear that a story is priced the more broken emotions it carries. The directors who were preparing a film end up being the protagonists of a tank full of drama, blood and with a fragmented mental health (just like the glass of the introduction).
In conclusion, the fictional series marks some of the serious problems that we have at a socio-emotional level and that, curiously, we have been dragging since before part of the technology that gives Black Mirror narrative support was launched.
Season six puts the prosumer in check with those situations that he normalizes or doesn’t want to talk regarding in order to present a crude but transparent dystopia, the least expected, but the most real of all.
Against: Why didn’t they give it another name if it is something else?
Diego Tabachnik
“Blackmirroresque”. The impact of the first seasons of Black Mirror was such that this adjective was even created, in colloquial speech, to define extreme situations. The confinement due to the pandemic, for example.
The power of the great series by the British Charlie Brooker was in many factors. Mainly, in the lack of a clear time reference, but the feeling that we were not that far from suffering from what we saw (dystopia).
The other point was logically how technology with its overwhelming arrogance crossed everything.
And also, how the twisted nature of their arguments generated a stinging discomfort. A sharp, suffocating critique.
Basically, everything that’s gone in this latest bland, vague, and bewildering new five-episode season. They changed the DNA of the series, something that we are accepting as the chapters go by and the disappointment increases. They broke the viewing pact with the viewer.
It is no longer even a matter of saying whether these five new stories are successful or not: this is basically something else. Some are more like the snobbish whims of their filmmakers, like the inexplicable “Mazey Day” and its satire on the paparazzi and exploited pop star guild.
Even the ingenious ones, such as “Joan is horrible”, which tries to wet the ear of Netflix itself, do not quite achieve the expected impact.
When he appeals to humor (something that is not new in the series), he raises the level a bit, like the relationship almost under the Stockholm syndrome of the protagonist of the last chapter, “Demon 79”, neither more nor less than with a devil in disco wave.
But, to be fair, only “Beyond the sea” is saved, the chapter that has Aaron Paul (we miss you, Jesse Pinkman) with a story that is worthy of the saga and its uncomfortable oppression.
It is enough to remember chapters like the magnificent “White Christmas”, the disruptive (within the logic of the series) and loving “San Junípero” or the visionary “National Hate” to accept that this last season is not only not up to the task: it would have been better to avoid it (or rename it).
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#unexpected #twist #worst #history
