Essay: Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror – backfiring new technology

Brookers phenomenal, BAFTA winning “Black Mirror” presents examples of backfiring new technology within a futuristic reality that is familiar enough for the viewer to questioning our own relation to this advanced culture. The science fiction, television series presents different perceptions of the modern day’s forever advancing technology reliant reality and the possible problems associated with these scientific advantages. Examining how society’s addiction and dependency of new technologies, Brooker confronts the unanticipated consequences of this addiction, often with a dark satirical tone, set in a near future, alternative present. Like the name suggests, if you use a black mirror, you will see the dark reflection of reality.
Charlie Brooker, the satirist creator of “You Have Been Watching”, “How TV ruined your life” as well as the anthology series called “Black Mirror”, was born in Reading, Berkshire, on the 3rd of March 1971.  He studied a Bachelor of Arts in media studies at University of Westminster, then Wallingford School, which according to Brooker, he didn’t graduate due to the choice of an unacceptable topic of video games.
This new found love to a new technology was almost forbidden by the majority of society to have negative effects on the user, just as this view carried as a constant throughout the nineties to the early 00’s such as addiction leading to health and relationships problems, and increased aggression. Although growing up with a society of views for and against new technology, I believe was the inspiration for Brooker to create these advancements to create and display the problems which the advancements could have on society by the dangers of the technology making us, in a way, less human.
Black Mirror contains a series of anthological episodes which usually contain a fable-like message in which it tries to explore the dangers of relying on the advancements of technology. Unlike a fable, the stories don’t illustrate lessons of morals to be learnt, rather amplifies the mistakes made within the story of humanities mistakes which aim to make people question their own actions. Black Mirror contains a large series of repeated half-allegories within its four series from the repeated theme of discrimination, internet trolling and power abuse. However, I shall focus my research on the hidden allegories of three episodes, rather than each individual example as there would be a large variety of repetition of ideas. Therefore is shall discuss the episodes of three different series and views, such as, ‘Men Against Fire’s link with modern day immigration, racism and discrimination, ‘USS Callister’s male abuse of power and internet trolling and ‘Fifteen Million Merits’ corruption of consumerism and how humans have a yearning for a distraction from the turmoil of modern life through the depletion of goods, which ironically aids the human stress and anxiety which leads to increased consumption.
I shall use a small list of the existing sources on this subject on online forums and published articles on online magazines listing all of sources of text I used within a Bibliography, which I shall provide after my conclusion. I shall provide a plot for each of the episodes and then follow it with analysis covering a variety of ideas and then conclude each episode before is start writing about the next episode which I will be analysing.
Within my bibliography, I shall present the hyperlinks and books which I used within my research to serve as a way of validating the quotes which I used and the information which influenced my interpretation. I will also include a graphical bibliography, separate to the source bibliography I just mentioned. Within this shall present the hyperlinks to where I found the image as they might be subject to copy right protection laws.
Finally, I shall provide an analysis of each source I used (not the graphical sources) within my bibliography discussing whether the information they supply is accurate how well balanced it is.
Men Against Fire Plot
Brooker’s Third series of the show, included an episode about a mentally unstable soldier named Stripe (Malachi Kirby [1]) within a post-apocalyptic, dystopia, where there are a series of ventures to hunt and exterminate deformed/ mutated human known as “roaches”. Each soldier is equipped with a neural implant, called MASS, which supposedly makes the hunting and killing of the ‘roaches’ easier, by enhancing their senses of smell, sight and hearing through augmented reality. MASS, from the soldiers’ perspective is that extra boost which they require to defeat the enemy, with as little to no losses as possible, as well as having it there to support them in the psychology of the killing by providing ‘sex dreams’ at night to calm the men and women and to prevent any development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Within Stripe’s first encounter with the ‘roaches’, he is able to kill two of the three roaches he found within a farmhouse, however after inspecting the simple weapon favoured by the roaches, a makeshift torch of some description, the light flashes in his eyes and from there on, his neural implant starts to malfunction.
The next day, Stripe and other soldiers go to a housing complex where the higher ranked soldier, Medina, is killed by an infected sniper therefore Hunter and Stripe go to investigate the building where Stripe finds an un mutated, normal women and tries to convince her to leave as she’s not safe being so close to a ‘roach’ hideout. Hunter however decides to shoot the woman on sight claiming the woman was a ‘roach’.
Stripe awakens later on in the episode, inside a prison cell, as he escaped with a woman and her son which were killed by Hunter after being told the truth about the MASS System, where “Arquette explains that the LED device had sent viral coding to Stripe’s MASS, causing it to glitch so that he could see roaches as human beings. Arquette then reveals the true secret purpose of the MASS implants: to augment the visual appearance of the persecuted humans to make them look zombie-like and frightening, to alter their voices to sound like monstrous nonsensical growls, to diminish the smells of blood and gore, and to selectively erase certain memories. MASS is used by the military to dehumanize the appearance of the enemy, allowing soldiers to kill them more efficiently and without remorse. Stripe, it turns out, has been working for a global eugenics program to “protect the bloodline” of humanity, something Stripe passively agreed to. Though his memory of agreeing to this has been erased by MASS, Arquette confirms it with video footage, and he also plays the raw footage of Stripe’s farmhouse mission, except the roaches’ appearances have not been augmented to look like monsters and so it is indeed revealed that he has been killing terrified, ordinary humans. Stripe pleads with him to stop the footage and Arquette threatens to imprison Stripe, endlessly looping the raw footage, if Stripe does not consent to wipe his memory of the last few days and get his MASS system reset.
Stripe is later shown being discharged with full military honours, implying he consented to a second erasure of his memory. He approaches what his eyes show to be an immaculate house and a waiting dream girl, but in actuality he stands alone outside a graffiti-tagged, dilapidated shack.” [2]
Men Against Fire Analysis
The Title, Men Against Fire, comes from Brigadier General, Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall’s book “Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command” and is an appropriate name as within the book, S.L.A.M displays the crucial effect the Ratio of Fire has on a successful war effort. S.L.A. Marshall’s core thesis of the ratio of fire is that in most cases, only 20% of infantrymen would fire directly at the enemy, rather than shooting over the enemies’ heads or not even pulling the trigger. Personally, this is quite a shocking figure as it means four out of five riflemen would prefer to be spectators then take another man’s, or woman’s, life. Marshall claims that his findings would be universal throughout the world’s warfare and it had only come to the publics and military attention because “in earlier wars there had never existed the opportunity for systematic collection of data.” [3] This “ratio of fire” theory had become a priority for military training to attempt at over coming and increasing this ratio.
“Marshall’s interpretation of his own evidence begs definition. Marshall argued the low ratio of fire he observed in combat was due to an inborn “fear of aggression” he believed to be “part of the normal man’s emotion make-up.” He wrote in Men Against Fire that the average, healthy individual, even one who can endure the stresses of combat, “still has such an inner S.L.A. Marshall US Army Photo 41 and usually unrealized resistance toward killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility.” [4] Marshall postulated from his observations on the Second World War a revolutionary idea that he considered applicable to the entire history of human warfare. Soldiers were not firing because of an innate resistance to killing others. Marshall’s interpretation can be summarized as follows: that soldiers not using their weapons is a) a bad thing, and b) represents a failure on the part of the military training system and the soldiers’ personal motivation to overcome an assumed human internal resistance to inflicting harm on others. Men Against Fire stated that infantrymen were unable to use their weapons because of a conscious or unconscious unwillingness to act aggressively, to threaten, or to kill others — even enemies attempting to kill them. Only those soldiers on crew-served weapons such as machine guns would reliably fight all the time; individual riflemen would not. The subsequent popularity of this interpretation is quite easy to understand. It flatters humanists because it affirms that most people are inherently good and would (could?) never hurt another person, even a stranger or an enemy. It simultaneously flatters those who do fight and kill, affirming that they are part of an elite group of warriors who are either culturally or biologically superior in this way to the rest of the humanity, who are the “sheep” waiting to be rescued, protected, and turned into collateral casualties.” [5]
I believe Charlie Brooker uses this theory and his fond love of modernising technology to attempt arguing the morals of using VR, or similar technology, to manipulate someone’s sense, lying about their reality. From Marshall’s data, I believe that Brooker presented a common fear of this Virtual Reality being better than the real world in an under published way, within the morals of taking another man. I’m positive that the majority of modern military leaders, including S.L.A. Marshall, would welcome ‘Men Against Fire’s approach of dealing with the issue of low fire rates, with open arms as it removes any ethical reason a soldier would refrain from taking another’s life, as well as creating a much more advanced soldier.
Personally, the idea of consciously agreeing to being given “MASS” as a way to cope with the killing of a military state is an attractive as I won’t have to cope with killing, which can lead to PTSD, however this is not the reason for MASS. The technology used cannot be justified in my opinion due to the fact that it involves the murdering of innocent families, which have been dehumanised and require to be exterminated in order to restore purity. I believe this is an allegory for, in short, discrimination within our society, but it covers much more than that.
Initially racism, as the main motif of discrimination throughout the sixty-minute duration of the episode is very apparent. From the beginning of the episode, all evidence of the feral-type creatures named roaches was extremely one sided used to create a bias opinion from the get go, maybe to strike fear into the audience or just to make them feel uneasy about the mission in which Stripe was being taken out on. That got me thinking on other ways in which one sided opinions can make people feel uneasy about a type of person without even meeting them and due to the new digital age, it is apparent that anyone is able to create and spread these views without many limitations.
There are many examples of how public opinion of a certain race, ethnicity, or religion can be manipulated with fear through lies and half-truths. The Vietnamese war was created through fear of communism and the media helped dehumanise communists to make the war seem justified which seems similar to the propaganda used by the National Socialism Party in the 1930’s to boycott and then justify the attempted deduction of the Jewish population within Germany and later on in other countries like Austria, France and Poland.
The Vietnam War has been regarded as one of the United States of America’s biggest Military failures of the 20th Century and the prejudice behind the 2,000,000 Vietnamese civilian dead and 60,000 United States of America soldiers killed. The United States of America were accountable for a large amount of the civilian deaths from the use of undiscriminating use of napalm bombs. The United States’ government however where not against this type of weapon, especially after dropping two nuclear bombs killing over 200,000 civilians within Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [6]
Evidence to this Vietnamese War connection can also be inferred through the Commander whose name is Medina. Captain Ernest Lou Medina, served during the Vietnam War as a commanding officer of 11th Brigade within Company C, and was court-martialled in 1971 due to his involvement of the My Lai Massacre, one of many massacres during the war in which soldiers were ordered to kill non-combatants, no matter if they were fleeing, weren’t carrying a weapon, or a child and was reported for killing at least three of 504 dead civilians.
The link, which can be made between the episode and the holocaust, I found on the episode’s IMDb page, [7] which suggests the story was extremely influenced by the early 20th Century pseudoscience with the name of Eugenics. This so-called science was studied that through selective breeding, the human race would improve and therefore a prevention of “inferior” people from contaminating “superior” bloodlines which eventually was the pseudoscience behind the Holocaust, and Hitler ensured that there was conclusive evidence being made by the evidence to back this, which was never really present. This “mass sterilization” of races deemed a threat to the Aryan bloodline, is similar to that of the killing of the roaches within the episode as in both scenarios, people are discriminated and dehumanized.
A source I found on Magazine [8], focuses on the episode being an allegory for an “anti-immigrant age” by suggesting that the digital age of has aided this idea of bias first opinions on ethnicities and cultures but with a more modern representation. Roxanne Sancto, the author of the article, suggests that this bias is similar to the media of today in the way it makes you think “Refugees who’ve fled from war-torn countries have entered yours to steal away your jobs, rape your wives and children and plan terrorist attacks; African-American men selling CDs on street corners are disguised hoodlums out to shoot you in the back; your neighborhood’s Pakistani community is made up of ISIS members looking to recruit new followers.”
She adds, “Once you recognize the direction it’s headed in, however, the impact of the story might make you want to discard “the news” forever, because you’ve realized once again you’re not just watching a show. You’re already living it.”
Her viewpoint of the episode is nearly as morbid as the episode itself as the correlation of the idea isn’t ignorable. Now this doesn’t mean the media as a whole meets this criteria, however Brooker intended for the show to spark this acknowledgement of the media as being full of hate and this filter being out of our control, which links to Stripe’s character as due to MASS, his unable to edit and change his true emotions as the higher ranking soldiers can go against his decision as Stripe gave them permission to. But if they were able to produce this neural implant that adapts their perception of the world through your senses, then forging a scene of approval from Stripe would have been child’s play.
I believe that ‘MASS’, the technology behind the editing of senses to disrupt the correct images reaching the brain, discriminates these civilians or ‘roaches’ because allegedly, they carry a disease which is worthy enough for them to lose their lives for it “to preserve the bloodline”. On the other hand, diseases are known to be undiscriminating of who they infect within nature so it begs the question that none of the roaches asked to be infected but now are being hunted because of it. Now I chased the idea of when you remove the idea of an infection or disease, and read that statement as people receive these ‘qualities’ at birth, it made me think of another undiscriminating feature, which I decided could be ethnicity and/or religion, therefore making the link to the allegory once again.
Fifteen Million Merits Plot
The storyline focuses on the life of Bingham “Bing” Madsen, played by Daniel Kaluuya, who lives within a society where people live, enclosed by video screens which display a different series of images. The inhabitants utilise stationary bikes which when ridden, rewards them with the digital currency that is “merits”. This currency is available to be spent on higher quality food, virtual accessories for their on screen avatar or “dopple”, presumably taken from the word doppelganger, and for basic goods like toothpaste. Due to the only way of gaining income is by cycling, the society sees overweight people as the “lower class” who are shunned not only in person, due to their cleaning jobs, but through the screened media of television shows and video games like “Botherguts”.
After inheriting a six digit sum of credits from his recently dead brother, Bing gets bored of the everyday purchases he undertakes on himself with the merits he already owns. One day, Bing doesn’t recognise one of the new members cycling within their room, whose name is Abi and later develops a crush on her after overhearing her singing the Irma Thomas song “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is”. Bing persists Abi to enter “Hot Shot”, the televised reality contest where the winners of the show can leave the exercise bikes behind and move into a higher standard of living. However entry requires 15 million merits, and the wealthy Bing buys her a ticket with all the money he has. Abi, joined by Bing, is made to drink an obligatory beverage by the name of “Cuppliance” before she is allowed on stage to perform the Irma Thomas song in front of the judges, Charity, Wraith and Hope. The judges congratulate her on her skill however say there is no more space for singers and Judge Wraith suggests that she may be better suited to performing within his adult, pornographic show “Wraith Babes”. Regardless of Bing’s disapproval, heard from the wing, Abi is brought to tears by the cheering of the judges and avatar audience and reluctantly accepts.
Bing, goes back to his life of stationary bikes to receive credits once again, as he no longer can afford the luxuries he did before, one of which was being able to skip ads, so when Abi’s new debut was being advertised within his personal cell, he is unable to skip the advert, no matter what he does. Frustrated, Bing breaks one of the screens creating a large shard of glass which he hides as well as Abi’s empty “Cuppliance” container. Then after months of hours of cycling, Bing finally haves enough t purchase his own Hot Shot entry ticket.
He takes the glass in his pocket and shows the stagehand is empty cartoon of “Cuppliance” belonging to Abi to get onto the stage without having to drink his own. He starts with an impressive dance routine which catches the Judges’ attention and the audience’s enjoyment until he puts the glass to his neck. Wraith tries convincing Bing to go through with it whilst Hope and Charity decide to listen to his hatred towards the system. The judges then decide to offer Bing his own show in which he is able to speak freely of his hatred, which he accepts.
The episode ends with Bing recording his new show, with the same piece of glass at his neck, where it ends with advertisements. Bingham’s new, larger quarters are shown as he makes his way to the edge of his room, looking upon a green forest that stretches into the horizon.
Fifteen Million Merits Analysis
The tedious everyday life of the members of the society built within Black Mirror’s second episode is one that can easily be related to the life of many people today. For example, the exercise bikes are ridden to create an income of merits to the rider as well as, supposedly, an electric energy, which is gained from the bike. This tedious job I believe can be related to an office job as in both instances the worker is sat down, producing work, or power, starring at a screen constantly whilst being rewarded with a currency, which they can spend whenever they want without many limitations. After a working day is done, the workers return to their home to utilize a screen either to play a video game or to watch a popular show until they go to bed. Within the dystopia, the need and desire for consumption is extremely apparent. With constant advertisements and screens displaying something new every few seconds, it would be hard to live within this society and not feel the urge to buy the best products you can afford, like the higher quality meals, the “cooler” outfits for their “dopples” as well as entry tickets to become celebrities. [9]
This modern day allegory for an office life being tedious but the episode also creates a feeling of body shaming by displaying your worth to society is that dependant on how much merits you own. The fitter people are able to work for longer which accumulates them with a higher income therefore the poor people are fat, and the rich people are fit and healthy. This then means that only fit people are able to gain access to the Hot Shots ticket, which everyday workers aspire to gain, with the hope of becoming a celebrity and thus live a better quality of life.
However, noticeably none of the “celebrities” are dependent on any type of merits system as it gives the sense hope that celebrities will have money regardless on however much they work, they are certified this supposedly high income regardless. One of the celebrities on the show is ‘Judge Hope’ who is identified by his stage right position of the X Factor like judges panel as Simon Cowell. Cowell is the face of multiple talent shows featuring the majority of the time as the deciding vote on whether the auditioned participant shall make it into the next round. This idea is prominent within the episode as the only way to get an interesting/ better life is to be granted it after months of work, by a “celebrity”. This concept shows a reality where people need the media to acknowledge they’re achievements and that is the only way that their self worth is increased, which links to similar idea to that of another ‘Black Mirror’ episode,” Nosedive” where each member of society’s worth is valued by the amount of ‘likes’ they get and positive interactions, all scoring them out of five.
As humans, we are fixated by always wanting the newest edition of phone, clothing, house, or even garden hose; we normally prefer the best version. The personal avatar is Brooker’s version of this; due to the fact the cyclists are unable to own anything different or individual clothing, as they all wear grey tracksuits and sweatshirts, and their only physical improvements that can be made are that of updating their ‘dopple’s appearance. These irrelevant purchases of pixelated improvements are the only, limited, individuality each member has which, in my opinion, conveys the metaphor between the restricted ideas of individuality within reality. Everything they own in real life is identical as well as they’re views. Bing is known to make origami penguins but each day, the cleaner takes it away, showing that this outside thinking is not encouraged. This links with the modern day by a society which is fixated on the norm of trending music, fashion, and idols and outside opinions are seen as a threat to society like the increased popularity of hip hop music.
“Another key symbol highlighted within Fifteen Million Merits is the media contained within it, particularly the entertainment shows and the advertisements. All this media is depicted as highly invasive and obnoxious, far too loud and tasteless for us as viewers, but is accepted by the characters completely. The advertisements shown are not even remotely subtle, but instead are required viewing, pausing and emitting a shrill tone if looked away from. The only way to avoid the adverts is to pay a fee to skip them. This is indexical and denotative of practices that already happen in modern day society: upgrading to a premium status or membership in order to skip advertisements in services like Spotify (for music) or YouTube (for video)… Additionally, the entertainment shows shown within Fifteen Million Merits are denotative of shows that already exist in our world, but a more widely connotative of the entertainment media industry being a gross practice that degrades and manipulates people for the entertainment of the masses. Taken further with the behind the scenes view of the Hot Shots show that we are given, these forms of entertainment are perpetuating the myth that commercial entertainment media are foul practices run simply to distract and amuse the population at large. This view however brings up an interesting hegemonical problem: is the show Black Mirror itself guilty of the same gross manipulation that it suggests reality entertainment is guilty of? It too is pushing a viewpoint; the general public too distributes it through a commercial network for viewing. In essence, Black Mirror is hegemonic, being part of the commercial business, and it is simultaneously counter hegemonic in its views about technology and the media, giving it a complex hegemonic identity.” [9]
The point made within Fifteen Million Merits is that of the world working through tedious tasks to earn and therefore consume, which is a pessimistic way of looking upon the human race but in this case it is true, Bing tries to deny this by changing his routine but eventually he gets reset to a similar tedious task. Like the episode of Men Against Fire, Fifteen Million Merits conveys Black Mirrors theme of showing the dark reflection of human life by taking the life out of living, whether its MASS implants or being confirmed to cells of consumption that is an allegory for society.
USS Callister Analysis
During the initial minutes of the episode, the audience is presented with a Star Trek geek, Robert Daly, who has programmed a open world video game and after seeing how poorly he is treated by his own workforce, it is unsurprising that a feeling of sympathy is felt for him. He’s quiet and lets his employees walk all over him by avoiding work and requests and laughing at him behind his back. So when he meets Nanette we think its sweet and that he’s just a little shy, but then he obtains a coffee cup with her DNA which switches the audiences opinion of Daly.
This abuse of power, which Daly obtains through his gaming platform, can be seen as an allegory for leadership roles who’s intentions are unmoral, specifically male leaders. Sexual harassment is a key issue that is both prominent in this episode and in the outside world of work with men who are in highly secured roles taking advantage of those in their workforce who normally get away unnoticed or unpunished. However, I believe that the recent movement of ‘#metoo’, after the multiple sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein, has supported the increase of whistle blowers against this specific type of power abuse. Also Nannette’s experience of this within the Infinity is an example of this as she stands up against the popular view, to just let Daly have his fun, but unites the whole workforce to stand up and to motivate justice. [11] [12]
An interesting note is that the anthology series is known of having sad or cliff hanger endings however “USS Callister” has a more light-hearted ending. Having an underestimated, heroine who is able to defeat, in a sense, the male patriarchy she works for. It’s almost as if Brooker is displaying that this word problem is not one to be ignored. The men, and in few cases women, who exploit others with harassment within the workplace must keep coming to the light until it no longer occurs. As a whole, Black Mirror once again blames the human actions of the world as the fault and with the increase of technology, privacy becomes less accessible therefore it is easier to exploit others.
Season four’s large variety of lead female roles is extremely clear, as all but one of the episodes (Hang the DJ) contain a female lead, all of which are independent, fighting for a certain, however not always an ethical one. This power switch within Brooker’s anthology series is itself a political allegory; the large increase of feminism since the 1910’s suffragettes has created the society we live in today. A society which is more conscious in how offensive their words or actions are, bringing to light those who do wrong.
On the other hand, the episode can be interpreted in another fashion. The plan Nanette created to escape from Daly’s control was that of her exploiting herself, making her a sexual object, by tempting Daly away from his omnicorder into the water, for the others to escape whilst blackmailing real life Nanette with her own PhotoCloud sexual images to steal from real life Daly. Also, the crew might have been able to escape the control of Daly, but their first encounter with another person, is yet another power hungry male who probably uses the infinity to live out his fantasies stating the fact that there might be one less Daly in the world, probably within a non returnable coma, but the “real world” is filled with many more people like him, to an extent. [13]
This almost, quite controversially states that the only real power women have within a forced or unhappy relationship, whether that be a professional one (workplace) or leisurely one (marriage/partner), is that of their sexual appearance which personally I believe is incorrect and actually an illusion or fantasy created by Hollywood. The start of the episode with Daly, the awkward genius that grabs everyone’s sympathy as no one gives him the gratification he deserves, so we take his side when we find out he has feelings for the new girl who not only makes him feel happy, but actually notices him. It all sounds like something out of the beginning of a Hollywood movie so I also believe this episode takes the side of actually indirectly shunning Hollywood as it is almost an anti-romantic comedy, presenting the dark side of exploitation and harassment within the workplace. [14]
Conclusion
Overall, Charlie Brooker’s “Black Mirror” is a political allegory for the modern age as it contains multiple dark, satire explorations of faults within society by discussing dangers of techno- knowledgeable advancements as well as them to highlight human faults.
After analysing a selection of different allegories within three different episodes, I have been able to create an answer to the question I asked as my title of “Is Charlie Brooker’s “Black Mirror” a Chilling Political Allegory for the Modern Age?” I have discovered, that although there is a large amount of research gathered upon analysing the meanings and background behind “Fifteen Million Merits”, ”USS Callister” and “Men Against Fire” ,to support this claim, it is not a sufficient amount to support the claim that Black Mirror, and all its episodes are a chilling political allegory.
My arguments for whether Men Against Fire was a political allegory focussed on modern day discrimination and anti-immigration. I supported this with opinions of my own as well as that of Internet forum authors. I discussed that with the MASS neural implants, mankind became less human through their senses and actions as an answer to a human problem of killing another human. This episode’s “Black Mirror” or the dark reflection created was that this morality knowing discriminations is wrong is being conflicted in the modern age by the media, and that the violent side is not the answer, as Stripe discovers the truth of his enemy.
Fifteen Million Merits’ political allegory is that of human consumerism, putting a price on love.  The tedious everyday life presented is an allegory for the average person’s office job, earning money so that they can consume and buy meaningless things endlessly, which I believe everyone is guilty of. Brooker presents the idea of Bing giving all the money he has in the world to almost buy Abi’s happiness only to hit him back in the face conveying that these pointless things are actually pointless, we don’t need them to be happy. We are fed hundreds of advertisements every day commanding us to consume to be happy. Surely as a species we are better than that. We try to find meaning by purchasing things but the real meaning of life, I believe Brooker tries to discourage this idea, because at the end of the day, surely the impact you have on others happiness is the real meaning of life. Knowing that you have made someone else’s day by helping them or making them feel special, not earning meaning through blindness purchases or the recognition of thousands.
The political allegory within USS Callister is that of Internet trolling and the harassment/ abuse within a workplace. The Infinity provides a space for all players to live out their fantasies or frustrations, having the anonymity to do and say whatever you please without real life consequences most of the time. Not only does the episode cover the allegory of harassment that has recently been denounced by many western societies, it challenges the romantic norm created by Hollywood to create sales rather than being realistic to give the outside world a false sense of reality.
I am aware that the research I have gathered and the conclusions I shall make will be extremely opinionated on the fact that all Allegory’s are that of a left wing, socialist nature due to that of the opinion of the shows writer and creator as well as the majority of viewers and reviewers. From that I have decided to state that through this, the most important aspects that I have learnt from this EPQ is that although Brooker presents technology as a tool of humanities poor judgement, displaying with his stories, the dark reflection of our actions.
The media and technology is the new voice of conveying our philosophy. Brooker’s is clear with his hidden messages within his anthology stories, each with it’s own fable teaching. In conclusion, I believe that “Charlie Brooker’s “Black Mirror” is a Chilling Political Allegory for the Modern Age” because the episodes are all inspired by other stories, world facts, and human decisions to create a 60 minute piece of art which conveys the stories, we might not know but can see the visible, unquestionable links, whether it is the men against fire within the jungles of Vietnam displaying discrimination of an ideal or the human actions taken upon others whether it is for the sake of profits and mass consumption or anonymous exploitation of a someone without the power to prevent it.