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Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

theguardian.com

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Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#41

Post by addicted »

bawolff wrote: post #14

Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…

The part you’re misunderstanding about black mirror is that it’s about how technology will strip the humanity out of people.

Also, the name of the show is BLACK mirror. Besides the iPhone symbolism by which the name is inspired, the whole point of the show is to hold up a mirror to the dark side of society.

This may lead to a show that is without nuance or is less interesting, but thats the point of the show.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#42

Post by disconcision »

alabastervlog wrote: post #22
dexwiz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno about you, but I don't care about a computer program that believes it's me living on after I die. You can wrap it with all the feel good trappings you want, that set of bits is not you. If anything, living a life in a way that you put off doing the fun things until the after life, spiritual or digital, sounds awful.

The end shows us the entirety of anything real happening: it’s a modern day pharaoh’s tomb. Nothing’s alive, just pantomiming at life. Hieroglyphs and organs in jars, but even less human. What you see is the only real thing. Caretaker machines swapping hard drives or whatever it is they were doing (it’s been a while since I watched it) That’s why it shows us that, when it does.

i think it's both, and more. i didn't read the ending as particularly opinionated about how 'real' the depicted emulation was, though i do think it had a decidedly hopeful tinge. the idea that we might somehow, in some way get the opportunity to do it over, to do it right, even if weird/contingent/incomplete, has i think a mythic resonance that transcends strict bounds of realism. even in a fully fantastic utopian afterlife unmediated by technology there would still be the question of whether this is 'really real': ontological, psychologically, etc. nonetheless, there are levels of unreality many seem willing to accept, the ending of 'inception' being another paradigmatic film example. i guess my perspective is that many aspects of 'real life' also abut artifice and pantomime (a phenomena not unrelated to the feelings of regret inspiring desire for strictly-impossible second chances), and the decision to accept anything as 'real' is always contains an element of tenuousness, uncertainty, and faith.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#43

Post by alabastervlog »

ViktorRay wrote: post #10

I disagree with the premise of this article. Sometimes an extremely pessimistic vision of a possible future CAN change things...by making it so people are determined to fight to prevent that possible future from ever happening. The novel 1984 by George Orwell was published in 1948. It is an extremely pessimistic vision of a possible future for mankind....and many of us over the generations who read it really really d…

I wonder if any ancient Greeks leveled this same criticism at Aesop’s Fables.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#44

Post by jfengel »

weinzierl wrote: post #2

"Absent is the plot twist of Pandora’s box that made it philosophically useful: the box also contained hope and opportunity that new knowledge brings." Yes, add that and it might be something interesting but sure not the Black Mirror I want to watch. I mean it is called Black Mirror for a reason. And it is not even true. Take the episode "San Junipro" for example? Isn't there some hope and opportunity in it? And yet,…

A friend of mine curated Black Mirror for me. I've got a lot tolerance for horror.

She showed me San Junipero and Hang the DJ. And then we were done.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#45

Post by anyfoo »

addicted wrote: post #41
bawolff wrote: post #14

Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…

The part you’re misunderstanding about black mirror is that it’s about how technology will strip the humanity out of people. Also, the name of the show is BLACK mirror. Besides the iPhone symbolism by which the name is inspired, the whole point of the show is to hold up a mirror to the dark side of society. This may lead to a show that is without nuance or is less interesting, but thats the point of the show.

That may or may not be the case, but either way it's still valid to criticize that approach, in favor of a more nuanced and potentially more effective one.

Like, maybe that's the show the creators wanted to make. I'm not certain about that, but it's a valid premise. But then maybe I would prefer if the show was a bit different regardless of that. That's always allowed.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#47

Post by lolinder »

addicted wrote: post #41
bawolff wrote: post #14

Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…

The part you’re misunderstanding about black mirror is that it’s about how technology will strip the humanity out of people. Also, the name of the show is BLACK mirror. Besides the iPhone symbolism by which the name is inspired, the whole point of the show is to hold up a mirror to the dark side of society. This may lead to a show that is without nuance or is less interesting, but thats the point of the show.

Every conversation about art runs into this problem: you can't criticize art without someone saying that the critic simply doesn't understand the art. Maybe in some cases this is true, but I don't think that's what's happening here. It seems pretty clear that OP understands Black Mirror's point perfectly and still thinks that unrelenting pessimism devoid of nuance is a bad point—they understand what the art is saying and don't like it.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#48

Post by alabastervlog »

ryandrake wrote: post #31
mandevil wrote: post #17

I feel like a big problem in the modern world is the small scale of our dreams. Dreams drive us, they change the world. In 1865, French author Jules Verne decided to write a book to inspire people to dream big, impossible dreams. He decided to write a novel proving that humans could do anything- by describing how, if enough people worked together, they could journey all the way to the moon. This became one of the fir…

Maybe this is an oversimplification, but optimism is gone from media because people are no longer optimistic about the future. For a long time, the next generation always just kind of assumed they'd have it better than the previous ones. Apart from a couple of terrible historic blips like world wars, of course. Everyone has kind of believed they'd live better lives than their parents. The Baby Boomers were the last g…

That “long time” is a blip on the historical timeline. Most of history is people expecting things to basically stay the same or to get worse.

We’re talking a few decades at a time in a few places scattered over a couple hundred years, maybe, if we mean the median person in that time and place.

The 20th century got a big optimism and productivity boost from finally all but ending cyclical famines, antibiotics, and vaccines, and most of the stuff since has been of far smaller consequence. We’re coming down off the brief high of Haber-Bosch and penicillin, and haven’t found another fix yet. Computers and the Internet ain’t it, so far.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#49

Post by anyfoo »

ryandrake wrote: post #39
anyfoo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel my social circle is like that. I mean, you're right that there are plenty of people as you describe, but I like to think that I surround myself with people for which that does not match (not always successfully when I was younger, but you learn as you grow older). As such, bawolff's point resonates with me. And even if that wasn't the case, they still have a good point. If you pick terrible protagonists…

Yea, I do the same, I try to surround myself with positive people. Friends I choose, local businesses I frequent. But there are some forced interactions (like kid's school friends' parents for example) where you have no choice to have to interact with terrible people. My recollection is that niceness used to be the default in random people you might meet. But that's not been true for about the last ten years or so. Y…

Hmm. One thing I have noticed, and something that I discuss with my wife relatively frequently (she notices it as well), is that when I engage with "new" people in something like a professional context, the initial contact indeed often starts as "rough", not rarely unfriendly, even. And that's not just the first sentence, it's through the first few minutes or so.

But when I persist in being nice, and having an "I know you're just doing your job attitude", and depending on the situation also an "I know my problem is convoluted" attitude, then more often than not, people suddenly switch to being nice. Depending on what's appropriate, I add in that I'm not in a rush, or signal for unpleasant situations on my side that I understand that it's not the fault of the person I'm talking to (I rarely, if ever, explicitly state that one, it's just clear).

Just recently I've even had it that several people then suddenly went out of their way to help me, for example giving me "private" extensions to people who should definitely be able to help me, despite that very explicitly not the procedure they or I am supposed to follow.

I always put it down to: People with more public facing jobs have to deal with a lot of angry, dumb, and/or generally unpleasant people, and when they sense that they are now facing someone who is understanding, cooperative, and wants nothing more than for both sides to resolve an issue in a mutually friendly way, but that also understands the limitations of their positions, they jump at that opportunity.

So in some sense, this strengthens your point: Society is full of badly acting (I'm explicitly not saying "bad") people, and this fosters the initial rough response of people in public facing positions.

But on the other hand, my relative success in "turning" people to be friendly and helpful in an instant, suggests that often, people are not like that at their core, but rather are inherently friendly and helpful and have just adopted a defense mechanism.

We have an expression in Germany: "How you shout into the forest, is how it sounds back."

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#50

Post by rottc0dd »

bawolff wrote: post #14

Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…

It's not necessary for a work of fiction to focus on diverse and realistic characters, particularly when its primary aim is to critique a specific aspect of technology. In such cases, characters often function as just means to highlight and amplify that central theme.

Take 1984. It reads like a thought experiment reflecting the author's deepest fears about the dangers of unchecked power structures. Allegedly, Orwell’s own son would have been around 40 years old in the year 1984 (I read so in Pynchon's introduction to this book in Penguin's edition. It was a great essay.)

But, 1984 also features a great protagonist and an absolutely haunting language. While many of the other characters mainly serve to convey the broader ideas, it’s him who grounds the story emotionally. His suffering, his moral collapse, and the eventual loss of his ability was so tough to read and will forever haunt me. When he breaks, it feels like a loss for all of humanity. But, what I mean is characters are not essential to make a great work. When Orwell wants to convey his ideas, the characters are sidelined and ideas take the front wheel.

I understand your perspective. I'm not a fan of many of the episodes either. I really liked the first season, but the ones that followed just didn’t live up to it. And it does not rise above a horror centered around some particular technology. But, it's them give it cultural relevance.

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