Editorial abstract Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory provides insight into why the Black Mirror series has garnered so much popular attention. Featuring international scholars of popular culture, media theory, and digital technologies, the book reverse-engineers Black Mirror episodes and invites readers to consider their own relationships with digital technology.
Guided by great thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Marshall McLuhan, and Paul Virilio, each chapter provides deep analyses and vivid examples from Black Mirror episodes.
It explores Black Mirror’s writers’ possible inspirations, goals, and unintended consequences, providing a deep analysis of contemporary implications and commentary. To do so, the book specifically explores six topics—human identity, surveillance culture, spectacle and hyperreality, aesthetics, technology and existence, and dystopian futures—applying them to the television series and more broadly to our own everyday experiences and tensions relating to technology use.
Table of Content
Introduction
Section 1: Human Identity
Chapter 1: Race, Cyborgs, and the Pitfalls of Biopolitical Discourse in Black Mirror’s “Men Against Fire”
Diana Leon-Boys and Morten Stinus Kristensen
Chapter 2: Digitally Natural: Gender and Sexuality Norms in Black Mirror
Angela M. Cirucci
Chapter 3: A Virtual Ever-After: Utopia, Race, and Gender in Black Mirror’s “San Junipero”
Eleanor Drage
Section 2: Surveillance Culture
Chapter 4: Black Mirror’s “Nosedive” as a new Panopticon: Interveillance and Digital Parrhesia in Alternative Realities
Francois Allard-Huver and Julie Escurignan
Chapter 5: All Eyes on Me: Surveillance and the Digital Archive in “The Entire History of You”
Derek R. Blackwell
Chapter 6: Seeing the “Surveillant Face” of Technology in Black Mirror: Using Futuristic Scenarios for an Interdisciplinary Discussion on the Feasibility and Implications of Technology
Pinelopi Troullinou and Mathieu d’Aquin
Section 3: The Spectacle and Hyperreality
Chapter 7: Waldo Wins IRL: Donald Trump, Black Mirror, and the Politics of Jean Baudrillard’s Hyperreal
Michael Mario Albrecht
Chapter 8: Why Black Mirror is Really Written by Jean Baudrillard: A Philosophical Interpretation of Charlie Brooker’s Series
Manel Jiménez-Morales and Marta Lopera-Mármol
Chapter 9: Spectacular Tech-Nightmare: Broadcasting Guy Debord
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
Section 4: Aesthetics
Chapter 10: Rhetorical Ethics in Black Mirror: The Aesthetics of Existence in Hyperreality and Posthumanity
Hillary A. Jones
Chapter 11: The Hysterical Sublime: Black Mirror, “Playtest,” and the Crises of the Present
Matthew Flisfeder
Chapter 12: Black Mirror, White Spaces: Nihilism, Enlightenment, and Technology
Barry Vacker and Erin Espelie
Section 5: Technology and Existence
Chapter 13: Over-Extended Media: Hashtag Hatred and Domestic Drones
Julia M. Hildebrand
Chapter 14: Unbearable Burden: Discipline, Punishment, and Moral Dystopia in Black Mirror’s “White Bear”
Osei Alleyne
Chapter 15: The Entire Evolution of Media: A Media Ecological Approach to Black Mirror
Carlos A. Scolari
Section 6: Dystopian Futures
Chapter 16: Heterotopias and Utopias in Black Mirror: Michel Foucault on “San Junipero”
Sarah J. Constant
Chapter 17: Trapped in Dystopian Techno Realities: Nosediving into Simulation through Consumptive Viewing
Erika M. Thomas and Romin Rajan
Chapter 18: The Dystopia of the Spectator: Past Revival and Acceleration of Time in Black Mirror (“The Entire History of You” and “Be Right Back”)
Macarena Urzúa Opazo and Antoine Faure
Conclusion: Connecting Our Themes to Season Four and the Future
Book details
Lexington Books
Pages: 294 • Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4985-7353-5 • Hardback • October 2018
978-1-4985-7354-2 • eBook • October 2018
Subjects: Social Science / Media Studies
Editorial information:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498573535/Black-Mirror-and-Critical-Media-Theory