Humanity In A Black Mirror – Jacob Blevins

However, there are at least two levels of consideration here in this regard: the first, is in terms of the moral responsibility of both the mother and the child for the consequences of this new technology in their lives; and the second, is in terms of the consequences of this new technology in terms of the government and care of children, a topic which we will see has deep roots in philosophical tradition dating back to the ancient Greeks.

Early in Oedipus the King, Creon, the brother of Jocasta, consults the oracle at Delphi about how to save Thebes from the plague. The oracle tells Creon that the murderer of King Laius of Thebes is still in the city. Once the King’s murderer is either killed or banished, the plague will subside. Reporting this to Oedipus, Creon says “This stain of blood makes shipwreck of our state.”4 As you will see, the stain of blood is also what makes Sara aware of the analogous “shipwreck” of her life via the governance of this new technology.

But the state plays a role in her scenario as well when considered in the context of the dialectics of the governance of children by the state versus by the family. In the first two sections of this essay, some of the highlights of the state’s role in the governance of children in the Greek tradition (following Plato and Aristotle) will be contrasted with the increasing family role in the modern tradition (following Thomas Hobbes and Immanuel Kant).

We will then turn to the neoliberal model of the governance of children (following Gilles Deleuze and Henry Giroux), and examine it through the context of the genealogy of the control society as envisioned through this episode of Black Mirror. The essay will offer that the government of children through surveillance in the age of neoliberalism gives the government and parents abilities much like those of Sophocles’s Teiresias, the blind prophet of Oedipus the King, who knows fate of Oedipus.

While new technology is not yet able to predict the future, it nevertheless contains the ability to control it, which is arguably more dangerous than merely knowing something that we cannot change. In conclusion, like Creon’s report from the oracle at Delphi, the plague of child surveillance technology can only be ended in the “Arkangel” episode of Black Mirror by killing or banishing Sara, neoliberal child surveillance technology’s Oedipus.

Classical Government of Children The “Arkangel” episode of Black Mirror centers on the care of a mother for her daughter. From the opening scene, where Marie Sambrell is seen giving birth to her daughter Sara while extremely worried about her well-being to the penultimate scene where Marie is frantically calling out for her daughter in the street after she awakens from almost being murdered by her, care for her daughter is the singular preoccupation, if not obsession, of this mother.

Library of Congress and British Library cataloguing data are available Library of Congress Control Number 2022054786 © 2023 Jacob Blevins and Zahi Zalloua. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Front cover image © Runrun2/Shutterstock Printed in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com OceanofPDF.com Table of Contents Introduction: Traversing the Fantasy of Technology Zahi Zalloua and Jacob Blevins The Utopia of the Mirror: Angst, the Uncanny, and the Postmodern Mise en abyme Robert T.

Tally, Jr. Paroxysm Politics Peter Hitchcock The Way the Cookie Doubles: Cripping the Cyber-Gothic of Black Mirror’s AI Tech Whitney S. May “Men Against Fire,” MASS, and Morality Melina Constantine Bell and Nathaniel Goldberg On the Government of Children: Visions of the Politics of Parenting from Plato to Deleuze in Black Mirror’s Arkangel Jeffrey R. Di Leo The Question(ing) Concerning (Anti-)Black-Technology: Inhabiting the Crack of Black Being Through the (Pyro-)Techno-Poethics of “Black Museum” Andrew Santana Kaplan Paranoia as Reparation in “Black Museum” Nicole Simek Trolling the Audience: Bandersnatch, Coercion, and Posthuman Capacities Paul Muhlhauser, Sera McClintock, and Gianna D’Avella Glass Walls and Unmasked Others: Anxiety and the Commodification of Desire in “Nosedive” Jacob Blevins Sexuality and the Real in “Striking Vipers” Zahi Zalloua Conclusion Jacob Blevins and Zahi Zalloua Bibliography About the Contributors Index of Terms OceanofPDF.com Introduction Traversing the Fantasy of Technology Zahi Zalloua and Jacob Blevins The highly popular Netflix series Black Mirror owes its success in no small part to its vivid depictions of a technological world just slightly out of sync with our own.

Series’ creator Charlie Brooker sets Black Mirror’s discrete stories or parables not in a distant reality, but rather in a very near future, in a fairly recognizable universe in which the development and commoditization of bio-technology (“The Entire History of You,” “Arkangel,” “Men Against Fire,” “White Bear,” “Black Museum,” “Crocodile”), social media (“The National Anthem,” “The Waldo Moment,” “Nosedive,” “Hated in the Nation,” “Smithereens,” “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too”), virtual reality or VR (“Playtest,” “San Junipero,” “Striking Vipers”), and artificial intelligence or AI (“Be Right Back,” “Hang the DJ,” “USS Callister,” “Metalhead,” “White Christmas”) have moved just one or two steps beyond current capabilities.

The show’s time is ours, but not quite. Rather than providing clear lessons about technology for viewers to absorb, these temporal dislocations push viewers to confront and actively engage a series of hermeneutical challenges.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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