After a four-year absence, Black Mirror finally returned with a rather destabilizing Season 6, between the familiar universe and the few liberties taken by Charlie Brooker and Annabelle Jones, the infernal duo behind the anthology series. We were confused by some of the episodes that didn’t strictly speaking fall under the series’ “technical” or even “technological” statute.
This is not the case with the first episode, “Joan is Horrible”, which has fun staging a world more familiar to subscribers and which combines modern technologies such as artificial intelligence, streaming services and truer than life deep fakes.
Perfect time
Instead of relying on the premise and making this episode just a “tech horror story of the week,” Charlie Brooker invites us to reflect on the current media landscape. Joan (Annie Murphy) is an ordinary woman who made one of the worst decisions of her life, which was broadcast on the popular streaming service: Streamberry.
Along with the fact that people don’t usually read the terms of the contracts they sign, the episode shows that Joan has essentially given up on her life, and the actress who plays the streamer version of Joan, Salma Hayek Pino. Signed up for shameless exploitation of her image rights.
With a comedic tone, the episode plays up the end of privacy and personal data with any subscription – while openly taking a stand against Netflix! Next, the episode introduces a quantum computer, a machine that is essentially an artificial intelligence so advanced that it writes scripts, creates deep rigging, and broadcasts the show in real time.
This system, which replaces screenwriters, illustrates in a way that could not be more critical the critical situation of the screenwriters’ strike against the studios that underpay and underpay them. Although the streamer uses the exact same codes as Netflix, “Joan Horrible” defies streaming platforms that lack humanity and anchor the episode in today’s world, not tomorrow’s.
A legitimate concern
Thus, this first episode addresses this trend toward automation, particularly in the entertainment industry, a concern that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has denounced during its current strike and that the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) is pursuing. Join the movement. Over the past decade, streamers have tipped the balance of industry development toward an unsustainable amount of content for viewers and very low wages for writers.
Today, industry leaders are demanding voice actors, author stories and user data for the future of automated entertainment. Netflix, the streaming service that distributes Black Mirror (and which outbids the show’s original channel for the right), is one of the main targets of the strike – and Black Mirror’s final season clearly highlights it.
The episode, written by Charlie Brooker himself, makes the case that tech, media and entertainment industry leaders are choosing a future worthy of Black Mirror, not a faceless computer. It was probably a concession that the episode reached the platform. But make no mistake, any satisfactory conclusion to these concerns will be the result of human, not technological, transformation.
Source: Allocine
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
