#fuck the oscars and fuck the people who created them to still congratulate themselves of the shit they spew

[chocochococoffee]

are you fucking shitting me

godzilla minus one, movie that won against every single movie in japan AND usa last year for fucking week plus being top 1 worldwide received ONE OSCAR NOMINATION? AND ONLY FOR VISUALS?????

oscars suck so fucking much, Gojira please nuke them

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part I - Episodes 1 & 2)

New Post has been published on https://nofspodcast.com/review-black-mirror-season-4-part-episodes-1-2/

Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part I - Episodes 1 & 2)

Black Mirror Season 4 dropped on December 29th, on Netflix.

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW:

Watch it. Oh my God, watch it. Now, then; Spoilers ahead.

EPISODE 1: USS CALLISTER

The aspect ratio of the opening sequence matches the aspect ratio of the old Star Trek television show. It’s little things like that keep my coffee hot and get me up in the morning.

“USS Callister” really tells two stories: the first is the tale of a loser computer programmer named Robert Daly, who’s created a groundbreaking Virtual-Reality-based game that lets people fly around the universe in spaceships, explore planets, battle each other trade, etcetera. The guy he started the company with is a dick who doesn’t appreciate his contributions to the company. His coworkers think he’s weird and awkward and kinda creepy sometimes.

The second story is that of a sadistic and cruel God named Robert Daly. Daly has created a parallel Virtual Reality that allows him to play out his fantasies of being a Hero in Charge, based on a retro science-fiction television show he loves. (Think Star Trek.)

The twist of the knife is that he has peopled this game with digital copies of coworkers he dislikes, generated by stolen samples of their DNA. They have all their memories and personalities from the real world. They are sentient, thinking and feeling as their real-world selves.

What “USS Callister” asks us is (among many other things), are they alive?

Not that episode one is all scowling and torment. Brooker mentioned that Black Mirror would ‘explore a little more comedy in this season’, and there is certainly a strong heartbeat of humor here. It’s the best kind of laughter, too, for the series: black humor. Hangman’s jokes. The dry British chuckle in the face of the abyss.

Watching the tortured, terrified digital clones of the USS Callister unwind while Daly is logged out of the game reminds one of London in the Blitz. Sure, there are bombs and blood and rubble everywhere, and things are pretty awful, but at least the bottles behind the bar survived.

When the newest digital clone, Cristin (played by Nanette Cole) finds out that nobody has genitals in Daly’s digital world, her battle cry is priceless:

Okay. Stealing my pussy is a red. Fucking. Line.

“USS Callister” is like a great Doctor Who episode that just happens to be Rated R.

When the trailers for Season 4 dropped, the teaser for “USS Callister” left out the real world entirely. It was a move of twofold genius. First, it saves the surprise of our first, bleak glimpse of the real world. Our introduction to neurotic weirdo Daly (an absolutely stunning performance by Jesse Plemons) feels like a nihilistic sigh of relief. It doesn’t have to be full dark 24/7, but there’s something in the uncompromising, unblinking hardness of Black Mirror that has always set it apart. A certain bleak jouissance that no other show delivers.

Second, it works as a commentary on the episode itself. In our little taste of “USS Callister,” the real world isn’t there at all. The trailer promises pure sci-fi. Pure escapism. Fun. Adventure. There’s no trace of the sinister sadism of Daly, or the suffering of his comrades. There’s no sense of true tragedy or actual stakes.

Just like the immersive, next-gen VR in the episode.

“Callister” examines the more disturbing elements of the AI and VR booms we’re seeing right now. Ten years from now, if we have a bad day, put on our VR headsets, and kill a hundred digital people in Call of Duty online, what will that mean? In a world where code is ever-improving, at what point is a program as nuanced and multifaceted as us? We don’t feel anything drowning Sims or making them wet themselves…but should we? If not today, when? At what point does simulated suffering cease to be Catharsis and become Sadism?

With the advent of technology like CRISPR, perhaps we aren’t so far from Daly’s nightmare after all.

  EPISODE 2: ARKANGEL

The obvious big-gun episode of the season is “Arkangel.” There’re no scrubs in the directorial talent of Black Mirror, but Jodie Foster (four Oscar nominations, two wins, Silence of the Lambs, ‘nuff said) is clearly the Heavy Hitter.

She swung for the fences.

She knocked it out of the park.

I don’t even like baseball.

“Arkangel” tells the story of a mother and daughter. When her daughter Sara (Aniya Hodge, Sara Abbot, and Brenna Harding) goes missing, Marie (Rosemarie DeWitt, Cinderella Man, Mad Men) has a monitoring system implanted in Sara’s head. It’s called “Arkangel,” and gives Marie access to Sara’s location, biological vitals, and even a direct feed from her optic nerve. Marie can see what Sara sees.

But “Arkangel” isn’t really about the creepy sci-fi stuff. None of the best episodes of Black Mirror are, and this is one of the best in the series. No. “Arkangel” is about what happens as Sara grows up. It’s about the Helicopter Parents of the future. About how far Marie will go to keep her safe, and how much of herself she’ll compromise to do it.

And the inevitable price to be paid.

The brilliance of Foster’s episode is (to borrow from Blake), its fearful symmetry. Its balance. Each element dances with another, each character reflected darkly in the actions of others. Sara and the all-seeing eye in her head are like a weight in the center of the episode. On one side is Marie and her Orwellian baby monitor. On the other is Trick (a superb performance by Own Teague), the Cute Drug Dealer from the Wrong Side of the Tracks, and all the rebellion and danger he represents.

Every line, every interaction in the episode shifts that weight, tilts the precarious position of the scale. Structurally, it’s breathtakingly beautiful. There is no wasted moment.

I don’t know whether to give the nod to Brooker (who has sole writing credit on the episode) or Foster for the delicate dance of these threads. The interplay between the writing and directing style is an elegant pas de deux, each word and element circling the others, and pulling the weave ever tighter.

Brooker understands Irony in a way that few shows do, and utilizes it like the keen, heartrending edge that it can be. And he knows Tragedy. The Capital-T kind that the Greeks told us so much about, all those years ago. He knows it intimately. Knows that the key to Tragedy is Hamaratia: the Fatal Flaw.

There are several Fatal Flaws in “Arkangel.” They run (appropriately) in arcs through the episode. Tracing those threads back reveals the subtlety and nuance Foster and Brooker actually manage.

Almost everything Marie does throughout the episode is countered or echoed elsewhere: when she reactivates the Arkangel unit in Sara’s teens, she sees her having sex with Trick, the “Dangerous Bad Boy.” Yet, that same night, she met up with one of her patients from physical therapy: a devil-may-care biker who injured himself driving his motorcycle recklessly, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Marie sees Sara experimenting with cocaine in Trick’s van. The effect of the drug is that it raises Sara’s heart rate. A few days later, Marie grinds some drugs into Sara’s morning smoothie. The effect of drugging her daughter is the spontaneous abortion of a pregnancy Sara didn’t even know about.

It’s ironic that Marie should confront Trick, condemning him as “a junkie.” Throughout the episode, Marie treats the Arkangel parent unit as a junkie treats drugs. She hides the unit upstairs, laments over whether to use it or not. Okay, just this one more time. Uses it just a little. Just a few functions. Starts carrying it with her. It’s clear that she’s addicted to it.

There’s even a brilliant reversal of the classic “Parent finds drugs in the kid’s room” scene, where Sara rifles her mother’s room and discovers that she’s still using the Arkangel parent unit. Sara is horrified and tosses it down, the perfect picture of a parent discovering their child’s dangerous addiction.

Marie is the first victim of Arkangel, and in her victimhood, she stands for all of us. I don’t mean the program itself. I’m talking about the sentiment behind it. Beneath the eerie veneer of the invasive surveillance of tomorrow, “Arkangel” is quietly commenting on something we’re experiencing today.

Safety. In excess. In extremis.

The opening scene of the episode doesn’t just establish the characters and set the stage. It holds up a mirror. Marie is giving birth: after complications during natural birth, the doctor is performing a C-section. “Arkangel” opens with Marie looking away from the things that frighten her: the doctors, the nurse, the procedure she’s undergoing. When Sara is finally born, the doctors whisk her away to a table nearby. There is no sound. No cry. Other doctors gather, and Marie becomes afraid: afraid her baby is dead, that she’s lost her little girl, and is powerless to help.

“Tell me she’s alright,” she says.

The nurse holds her hand, tells her to calm down. Comforts her. Then Sara cries and is brought over, and she’s fine, and everything is fine. We get the sort of close-up maternal scene we’re accustomed to seeing when babies are born on television. Lots of nuzzling and happy tears and lifelong bonds being wound between mother and child.

And then, brilliantly, brutally, honestly, Foster shows us what we seldom see these days, too busy cooing over the microcosm and the close-up.

She shows us the big picture.

On one side of the curtain, Marie is bonding with her little girl. Her daughter is alive and well. Everything is fine. Nurses smile and nod and congratulate her. And on the other side of the curtain, her body is open and bloody. Doctors work quietly to stop the bleeding and make her whole again. Though a routine procedure, Marie has experienced massive trauma, could conceivably die if things go wrong…but she’ll never know. The sheet protects her. She doesn’t feel a thing: the doctors have numbed her to the trauma she’s experiencing. All that’s left is bliss.

(By the by, I’m not suggesting we force new mothers to watch surgeries performed on them without anesthetic. I’m not a monster. I am an observer of metaphors.)

The “parental control” of the Arkangel unit is obviously the darkest, most troubling of the sci-fi elements of the episode, but it raises some interesting questions about what safety might mean, in the long-term.

When Sara’s grandfather has a heart attack, she can’t see what’s happening to him, and can’t hear his pleas for her to get help. She’s shielded from the trauma by the unit. But there’s a parallel in our world, here: if we crumble in the face of fear and trauma, shutting down and closing it out, refusing to look, what are the consequences of that willful blind eye?

Later, as Marie grieves over her father’s grave, Sara can’t see her mother’s face. Grief is uncomfortable. It has been censored out.

Again, there are real considerations for us in the real world. If we turn our backs on grief and powerful, negative human emotions because they make us uncomfortable, what does that mean? The end of empathy? A society that must grieve alone and uncomforted, with no community to feel and grieve with us, no strength to be lent to us because we are, in our sadness, upsetting?

Just something to think about.

Sara’s grandfather speaks for some us, after Marie has the Arkangel implanted in Sara’s head:

“I remember when we used to open up the door and let the kids be.”

It provokes an interesting thought. The difference between opening a door and a locked one can be the difference between a home and a prison. Between a conversation and a censure is the difference between a parent and a warden.

And once you’ve escaped a prison, why would you ever go back?

  Overall

There’s a common thread between “USS Callister” and “Arkangel.”

Hope.

When Cristin and company break out of Daly’s digital world, they have a whole new universe to explore. They’re in charge of their own destinies again. They have free will, and the will to live.

Once Sara escapes her mother’s smothering safety, she has a whole world to explore. She’s free, finally, with her whole life ahead of her.

Watching these two episodes, I noticed something for the first time. In the opening credits of Black Mirror, just before the screen goes dark, and we stare into the black possibilities of the onrushing technological age…

The Black Mirror always cracks. The mirror Brooker holds up is not impervious. We can escape.

There’s always hope.

[paradox-media]

Fandom and its Mentality

If you’re a fan of anything in 2020, chances are you know what a fandom is. You know the ones, their twitter handles will include their faves name in some way shape or form, followed by a colour or a body part and their icons will never be a picture of themselves, (myself included – mines a picture of Oscar Isaac right now.) They’re usually everywhere on your feed whether you follow any of them or not and will probably tell you to “STAN LOONA” under your tweets for no reason. Not every fan is the same though, there are casual ones out there that just lurk in the distant shadows and simply buy their merchandise and go. It’s not inherently a bad thing to be either type of these fans, but there is definitely a stigma that surrounds fandom and fans alike.

If you’ve picked this magazine up, the chances are that you like K-pop or are at least interested in some way and if not then hi, welcome, it’s a bit of a mess in here. But fandom isn’t just for K-pop fans, if you’ve been around on the internet for the last few years you’ll have seen the Star Wars fandom explode in popularity with the release of the new trilogy and subsequently The Mandalorian to match – those who ship ‘Reylo’ and those who don’t (FinnPoe for life – looking at you, Disney, give Oscar Isaac what he wants).

The concept is the same, though, and most of the time it’s two sides of the same coin and you either think that fandom and fans are okay or you think they’re crazy and honestly I can see both sides. Let people enjoy what they want! If someone wants to create an account that solely features pictures of Jonghyun from SHINee every single day then do it – so long as you’re not being disrespectful then you post those pictures. I’ll probably follow you myself if you do. The issue lies when people begin to forget who they are and are being consumed by their fandom and thing that they enjoy, and those who become rude towards those who are or aren’t fans are usually singled out pretty quickly.

“You haven’t streamed this song enough you’re not a true fan,” “You don’t own all of their albums? Fake fan,” “Ew you like x group? Flops.” Can’t we just let people enjoy whatever artist they like in their own time? Surely we can, right? There are people out there that can’t afford to buy every single album from every single group that they like and that’s okay! Monetary value doesn’t equate to how much or how little you like and enjoy someone’s work. Of course you’re going to have people out there who don’t like the same groups or even genres as you, and if you think that maybe they’ll like a song absolutely tell them about it, but don’t be rude.

Telling someone to “STAN LOONA” underneath a tweet about something serious like politics, bereavement or bad news is just going to make larger communities hate not only your fandom but also the group you stan as a result. We’re working hard enough as it is to remove stigmas revolving around K-pop as a genre and the fans and you’re not exactly helping, I’m just saying. All people are ‘gonna think is “wow, ‘gonna stay as far away from that as possible” and, congratulations, you’ve helped to give your fandom a bad name.

When asked “What do you think of fandoms and their mentality?” one fan had this to say: “Fandoms can be positive in many ways – online fandoms can create friendships, make people feel that their passions and interests are relevant and important and are often fun and safe spaces. However, they can also create a negative mentality – fandoms fight [between themselves] and wherever there is any sort of online presence there will be jealousy, bullying and a means of competition.” B, 20, South London. Another fan had a similar opinion: “Fandom spaces can be extremely powerful. Fandom creates a network of people all with one thing in common wherein everyone can feel supported in their love for that one thing. This support and understanding can create spaces for people to share things about themselves, [the] things they create and form friendships.

I think the problem within fandoms, such as obsession, jealousy and malicious behaviour all come from a place of insecurity; a place where people think they are owed something else – be it attention, love or recognition – from others within the fandom, other existing fandoms or even the thing they celebrate in the first place.” L, 20, South London.

On a more serious note, these spaces online are extremely important to those who may not be able to get out and socialise as much as they would like. Different disabilities, social anxiety or financial issues are just a few examples of obstacles that may stop someone from going out to socialise and social media helps these people to connect with others. Now when this magazine is released, we’ll hopefully be through the worst of the current Coronavirus (COVID-19) virus that’s been sweeping through the country (thanks, Boris.) And as shitty as its been with pasta and toilet roll being sold out in your local Sainabury’s, social distancing during this pandemic has only proven just how vital social media can become when faced with the inability to go outside and socialise face to face. Despite all of the negative connotations that mainstream popular media likes to portray of social media and online friendships, they can be extremely helpful and positive.

I mean come on now, we’re not living in the early noughties anymore, it’s very very unlikely that the person on the other end of the conversation is not who they say they are (please still be careful though – you truly never do know.)

Music and pop culture fandoms are not the only ones to exist online – technically if you’re a football fan you’re a part of a fandom as unusual as that sounds (those unhealthy stereotypes of young teenage girls being the only ones in fandoms really shows). It’s not quite the same, I’m sure there isn’t a Archive Of Our Own account out there dedicated to Jurgen Klopp but never say never, that’s a niche that probably doesn’t need to be filled but would be funny as fuck if it was.

Regardless of what you think about fandoms and whether or not you believe in the stereotypes you have to admit – they’re pretty fucking cool. Millions of people brought together under one shared interest, regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation or ethnicity in THIS economy? That’s pretty special. Count me in.

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part I - Episodes 1 & 2)

New Post has been published on https://nofspodcast.com/review-black-mirror-season-4-part-episodes-1-2/

Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part I - Episodes 1 & 2)

Black Mirror Season 4 dropped on December 29th, on Netflix.

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW:

Watch it. Oh my God, watch it. Now, then; Spoilers ahead.

EPISODE 1: USS CALLISTER

The aspect ratio of the opening sequence matches the aspect ratio of the old Star Trek television show. It’s little things like that keep my coffee hot and get me up in the morning.

“USS Callister” really tells two stories: the first is the tale of a loser computer programmer named Robert Daly, who’s created a groundbreaking Virtual-Reality-based game that lets people fly around the universe in spaceships, explore planets, battle each other trade, etcetera. The guy he started the company with is a dick who doesn’t appreciate his contributions to the company. His coworkers think he’s weird and awkward and kinda creepy sometimes.

The second story is that of a sadistic and cruel God named Robert Daly. Daly has created a parallel Virtual Reality that allows him to play out his fantasies of being a Hero in Charge, based on a retro science-fiction television show he loves. (Think Star Trek.)

The twist of the knife is that he has peopled this game with digital copies of coworkers he dislikes, generated by stolen samples of their DNA. They have all their memories and personalities from the real world. They are sentient, thinking and feeling as their real-world selves.

What “USS Callister” asks us is (among many other things), are they alive?

Not that episode one is all scowling and torment. Brooker mentioned that Black Mirror would ‘explore a little more comedy in this season’, and there is certainly a strong heartbeat of humor here. It’s the best kind of laughter, too, for the series: black humor. Hangman’s jokes. The dry British chuckle in the face of the abyss.

Watching the tortured, terrified digital clones of the USS Callister unwind while Daly is logged out of the game reminds one of London in the Blitz. Sure, there are bombs and blood and rubble everywhere, and things are pretty awful, but at least the bottles behind the bar survived.

When the newest digital clone, Nanette Cole (played by Cristin Milioti) finds out that nobody has genitals in Daly’s digital world, her battle cry is priceless:

Okay. Stealing my pussy is a red. Fucking. Line.

“USS Callister” is like a great Doctor Who episode that just happens to be Rated R.

When the trailers for Season 4 dropped, the teaser for “USS Callister” left out the real world entirely. It was a move of twofold genius. First, it saves the surprise of our first, bleak glimpse of the real world. Our introduction to neurotic weirdo Daly (an absolutely stunning performance by Jesse Plemons) feels like a nihilistic sigh of relief. It doesn’t have to be full dark 24/7, but there’s something in the uncompromising, unblinking hardness of Black Mirror that has always set it apart. A certain bleak jouissance that no other show delivers.

Second, it works as a commentary on the episode itself. In our little taste of “USS Callister,” the real world isn’t there at all. The trailer promises pure sci-fi. Pure escapism. Fun. Adventure. There’s no trace of the sinister sadism of Daly, or the suffering of his comrades. There’s no sense of true tragedy or actual stakes.

Just like the immersive, next-gen VR in the episode.

“Callister” examines the more disturbing elements of the AI and VR booms we’re seeing right now. Ten years from now, if we have a bad day, put on our VR headsets, and kill a hundred digital people in Call of Duty online, what will that mean? In a world where code is ever-improving, at what point is a program as nuanced and multifaceted as us? We don’t feel anything drowning Sims or making them wet themselves…but should we? If not today, when? At what point does simulated suffering cease to be Catharsis and become Sadism?

With the advent of technology like CRISPR, perhaps we aren’t so far from Daly’s nightmare after all.

  EPISODE 2: ARKANGEL

The obvious big-gun episode of the season is “Arkangel.” There’re no scrubs in the directorial talent of Black Mirror, but Jodie Foster (four Oscar nominations, two wins, Silence of the Lambs, ‘nuff said) is clearly the Heavy Hitter.

She swung for the fences.

She knocked it out of the park.

I don’t even like baseball.

“Arkangel” tells the story of a mother and daughter. When her daughter Sara (Aniya Hodge, Sara Abbot, and Brenna Harding) goes missing, Marie (Rosemarie DeWitt, Cinderella Man, Mad Men) has a monitoring system implanted in Sara’s head. It’s called “Arkangel,” and gives Marie access to Sara’s location, biological vitals, and even a direct feed from her optic nerve. Marie can see what Sara sees.

But “Arkangel” isn’t really about the creepy sci-fi stuff. None of the best episodes of Black Mirror are, and this is one of the best in the series. No. “Arkangel” is about what happens as Sara grows up. It’s about the Helicopter Parents of the future. About how far Marie will go to keep her safe, and how much of herself she’ll compromise to do it.

And the inevitable price to be paid.

The brilliance of Foster’s episode is (to borrow from Blake), its fearful symmetry. Its balance. Each element dances with another, each character reflected darkly in the actions of others. Sara and the all-seeing eye in her head are like a weight in the center of the episode. On one side is Marie and her Orwellian baby monitor. On the other is Trick (a superb performance by Own Teague), the Cute Drug Dealer from the Wrong Side of the Tracks, and all the rebellion and danger he represents.

Every line, every interaction in the episode shifts that weight, tilts the precarious position of the scale. Structurally, it’s breathtakingly beautiful. There is no wasted moment.

I don’t know whether to give the nod to Brooker (who has sole writing credit on the episode) or Foster for the delicate dance of these threads. The interplay between the writing and directing style is an elegant pas de deux, each word and element circling the others, and pulling the weave ever tighter.

Brooker understands Irony in a way that few shows do, and utilizes it like the keen, heartrending edge that it can be. And he knows Tragedy. The Capital-T kind that the Greeks told us so much about, all those years ago. He knows it intimately. Knows that the key to Tragedy is Hamaratia: the Fatal Flaw.

There are several Fatal Flaws in “Arkangel.” They run (appropriately) in arcs through the episode. Tracing those threads back reveals the subtlety and nuance Foster and Brooker actually manage.

Almost everything Marie does throughout the episode is countered or echoed elsewhere: when she reactivates the Arkangel unit in Sara’s teens, she sees her having sex with Trick, the “Dangerous Bad Boy.” Yet, that same night, she met up with one of her patients from physical therapy: a devil-may-care biker who injured himself driving his motorcycle recklessly, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Marie sees Sara experimenting with cocaine in Trick’s van. The effect of the drug is that it raises Sara’s heart rate. A few days later, Marie grinds some drugs into Sara’s morning smoothie. The effect of drugging her daughter is the spontaneous abortion of a pregnancy Sara didn’t even know about.

It’s ironic that Marie should confront Trick, condemning him as “a junkie.” Throughout the episode, Marie treats the Arkangel parent unit as a junkie treats drugs. She hides the unit upstairs, laments over whether to use it or not. Okay, just this one more time. Uses it just a little. Just a few functions. Starts carrying it with her. It’s clear that she’s addicted to it.

There’s even a brilliant reversal of the classic “Parent finds drugs in the kid’s room” scene, where Sara rifles her mother’s room and discovers that she’s still using the Arkangel parent unit. Sara is horrified and tosses it down, the perfect picture of a parent discovering their child’s dangerous addiction.

Marie is the first victim of Arkangel, and in her victimhood, she stands for all of us. I don’t mean the program itself. I’m talking about the sentiment behind it. Beneath the eerie veneer of the invasive surveillance of tomorrow, “Arkangel” is quietly commenting on something we’re experiencing today.

Safety. In excess. In extremis.

The opening scene of the episode doesn’t just establish the characters and set the stage. It holds up a mirror. Marie is giving birth: after complications during natural birth, the doctor is performing a C-section. “Arkangel” opens with Marie looking away from the things that frighten her: the doctors, the nurse, the procedure she’s undergoing. When Sara is finally born, the doctors whisk her away to a table nearby. There is no sound. No cry. Other doctors gather, and Marie becomes afraid: afraid her baby is dead, that she’s lost her little girl, and is powerless to help.

“Tell me she’s alright,” she says.

The nurse holds her hand, tells her to calm down. Comforts her. Then Sara cries and is brought over, and she’s fine, and everything is fine. We get the sort of close-up maternal scene we’re accustomed to seeing when babies are born on television. Lots of nuzzling and happy tears and lifelong bonds being wound between mother and child.

And then, brilliantly, brutally, honestly, Foster shows us what we seldom see these days, too busy cooing over the microcosm and the close-up.

She shows us the big picture.

On one side of the curtain, Marie is bonding with her little girl. Her daughter is alive and well. Everything is fine. Nurses smile and nod and congratulate her. And on the other side of the curtain, her body is open and bloody. Doctors work quietly to stop the bleeding and make her whole again. Though a routine procedure, Marie has experienced massive trauma, could conceivably die if things go wrong…but she’ll never know. The sheet protects her. She doesn’t feel a thing: the doctors have numbed her to the trauma she’s experiencing. All that’s left is bliss.

(By the by, I’m not suggesting we force new mothers to watch surgeries performed on them without anesthetic. I’m not a monster. I am an observer of metaphors.)

The “parental control” of the Arkangel unit is obviously the darkest, most troubling of the sci-fi elements of the episode, but it raises some interesting questions about what safety might mean, in the long-term.

When Sara’s grandfather has a heart attack, she can’t see what’s happening to him, and can’t hear his pleas for her to get help. She’s shielded from the trauma by the unit. But there’s a parallel in our world, here: if we crumble in the face of fear and trauma, shutting down and closing it out, refusing to look, what are the consequences of that willful blind eye?

Later, as Marie grieves over her father’s grave, Sara can’t see her mother’s face. Grief is uncomfortable. It has been censored out.

Again, there are real considerations for us in the real world. If we turn our backs on grief and powerful, negative human emotions because they make us uncomfortable, what does that mean? The end of empathy? A society that must grieve alone and uncomforted, with no community to feel and grieve with us, no strength to be lent to us because we are, in our sadness, upsetting?

Just something to think about.

Sara’s grandfather speaks for some us, after Marie has the Arkangel implanted in Sara’s head:

“I remember when we used to open up the door and let the kids be.”

It provokes an interesting thought. The difference between opening a door and a locked one can be the difference between a home and a prison. Between a conversation and a censure is the difference between a parent and a warden.

And once you’ve escaped a prison, why would you ever go back?

  Overall

There’s a common thread between “USS Callister” and “Arkangel.”

Hope.

When Cristin and company break out of Daly’s digital world, they have a whole new universe to explore. They’re in charge of their own destinies again. They have free will, and the will to live.

Once Sara escapes her mother’s smothering safety, she has a whole world to explore. She’s free, finally, with her whole life ahead of her.

Watching these two episodes, I noticed something for the first time. In the opening credits of Black Mirror, just before the screen goes dark, and we stare into the black possibilities of the onrushing technological age…

The Black Mirror always cracks. The mirror Brooker holds up is not impervious. We can escape.

There’s always hope.