ipl-logo

Summary Of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror

846 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essays on dystopian literature

The amount of futuristic dystopian society stories is rising and the actual content is skewed towards the same subject time and time again. Charlie Brooker’s series Black Mirror is no change to the norm, addressing how the way we live our lives results in disaster. Fifteen Million Merits follows the protagonist Bing Madsen as he goes day in and day out on the cycle generating power for the construct the society takes place in. We are not shown much of the construct other than the cycle and the room that Bing lives in, depicting how the working class has very minimal space to do anything within their means of living. Within this story following Bing we see a sort of class system chillingly close to our own, the monster that is capitalism that …show more content…

In a top shot scene, we see all of Bing’s room all four corners fit very easily and one cane make out the protagonist very easily, this is how tiny this room is. Bing wakes up and does everything that the one would do in their daily life, brushing their teeth, showering, etc., etc. He gets in an elevator with everyone that is just standing around and making no conversation and Bing looks dead forward no emotion in his eyes. Once he gets to the room where they do the actual work in the building, cycling and generating power for the construct in their tight cramped corners. We are then introduced to a lower-class system in the episode the cleaners that are constantly berated and put down by the society they live in. There is also no surprise with this being the case as even most American’s consider a cleaning person of lower status, “Here are some average prestige scores for various occupations: physician, 86; college professor, 74; elementary school teacher, 64; letter carrier, 47; garbage collector, 28; and janitor, 22.” (Social World 8.3) They constantly put down the people within this class system which, the producers of the show want the viewer to see them as lower class to, as they constantly push that sort of ideal throughout the show. With shows that put down the cleaners and they have different brightly colored clothes and do not ever say a word or express emotions other than

Show More
Related
505 Words | 3 Pages

At the end of the 19th Century, as the United States was experiencing rapid industrialization, a reconfiguration of the social order yielded opposing visions of social progress. Andrew Carnegie, wealthy businessman, and Jane Addams, founder of Chicago’s Hull House, put forward different methods to achieve such progress, where Addams focuses on creating social capital in a seemingly horizontal manner while Carnegie advocates for a top-down approach. While both of them seem to reap a sense of purpose from their attempts to improve the nation, their approaches vary depending on their vision of the composition of the population they want to uplift. First, Carnegie and Addams’ desire to improve society is partly self-serving. For Carnegie, improving society is the role of the wealthy man who, “animated by Christ’s spirit” (“Wealth”), can administer wealth for the community better than it could have for itself (“Wealth”).

Read More
697 Words | 3 Pages

In Chapter 9-14 Holden Caulfield leaves Penecy Prep and heads to New York City. Where he will stay for a couple days before winter vacation starts and he will head home. Delaying breaking the news to his family he got kicked out of school for as long as possible. These chapters are where Holden’s loneliness becomes abundantly clear. The reader is subjected to many long rants by Holden about the company he wants, though he attempts to settle several times.

Read More
1201 Words | 5 Pages

In sight of the cold war, in 1961 the highest point of the cold war is when the episode known as “The Shelter” in the series called The Twilight Zone was created. The episode covered the possibilities of many particular situations that may have occurred in a desperate time like this if a missile was launched at the United States. At the beginning of the episode, Rod Serling himself tells us “what you are about to watch is a nightmare.” We get a very ominous sense of what is coming due to the eerie music that had been playing in the background, and we soon find out that this episode is just that. A nightmare, in the sense of the event that is occurring but also the constant battle of a nightmare between thoughts that may drive one crazy as well as those thoughts mixed with the people you knew as “friends.”

Read More
734 Words | 3 Pages

The eye opening topics of The Twilight Zone reveal societal issues that were relevant in the 60’s when this show was first released. The black and white, 22 minute episodes each told a story while teaching lessons to the audience. This series was a popular science-fiction show during the 5 seasons it ran. Each episode highlighted a different part of society and brought light to the problems it will have if society doesn’t fix them.

Read More
609 Words | 3 Pages

In the short story “That Room” by Tobias Wolff the room and what happens in it represents the realization the narrator has about how he has no control of his life. He wants a better life than the one he is living right now. He thrives for greatness in his life but he can only create that greatness in his mind. “I felt the actuality of a life I knew nothing about yet somehow contrived to want myself: a real life in a real world” (Wolff 269). The narrator in this story can’t really do anything about the life his living at the moment, he only wishes to do so.

Read More
636 Words | 3 Pages

Equality for All “Equality in pay has improved in the US since 1979 when women earned about 62 percent as much as men. In 2010, American women on average earned 81 percent of what their male counterparts earned” ( Highlights in the US). “Harrison Bergeron” and Anthem both are dystopian societies that tried to create equality, but end up with horrible corruption, no real equality, and incorrect portrayals of equality. In “Harrison Bergeron” the society leaders use handicaps to bring people down to the lowest level or the “average” of their society. There are similar concepts in Anthem, no one can be better than anyone, but they use shame and guilt to keep their people in line.

Read More
1308 Words | 6 Pages

Holden Caulfield lives his life as an outsider to his society, because of this any we (as a reader) find normal is a phony to him. Basically, every breathing thing in The Catcher in the Rye is a phony expect a select few, like Jane Gallagher. What is a phony to Holden and why is he obsessed with them? A phony is anyone who Holden feels is that living their authentic life, like D.B. (his older brother). Or simply anyone who fits into society norms, for example, Sally Hayes.

Read More
1145 Words | 5 Pages

Piper Kerman is a Caucasian woman who is well educated, and of a comfortable socioeconomic class. Piper wrote the book Orange is the New Black to expose the injustices of the justice system through her personal account of her sentence in federal prison. Piper has written about all of her experiences starting from graduating college to her time spent in prison, to her release, and writes her account to exploit the criminal justice system and the struggles women face during their time of incarceration. After graduating from Smith College, Piper lived a comfortable, yet predictable life, in Northampton, but yearned for a sense of adventure.

Read More
657 Words | 3 Pages

America, the land of equity, has the largest ratio of rich citizens to poor citizens at 12:1. Compared to Japan and Germany’s measly 4:1, this information is outrageous. America is shown to have the most skewed economic pyramid when denoting the amount of people on each side of the economic slide. The selection, Class in America - 2006, an academic paper by Gregory Mantsios, argues the existence and magnitude of class and economic standing in the United States; through the use of fact and opinion, he creates the visual of a society severely divided by economic standing. Gregory Mantsios effectively convinces the audience of the differences in class sanding that cause a significant impact in the lives of americans and economic spectrum with his use of logos, anticipation, and credible evidence.

Read More
491 Words | 2 Pages

My mother taught me that there is no such thing as a low class job, only low class people who look down on others. As a Hispanic I am proud that our kind do necessary jobs for necessary people no matter how low the pay or how bad the benefits we do it as long as its

Read More
869 Words | 4 Pages

He put the little bag on Mrs. Thorn’s desk and rested his hand on it.” (Duprau, 7) The students would walk incoherently to the mayor and grab a piece of paper, you get what you get and you don’t get upset. Additionally, everyone has the same jobs, there are only a couple types of jobs to choose, so no one has an outcast of a job. Some of the jobs to choose from are messenger, pipe workers, supply depot clerk, greenhouse, and electrician.

Read More
508 Words | 3 Pages

Dystopian texts espouse a variety of didactic messages that depend significantly upon both the context and zeitgeist of the time in which they were created. Differences can be found when comparing the techniques and perspectives the authors have chosen to represent their contextual concerns to audiences. Together both Fritz Lang’s silent black and white film ‘Metropolis’ 1927 and George Orwell’s novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (*referred to as 1984) 1948, confront and provoke audiences to consider the impact that (abusive power + unquestionable control= insert question statement) can have not only on the characters in these two texts, but also on the cultural and political lives of the reader and viewer. By subjugating & dehumanising the lower classes, dictators are

Read More
1743 Words | 7 Pages

Television show, Black Mirror focuses on the effects that technology have on individuals and society itself. Nosedive, an episode of Black Mirror, displays how society dedicates itself to maintaining a good image through extreme social media use. The story follows Lacie Pound, an individual who obsesses over her social media rating and does whatever it takes to increase her score. People living in this technological society rely on their online score to appear in their best light to others. The highest rating one can get is up to five stars.

Read More
915 Words | 4 Pages

Black Mirror’s season three opens with a dystopian science fiction episode ‘Nosedive’. From (“Critical Essays”), I learned that in a dystopian setting, the focus of the film is usually not on the technology itself but rather on the psychology and emotions of the characters that live under such conditions and circumstances. My evaluation of the episode is on how the dystopian genre, colors, and soundtrack of the episode were able to relay the message of the story to the audience. Here’s a brief overview of the episode. Lacie, the protagonist, is living in a town where technology is integrated in almost every aspect of their lives.

Read More
978 Words | 4 Pages

At the end when Bing stands up on the stage to give a heart-breaking speech, he ends up making a controversial decision. It can be related to hive mentality. An article on Scientific American states the following about the singular hive mind, where Jason Castro writes: Every decision you make is essentially a committee act. Members chime in, options are weighed, and eventually a single proposal for action is approved by consensus.

Read More

More about Summary Of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror

Related Topics

Open Document