Charlie Brooker, creator of Black Mirror (Archives) -

Blair Raughley / AP / SIPA

  • In the book

    Black mirror and the digital dawn

    , Vincenzo Susca, lecturer in sociology in Montpellier, and Claudia Attimonelli, socio-semiologist at Moro University in Bari, dissect this series "which outlines the society of the future".

  • For the authors, the anticipation series, broadcast by Netflix, tells "what we are going through, even what we are going to live".

  • The series

    Black mirror

     shows in particular, in several episodes, how politics could evolve in the coming years.

Everyone who has seen

Black Mirror

has necessarily asked the question: What if this amazing anticipation series, broadcast by Netflix, becomes reality?

What if these dreadful societies, dreamed up by producer Charlie Brooker, were just a reflection, hardly exaggerated, of our own?

In the book

Black mirror and the digital aurora,

Vincenzo Susca, lecturer in sociology at the University Paul-Valéry, in Montpellier (Hérault), and Claudia Attimonelli, socio-semiologist at the Aldo-Moro University in Bari ( Italy), dissect this series “which outlines the society of the future”.

Black mirror

tells us what we are going through, even what we are going to live," Vincenzo Susca confides to

20 Minutes

.

Charlie Brooker's intelligence has been to build each episode from something that has already happened.

Everything the show tells only radicalizes experiences that we are already going through.

Moreover, the authors do not speak of "episodes" about this series, but of "essays".

"Things we already know"

And 

Black Mirror

is neither 

Star Wars

nor The 

Matrix:

the series never involves "unimaginable, bizarre or complicated technologies", continues the researcher, but "things that we already know, pushing them a little little.

But not very much ”.

This young man who accepts, for money, that a horror video game be grafted into his brain, this society where romantic encounters are timed or these young people who pedal all day to participate in a telecrochet, would be nothing other than the extension of what we already know.

Among the themes she discusses, there is one whose evolution that

Black Mirror

imagines shivers down the spine: politics.

An example: in the first episode,

The National Anthem

, released in 2011, undoubtedly one of the most terrifying, the English Prime Minister is forced, by the kidnapper of the princess, to have sex with a pig , live on television, to get her through.

Under pressure from the English media and public opinion, he finally gave in, under the eye of captivated viewers.

Berlusconi and Trump

Science fiction?

Yes, but… All this is nothing other than a “sensationalist TV show”, “an orgiastic audiovisual moment”, note the authors.

“Politics is, today, under the control, even the threat, of the media, and in particular the media which come from below, the social networks, explains Vincenzo Susca.

They become a power even more important than the power itself.

And when politics becomes a show, it doesn't surprise (almost) anyone anymore.

In

The Waldo Show

, released in 2013,

Black Mirror

still questions this relationship between power and spectacle.

A CGI bear suddenly gains popularity as he slings himself in front of a hilarious audience with a member of the Conservative Party.

He ends up ... by getting involved in politics.

"They are Silvio Berlusconi in Italy or Donald Trump in the United States," notes the researcher.

Policies that no longer aim to make people think, but to seduce, by providing emotions.

"Moreover, the day after the businessman's accession to the White House, the

Black mirror

account 

had tweeted" This is not an episode […], it is reality ", point out Claudia Attimonelli and Vincenzo Susca.

"We can still intervene in history"

For the authors, there is no doubt that in a few years, we will point to

Black Mirror

as the series that predicted everything.

"If an extraterrestrial landed on Earth,

Black Mirror

is the series that would best explain to him what our society is heading towards," says the researcher.

Among all the series that we have known for thirty years, this is the one that tells the best of what we are, and what we will be.

“Those who have seen the series will agree: it's not great, super reassuring.

But all is not lost: the researchers note that it is still possible to get rid of this decline.

Like the heroine of

Black Museum

, who ends up having her revenge on the curator who exhibits a holographic projection of her father, wrongly condemned to the electric chair.

“We are not reduced to the simple passive role of pawns, we can still intervene in history, write the authors.

We have the faculty, like the heroine of the episode, to sabotage the devices which govern our existence.

"

"Black mirror and the digital dawn", available March 23 from Liber editions.

Series

"The Feed", the series that imagines a world with Facebook implanted in the brain

Series

"Black Mirror": The various facts to (re) read which prove that the future is already here

  • Television

  • Languedoc-Roussillon

  • Social networks

  • Black mirror

  • Montpellier

  • Netflix

  • Series