To begin, Black Mirror is a British Series on Netflix, which portrays mainly technological events which can occur in the future. Episodes are in a story-like form in order to convey a specific message towards its audience. Generally, a black mirror is a turned off screen, it can range from television screens, phone screens, computer screens. Through the turned off screen, individuals are able to see their reflection, which further outlines societies self-reliance on any technological product. In particularly, season 2 episode 2: “White Bear,” portrays an occasion that revolves around placing the main character, Victoria, through a simulation continuously, in order for society to bring vengeance upon her for her terrible actions. Ultimately, Victoria was involved in a nationwide criminal case where she was found guilty of being a bystander, by recording and not intervening, when her finance tormenting and murdering a 6 year old girl named Jemima. Throughout the episode, political themes such as surveillance and invasion of privacy are shown, alongside certain identity issues the main character faces.
In the beginning of “White Bear,” Victoria, faces many identity issues because she wakes up alone, confused and unable to remember who she is who her friends are and even who her family is. Her memories of each simulation are wiped after, so she wakes up in a confused and unknown state. As Victoria makes her way disarranged throughout the house she woke up in, unable to recall any memories as to if this was her house. She does not know where she belongs in the world. Throughout the episode, she does not fully remember her name and claims a picture she saw of 6 year old, Jemima, is her own daughter, unaware of the events that really occurred in reality. Her bewilderment to the world she woke up in and her uncertainty with her identity led to her to developing a selfish attitude and skewed perception, where she wants people to help her but she does not want to help others. In the episode for example, she was supposed to help a boy, Damien, take down one of the “hunters,” who was trying to violently kill them, but instead she ran away the first chance she got without trying to help him. Towards the end of the episode, it is revealed to the audience that as a factor to evoke the simulation, they strategically place photographs and items specifically around the set, where she would conveniently be able to find them. This was a tactic used by the actors into leading Victoria to believe that the individuals in the photos are her family or friends.
Black Mirror employs many political themes throughout its series, with surveillance and invasion of privacy being the specific themes used in this singular episode. Throughout the simulation, there were individuals called “onlookers” who specifically recorded and monitored all of the movements of Victoria. In other words, they followed her around and recorded her throughout everything she did. Another instance of surveillance used in the episode is the individuals monitoring the actors and the overall set. Since Victoria is the only one being deceived and everyone else is in on the fact that they are trying to act a certain way throughout the act, Victoria is severely monitored as there are unnoticeable cameras placed throughout the scene. The cameras record her movement and let the actors around her know when she would be arriving at a certain location and when, so they are ready to play along with the scenario when she arrives. When Victoria asked how the world formed in the way it was, with individuals recording and not talking or helping her when she was running for her life from “hunters,” she was told by her accomplice that a flashing symbol appeared on any screen available which caused people to become bystanders and film everything around them. In our society today as technology is being exceedingly advanced and society is becoming extremely reliant on it for everyday purposes, it makes it easier for movements and locations of individuals to be tracked.
Simple movements are being tracked, for example in the scholarly journal, Privacy, Surveillance, and Law, it states, “Gmail, Google’s popular email service, automatically searches the text of an email and posts advertisements keyed to its content.” (Posner 249). This detail expresses factual evidence on the surveillance aspect which comes from common, uncomplicated search engines, which is widely used in our world today. As small and compact our phones are today, it can be used widely by various sources, not only the government, to trace an individual. In the episode, individuals are using their cellphones to record and capture the movements of Victoria. Furthermore, in “Restraining the Surveillance State: A Global Right to Privacy,” it states, “Identifying the emerging norm of privacy, it is suggested, is of vital importance not merely for individual citizens but for the governments whose powers need to be checked. Technology might be useful, but its use in a situation free of ethical guidance or legal restraint is not desirable,” (Kampmark 12). In other words, since technology is widely available and used for almost every aspect of life, it is readily available for the government to use for their own predilection. Even so, they should be aware of society’s rights and understand that surveillance should be limited in many ways for respect of its citizens. Lastly, the US government has a certain level of control to limit the privacy its citizens receive. To put it simply, during times of war the security increases while privacy decreases.
The episode engaged with identity politics, which is the act of people forming alliances and groups based on a similar factor they all categorize with. In the episode, there was a formation of 2 groups: the onlookers and the hunters. The onlookers are witnesses, recording the whole event and not physically participating in anything. Especially when Victoria asks them to help her, they do not respond instead, they only follow her around recording. She is unable to hide from them because they are following her every movement. This is a definite case of invasion of her privacy. The individuals in this group identified with the fact that they wanted to participate by recording events and follow the main subject. The next group in the episode was the hunters. They are a violent group of individuals who were not affected by the signal and realized they were able to cause fear among others by committing terrible acts without being stopped. They carried guns to shoot and kill other non-affected individuals. In order to strike fear in the main character, they chased her to kill her. Overall, Victoria was placed in situation where her life was at stake where she had to plead and beg in order to save her life. By doing this, the actors in the simulation were trying to invoke the fear and the feelings that her and her fiancé caused upon the little girl. In the real life event, Victoria and her fiancé kidnapped 6 year old, Jemima, and kept her hidden for months on end. Victoria was an onlooker in the real life event, where she was filming and not intervening to help the terrified young girl as her fiancé tortured, afflict suffering and murdered the young girl. In comparison, her fiancé is on the other side, a hunter, where he was on a mission to kill and cause fear in others around him. Lastly, the simulation, creates a parallel between the little girls disturbing incident and Victoria’s current situation.
While it might be true that, surveillance and invasion of privacy negatively affects the society, others may say that surveillance benefits society in many ways as the government is able to track certain aspects. For example, in, “Surveillance as a Cultural Practice,” it states, “From this perspective, surveillance can serve democratic or empowering ends if it brings about openness, transparency, accountability, participation, and power equalization among social groups and institutions,” (Monahan 498). Overall, this fact shows that surveillance is a way of creating a different atmosphere, while taking into consideration many composed factors surrounding it. It also leads the public into certain directions which may benefit them in long term by providing them with the necessary information. Also, in the text it states, “In another example, James Walsh (2010) shows how progressive activist groups engage in technological surveillance of the U.S.-Mexico border, border agents, and vigilantes to prevent immigrant deaths, by using geographic information systems, for instance, to determine where to site water stations” (Monahan 498). This detail depicts a specific reason as to why surveillance is beneficial to other societies. By monitoring certain functions that contribute to the way of living, individuals can highly benefit. The government is able to observer the effects of precise utilities or purposes and change it depending on how it may affect the primary community. Even though the evidence to back surveillance can benefit those globally, surveillance specifically on a community negatively impacts it as people are further traced in detail.
To conclude, surveillance negatively impacts individuals and it is specifically shown throughout an episode in Black Mirror. Along with this, the episode portrays the formation of parties and identity issues.
Works Cited
Monahan, Torin. “SURVEILLANCE AS CULTURAL PRACTICE.” The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 4, 2011, pp. 495–508. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23027562.
Posner, Richard A. “Privacy, Surveillance, and Law.” The University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 75, no. 1, 2008, pp. 245–260. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20141907.
Binoy Kampmark. “Restraining the Surveillance State: A Global Right to Privacy.” Journal of Global Faultlines, vol. 2, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1–16. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/jglobfaul.2.1.0001.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
