Human Nature And Technology In The Film Her And Series Black Mirror
The technological milieu in which we prevail is a modification of our natural world, aimed to better suit our own purposes; That is, technological devices and media as instruments of extending our human abilities to satisfy our deepest human desires. Spike Jonze’s film Her (2013) and Charlie Brooker’s series Black Mirror (2011) tell us more about human nature and the human condition than it does about media technologies. Both texts, existing between pleasure and discomfort, are delineated not only in the essence of a ‘technological crisis’ but a ‘crisis of humanity, ’ portraying that as powerful as technology is to become, its greatest power is in how it reflects our identity and what we do with it. Ultimately, it’s a human problem that we continually face, not a technological one. This response will envelop the notion of media technology as a void that amplifies, twists and reflects our existential and inner irreverence right back at us. I will discuss the blossoming and decay that encompasses human love and the intrinsic human experience of death; representations of a metaphysical and immaterial future; and the innate curiosity that drives our technological ambitions to achieve identification. Concurrent ideological values of consumerism and progressivism, as well as our technological culture as a social construct, are concepts that are modelled within both narratives to anchor their significance in the lives of those engrossed in their viewings. Where better to disquiet us about our equivocal future than in the security and solace of our own homes?
Black Mirror, a speculative anthology series, and Her, an outlandish yet mesmerising science-fiction film, consider the concurrent murky relationship between humans and technology; The latter being an amplification of the evils found within our human selves, and our constant desire for affection, acceptance and attention. The notion of human love and the intrinsic experience of death is hailed within both. In particular, Black Mirror’s Season 2 opener “Be Right Back” never loses sight of its humanity, telling the story of Martha’s bereavement after losing her boyfriend, Ash. Introduced to an experimental service that, quite literally, reconnects the living to the dead, Martha ‘installs’ a robotic-like clone of her deceased partner. She finds that this technology gives her a considerable amount of comfort in dealing with her grief, but simultaneously imprisons her in a colourless imitation of her old life. Human nature hauls us toward an innate curiosity and blossoming of love, with a lingering fear of its decay. The notion of death within this quintessential framework is difficult to fathom, but is naturally inevitable. Often, our darkest desires lead us toward unethical reasonings, much like Martha’s desire to again rekindle a love she once held with Ash. It can be deduced that social media and media technologies act as a ‘buffer’ between our experiences and genuine, human emotion.
Similarly, Jonze’s Her is a paragon of love, wit and the human condition, illuminating that what promises to give us a fulfilling connection, results strictly in the opposite — the illusion of relationships and human love. Heartbroken after the collapse of a long-term relationship, Theodore, the protagonist, becomes intrigued with a new and advanced operating system, which promises to be an instinctive entity, individual to each user. Upon launching it, he is pleased to meet “Samantha, ” a youthful, female automaton, who is intelligent, sympathetic and surprisingly funny. As her desires grow, in tandem with Theodore’s, their friendship deepens into love. Black Mirror’s Be Right Back and the film Her exhibit the narrative theory of binary oppositions in comparing a love that is tangible in Black Mirror, to a metaphysical love in Her. However, they both explore the evolving nature — and the risks — of intimacy in the modern world, and to what extent soulless human-technology intimacy can persist. Dealing with themes of identity, both protagonists begin at a state of disunity, to only end up in the same state at the conclusion of their story. It is challenging to accept that as media technology is continually evolving, we are not; We are trapped in our rituals, naivety and fear.
The final image of Her’s Theodore and Amy, and a scene of Black Mirror’s Ash and Martha, is atop a skyscraper and cliff, respectively, suggesting alienation and, quite possibly, the desire to jump/push to their deaths, or seeking something beyond their existence. Deduced from this is a powerful reminder of the soullessness of social media and technology, in falling short of a substitute to actual relationships or loving, human connectedness. It illuminates that what we create and come to rely on reveals more about ourselves than almost anything else; Themes of the human desire for affection, acceptance and attention, of which technology, as we know it, fails to replace or fully provide. The film Her and TV series Black Mirror tell us more about human nature and our curiosity of the metaphysical and addiction to the immaterial than of technology itself. While seamlessly blurring genre boundaries, of horror, satire and science fiction, this eclectic series and science-fiction film pushes our contemporary understanding of the digital revolution into possible re-presentations or projections of ourselves within a metaphysical and immaterial future.
Many media products represent the real world but are not the real world itself. They are re-presentations or constructions of the world aiding to reinforce values that are a part of the whole society. The media, as described by Frankfurt School as a ‘consciousness industry, ’ performs social control in keeping the masses ordered. In their representations, the media give information and explanations of ways to understand the world we live in. We, as consumers, instinctively take on an interpretive role, making sense of the world, other people and ourselves at the hands of the issues presented to us. As quoted by James Holloran (1994), “We must get away from the habit of thinking in terms of what the media do to people and substitute for it the idea of what people do with the media“ (uses-and-gratifications model). Each episode of Brooker’s Black Mirror alone poses difficult ethical and moral questions to the characters; in turn, we question ourselves within our own reality. Technology may be neutral, however the issues surfaced by it are not. The political economy of the media sights media as serving the economic or political interests of whomever owns and controls them; A concept derived from Frankfurt School. However, agenda setting, the process by which media producers illuminate issues that their media is to focus on, illustrates a movement toward media homogenisation, allowing audiences to, incidentally, have a say in what gets produced based on what they perceive as important. Media representations, such as Black Mirror and Her, reflect the dominant values of society; Values based on economic growth and consumerism.
Through satirically and relentlessly presenting these issues, Brooker encourages us, as blind runners and reluctant viewers, to not impulsively consume media technology, but wisely wrestle it. We are encouraged, through our social media feeds, to believe that technological advancements promise to bring dreams to life. However, Black Mirror and Her vividly show that these dreams can turn to social nightmares if over-consumed and manipulated, and although technology is more neutral than it is evil, it provides us incredible power; a direct line to our desires. If we are not careful, technology can overstimulate us, enslave us, isolate us, and cause us to drift away from other people and ourselves. In Black Mirror’s satirical, season three episode ‘Nosedive’ is set in a not-so-distant future, where social media “likes” and “ratings” determine a person’s lifestyle, job and prospects. It is presented as a sardonic mockery in which the protagonist, Lacie, fights her way to not only social acceptance, but to move her way through an immaterial and metaphysical class system to achieve a sense of purpose within ‘the global village’. Ultimately, this episode reinforces what we already fear: Social stagnation as a result of the supposedly benevolent technology we have constructed. This targets the notion of an immaterial and incorporeal future, through our own constructing of a virtual reality. As this response pleads, the dark side of technology portrayed within these two texts is only an extension of the darkness within ourselves due to our progressive and consumeristic ideologies; technology as purely an accomplice to satisfy these values.
Similarly, in Her, we watch as Theodore attempts to find a connection to the world, motivated by his incorporeal connection with Samantha. In opening up to his non-judgmental computer, he is able to realise the many ways he is destined to be a part of his world. We understand that Theodore’s connection with others is modelled by his connection to Samantha, and the more time they spend together, the more Theodore feels encouraged to connect with others in his life. For many, watching Charlie Brooker’s series and Spike Jonze’s film feels more like ‘deja vu’ than dystopia. Issues of politics, propaganda, immortality, capitalism, social media and everything in between is alluded to by both Brooker and Jonze. These issues are extremely prevalent and tangible in our society, particularly following the growth of media technology consumption and distribution. This form of media reproduces reality in a mimetic way, appearing to show us unmediated reality and digitalised impressions of the real world. Consequently, this ‘intangible, dystopian future’ portrayed in both texts dawns on us as a living, hostile reality; projections of ourselves within the media.
The metaphysical and intangible world we have construed through the technological device within our hands has introduced an array of palpable social predicaments that both Black Mirror and Her represent in an effort to make us question our corrupt human tendencies. Arguing against Marshall McLuhan synopsis that “the medium is the message” (1967). Our innate curiosity of technology and its capabilities is evident in the media we produce, paving a timeline of the ways in which our satisfaction, of desires and needs, has evolved; a shift from functionality, to emotion, and arriving at identification. However, the historical fear of social media, as an instrument of control and propaganda, supporting capitalist consumerism, still exists in our psyche when concerned with futuristic media.
Some episodes of Black Mirror, particularly “Be Right Back”, and the film Her can be seen as adaptations of much older literature, utilising intertextuality to support a preferred reading. This theory of semiology stresses the relation of one test to others and to society as a whole, using cultural codes, conventions and connotations, to assist us in making links and comparisons with our society; Meaning as social produced. Thus, Barthes argued that cultural signs are wider systems of social myths. Season 2 opener “Be Right Back” is a re-work of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from 1818. Be Right Back’s storyline sees a distraught widow invest in a biosynthetic model of her deceased husband after he is killed in a car accident. After downloading all extant digital documentation of her husband into the model, he comes alive in a seemingly faultless imitation of Ash. Despite his superficial perfection, the resurrected figure — like Frankenstein’s creature — can never be human. Once she has passed through the euphoria and solace that she finds in the bio-simulation, the widow gradually comes to regard her reconstructed partner with horror. Two hundred years later, and Black Mirror has updated Shelley’s ethical questions that asserts the digital presence in which we prevail is no more the critical essence of humanity than Frankenstein’s assemblage of human body parts. Binary oppositions of a tragic relationship between the creation and creator, explored in Frankenstein, compares to the relationship between the creation and modern day consumer in Be Right Back; A shift from technology merely for functionality, to technology as purely emotive. Still, our innate curiosity of media technology lingers as we find new means of satisfying our desires, in particular, altering the course of life.
Comparatively, Michael Powell’s A Matter of Life and Death takes to the likings of Jonze’s Her. It falls nothing short of a fantasy romance film about a World War Two pilot, named David Niven, who cheats death when his plane malfunctions. Minutes before the crash, he communicates with a woman, Kim Hunter, on the other end of his radio, and they happen to fall in love having only heard each other’s voices. Although human, let’s assume this voice was not of a living being, rather an entity, much like Her. The question lingers, tying the two texts together: Can human beings have an authentic relationship with an inhuman entity, and to what extent will our curiosity push this question? In my opinion, it is impossible to satisfy our inherent human desires of attention, affection and acceptance without the intimacy that embodies genuine, human interaction and love. However, our inquisitiveness always pushes these technological boundaries, and, in turn, our ethical frameworks. Our desires remain the same, but our urge for them to be fulfilled increases as we come to realise what technology can actually provide; Virtuality. Most episodes of Black Mirror, and the conclusion of Her, end bleakly; Often with isolation, depressing epiphanies, families torn apart, adultery, and death. When presented in these metaphorical, quasi-fictional worlds, suddenly they become disarming. We become numb to what is being shown to us in a reality much similar to ours. This notion of interpellation, or hailing, is insinuated in the title itself. Brooker quotes “I quite like the fact that people are watching it on their TV or on their laptop… and then as the end credits start running and the screen cuts to black, they see themselves reflected”. We are hailed, in this sense, to explore our role in the reality we have just immersed ourselves into for close to an hour. Brooker aids in our questioning of the amount of media we consume and the ways in which we utilise it, as we stare back at ourselves; our identity and social construction. His aim is to utilise media technology in a way that changes our mental states on the issues prevailing around us, and his metaphorical title and series concept does so in a bleak but seamless manner. Brooker and Jonze, through their respective media portrayals, remind us, as viewers and members of society, to manage our technology consumption in ways that reflect respect for all other beings. In doing so, they highlight that media technologies are not portrayed as the issue; we are. Despite our degree of curiosity, we are to be wary of ethical considerations when using media technologies to satisfy our human needs and desires. This response has unveiled the murky relationship between media technologies and human beings, through examples of both Black Mirror and Her. What has been delineated is that social media and media technologies act as a buffer between our experiences and genuine, human emotion; we have an innate curiosity towards the technologically metaphysical and its ability to satisfy our human needs, despite implications; and that these directors encourage us to manage our curiosity-driven technology consumption in ways that reflect respect for all other beings.
As intriguing as it was to research this topic, and wish to continue, I end this response on one note: It can be argued that the film Her and television series Black Mirror tell us more about the human condition and human nature than it does about media technologies.
