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  • Essay / Society under total surveillance in White Christmas, an episode of Black Mirror

    Table of contentsIntroductionMedia models in Black MirrorMeda models/themes in societyConclusionIntroductionThe film Black Mirror begins with two men, Matt and Joe, who live on an isolated station in middle of the desert filled with snow. To pass the time, they tell each other about their lives. Matt cooks Christmas dinner and talks to Joe about what brought him to this isolated resort in the middle of nowhere, something they've never talked about since they moved there five years ago . Joe is hesitant to answer, so Matt answers his own question first by explaining why he came. Matt describes his real job in a flashback. The technology has created a small chip, also called a "cookie", that can be temporarily implanted in a person's brain to create a copy of their consciousness. These chips can be removed and used in an egg-shaped device to function as the original person's personal assistant. Matt helps house a rich woman named Greta. Matt provides him with a virtual body, a clean room, and a computer desk to accomplish his tasks. When she refuses to cooperate, he modifies her "cookie", causing her to experience six months of boredom and isolation, which actually only lasts a few seconds. His cookie becomes catatonic and finally has the will to break. In the present day, Joe dislikes Matt's career, in which later Matt observes that Joe is a good person. After Joe gets a little drunk, Joe finally tells Matt his story about his girlfriend's father never loving him and explains his situation to him. Joe had a serious relationship with a girl named Beth, but they broke up because Joe was an alcoholic. One day they were having dinner with their friends Time and Gita, but Joe was drunk and Beth was angry. After dinner, Joe finds a pregnancy test in the trash and thinks he's going to be a dad. Beth does not want the child and plans to have an abortion. Joe gets drunk and becomes angry with Beth because he thinks she is selfish and guilty for harming their unborn baby. Beth places a Z-Eye "block" on Joe, meaning she can't hear or see him, and leaves him the next day, unable to hear his excuses because of her block. He discovers that Beth left her job thanks to her friends Tim and Gita. He wrote her letters for months, but received no response. He knows that she is spending Christmas with her father who lives nearby, so he spends the next few months monitoring her and sees the stages of her pregnancy when she is at her father's house. When she finally gives birth to the baby, he cannot give her the child because the blockage extends to the child, but he can only see the silhouette. He eventually realizes it's a girl, but then discovers it's not his. He finds out because he discovered that Beth had died following a tragic train accident, which then caused the block to be removed so that he could now see his child. He discovers that his child is Asian, and that he nor Beth have these characteristics. He later discovers that she was having an affair with his friend Tim, who is Asian. He is so angry that he sneaks into the father's house and hits Beth's father's head, which ends up killing him and he quickly leaves the cabin. This episode of Black Mirror comments on the themes of the medium and the message, including how the Z-eye sends the social message of a society under total surveillance, and the themes.Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayMedia Patterns in Black MirrorThe media patterns in Black Mirror “White Christmas” that we have identified in this film are themodels of spectacle and hyperrealism. The media model of spectacle describes a technological and cultural change with the representation of lived experiences. Guy Debord's spectacle is explained as follows: “In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly experienced has moved away into a representation." The media model of the hyperreal is a world of reproduction. It is also the simulation or representation of reality. The hyperreal distorts the reality that we know or sometimes does not even represent anything having a real existence. The model of The spectacle gives many examples from the film The spectacle is any type of compelling visual display The main spectacle that depicts our daily reality is that which passes through our screens. Black Mirror uses screens a lot using phones, television or even a mirror. In "White Christmas", the Z-eye is the screen of their eye. the hyperreal, the things he can do could be part of a show, there was a flashback where Matt reveals himself to be a dating coach for single men to help them seduce women. the Z-eye to see and hear what its customers witness and give them instructions. His latest client is shy and socially awkward. awkward Harry, who was asked by Matt to enter an office Christmas party uninvited. Matt, along with several other single men sharing Harry's video feed, identify Jennifer as a "discreet and attractive stranger" based on her social media profile. Matt guides Harry to start a conversation with her. Matt controlling Harry through a screen is an example from the show. In the PowerPoint, the example of how the Rocky movie everyone loved. Sylvester Stallone, who plays Rocky in the film, is known as the real Rocky because of the film. The real Rocky gets no credit for what he did in real life, but Sylvester Stallone deserves all the credit. Matt doing all the work for Harry is almost the same as Rocky's example. Harry gets all the credit for Matt's work. Still in the PowerPoint, an example of a show is television. He asserts that television is "the most powerful force shaping our cultural discourse and the way we see the world." Harry watches the world with Matt's help inside his head from the Z-eye. There are also many examples of the hyperrealistic model, in the Black Mirror episode "White Christmas". The Z-eye is an immovable augmented reality device implanted in the eyes that allows access to the Internet to see and hear people. This enables the idea of ​​blocking not just social media, but the person as a whole, so that they become an invisible, blurred shadow to you and vice versa. An example of the Z-eye from the movie is when Beth blocked Joe so she couldn't see or hear him and he couldn't see or hear her. Beth had also excluded the child she had from Joe, who he thought was his own daughter. With the Z-eye, she was able to do whatever she wanted and he couldn't undo anything she did. So far, the closest thing in our world today is Google. The idea of ​​blocking things is credible, but not with something implanted in your head. The example of the invisible cloak comes to mind, from Harry Potter. Another example from the film is the “cookie”. “Cookie” is the concept of downloading and extracting an exact replica of yourself in digital form to act as a slave. An example of the film's cookie is when Greta, a rich and demanding woman, refuses breakfast at thereads that a clinic serves her because the toast is a little toastier than she wants. The anesthesiologist told Greta to count down from ten while Greta is sedated. As she counts, she experiences an out-of-body experience and reveals herself to be a small chip placed in a portable electronic device. The device was taken back to her home, where her consciousness is greeted by Matt. He explains what she really is, which is a digital copy of his consciousness called a "cookie". In the PowerPoint, there is talk of the territory capture map. He also says that the media is the territory, the “reality”. Matt is able to take control of people's lives through the cookie using a replica to have as his slave. This also explains how the Z-eye can be used as a card to take control of a territory. An example given by PowerPoint concerns football stadiums and large screens used as a high definition map for the map that is the territory. Harry's visual map is Matt's big screen to help direct him. Patterns/Themes of Society in Society Additionally, “White Christmas” has a lot to say about the role of media in society today and tomorrow. One of the themes of the episode that explores this topic is that the medium is the message. In this case, the medium used is the cookie and the message concerns a company under total surveillance. In a world where technology is becoming more and more ubiquitous, “White Christmas” speaks to the fears some may have about the future of privacy. With the introduction of the cookie into society, everyone's deepest, darkest secrets can be revealed through the hyperreal copy of oneself, also known as a cookie. Additionally, the PowerPoint references the damage to privacy when discussing George Orwell's science fiction book, 1984. Published in 1948, the book compares the widespread use of television to that of the Panopticon, which is also presented in the PowerPoint. The Panopticon is an architectural design by Jeremy Bentham in the late 1700s. In his design, Bentham created the most "efficient" prison, in which a few guards are placed in the center of a circle lined with cells. Essentially, a few are able to observe the majority, who are under total surveillance at all times thanks to the design of the Panopticon. The class textbook delves deeper into the idea of ​​total surveillance in the future when the author writes about the correlation between diminishing privacy and the growing role of social media in society. As society becomes more transparent and allows less time for introspection and solitude, a hive mind is most likely being created. This hive mind is created via the Internet, a constant source of information and communication. Additionally, the episode also acknowledges the theme of temes. Besides genes and themes, there is a third replicator called temes. The class manual references themes as Susan Blackmore's phrase used to define a type of meme that concerns technological evolution and how technology continues to endorse copies of itself. Since all media technologies are mass produced, this means that they are copied and replicated, much like genes and memes. For example, according to the PowerPoint course, television is a theme of radio and camera, a combination of the capabilities of both and therefore an even more advanced version of both devices. In another example, mainframe computers in the mid-20th century evolved from personal desktops to laptops and then to what are today considered smartphones and tablets...