Wisecrack Edition

The Philosophy of Black Mirror (2017x23)

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Black Mirror is one of the most unnerving viewing experiences in recent memory. And around the Wisecrack office, watching Black Mirror goes hand in hand with having a panic attack. But why does this show evoke such a sense of dread? Unlike other shows about technology and future dystopias, Black Mirror taps in to something eerily familiar to our everyday world. In this Wisecrack Edition, we dive in to the work of prophetic French philosopher Guy Debord to better understand an idea that permeates Black Mirror, as well as our own society- spectacle. Drawing from Debord’s landmark text “The Society of the Spectacle,” we explore how Black Mirror holds up a MIRROR (see what we did there?) to our current social predicament: namely, the ways in which technology not only mediates our relationships with other humans, but also the world around us.