Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory

Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory provides insight into why the Black Mirror series has garnered so much popular attention. Featuring international scholars of popular culture, media theory, and digital technologies, the book reverse-engineers Black Mirror episodes and invites readers to consider their own relationships with digital technology. Guided by great thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Marshall McLuhan, and Paul Virilio, each chapter provides deep analyses and vivid examples from Black Mirror episodes. It explores Black Mirror's writers' possible inspirations, goals, and unintended consequences, providing a deep analysis of contemporary implications and commentary. To do so, the book specifically explores six topics--human identity, surveillance culture, spectacle and hyperreality, aesthetics, technology and existence, and dystopian futures--applying them to the television series and more broadly to our own everyday experiences and tensions relating to technology use.