Black Mirror

I feel that I need to talk about the TV series Black Mirror because it shares many of the same ideas as our film. 'Black Mirror' is a TV series created by Charlie Brooker that shows how our evolving technology and our attachment to it is unhealthy. Brooker says in an interview how our technology use is almost like a drug use and he wanted to show negative the side effects of this. He notes that 'each episode has a different cast, a different setting, even a different reality. But they're all about the way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes' time if we're clumsy.". 

The development of technology is a given, we are never going to stop inventing and never going to stop using it. The rate that this is happening is also increasing, with this knowledge at the back of our mind a whole plethora of twisted scenarios are made available as a very much possible reality in the near future. In the first episode a member of the royal family is held at ransom and will only be let free and not murdered if the prime minister does the unspeakable to a pig whilst being coaxed on by YouTube videos and tweets. Channel 4 described the episode as a 'twisted parable for the twitter age' and sets the tone for the rest of the series as a kind of warning for our society on what can be possible in a technology obsessed culture.

Our absorption with technology is shown in one Black Mirror episode where humans are made to cycle of bike machines to get virtual rewards and points akin to Nintendo Wii's. In another episode humans have recording devices planted in their eyes so that they can re-watch every second of their lives and i see this as like how we try and record everything through photos and video's and are not present in the moment. Black mirror draws on this 'techno-paranoia' feel, in 'Silenced' no-one talks and everyone is so engulfed with their technology that they keep bumping into things. I think that this is happening right now, i feel that our default activity has changed from looking at the world around us to looking at the world through our phones. This has reverberated into how our communication of preference is now through our phones and not through face-to-face contact. Its questionable if a certain threshold of connection to each other can be breached through just text. Texting can seem very emotionless, there is no touching, and no looking into another person’s eyes and we wanted to explore Max’s jealousy of this in the scene where he’s watching an old romantic film.

Many people are guilty of pretending to look on their phones when they’re in a conversation with someone to appease the awkwardness or to avoid talking completely. No-one questions what you are doing on your phone we just accept that someone has something important to do and it's so common that its not considered rude to do so. Its a big leap from not choosing to communicate with out mouth to not actually being able to but our film can be looked at as like a metaphor because we are so antisocial with our phone use that we may as well not be speaking at all. Where 'Black Mirror' 'exaggerated present-day technology and obsessions to subtle but infernal effect' 'Silenced' exaggerates our lifestyle to the point of it being symbolic.