What the title ‘Black Mirror’ really means according to the creator of the show

A quick inspection of The The main inspiration for “Black Mirror” leads us to a CBS anthology series celebrated by the criticism, which serves as a blueprint for speculative fiction on television. Yes, Charlie Brooker’s “Black Mirror” borrowed from Rod Serling “The Twilight Zone”, where all similarities between the two of Brooker come to the beloved CBS show. Even if these recalls are not intentionally, the influence of the “Twilight Zone” is impossible to escape, since the series has shaped our collective understanding of stories that cause reality and surreal.

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In addition, Serling Show has always stopped a mirror on social issues at root level, with every episode playing as a moral history that condemns the hollowness of an increasingly capitalist landscape. “Black Mirror” deliberately imitated this approach from a postmodern objectively, whereby our complicated relationship with technological progress increases. As a result, most of the “Black Mirror” episodes are careful or dystopic, whereby the attractiveness in the gap between the present and what could possibly occur in the near future are.

However, these possible futures are mostly bleak and force us to face our excessive dependence on technology that could undermine our sense of humanity. With the terrifying advent of the generative AI, the responsibility of learning human skills at the basic level-the most rudimentary thinking of the most rudimentary thinking up to research-based writing, which is etched by “Black Mirror” is not as speculative as we want.

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This raises the question: What does the term “black mirror” mean? When we look at the inspiring roots of the show, “The Twilight Zone” was described as a border area that is “between light and shadow” and “science and superstition”. It is a purely imaginative dimension that is outside the room/time and reflects the greatest fears of humanity and the limits of human knowledge. What does “Black Mirror” mean in the eye, which means “black mirror”? Let’s see what Brooker has to say himself.

In an op-ED for the Guardian, Brooker spoke extensively about the worrying trend to speak to machines all day-a fairly recent accepted reality that would have made no sense a decade ago. Brooker quotes examples, including our newly discovered urge to constantly shape our lives, or the need to share videos of absolute strangers for viral interactions on social platforms. Brooker underlines these constantly changing norms of what is considered socially acceptable, and explains the borderline of the term “Black Mirror”, which refers to every empty screen in our lives, from television to smartphones:

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“In this area – between joy and complaints – ‘Black Mirror’, my new drama series, is set. The ‘black mirror’ of the title is the one that you should find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a television device, a monitor, a smartphone.”

Immediately afterwards, Brooker confirms the connection “The Twilight Zone” and emphasizes the brilliance of Serling’s scripts, which could talk about topics such as racism or class-based exploitation in “a metaphorical, quasi-fictional world” without fear of censorship. The anthology format of the CBS show also made it possible for the writers to explore a broad width of topics and to increase the scope of what Serling and Co. wanted to say from an artistic perspective. Brooker follows with the statement that “Black Mirror” always aims to do the same:

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“This is what we strive for with ‘Black Mirror’: Every episode has a different line -up, a different backdrop, even a different reality. But they are all about the way we live now – and how we could live in 10 minutes if we have grown without it. And if one knows about humanity, it is usually language.”

It is worth noting that Brooker does not deny the use of technology in the postmodern era. If anything, he has an appreciation for technological services that can make life a little easier. However, the impulse behind “Black Mirror” lies in the latent concern for our future, in which this trust in alarm levels achieve and negates human experience as a whole.