Cloudy Surface

This is the final installment of my thoughts on Black Mirror, which are neither intelligent nor informative. The observationalists out there will notice that the post URL is 'The Van Gogh Method'. I can explain this, but I'm not going to.

Black Mirror: The Entire History of You

I won't go into massive detail about 'The Entire History of You', which I thought was the weakest of the three. You can view it on 4OD at the moment, or catch up with the plot in wikipedia. Summarizing, the episode is set in an alternative reality where people have microchips in their neck that record everything they do. In the end, the protagonist ends up relieving certain scenes from a party he attended, eventually causing him to become a collosal but vindicated tool and end his relationship over an affair he deciphered from his partner's bodylanguage.

The episode finishes with him removing the chip because he's upset. Moral is that presumably we aren't supposed to know everything all the time, and a selective memory is quite liberating.

Why it wasn't interesting

Perhaps, being Charlie Brooker, people expected something a little more philosophical or funny. I suppose I did. But The Entire History of You isn't particularly funny or philosophical. It has no deeper merit than just being a piece of TV. Maybe it was unfair to think of it that way.

There are several problems with The Entire History of You are, in my opinion.

Number One: It does not account for when people are convinced they're right, or about particular conversations they've had, or pretty much anything. It doesn't highlight anything much about being able to record everything all the time. It's almost patronising its opinion of memory. Yes Charlie, we're not supposed to know everything. Cheers for that. It would never be useful to introspectively look at how much of a tool you've been back in the day. It'd never be useful at all. It would just cause pointless conflict.

Number Two: The majority of the episode is just a guy living the day before. If people had this ability, all they'd do is watch their own stuff over and over again, thus leading to the collapse of civilised society. Or something.

Number Three: While highlighting issues with insurance, it makes no mention on it's uses or abuses for academia, crime, copywrite - watching that same movie over and over again. Coulda done Charlie, but didn't. The character spends an entire episode warning us of the dangers of over thinking without elaborating on how this works. But, I hear you cry, this didn't happen in other episodes either, and you liked them. Yeah, selective memory there...

Number Four: People relieve their lives over and over again anyway, with faulty memories, over thinking and general douchebaggery. People still accuse other people of various perceived and imagined crimes. The Entire History of You just highlights the dangers of over thinking and being able to instantly relive things from before, but the guy himself is vindicated anyway. It then makes an emotional point about him not wanting to remember. Lots of people are haunted by bad memories. They don't end when you destroy the CCTV. It's a poorly made, badly articulated issues.

And the Winner is...

My favourite Black Mirror episode has to be a toss up between the first two. They were good in their own way. A cop out, yeah, I suppose. As a series, I'm confused. I can't decide if it was blind, insane genius or malicious scriptwriting. Was it over-expectation or underwhelming television? I suppose it would be worth watching, if you don't mind adverts and have three hours to kill.

Six out of ten, if I had to rate it. It certainly did not live up to my expectations of Mr. Brooker, nor the whirlwind of interest on Facebook.