Spoiler: Black Mirror S04E02 plat explained below.
A mirror is one of the most ionic things created by human beings. People usually think about it in very straightforward terms as if its a tool that is used to see how you are looking today. A mirror is way deeper than that and has the power to shows you, your true self and to transform you completely. You must have heard the term on many occasions that “go and look into a mirror and then come back”. The saying suggests that you should look deep into your self and then decide if you are man enough to stand for something.
The series Black Mirror, the name chosen very aptly, shows the Black (dark) side of humankind. The dark side of human beings, society and the future driven by the extensive use of Technology. The episodes are based on the near future technologies and its impact on human beings. The technologies shown in the show are very realistic and seems like would be available in not so distant future.
The show is all about, how humans are going to interact with the new technologies, and brilliantly shows the human emotion in conjunction with the usage of the new devices and technologies. Most of the episodes are left open for interpretation which is the most incredible point of the series.
The episode S04E02 Arkangel is based on a technology that is designed to keep our children safe, no malicious intent was shows in the episode from the technology perspective. The Episode is directed from the mother’s perspective. The episode starts that with the mother (Marie) giving birth to a daughter. Lots of great emotions are shows upon the arrival of a new family member. After a while, the daughter is 3 years old (Sara) and goes missing when she tries to follow a cat. The daughter is found, but the Marie is scared to the core and could not stand the thought of losing her child again.
Marie approaches the company Arkangel where the company put an implant on her daughter. The process of the implant shown is very simple and quicker than getting her ear pierced. This implant would help the mother to see current location, vital stats of the daughter real time. The implant would provide the alerts if her heart rate rises or anything vitals changes in the body. Pretty Cool!!
The crazy part is one optional filer; if the parents want to turn it on then, the child would only see the blurred images of the things that scare the child for example, things that are gory in nature, people fighting, people dying, blood, anger, sex etc. The mother decided to turn it on.
The girl grew (8year old) and started to go to school. Every day the daughter passes a house where a dog barks at her, and she only sees a blurred image of that dog. Creepy!!
The kids in the school shares video of fight scenes, porn etc. and the girl have no idea what is happening, as for her everything is blurred. One day the girl is drawing the picture of a fight scene where one man is bleeding The moment she starts to colour the blood as red, the area becomes blurred. The daughter gets frustrated and hurts herself with a sharp pencil to see blood, but all she can see is blurred images. It seemed like the girl is in the prison and she could not see the reality. She was living in a world of illusion.
Marie took Sara to the psychologist, where the psychologist shows Sara a series of photos mainly with two people fighting and asks what is happening in the pictures, and Sara had no idea. Sara has never experienced emotions like anger, disgust in her life. Her life is just fake years with all positives emotions around. When the psychologist suggests the mother to stop using the implant the mother agrees, but she is scared to imagine how the daughter would behave when she experiences these missing emotion suddenly in life.
Sara gets scared when she looks at the barking dog, as this is the first time she looked at how that dog looked like. Right after the first strange encounter with the dog, she is looking good and ignores the dog bark completely. At school, she looks at all kind of video and gets amazed after looking at all those emotions that she never experienced.
The girl is now 16-17 years and the episode shows some instances when Marie follow Sara and tries to save her from some guys who were into drugs. As one of the function of the implant was that the Marie can see the same things that Sara is looking at the real time.
Somehow Sara learned about the implant that her mother was tracking her all the time and she watched her all the time, while she was growing up. The mother tried to explain that she was just protecting her and did not watch her all the time. Sara was furious and clicked some button in rage on the tablet kind of device and turn on the blurred filter accidentally. In anger Sara hit the mother with the device multiple time and could not see that her mother was bleeding profusely (as the blur filter was on). While hitting her mother multiple time the filter turned off and Sara sees the the mother lying unconscious on the floor.
After a while mother came down on the street shouting Sara Sara, remembering Sara when she was born. Shouting like mad people understanding that she has lost her daughter forever, crying in guilt, scared about the long lasting suffering, pain and emptiness she is going to have for rest of her life.
What an incredible technology!! if we could raise all the people like that where people do not have any understanding of anger and disgust the world may be a much better place to live.
Would it work, is it possible???
Positive and negative emotions balance our life, if the emotions are not balanced, we cannot have a human being with the capacity to think straight. We will not be able to take the correct decision as we cannot feel the obvious. Like all Black Mirror episode, I just love this episode and this has left a deep impact on me.
Do watch it, I highly recommend it.
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