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Black Mirror S04E02 “Arkangel” discussion thread
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Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 2 - Arkangel
Worried about her daughter’s safety, single mom Marie signs up for a cutting-edge device that monitors the girl’s whereabouts -- and much more.
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Didn't really like this episode, the premise was faulty to begin with.
No one is their right mind would create a device to prevent someone to see anything "dangerous" just to preserve their stress level (since it's basically all it's doing, the tracking is just a bonus).
Let's say someone equiped with this thing is "witnessing" an assault, all they'd see would be a blurry mess, puting themselves in immediate danger. Same thing with a car crash, they wouldn't see a thing and just add to the surrounding chaos by running over someone or being run over.
And I'm not even talking about the very idea of locking someone in a bubble, making them inapt to live in our society.
Everything about this screams "terrible idea" and made they whole thing hardly believable. In all honesty, "Arkangel" was so bad that I've yet to watch the following episodes.
Black Mirror sometimes takes an idea that's already happening and then ramps it right up. Here we see an extension of helicopter parenting. Some parents don't allow their children to walk to a local park alone; they implement very strict filters for Internet strict rules for screen time. Take all that and amplify it. You end up with a Black Mirror episode.
But that's the point. "Let children play" is the message.
Letting people look at reality as it is is f a r preferable to shielding them from it. I grew up in pandemonium and adapted; peers are shielded and run from one emotional obstacle into the other. Better to know what's what as early as possible and save yourself the time otherwise wasted on illusions.
Well, it was not supposed to be turned on permanently. As I understood it, it was designed for children, which are unlikely to be in an important position in case of car crash or witness assault without adult around.
Rather than the blocking, I was much more intrigued about the ability to watch every person’s step, indefinitelly, without an option to turn it off. I quite like your thought about locking them in social bubble.
I find this episode quite good - especially after gems such as USS Callister, which was just weird - if I didn’t know beforehand, I wouldn’t even guess USS Callister was Black Mirror.
I feel like they are moving more and more towards sci-fi after Netflix took over rather than the old good mindfuck and I agree with you on this. I came here for Black Mirror, not yet another unbelievable sci-fi. And while it was not bad, I really hope they return back to the feeling of first three series of Black Mirror.
I've heard this perspective before and, to me, it's amusing that people have a hard time believing this technology could be allowed... But then have no problem immersing in the literal "blocking" of people presented in White Christmas. In my head-canon, Arkangel is a prototype of the tech later used in White Christmas, possibly after being deemed unsafe for children?
I'd have sued her into oblivion at the first possible date, leaning on every privacy and child protection law in existence. Just the thought of spying on someone's intimate privacy is repugnant.