10
votes
Black Mirror S04E06 “Black Museum” Discussion Thread
Previous episode | Index thread
Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 6 - Black Museum
On a dusty stretch of highway, a traveler stumbles across a museum that boasts rare criminal artifacts -- and a disturbing main attraction.
Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.
You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!
If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:
- How does the title relate to the episode itself?
- Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
- Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?
I did like how this episode was structured into three separate parts. They came together nicely in the end.
However, Black Mirror is at its best when it shows potential real futures. For me, the idea of people enjoying a living avatar being tortured sitting from their rear-view mirror at all times is just too cartoon evil to be believable.
To a fault, in this case. It was like they were rubbing your nose in the easter eggs this time.
That said, it was still an enjoyable episode. Good mix of humour and dark.
It's funny because, to me, that was what made this episode hyper-realistic. Think of all the "orange man bad" and "hillary eats babies" rhetoric that has been tossed around in the last two years. If someone made a little tomagotchi avatar of either 2016 presidential candidate being tortured, however distasteful, I have a hard time believing it wouldn't sell well.
Granted, the episode portrayed it featuring a "nationally hated icon," not anyone political. But doesn't that just make it all the more likely?
I noticed the bloody smashed tablet from "Arkangel" was in the black museum.
Fun fact for those who didn't see it in the credits, the story with the doctor, "Pain Addict", was originally written by Penn Jillette. Yes, the magician. He said that he wrote the story decades ago but was unable to find someone who would publish such a dark story.
In addition to the tablet from Arkangel, the suit worn by the stalker in White Bear and the bathtub from Crocodile can also be seen in the background during various pans.
I wonder if the existence of these objects as "museum-worthy" in this universe implies some sort of discontinuity in the rest of the episodes? Or if the episodes all truly take place in the same universe but they only had time to fit a limited number of objects as references into one episode?