The Digital Dystopias of Black Mirror and Electric Dreams

The Digital Dystopias of Black Mirror and Electric Dreams

Author: Steven Keslowitz

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2019-12-24

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1476678685

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This critical examination of two dystopian television series--Black Mirror and Electric Dreams--focuses on pop culture depictions of technology and its impact on human existence. Representations of a wide range of modern and futuristic technologies are explored, from early portrayals of artificial intelligence (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1921) to digital consciousness transference as envisioned in Black Mirror's "San Junipero." These representations reflect societal anxieties about unfettered technological development and how a world infused with invasive artificial intelligence might redefine life and death, power and control. The impact of social media platforms is considered in the contexts of modern-day communication and political manipulation.


Dystopia on Demand: Technology, Digital Culture, and the Metamodern Quest in Complex Serial Dystopias

Dystopia on Demand: Technology, Digital Culture, and the Metamodern Quest in Complex Serial Dystopias

Author: Laura Winter

Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag

Published: 2024-01-29

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 3381112228

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Serial storytelling has the advantage of unlocking rather than simplifying the complexities of digital culture. With their worldbuilding potential, TV series open up new artistic horizons, particularly for the dystopian genre. Situated at the nexus of dystopia, complex TV, and a metamodern cultural logic, Dystopia on Demand: Technology, Digital Culture, and the Metamodern Quest in Complex Serial Dystopias offers readers novel insights into the dynamics of serial dystopias in the contemporary streaming landscape. Introducing the term 'complex serial dystopias' to describe series that allow audiences to engage with the dystopian premise from multiple angles, the book examines four Anglo-American series, including Black Mirror, Mr. Robot, Westworld, and Kiss Me First. The in-depth analyses trace the variety of ways in which these series offer critical reflections on the human-technology entanglement in digital culture.


Dystopia on Demand: Technology, Digital Culture, and the Metamodern Quest in Complex Serial Dystopias

Dystopia on Demand: Technology, Digital Culture, and the Metamodern Quest in Complex Serial Dystopias

Author: Laura Winter

Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag

Published: 2024-01-29

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 3381112236

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Serial storytelling has the advantage of unlocking rather than simplifying the complexities of digital culture. With their worldbuilding potential, TV series open up new artistic horizons, particularly for the dystopian genre. Situated at the nexus of dystopia, complex TV, and a metamodern cultural logic, Dystopia on Demand: Technology, Digital Culture, and the Metamodern Quest in Complex Serial Dystopias offers readers novel insights into the dynamics of serial dystopias in the contemporary streaming landscape. Introducing the term 'complex serial dystopias' to describe series that allow audiences to engage with the dystopian premise from multiple angles, the book examines four Anglo-American series, including Black Mirror, Mr. Robot, Westworld, and Kiss Me First. The in-depth analyses trace the variety of ways in which these series offer critical reflections on the human-technology entanglement in digital culture.


Dystopian Aspects in the TV-Series Black Mirror

Dystopian Aspects in the TV-Series Black Mirror

Author:

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2020-07-29

Total Pages: 10

ISBN-13: 3346215210

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Pre-University Paper from the year 2020 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: 1-, , language: English, abstract: In this essay the author talks about the dystopian show "Black Mirror" and analyzes the episode "Nosedive". We live in a society with a constant, seemingly positive, technological growth. But what if we lose control over what we are creating? That's what dystopian stories are about.


Humanity in a Black Mirror

Humanity in a Black Mirror

Author: Jacob Blevins

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2023-01-12

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1476647127

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The presentation of technology as a response to human want or need is a defining aspect of Black Mirror, a series that centers the transhumanist conviction that ontological deficiency is a solvable problem. The articles in this collection continue Black Mirror's examination of the transhuman need for plentitude, addressing the convergence of fantasy, the posthuman, and the dramatization of fear. The contributors contend that Black Mirror reveals both the cracks of the posthuman self and the formation of anxiety within fantasy's empty, yet necessary, economy of desire. The strength of the series lies in its ability to disrupt the visibility of technology, no longer portraying it as a naturalized, unseen background, affecting our very being at the ontological level without many of us realizing it. This volume of essays argues that this negative lesson is Black Mirror's most successful approach. It examines how Black Mirror demonstrates the Janus-like structure of fantasy, as well as how it teaches, unteaches, and reteaches us about desire in a technological world.


Why You Better Call Saul

Why You Better Call Saul

Author: Steven Keslowitz

Publisher: QuillPop Books

Published: 2017-04-21

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0998895121

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Better Call Saul chronicles the transformation of a decent, likable guy named Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman, the morally bankrupt lawyer we met on Breaking Bad. Captivating and funny, the show provides far more than a few binge-watched hours of entertainment, raising questions about the legal system and human nature itself. Why You Better Call Saul: What Our Favorite TV Lawyer Says About Life, Love, and Scheming Your Way to Acquittal and a Large Cash Payout examines the many faces of our favorite fictional lawyer, as well as other characters in the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe: ls Saul Goodman a persona that Jimmy invents to attract a particular kind of client, or does he reflect Jimmy's true self? To what extent does Jimmy/Saul bend - or break - the rules to which attorneys are bound?What do Jimmy McGill and Mike Ehrmantraut have in common with Dexter Morgan? What do Jimmy's most important relationships teach us about the effect of outside influences on one's psyche? How do Saul Goodman and Walter White break free of societal constraints? How does Saul manipulate the media in order to promote his legal services? Is he defined by his tacky advertisements? And much more ... About the Author STEVEN KESLOWITZ is a practicing attorney and pop culture expert. He is the author of three other books - The World According to the Simpsons, The Tao of Jack Bauer, and From Poland to Brooklyn -- and several journal articles focused on the intersection of law and pop culture. Please visit his website at StevenKeslowitz.com


The World According to the Simpsons

The World According to the Simpsons

Author: Steven Keslowitz

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13:

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This entertaining and informative book is a fun and intelligent look at how our society is reflected in the hit TV show The Simpsons, and how The Simpsons is reflected in society.


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Author: Ana Galvan

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books

Published: 2019-09-04

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 1683962168

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Spanish cartoonist Ana Galvañ charts an often-psychedelic and existential course for modernity in her English language debut, utilizing swaths of electric and florescent colors to create a series of short stories that intertwine and explore the dehumanizing effects of contemporary society. Like a candycolored collection of Black Mirror episodes, Galvañ’s world, set in the very near-future, is familiar and cautionary at once. Galvañ’s unwitting and addictive characters navigate a world of iridescent pastels and geometric energy like puppets. Departments of inhumane resources dehumanize the people it is purported to protect; information is determinedly mined like the gold of the 21st century that it is; induced suicidal thoughts are a tool to manage overpopulation. Galvañ’s near future is less paranoid dystopia than it is a logical extension of things to come, where the malice of large corporations manifests in small, everyday ways—real if a bit surreal at the same time.


Inside Black Mirror

Inside Black Mirror

Author: Charlie Brooker

Publisher: Crown Archetype

Published: 2018-11-20

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1984823493

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The first official companion to the Netflix cult-hit sci-fi television series that's fascinated millions of fans worldwide What becomes of humanity when it's fed into the jaws of a hungry new digital machine? Discover the world of Black Mirror in this immersive, illustrated, oral history. This first official book logs the entire Black Mirror journey, from its origins in creator Charlie Brooker's mind to its current status as one of the biggest cult TV shows to emerge from the UK. Alongside a collection of astonishing behind-the-scenes imagery and ephemera, Brooker and producer Annabel Jones will detail the creative genesis, inspiration, and thought process behind each film for the first time, while key actors, directors and other creative talents relive their own involvement.


Heavy Weather

Heavy Weather

Author: Bruce Sterling

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2020-08-11

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1504063074

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A near-future eco-thriller from the bestselling author of Schismatrix Plus and The Difference Engine. The Storm Troupers are a group of weather hackers who roam the plains of Texas and Oklahoma, hopped up on adrenaline and technology. Utilizing virtual reality, flying robots, and all-terrain vehicles, they collect data on the extreme storms ravaging an America decimated by climate change. But even their visionary leader can’t predict the danger on the horizon when a volatile new member joins their ranks and faces a trial by fire: a massive tornado unlike any the world has seen before. “A remarkable and individual sharpness of vision . . . Sterling hacks the future, and an elegant hack it is.” —Locus “Lucid and tremendously entertaining. Sterling shows once more his skills in storytelling and technospeak. A cyberpunk winner.” —Kirkus Reviews “So believable are the speculations that . . . one becomes convinced that the world must and will develop into what Sterling has predicted.” —Science Fiction Age “A very exciting coming-of-age story in a wild future America . . . What’s it got? Cyberpunk attitude, genuine humor, nanotechnology, minimal sex but some cool medications and very big weather systems.” —SFReviews.net “Brilliant . . . Fascinating . . . Exciting . . . A full complement of thrills.” —The New York Review of Science Fiction