*Contains spoilers*
Towards the end of the final episode of this season’s Black Mirror (Netflix, 5th June), we see protagonist Ashley O tied down to a bed. Ashley (Miley Cyrus) is an iconic pop sensation whose artistic outputs are adored around the world. Lately Ashley has been being a bit difficult, so her managerial team have reasonably placed her into an induced coma. Attached to her head is a device which will monitor creative activity, digesting the sound-waves pulsing through her brain, and transcribe them to create songs Ashley is dreaming. The plan is to funnel these new songs into an album and perform them live via an enormous Ashley hologram. Ashley O might die, but the thing that makes her valuable will live forever. It will be bigger, better.
This episode touches on many of the anxieties we usually see in Black Mirror. We’ve got bad advice from robots, aggressive friendlessness, commercial gloom and internet addicts with delusional expectations. First and foremost though, it’s a commentary on the commodification of talent. Outside of what you’re good at, what are you good for? The obvious parallel here is Miley Cyrus herself. Cyrus started out as a Disney sensation in squeaky tween show Hannah Montana, before rebelling against Disney's tight restrictions, culminating in her chopping off her hair, prancing nude on a wrecking ball and twerking against the monochrome crotch of Robin Thicke.
Black Mirror co-creators Annabel Jones and Charlie Brooker have confirmed that the Cyrus parallel is intentional, and she collaborated with the director when reworking the script. Look closer to home, however, and there's another parallel to be found. If the links between Cyrus and Ashley O are visible, we can also see them with the Black Mirror co-creators. Jones and Brooker are the masterminds of a show so successful that it's now surpassed its meta status. Black Mirror has become a front-runner product of the system it criticises.
I wrote a few years ago about the “Hollywoodisation” of Black Mirror after it transferred to Netflix, in the wake of season three. Brooker’s low-key roots as a Guardian grouch then seemed a distant memory; the earlier Channel 4 episodes were similarly obscured. While the first two series of Black Mirror had mostly featured UK-based, BBC-famous actors like Rory Kinnear and Domnhall Gleeson, now there were Really Famous People in the credits. This impacted the tone as well as the audience reach. It felt as though the rougher aspects of the show were being gradually waxed away, leaving a shiny sci-fi surface.
Come season five and the wax is a full Hollywood.Black Mirror is one of the biggest TV shows in the world. It is a staple of the Netflix menu and—despite its self-awareness—has become precisely the sort of phenomenon it was designed to satirise. Even watching the season five trailer feels like watching the promo for a sci-fi feature film. “FROM THE AWARD-WINNING SHOW,” it boasts, “THAT CHANGED. HOW YOU SEE.”, (pulse), “TECHNOLOGY,” (pulse pulse), “THE FUTURE,” (synth music, flashy shot), “THE WORLD,” boom boom “EACH OTHER,” boomboomboom, “LOVE. PRIVACY. CONNECTION. FAMILY. WORK. AFTERLIFE.” The text speeds up before exploding into a constellation of dramatic one-second clips: eyes closing and opening, a panorama of valleys and hills, a man shouting, a crowd shouting, laptops, phones, Andrew Scott having a Moriarty meltdown. Everything is bigger—definitely. Better? Sometimes. Consistently though, it feels more commercial. Being the creators of a show both this successful and this cynical must be strange. It probably feels kind of lonely, in a luxe-fashion sort of way. None of this is to say that the new season lacks impact. Indeed in many respects it is an improvement on its predecessor. Brooker and Jones have said that loneliness is the "unifying theme" this season, and it features to a point that is almost overwhelming. Ashley O is lonely and friendless; her number one fan Rachel is lonely and friendless. So is Rachel’s sister; so (probably) is Rachel’s sardonic dad. In episode two, Andrew Scott is so lonely that the only person he can talk to honestly is a remote Silicon Valley guru. The woman he meets at counselling is so lonely she spends every day guessing her dead daughter’s social media password; her daughter, who committed suicide, was so lonely no one has any idea why she did it. Loneliness has always been a key theme in Black Mirror, because the failure of people to understand each other is one of the main disappointments about human existence. We are unsatisfying. We misinterpret, aren’t interesting, or are unhelpful to one other. It’s partly as a result of this that we find technology so attractive. It can give us what we want, when we want. It can understand us.
No TV show understands our attraction to technology better than Black Mirror. For this reason it's best when it has a very specific focus: zoning in on something small and detailed, studying it from all angles, then wrenching it flipside to expose its grotesque power. Despite the mega-budget of the show and its transformation since the early days, it can still give us that.
The first episode “Striking Vipers” is a prime example. Centring on two middle-aged men on the brink of existential crisis, it tells the story of Karl (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Danny (Anthony Mackie), who are not only lonely but bored bored bored. In their youth, Karl and Danny chewed the fat, smoked weed, and played the console game Striking Vipers into the early hours. Now they’re in their late 30s and the glow of youth has faded, making everything around them low-res. At Danny's 38th birthday barbecue, they clunk fists, slurp beer. Then Karl hands Danny his birthday present—Striking Vipers X. It's a thoughtful gift. Fighting, like other things, can make you feel alive.
“Striking Vipers” starts off like a rehash of “Bandersnatch” or season three's “Playtest” (the heart sinks; the tedium). What emerges is something completely different: a bold dissolution of everything you thought you knew about gender, sexuality, and intimacy. It pushes the mental detachment required in sexual fantasy to its logical, uncomfortable conclusion. In my opinion this is one of the most impressive episodes that Black Mirror has ever put out—in terms of psychological depth and satisfying plotting.
Some fans would say that a better example of True Black Mirror is the Ashley O episode. “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too” ticks tech-boxes across several snazzy devices—the dream feeder; the hologram; the voice-recognition robot. It's a big-scale, big-budget production largely driven by plot. (Again, it feels very much like a feature film.) The problem is that its ambition—and verve—have led to an oversight where the characters are concerned. In “Striking Vipers,” the feature-length works well because it spins on a psychological axis: nothing “Black Mirrory” happens for 20 minutes, which is enough time for us to get to know the characters. Here the action feels too condensed. There are so many things going on in the plot that we never get a real sense of who the people are enacting them. How does the humiliation of the dance scene affect Rachel at school? What is Ashley like outside of her career? The energy is there, but somehow the substance is lacking.
The second episode, “Smithereens,” is the jewel in the crown of season five. Starring Andrew Scott as a cabbie with an agenda, much of the hour feels like a Channel 4 throwback, with only occasional drifts into Hollywood territory. It starts off as an anarcho-heist satire (shades of Martin MacDonagh) then blossoms into a wider commentary on grief and detachment. Scott is predictably excellent as Chris, the unstable Uber driver who kidnaps the intern of Facebook-style company “Smithereens” in order to get access (via phone) to the company's founder. Scott’s emotional range and weird facial choices are always compelling to watch: here, you're constantly guessing as to whether he's good or bad.
In terms of what the characters represent in this episode, however, perhaps the most interesting is “Smithereens” founder Billy Bauer (Topher Grace). While Chris is on his abduction spree in London, Bauer has checked himself into a 10-day silent retreat. Frustrated and dissatisfied, he's literally run away from the world he created. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," he murmurs later, on the phone to Chris. "It was one thing when we started and... then it became something totally fucking different." All in all, Bauer comes across as disturbingly normal and unpretentious. You can't help but wonder about the timing and context of such a sympathetic portrayal. In earlier seasons the Guys In Charge were unequivocal Baddies. Now the show makes an effort to tease out the moral psychology of the creators of mass-market products—products like “Smithereens,” or Ashley O's music, or, hey, Black Mirror. Is some guilt complex being hashed out here? Is this a way of Brooker and Jones telling us that they've lost artistic control? Or is it... hang on. Is it a cry for help?
On that front, things may be about to get weird. One day after season five dropped on Netflix, the ironically catchy song by “Ashley O” was diced together from clips and—apparently unironically—uploaded by a number of different Youtubers. As this article goes to press, the Youtube fan vids have a cumulative total of two million views. Comments sections are filled with statements like: "This is better than most of the pop music out there right now.” Well, marylou1992, if it sounds better than a contemporary song, that’s because it isn’t one. “On a Roll” is a cover of Nine Inch Nails’ 1990 hit “Head Like A Hole,” rewritten by Brooker with the permission of Trent Raznor. Now, the comments section under the official video for “Head Like a Hole” reads: “Black Mirror brought me here :)”, etc.
Last week Miley Cyrus confirmed via Twitter that she is hoping to release “On A Roll” as a single. I'll bet that if she does, it will roll straight to number one. Just think about this for a second. Brooker, having sarcastically rewritten a hard rock classic in order to make it sound commercial and soulless, will become a chart-topping lyricist. This is off the back of a TV episode that demonstrates how artists are exploited by an industry—and a process—in which their fans are complicit. Ah, humanity. Bow down before the one you serve. You’re going to get what you deserve.
Towards the end of the final episode of this season’s Black Mirror (Netflix, 5th June), we see protagonist Ashley O tied down to a bed. Ashley (Miley Cyrus) is an iconic pop sensation whose artistic outputs are adored around the world. Lately Ashley has been being a bit difficult, so her managerial team have reasonably placed her into an induced coma. Attached to her head is a device which will monitor creative activity, digesting the sound-waves pulsing through her brain, and transcribe them to create songs Ashley is dreaming. The plan is to funnel these new songs into an album and perform them live via an enormous Ashley hologram. Ashley O might die, but the thing that makes her valuable will live forever. It will be bigger, better.
This episode touches on many of the anxieties we usually see in Black Mirror. We’ve got bad advice from robots, aggressive friendlessness, commercial gloom and internet addicts with delusional expectations. First and foremost though, it’s a commentary on the commodification of talent. Outside of what you’re good at, what are you good for? The obvious parallel here is Miley Cyrus herself. Cyrus started out as a Disney sensation in squeaky tween show Hannah Montana, before rebelling against Disney's tight restrictions, culminating in her chopping off her hair, prancing nude on a wrecking ball and twerking against the monochrome crotch of Robin Thicke.
Black Mirror co-creators Annabel Jones and Charlie Brooker have confirmed that the Cyrus parallel is intentional, and she collaborated with the director when reworking the script. Look closer to home, however, and there's another parallel to be found. If the links between Cyrus and Ashley O are visible, we can also see them with the Black Mirror co-creators. Jones and Brooker are the masterminds of a show so successful that it's now surpassed its meta status. Black Mirror has become a front-runner product of the system it criticises.
I wrote a few years ago about the “Hollywoodisation” of Black Mirror after it transferred to Netflix, in the wake of season three. Brooker’s low-key roots as a Guardian grouch then seemed a distant memory; the earlier Channel 4 episodes were similarly obscured. While the first two series of Black Mirror had mostly featured UK-based, BBC-famous actors like Rory Kinnear and Domnhall Gleeson, now there were Really Famous People in the credits. This impacted the tone as well as the audience reach. It felt as though the rougher aspects of the show were being gradually waxed away, leaving a shiny sci-fi surface.
Come season five and the wax is a full Hollywood.Black Mirror is one of the biggest TV shows in the world. It is a staple of the Netflix menu and—despite its self-awareness—has become precisely the sort of phenomenon it was designed to satirise. Even watching the season five trailer feels like watching the promo for a sci-fi feature film. “FROM THE AWARD-WINNING SHOW,” it boasts, “THAT CHANGED. HOW YOU SEE.”, (pulse), “TECHNOLOGY,” (pulse pulse), “THE FUTURE,” (synth music, flashy shot), “THE WORLD,” boom boom “EACH OTHER,” boomboomboom, “LOVE. PRIVACY. CONNECTION. FAMILY. WORK. AFTERLIFE.” The text speeds up before exploding into a constellation of dramatic one-second clips: eyes closing and opening, a panorama of valleys and hills, a man shouting, a crowd shouting, laptops, phones, Andrew Scott having a Moriarty meltdown. Everything is bigger—definitely. Better? Sometimes. Consistently though, it feels more commercial. Being the creators of a show both this successful and this cynical must be strange. It probably feels kind of lonely, in a luxe-fashion sort of way. None of this is to say that the new season lacks impact. Indeed in many respects it is an improvement on its predecessor. Brooker and Jones have said that loneliness is the "unifying theme" this season, and it features to a point that is almost overwhelming. Ashley O is lonely and friendless; her number one fan Rachel is lonely and friendless. So is Rachel’s sister; so (probably) is Rachel’s sardonic dad. In episode two, Andrew Scott is so lonely that the only person he can talk to honestly is a remote Silicon Valley guru. The woman he meets at counselling is so lonely she spends every day guessing her dead daughter’s social media password; her daughter, who committed suicide, was so lonely no one has any idea why she did it. Loneliness has always been a key theme in Black Mirror, because the failure of people to understand each other is one of the main disappointments about human existence. We are unsatisfying. We misinterpret, aren’t interesting, or are unhelpful to one other. It’s partly as a result of this that we find technology so attractive. It can give us what we want, when we want. It can understand us.
No TV show understands our attraction to technology better than Black Mirror. For this reason it's best when it has a very specific focus: zoning in on something small and detailed, studying it from all angles, then wrenching it flipside to expose its grotesque power. Despite the mega-budget of the show and its transformation since the early days, it can still give us that.
The first episode “Striking Vipers” is a prime example. Centring on two middle-aged men on the brink of existential crisis, it tells the story of Karl (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Danny (Anthony Mackie), who are not only lonely but bored bored bored. In their youth, Karl and Danny chewed the fat, smoked weed, and played the console game Striking Vipers into the early hours. Now they’re in their late 30s and the glow of youth has faded, making everything around them low-res. At Danny's 38th birthday barbecue, they clunk fists, slurp beer. Then Karl hands Danny his birthday present—Striking Vipers X. It's a thoughtful gift. Fighting, like other things, can make you feel alive.
“Striking Vipers” starts off like a rehash of “Bandersnatch” or season three's “Playtest” (the heart sinks; the tedium). What emerges is something completely different: a bold dissolution of everything you thought you knew about gender, sexuality, and intimacy. It pushes the mental detachment required in sexual fantasy to its logical, uncomfortable conclusion. In my opinion this is one of the most impressive episodes that Black Mirror has ever put out—in terms of psychological depth and satisfying plotting.
Some fans would say that a better example of True Black Mirror is the Ashley O episode. “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too” ticks tech-boxes across several snazzy devices—the dream feeder; the hologram; the voice-recognition robot. It's a big-scale, big-budget production largely driven by plot. (Again, it feels very much like a feature film.) The problem is that its ambition—and verve—have led to an oversight where the characters are concerned. In “Striking Vipers,” the feature-length works well because it spins on a psychological axis: nothing “Black Mirrory” happens for 20 minutes, which is enough time for us to get to know the characters. Here the action feels too condensed. There are so many things going on in the plot that we never get a real sense of who the people are enacting them. How does the humiliation of the dance scene affect Rachel at school? What is Ashley like outside of her career? The energy is there, but somehow the substance is lacking.
The second episode, “Smithereens,” is the jewel in the crown of season five. Starring Andrew Scott as a cabbie with an agenda, much of the hour feels like a Channel 4 throwback, with only occasional drifts into Hollywood territory. It starts off as an anarcho-heist satire (shades of Martin MacDonagh) then blossoms into a wider commentary on grief and detachment. Scott is predictably excellent as Chris, the unstable Uber driver who kidnaps the intern of Facebook-style company “Smithereens” in order to get access (via phone) to the company's founder. Scott’s emotional range and weird facial choices are always compelling to watch: here, you're constantly guessing as to whether he's good or bad.
In terms of what the characters represent in this episode, however, perhaps the most interesting is “Smithereens” founder Billy Bauer (Topher Grace). While Chris is on his abduction spree in London, Bauer has checked himself into a 10-day silent retreat. Frustrated and dissatisfied, he's literally run away from the world he created. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," he murmurs later, on the phone to Chris. "It was one thing when we started and... then it became something totally fucking different." All in all, Bauer comes across as disturbingly normal and unpretentious. You can't help but wonder about the timing and context of such a sympathetic portrayal. In earlier seasons the Guys In Charge were unequivocal Baddies. Now the show makes an effort to tease out the moral psychology of the creators of mass-market products—products like “Smithereens,” or Ashley O's music, or, hey, Black Mirror. Is some guilt complex being hashed out here? Is this a way of Brooker and Jones telling us that they've lost artistic control? Or is it... hang on. Is it a cry for help?
On that front, things may be about to get weird. One day after season five dropped on Netflix, the ironically catchy song by “Ashley O” was diced together from clips and—apparently unironically—uploaded by a number of different Youtubers. As this article goes to press, the Youtube fan vids have a cumulative total of two million views. Comments sections are filled with statements like: "This is better than most of the pop music out there right now.” Well, marylou1992, if it sounds better than a contemporary song, that’s because it isn’t one. “On a Roll” is a cover of Nine Inch Nails’ 1990 hit “Head Like A Hole,” rewritten by Brooker with the permission of Trent Raznor. Now, the comments section under the official video for “Head Like a Hole” reads: “Black Mirror brought me here :)”, etc.
Last week Miley Cyrus confirmed via Twitter that she is hoping to release “On A Roll” as a single. I'll bet that if she does, it will roll straight to number one. Just think about this for a second. Brooker, having sarcastically rewritten a hard rock classic in order to make it sound commercial and soulless, will become a chart-topping lyricist. This is off the back of a TV episode that demonstrates how artists are exploited by an industry—and a process—in which their fans are complicit. Ah, humanity. Bow down before the one you serve. You’re going to get what you deserve.
