10K Posts Tv Club: Black Mirror
Added 2023-05-05 09:20:55 +0000 UTCThis week, Phoebe and Hussein watch Black Mirror S1E2 '15 Million Credits'. Is it an effective satire of capitalism and consumerism? We have some thoughts about that.
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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth).
Comments
Triplets of Belville predicted Peloton imo
Toby
2023-05-20 19:21:31 +0000 UTCI do wonder about Brooker. I still maintain that he produced some of the most entertaining and accessible media criticism that I've seen on television (How TV Ruined Your Life in particular) but he definitely seemed to be led much more by his column-persona misanthropy than anything else - it's noticeable that he never really suggests an alternative, or what the motivations behind programming are besides "keep people watching", and that kind of slight incuriosity comes over to Black Mirror, I think.
Tovfly
2023-05-09 07:54:23 +0000 UTCInteresting synthesis between speculative fiction being somewhat conservative and Brooker's somewhat performative misanthropy. If I'm remembering right I do remember his third or fourth collection of columns (which was around the time of Black Mirror I think?) got a bit of 'going through the motions' criticism at the time.
Tovfly
2023-05-09 07:51:20 +0000 UTCL, Mister Bond. You press L.
Jordan Clementi
2023-05-08 04:00:53 +0000 UTCI appreciate the sas and lay humbled.
Denzil Dean
2023-05-07 07:19:36 +0000 UTCI agree that would be a strange take if that hadn't been the precise and polar opposite of the point I was making, in so many words! When CB wrote this episode there was a reasonably prevalent cultural attitude that talent shows were an escape, which he violently disagreed with and wrote a show around the idea of them being villainous and exploitative even if you succeed at them (even to the point of the characters making the same assumption and being brutally disillusioned). But yes you're right! that really would have been a weird take!
Ten Thousand Posts
2023-05-07 07:07:34 +0000 UTCPs I haven't listened to the whole ep because I was so baffled by that take I lost interest.
Denzil Dean
2023-05-06 23:55:15 +0000 UTCI don't even like Black Mirror that much but Phoebe's take about him showing talent shows as somekind of escape is such a weird read. Did she not watch the whole episode or something? It's about being exploited and manipulated at every stage. Even when you've 'made it'. It's essentially a bargain bin version of Network.
Denzil Dean
2023-05-06 23:53:35 +0000 UTCI'd tentatively defend 'The Waldo Moment' (the cartoon bear ep), which imo can be read as a commentary on how anti-politics without a positive ideology of its own is easily co-opted by fascism. Brooker is too cynical/establishment to believe that said positive ideology is possible (hence his view of 'the masses' as passive cruelty-sponges), but I think that was a slightly more understandable place to be in 2013, after a decade of public sadism in TV and politics.
Nemo
2023-05-05 12:17:40 +0000 UTC
