Watch Black Mirror Season 4 (Series 4) Full Episodes online here. 'Black Mirror' goes from everything that we renounce for letting technology improve our lives. The real connections that we put aside for using Tinder, the creativity that we waste by having a program at hand that does it for us... It goes on how that technology can bring out the best and the worst of the human being at the same time. It goes from verifying that no matter how much we advance, by many clutter that we have around us to make life easier, the basic emotions continue to prevail and the internal voids are still as deafening as before.
This fourth season has brought us perverse video games, maternal voyages and even dystopias in the style of 'The Hunger Games', but it is in his last episode that the essence of the series created by Charlie Brooker is condensed. Dubbed the 'Black Museum', this story about a museum of horrors seems to represent the very structure of the 'show'. And, more disturbingly, it seems to want to blow away the very heritage of 'Black Mirror' and its many futuristic stories.
Nish (Letitia Wright) stops at a gas station to refuel the solar energy of his car-yes, strange-and finds himself with a solitary museum that hides multiple stories so as not to sleep. Its owner, Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge), acts as a guide for the curious young woman, and tells him three real stories that emerge from three of the "objects" exhibited in the showcases of the place. Everything starts to fit in a very perverse way, because is not 'Black Mirror' a museum of possible stories with mostly bitter endings? Are not we, as spectators, the faithful reflection of Nish, his skepticism when everything is too happy and his face of astonishment at the outcome? The similarity in the title is not trivial: 'Black Museum' is 'Black Mirror'.
This is a very general concept, and maybe it sounds capricious. But if we go deeper into the stories we will see that it is not. The first one is about a doctor (Daniel Lapaine) able to feel the pain symptoms of their patients, and in this way can diagnose better and faster what their problems are. A breakthrough for medicine, which ends up becoming a curse. Man will become addicted to feeling the pain of others, and will need more and more, eventually realizing that the process is only truly pleasurable when accompanied by fear. It's like a horror movie, whose vacuous scares can surprise us, but it's the deepest, most human or realistic stories that leave their mark. In this way, the fans of 'Black Mirror' seek in the series more and more radical proposals, increasingly connected with our present, because it is that vision that gives terror. And, as potential 'voyeurs' that we are the avid spectators, "we enjoy" the pain of characters alien to us, but being aware that we could be them in a few years.
The second of the stories shows another perspective on this issue. In it, we meet a couple who make a complicated decision: to unite the mind of the woman (Alexandra Roach), in a comatose state, to that of her husband to share a body and be able to live and watch her little son grow up. See through the eyes of others. The empathy. This second story is a call to what the first did not have: the awareness that we are talking about people. When the husband gets fed up with confronting another mind inside his head and decides to insert what's left of his wife into a teddy bear, that empathy goes to pieces. Because understanding the feelings of others is painful. It is not fun, nor should it be taken lightly, and that is perhaps a self-criticism of some of the episodes of the series itself.
Who has taken advantage of these stories - and continues to do so - is the aforementioned Rolo Haynes, the owner of the museum and instigator of many of these situations. He is, in fact, Charlie Brooker, in a far more perverse and less critical version of what the creator of 'Black Mirror' actually is. But there he is, teaching his creations, the consequences of his drifts of grandeur, to a visitor that we are all. That's the equation: Nish is the audience, Haynes is Brooker and the 'Black Museum' is 'Black Mirror'. The signs are there: the stories that Haynes tells us are new, but deep down we can see in the museum the tablet of 'Arkangel', the lollipop of 'USS Callister' or the bathtub of 'Crocodile', in a massive exhibition of 'Easter Eggs'. This metaphor of large dimensions ends, as you know, flying through the air. The public takes revenge of the cruelty of Brooker and destroys all the rest of its histories. Has the Briton been immolated in his own series? It is still a curious reading, but it is not the only one. It never is.
Others have pointed out that 'Black Museum' may be talking about the US prison system, especially the third and last of Haynes' stories: a man condemned to die in the electric chair and who sold him the "image rights" "from his last seconds of life to the entrepreneur. In the form of a hologram, the man condemned himself to live like a shadow in the museum and allowed - without knowing it - that the visitors could activate again and again the electric chair to see him die 'ad infinitum'. Again, the cruelty of the viewer, who in this story can exhibit a criticism of prisons and, above all, the collateral effects of them: families, pain, injustice.
Actually, it does not matter how you interpret 'Black Museum': it is still the most important chapter of this fourth season. Much of the press has described it as "lacking in originality" and "overloaded and disappointing", from Variety to Entertainment Weekly, but beyond being more or less entertaining, more or less revolutionary, it is absolutely essential in the development of the Show. It is a mirror in which you look at yourself, and in which you want us to look as well. It is self-reflexive and complex, and marks the farewell - at the moment - of the most disturbing series of contemporary audiovisuals.
Watch Black Mirror Season 4 (Series 4) Full Episodes online here.
This fourth season has brought us perverse video games, maternal voyages and even dystopias in the style of 'The Hunger Games', but it is in his last episode that the essence of the series created by Charlie Brooker is condensed. Dubbed the 'Black Museum', this story about a museum of horrors seems to represent the very structure of the 'show'. And, more disturbingly, it seems to want to blow away the very heritage of 'Black Mirror' and its many futuristic stories.
Nish (Letitia Wright) stops at a gas station to refuel the solar energy of his car-yes, strange-and finds himself with a solitary museum that hides multiple stories so as not to sleep. Its owner, Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge), acts as a guide for the curious young woman, and tells him three real stories that emerge from three of the "objects" exhibited in the showcases of the place. Everything starts to fit in a very perverse way, because is not 'Black Mirror' a museum of possible stories with mostly bitter endings? Are not we, as spectators, the faithful reflection of Nish, his skepticism when everything is too happy and his face of astonishment at the outcome? The similarity in the title is not trivial: 'Black Museum' is 'Black Mirror'.
This is a very general concept, and maybe it sounds capricious. But if we go deeper into the stories we will see that it is not. The first one is about a doctor (Daniel Lapaine) able to feel the pain symptoms of their patients, and in this way can diagnose better and faster what their problems are. A breakthrough for medicine, which ends up becoming a curse. Man will become addicted to feeling the pain of others, and will need more and more, eventually realizing that the process is only truly pleasurable when accompanied by fear. It's like a horror movie, whose vacuous scares can surprise us, but it's the deepest, most human or realistic stories that leave their mark. In this way, the fans of 'Black Mirror' seek in the series more and more radical proposals, increasingly connected with our present, because it is that vision that gives terror. And, as potential 'voyeurs' that we are the avid spectators, "we enjoy" the pain of characters alien to us, but being aware that we could be them in a few years.
The second of the stories shows another perspective on this issue. In it, we meet a couple who make a complicated decision: to unite the mind of the woman (Alexandra Roach), in a comatose state, to that of her husband to share a body and be able to live and watch her little son grow up. See through the eyes of others. The empathy. This second story is a call to what the first did not have: the awareness that we are talking about people. When the husband gets fed up with confronting another mind inside his head and decides to insert what's left of his wife into a teddy bear, that empathy goes to pieces. Because understanding the feelings of others is painful. It is not fun, nor should it be taken lightly, and that is perhaps a self-criticism of some of the episodes of the series itself.
Who has taken advantage of these stories - and continues to do so - is the aforementioned Rolo Haynes, the owner of the museum and instigator of many of these situations. He is, in fact, Charlie Brooker, in a far more perverse and less critical version of what the creator of 'Black Mirror' actually is. But there he is, teaching his creations, the consequences of his drifts of grandeur, to a visitor that we are all. That's the equation: Nish is the audience, Haynes is Brooker and the 'Black Museum' is 'Black Mirror'. The signs are there: the stories that Haynes tells us are new, but deep down we can see in the museum the tablet of 'Arkangel', the lollipop of 'USS Callister' or the bathtub of 'Crocodile', in a massive exhibition of 'Easter Eggs'. This metaphor of large dimensions ends, as you know, flying through the air. The public takes revenge of the cruelty of Brooker and destroys all the rest of its histories. Has the Briton been immolated in his own series? It is still a curious reading, but it is not the only one. It never is.
Others have pointed out that 'Black Museum' may be talking about the US prison system, especially the third and last of Haynes' stories: a man condemned to die in the electric chair and who sold him the "image rights" "from his last seconds of life to the entrepreneur. In the form of a hologram, the man condemned himself to live like a shadow in the museum and allowed - without knowing it - that the visitors could activate again and again the electric chair to see him die 'ad infinitum'. Again, the cruelty of the viewer, who in this story can exhibit a criticism of prisons and, above all, the collateral effects of them: families, pain, injustice.
Actually, it does not matter how you interpret 'Black Museum': it is still the most important chapter of this fourth season. Much of the press has described it as "lacking in originality" and "overloaded and disappointing", from Variety to Entertainment Weekly, but beyond being more or less entertaining, more or less revolutionary, it is absolutely essential in the development of the Show. It is a mirror in which you look at yourself, and in which you want us to look as well. It is self-reflexive and complex, and marks the farewell - at the moment - of the most disturbing series of contemporary audiovisuals.
Watch Black Mirror Season 4 (Series 4) Full Episodes online here.