![]() I delight in the pleasures of doing the difficult thing. I think Socrates was on to something when he suggested thinking was a practice of living. I care about justice, feminism, opposing racism and resisting neoliberalism. My second book considers Aristotle's conception of nature in his account of generation to show the ways that form and matter seem interdependent in the model of a Möbius strip. My first book argues that Aristotle's Politicsdraws on a conception of nature that is not opposed to these things and thus not exclusive. I'm particularly interested in the concept of nature and how historically nature, understood in relation to its apparent opposite of reason, nature, and artifice, has led to conceptions of community that require a founding exclusion. I work on ancient Greek-mainly Plato and Aristotle-and contemporary European philosophy inflected by social and political concerns. I'm Chair and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. In both episodes the show suggests that even if you will do anything to keep from being caught you cannot be protected. Shut Up and Dance and Crocodile are about the limits you would go to protect yourself from exposure even when that means killing someone. Arkangel and The Entire History of You have similar concerns with our capacity for secrets and privacy, as does Shut Up and Dance. This episode also combines two technological innovations to explain the plot line, not unlike Black Museum. My view is that it combines themes from White Bear with the technology of USS Callister and the teddy bear sketch in Black Museum. Johnson left White Christmas off the list for being White Bear redux. One thing I find interesting is the way that episodes return to themes in various ways. But I’m not sure it motivates that thought unless you see the really rather subtle connections between the character’s fear and what the technology is doing. The episode only becomes meaningful for me upon serious reflection and dissection which I suppose should make me think it is good insofar as it motivates thought. I can be convinced that the penultimate scene reveals that the main fear is also in fact the fear of what the technology is doing, which in fact it is. I guess it wasn’t clear to me how that fear was further examined through the technology. Her reading made me think it was interesting when my viewing of it did not provoke interest, but I still wonder whether it says anything new about fear, though perhaps Johnson is right that is says something specifically about a certain fear that ends up being the driving fear of the main character. Playtest was underwhelming to me, though Leigh Johnson makes a convincing case that it is about fear. I think this means it is really hard to give a definitive ranking and reconsidering and rewatching any Black Mirror episode can change your thinking about it, and if that isn’t a sign of good television, then I don’t know what is. Also, I’ve been working on this post for awhile, and up until right before I posted this I’ve been rearranging. I think whether Hang the DJ has a twist or not is up for debate. The “twistiest” of the episodes for me was White Bear, although I do wonder whether its twist also double downs on the sense of empathy for the protoganist even though the ending suggests that your perspective of empathy should change. Episodes often have a twist, and the twist often seems to double down rather than escape the reality of the situation–15 Million Merits is a good example of that, although USS Callister offers an escape. ![]() ![]() I think that they often begin with a person who is a little bit outside the social structure and they seek power through technology and they end up controlled by it. I’m also interested in the structure of Black Mirror episodes. So while I thought Shut Up and Dance captured the truth of humanity, the technology seemed pretty much already possible so the episode didn’t seem that imaginative to me. But I also coupled that with how interesting the technology / world created by the technology was. ![]() The more those dilemmas seemed to capture the truth of humanity in this moment in time the better I thought the episode was. One element is how believable it is, not in terms of the technology, but the ethical dilemmas and decisions people find themselves facing as a result of the technology or the aspects of the human condition the technology reveals. I was trying to think about what my ranking criteria are. For me best to worst does not mean I don’t like the episodes on the bottom of the list, I just mean, in terms of Black Mirror episodes, they were not as good as the ones ahead of them. So apparently listing all of the Black Mirror Episodes in the order from best to worst is now a thing. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |