(Text/Yang Shiyang)
There is almost no controversy, the fifth season of "Black Mirror" completely collapsed. Even if you are a loyal fan, no matter how high the expectations are before the broadcast of the fifth season, you can't find any reason for defense at the current level. Three stories, steadily falling step by step, until the body is broken. The reason for the success of "Black Mirror" is clear. It uses the alienation of science and technology as the entry point to explore the alienation of the human mind as its destination. It is a deeper mystery which of the technological mutation and the human mind mutation gave birth to the other. , It is all this that makes the classic taste of this series, and this taste has become extremely thin in the fifth season.
If there is a little bit of "black mirror DNA" left in these three stories, then maybe the concentration in the first episode is slightly higher. In-depth virtual reality video games can allow people to enter the game and directly become the characters in the game. Unexpectedly, this exposes or restarts the deep desires of the two male protagonists that they don't even know. When those two friends for many years put on small instruments in their homes and started the game, we saw the classic sections of "Black Mirror" that had appeared several times, but soon, this posture slackened and became Discussing marriage, emotions, sex, boredom and salvation, in the final analysis, this story is just scratching the itch for marriage from a different perspective. It will scratch some itchy spots, and touch some sore spots vaguely, but overall it's just not painful or itchy. This is because of the setting of the character’s race and the discussion of sexual orientation, which makes this story resemble a quiet torture in the current world of increasingly conservative forces and narrow values. But at the end, I find that those tortures However, we, as fans of "Black Mirror", project ourselves wishfully, far from the author’s intention. At the beginning of writing this story, the author seemed to want to talk about the well-known and unsolvable sighs in marriage, but it was because we had previously Knowing that this is "Black Mirror", we all presuppose some expectations, thinking that it will not just fall into stereotypes, it must be used to loosen people's minds with stereotypes, and then it will always be pierced into the flesh and blood with a sudden oblique stabbing. , But the knife did not appear after all, it ended silently like this. When the second story comes to an end, people don’t even have the previous expectations. Maybe all fans are starting to wonder, what is this? Is it an advocacy article issued by the police? Remind everyone not to use mobile phones while driving? When it comes to the third story, it becomes even more embarrassing. The idols and fans flee in triumph, and jointly defeat the vicious aunts, and rediscover themselves-the modern transformation of inferior fairy tales, the old chicken soup, and the most deadly story is this story. Even the most classic black technology ranks in "Black Mirror" have dropped unimaginably. An AI doll is not as good as the copycat robots that supervise children's homework in Chinese TV shopping. Is this guilty of a name with a black mirror on it? Looking at it as a whole, it is the second episode. The crazy, neurotic, screaming monologue of Andrew Scott, stirring confession, accusation, accusation, and compassion, is even more impressive. Therefore, the fifth season of "Black Mirror" is more like unconfident realism or soft science fiction practice without getting started.
It is undeniable that when "Black Mirror" was born, it made a shocking appearance in a groundbreaking way. Now, when we look back, why was the "Black Mirror" attractive at that time? It is because at this moment, for the first time in human history, we have personally felt the fear of being slowly eroded and gradually swallowed by the technology created by our own hands, but this fear has not been effectively expressed for a long time, and more works are flowing in On the surface, but "Black Mirror" is completely different. It is cold and bitter, seemingly absurd, and sometimes sensational, but the fear it conveys is so precise, so indisputable, it takes those we always know but don’t know how to say. The content of is woven into an orderly story, allowing all our imagined fears to be shaped. Of course, all this is accompanied by large-scale, heavy taste, unrestrained ridicule, unscrupulous disclosure, and introspection. It is bold and sharp to win the first call, and it is laid out with deep humanistic care.
"Black Mirror" only belongs to this era. Technology distorts itself and accelerates alienation in a way and speed visible to the naked eye. The original intention of their invention was quickly deviated, from a liberation and assistance to human beings to human surveillance. And slavery, we can perceive all of this at any time. The distance between great inventions and alienated monsters has been shortened. Before we had time to cheer, we began to wailing. From this perspective, we also focused on such themes. The science fiction dramas "Real Humans" or "Western World" have similar spiritual orientations, but the latter two dramas create a set of tense future worlds, and there is a set that can already operate on its own. The mechanism is different from "Black Mirror". Its beauty and strength lies in the fact that the stories it tells are connected to the world we are currently in. It presents our present life and the next life that is one step forward, and that step forward is a cliff. On the edge, "Black Mirror" draws us into the air and overlooks our crumbling eve, a moment mixed with pleasure, excitement and extreme fear, which is a chemical reaction of prophecy and fable. However, we must know that such a creative height is destined to be impossible to last. Nowadays, the gnawing of human heart and the intrusion of human nature by science and technology, regardless of form or possible direction, are actually limited in variety. After all kinds of illusions and transformations, we can mostly grasp the sect, and writing later, it is destined to be a routine. , And after the routine, when the story is no longer fascinating, it becomes a mission. Jingshiheng said that once the story itself is separated, it will always be boring.
From almost two years ago, fans of the drama began to complain about the quality of "Black Mirror", but objectively speaking, it was not bad until the last season, regardless of the idea of using only a mechanical dog to create tension in the doomsday crisis, or being The retribution of the cycle of imprisonment trapped in the prison is no problem at least at the level of the imagination of technology and the combination of human nature. The cold dark tone of the story itself also upholds the initial level, but now in the fifth season, Everything is indeed difficult to maintain. The imagination of science and technology is weak, the social issues being discussed are so clichéd, the sharpness of the stinging heart and the temperature of humanistic care have dropped irreversibly. Perhaps it should have ended a little earlier, while it is still in use. Leave the remaining warmth of the drama.
(This article was first published in "Beijing Youth Daily", please do not reprint without authorization)
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