Black Mirrors

Black Mirrors is a British TV show focused on a science-fiction argument. The show is directed by Charlie Brooker and was created in 2011. Each episode has a length of 40 to 70 minutes. This TV Show is a great representation of the power of media in our day a day life. Technology and media are what drive this show and makes it different from many others.

During the 1st episode of the season, a group of 'terrorists' kidnap the princess of England and send YouTube video directed to the Prime Minister in which the princess explains what he has to do in order to break her free. The task for the Prime Minister is to have live sex with a pig on TV. The situation just described already shows us how media interferes in our life and how much the society has changed over the years. Terrorists now send videos via public networks so everyone can see them and feel insecure; also, people now look forward to public humiliation of other people. The video goes viral within the first minutes of being posted on YouTube, allowing people to copy it or download it; making the government's attempt to delete it impossible. Again, we have an example of how media impacts people's life,  taken control over their life. The video got viral in a time lapse of 10 minutes, which also explains how impossible is to delete something from the media once it is already there. After the video gets viral, TV channels are trying to be the first ones to publish the video on the News; while the government is trying to stop them from doing that. This is a great example of competition between channels and the manipulation that sometimes can be shown in the media, in this case the government trying to protect the Prime Minister image while the entire population was wondering why the TV Channels weren't talking about it. The video at this point is posted in every media, which also creates a lot of different reactions, comments, and opinions among people. This situation affects the Prime Minister and his family, being exposed to any type of comments. Finally,, technology also affects the back up plan of the government if they are not able to find the princess before the video has to be send. Their back up plan is to create a fake video  while using Photoshop, Illustrator, or any other type of program made to manipulate images. This back up plan would be a big relief for the Prime Minister, who wouldn't have to actually do the task he was asked to do.

It is really difficult to know what the actors could have done differently in order change the outcome of the show. To be honest, the situation is already difficult enough by itself to be able to radically change its outcome. One of the things that they could have done differently would be to try to delete the video from YouTube earlier. The problem of the situation starts with the fact the video is going viral. In order to stop that they should have deleted that video sooner than they did. Other way to change the outcome would be to convince the TV channels not to use the video in the news until they are able to gather more information and try to find the terrorists without having to also deal with media, society... One last thing characters could have done differently is to try to use media as a tool to find the terrorists. Media connects everyone of us to each other and by using media we can't hide from the world. There are many ways to track down someone because of his or her use of media. I think they could have done a much better job by using media as a tool.

Finally, this TV show brings us a really dystopian world and society. In an utopian society the princess wouldn't be kidnapped and the terrorists wouldn't use media as a tool to humiliate the Prime Minister. Also, citizens of England wouldn't have made that video viral so the government could have more time to just worry about finding the terrorists instead of also worrying about dealing with the media and the society. After all, society has the tools to make something a big deal or not. In an utopian perspective, every citizen would understand that and wouldn't help the terrorists by making that video be everywhere in the world.