Don’t get me wrong, the episode is thrilling; I recommend it. However, the blocking feature is a disturbing concept for the movie director Carl Tibbetts and writer Charlie Brooker to have come up with.
I started watching Black Mirror on Netflix and initially didn’t want to share this, but the itch kept growing because season 2, episode 4, got to me. The episode’s title is “White Christmas,” released in 2014.
Black Mirror isn’t like a regular series that follows a continuous storyline with the same characters acting out a sequence of events per episode. No, it’s an anthology. This means it’s a series in which different episodes come with a unique story line and a different set of characters portrayed by different actors.
From the first episode, I was hooked. Each episode left me with more questions than a satisfying movie-watching experience. I had never experienced such a thing. I reached the 4th episode of the series, and instead of leaving me with more questions as every other episode did, the “White Christmas” episode left me in an unexplainable state; I was pissed, confused, and future-worried all mixed.
The moral lesson from that episode could be to control your anger so it doesn’t get you into trouble.
But Blocking? Is Blocking a fair punishment for someone who merely yelled at you?
Okay, to get my point, permit me to backtrack.
The Black Mirror series showcases cutting-edge technology like sharing what you see with someone remotely, watching your memories, or even extracting your memory and having it in a “cookie.” The series shows off this excellent tech in each episode. It’s not like the dystopian futuristic tech where the air is terrible, and everyone is in a tight spandex costume/space wear, or the utopian kind where everything is perfect and unrealistic. No, it’s the traditional society but then with technology way beyond current research.
So, back to “White Christmas.” This episode showcases some eye tech called Zed Eyes that works like a computer inside you. You can take photos with just your eyes, zoom into real-life views: like zoom a few meters into your sight, or something like that. The episode also reveals a kind of brain implant that one can purchase, insert in your head, and it copies you. The implant simulates your brain and can then be used in a machine to act like a virtual assistant for yourself; because only you can know what is best for you, right? Creepy.
One weird and unsettling aspect of that tech is a feature called “Blocking.” With Blocking, you can literally block anyone from seeing you, hearing you, seeing your picture, or seeing your offspring and their picture too. In the series, once you are blocked, you can only see a greyish-white silhouette of the person that blocked you, and they see the same of you.
The worst-case scenario is if you’re on the register. In the series, law offenders can be put on the register, which means they are blocked from everyone on earth. A bit excessive.
In the series, Matt Trent, played by Jon Hamm, was put on the register by the police for not reporting a murder and also watching Harry, played by Rasmus Hardiker, while he was peeing in the bar’s public toilet. When Matt stepped out of the station, you can imagine him not being able to see anyone except their silhouettes, and it was the f**king festive Christmas season. Jeez.
As for Joe Potter (Rafe Spall), whose “cookie” Matt was cracking, he was blocked by his wife for yelling at her. Joe’s wife, Bethany ‘Beth’ Grey (Janet Montgomery), was pregnant.
Check out: Rafe Spall Net worth
Joe found out when he saw the pregnancy test result in the trash. He confronted his wife but was met with a repulsive attitude. Beth stated she didn’t want to keep the child. Joe called her a cold “b*tch” who would kill her baby. Beth then pulled out her Zed Eyes controller and literally blocked her husband. Joe could not see his wife or even the child when the child was born because Beth went ahead to get Joe legally blocked, which meant he couldn’t see Beth’s offspring. Later, Beth died, the blocking lifted, and Joe went to see the child, whose gender he had not been able to discern until she was older based on her silhouette.
As Joe approached the child, it turned out that the child, May, wasn’t his but the daughter of Beth’s co-worker, Tim (Dan Li). What a shock!
Joe was later arrested; he killed Beth’s protective father, leading to the death of the child, who died in the cold after she went out seeking help.
Joe’s “cookie,” a simulation/digital copy of the real Joe, gets to be punished by living a thousand years per minute in a simulated world. Real Joe rots in jail.
Why would the filmmakers do that to Joe? He was the villain in the movie, sad plot twist, but the punishment far outweighs the crime, in my opinion.
That blocking tech and cookie tech in White Christmas is inhumane, and I find it disturbing because someone can choose to invent them.
Someone anywhere in the real world may draw inspiration for the movie and want to develop Zed Eyes with that blocking feature – technology torture. What’s not possible with the rapid growth of AI and its capabilities? I fear that in the future, near or distant, someone will come up with his blocking feature just as the writer of this episode, Charlie Brooker, did. I believe the movie may have already given Google, Apple, or Microsoft an idea of what a virtual assistant should be in the future – a digital copy of humans tortured to be submissive.
And if you think that such tech is far from happening. Think again because, according to an article by businessinsider.com, “prisoners could serve 1,000-year sentences in 8.5 hours In the future.” *pukes.
Of all the episodes of Black Mirror and its incredible technologies, this particular “White Christmas” tech made me cringe.