Black Mirror has been telling high-tech horror stories since the Obama administration — we’re talking first term — and stoking fears about AI before ChatGPT was even a gleam in the eye of global capitalism. That may be one reason why creator Charlie Brooker thought it was time to shake up his approach a bit in season six, the first batch of Black Mirror episodes to arrive in a post-pandemic world, by opting to gaze backward. In a change from the usual Black Mirror format, three of the five new installments released on Netflix qualify as genuine period pieces. “Beyond the Sea,” about the relationship between two astronauts who work in space while also existing as replicants on Earth, takes place in an alternate version of 1969; “Mazey Day,” a mini monster movie about L.A. paparazzi, is set in 2006; and “Demon 79,” which focuses on a British Indian shoe saleswoman who believes she must commit several murders to avert the apocalypse, unfolds in the late 1970s. And while the season’s first two episodes are present-day stories, both zero in on pop culture’s fixation on the past. It’s as if Brooker is reminding us, in our own heightened moment of technological anxiety, that the future has seemed scary in every era because innovation has always held the potential to rob people of their humanity. |
