This article has been subjected to review by the editors of the issue or by the Editorial board

author: Daniela Panosetti (Università di Bologna (IT))

Black Mirror. Dystopias of the sight

language: italian

abstract: The essay discusses the second episode of Black Mirror (2011), the miniseries produced by Charlie Brooker for British TV, by analysing the complex relationship between the special regime of visibility that regulates the possible world and the deeply rooted system of values adopted or rejected by those concerned. The author endeavours to demonstrate how, in the evident attempt at contemporary reinterpretation of certain recurring topoi in so-called dystopian narrations (especially of their modern archetype, George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four), the text stages an original representation, albeit set in the future, of today's media scenario, problematising the different issues within a single, tendentially dysphoric projective dimension: declining phenomena (the screen vision as up-down “administration”), emerging phenomena (augmented reality) and dominating phenomena (the prevalent “virtual sociality” in all web 2.0 expressions). A series of reversals and shifting of the dystopian topoi recalled for another reason emerges from the global sense effect produced by speech (specifically in the final scenes): the issue switches from an obsessive de-individualization to an excess of personalization, from the tyranny of being / having to be seen/ to that of seeing / having to see, from the search for reality and truth to that of authenticity, this latter presented as principal isotopy and true epistemic architrave of the entire narration.

citation information: Daniela Panosetti, Black Mirror. Distopie del vedere, "Ocula", vol.13, February 2012. DOI: 10.12977/ocula56

Ocula.it publishes articles and essays in semiotic research, with a particular eye on communication and culture; it is open to dialogue with other research fields and welcomes contributions from all the areas of the social and human sciences. See the Editorial Board and the Editorial Board.