This document provides discussion questions and analysis for the Black Mirror episode "15 Million Merits". It asks how the episode is postmodern, and how the theories of Baudrillard and Foucault can be applied. It also compares the episode to other media and explores the types of technology and media portrayed. The intended audience is described as niche, as the episode tackles modern issues in a challenging, futuristic way.

1. Black Mirror Analysis
15 million merits
(due 27/04/16)

2. Questions
• How is this episode postmodern (pomo features)
• How can you apply/relate Baurillard theory
• How can you apply/relate Focault theory
• How does it differ or challenge other media (could compare to other current media
or traditional media)
• How is it similar to other media? (could be other platforms)
• What type of audience is this episode made for? What sort of impact does Charlie
Brooker want on this audience? Why?
• What types of technology and media are explored in black mirror?

3. How is this episode postmodern?
(pomo features)
• Intertextuality: Mobile phones, tablets, and cyborgs (similar to the
Matrix, reborn from the nanobots and synthetic clone).
• Dystopian narrative: Cyborgs are now a reality, people can be
replaced by artificial beings, referenced to the Terminator concept
of computer uprising, adding a sense of horror and expectancy.
• Hybridisation: drama, Romance, Sci-Fi, Futuristic
• Flattening of Affect: The clone has no recollection of empathy or
emotion, he only knows the information that is fed to him, like a
computer removing the humanistic nature of the character.
• Artificialness: When she resurrects her husband her happiness is
short term and artificial as the clone before her hasn’t retained
the qualities that she misses the most. Also it reflects on the
reliance of social media and how our portrayal of ourselves is
artificial.

4. How can you apply Baurillard’s theory?
(hyperreality)
• Hyper reality of their artificial world
– Grieving and mourning is taken to a new extreme with
Martha willing to buy her husband back like a common
possession.
– Their social network accounts are able to determine who
they are. (virtual realities)
– How they communicate through social media and the
conversation after he dies. (simplified version of complex
human emotions)
– Everything about them is artificial, from the TV show its
self, too their characters and their possession and even
the morale story behind it.

5. How can you apply Foucault’s theory?
(panopticanisation & voyeurism)
• External audience: when replying to tweets and sharing images, the recipient is the
external audience.
• Internal audience: He is constantly viewing the opinions of others through social
media, Martha is then the internal audience of his thoughts and the processed
persona of his past.
• Being watched changes you: Ash is constantly being watched by the social world and
his clone is given a personality that has been calculated and devised through his
posts and videos. Martha also hides him in the attic, this is so she can live a normal
life with her child without the outside world judging her for the choices that she
made.
• Panopticism: The cloned body does not act completely like Ash, it only takes what it
can find from the internet to build its knowledge of Ash’s personality and humour,
however the life that we portray over social media is often a fragmented perception
of ourselves, changed in order to fit in with others.
• Scopopphilia = (pleasure in watching other bodies): When Martha is grieving she
resorts to watching old home videos and looking at pictures of Ash, in an attempt to
reminisce and feel happiness in her state of mourning.

6. How does it differ or challenge other
media? (could compare to other current media or traditional media)
• Modern advertising and sales tactics: No current product has a direct
target audience of recent widows, however this episode shows an
experimental company using the misfortune of others to promote their
prototypes and make a profit from their pain.
• Modern purpose for social media: When Martha tries to talk to Ash, on
several occasion he is lost in his phone and ignores her conversation,
therefore making him unsociable.
• A romance film is supposed to have a happy ending after the suffering and
pain, however with this episode we are left with an ending of sour and
painful connotations, Ash is locked in the attic kept away from his
daughter who refers to him as ‘Ash’ , but perhaps the most distressing
element to this is that he is happy to be their because he does not know
any better.

7. How is it similar to other media?
(similar to current media or traditional media)
• Advertisement of products and the need to be socially
accepted (his twitter posts)
• Current TV drama’s = similar raw/nitty gritty/harsh
representation of reality / the world / social issues /
characters (the depression that comes after a loss)
• Current films = dystopian (The Island) (or any other
dystopian film set in the future about technology and
artificial intelligence (Ex-Machina, Matrix, I-Robot..
etc)

8. What type of audience is this episode made for?
What sort of impact does Charlie Brooker want on this
audience? Why?
• For niche audience (not mass as it is not typical TV drama, it tackles modern issues in a
futuristic way)
• Audience theory: Is it effects or reception?
– Effects theory = (passive audiences who accept and take in messages in texts
because they are easily influenced (hyperdermic needle theory)
OR
– Reception theory = (active audiences who challenge/question messages in texts)
– *It could be both
• Reception theory = obviously made for a more niche audience who have some interest in
sci-fi and romance which are more ‘challenging’ texts, relevant as Charlie Brooker
himself likes to challenge conventions
• Effects theory = however, like Martha has to move naturally, in the end she realises that
nature has taken its course and she cannot cheat death. While it could be argued we are
watching a text that enables us to question the impact of technology.

9. What types of technology and media
are explored in black mirror?
• See Intertextuality…..
• Media themes
– Surveillance
– Dependence on technology
– Impact of media in online age
– Privacy
– The importance of our videos and personal
footage.

10. Discuss the concept of narrative in black
mirror, does it challenge or reinforce?
• Fairly linear = which is typical in TV drama so
reinforced, however it does not play out the
generic drama or romantic TV drama, it ends
with the harrowing thought of having to see
your deceased loved one every day, knowing
that they will never age or die, a concept that
is very dissimilar to a generic TV programme.