{"id":140,"date":"2017-01-24T02:04:41","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T02:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=140"},"modified":"2017-01-26T20:19:23","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T20:19:23","slug":"re-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/01\/24\/re-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethics, digital suspension of death, and guilt in Black Mirror"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>
Martha and her phone, image from A.V. Club.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As is the case with many\u00a0Black Mirror\u00a0<\/em>episodes, “Be Right Back” addresses\u00a0reality, death, and the reality (or potential nonreality) of death in a spare, effective manner.\u00a0After viewing the episode, undeniable ethical questions regarding the future of death and technology linger. It\u2019s hard\u2014at least for me\u2014to place a finger on why Ash\u2019s state of quasi-existence makes us uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

My friend\u2019s family refers to this episode as \u201cAttic dad,\u201d which is funny, but also plays into the discomfort brought about by Ash\u2019s strange existence in this story. At the end of the day, \u201cAsh\u201d is just another object stashed away in the attic, but he is an object that gestures towards the undeniable reality of the child \u201che\u201d and his former girlfriend have together.<\/p>\n

The cycle of life and death is grotesquely suspended in \u201cBe Right Back,\u201d and the moment at which this is most emphasized\u2014even more so than when Martha realizes she is pregnant\u2014is when their daughter asks to see “him”\u00a0on her birthday. This is special, as she normally only interacts with “him” on the weekend.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Martha\u2019s limitation of her daughter\u2019s interactions with the eerie organic robot indicate her\u00a0desire to undo what she\u2019s done by keeping \u201cAsh\u201d around and presents a sort of guilt, as does her anguished pause before climbing the ladder after her daughter. We are left to wonder what sort of human contact Martha and her daughter have outside of one another\u2014where is Martha\u2019s sister\u2019s family at this sparse birthday celebration? Or her daughter\u2019s friends? I can’t help but wonder if “Ash” drove them away. I think\u00a0this isolation would be even more effective if the episode only cast Martha and Ash (and their daughter at the end), and had no other humans involved at all. It certainly comes close.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As is the case with many\u00a0Black Mirror\u00a0episodes, “Be Right Back” addresses\u00a0reality, death, and the reality (or potential nonreality) of death in a spare, effective manner.\u00a0After viewing the episode, undeniable ethical questions regarding the future of death and technology linger. It\u2019s hard\u2014at least for me\u2014to place a finger on why Ash\u2019s state of quasi-existence makes us … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Ethics, digital suspension of death, and guilt in Black Mirror”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}