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purplecowbell · 1 year

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Black Mirror: A Boring Twilight Zone

When I tell people I love The Twilight Zone, both the original series and the reboot, the first thing out of their mouths is, “You should check out Black Mirror.” I suppress a cringe, thank them for their recommendation, and then never follow through. I don’t because I’ve already tried it, and I don’t think it compares.

I understand why people keep comparing Black Mirror to The Twilight Zone; it’s certainly a more contemporary perspective on issues (at least if you ignore the more recent reboots like many people seem to do), but the actual core of the shows, how and why they depict their speculative worlds, are very different. I apologize for using an insulting title to the Black Mirror fans, but for someone who’s looking for The Twilight Zone, it just does not scratch the right itch for me.

In The Twilight Zone, the writers cover a wide variety of topics. They explore mob mentality, our perception of aliens, and “the other.” They explore tragic stories of luck and ignorant selfishness, and praise heroic stories with martyrs and rebels. My favorite types of Twilight Zone episodes are ones in which there’s no strong message, just Rod Sterling shows up at the end with, “Well, wasn’t that crazy?” There was one episode (“A World of His Own”) where a playwright had a god-like ability to create people and destroyed his old wife to make a new one, and when Rod Sterling starts to narrate at the end, the author interrupts to destroy Rod Sterling. But The Twilight Zone also isn’t afraid of covering serious issues, whether cynical or optimistic, individual or societal. The show can jump from an episode about the mentality of witch hunts and colonization (“Will the Real Martian Stand Up?”) to one about the value of education against tyrannies and the importance of heroic public acts (“The Obsolete Man”). This wide range of diversity allows The Twilight Zone to cover an entire spectrum of imagination and the human condition, whether silly or profound. When The Twilight Zone comments on societal ills (which Black Mirror is famous for), it pressures you slightly on what was already there and asks, “Do you really want this to get worse?” Black Mirror, on the other hand, crushes you with the framework of structural problems without relent.

Black Mirror focuses on the problems of technology, and a focus is fine; it allows you to really get into the granular details. But unfortunately (for The Twilight Zone fans) the exploration of technology is through a singular cynical lens. Every single story is, without fail, a dystopia, for both those who “deserve” it and those who don’t. Some people have argued that this consistency makes Black Mirror intrinsically better, but I don’t read or watch anthologies for repetition. The characters are less “characters” and more cogs in the machine that happen to be human-shaped. No story satisfyingly breaks from the horrific status quo, and the show usually depicts a snapshot of people that could be happening an infinite number of times in other places of the world. Many times the story ends on just the note: “And then everything continues.” The only episodes that I felt were deviations from this were “The Waldo Moment,” “Nosedive,” and “USS Callister.” These are the only episodes where either the characters felt like they mattered (The Waldo Moment), where the ending showed some upside to deviation from the system (Nosedive) or a combination of the two (USS Callister). The emotional spectrum of the characters ranges from black, to gray, to brown, to artificial-happy-yellow. For a show set in the 21st century, its characters are sometimes more black and white than the Twilight Zone in the 1960s. But that’s not a sin; you’re not supposed to worry about complex characters in the anthology episode format. The lack of complexity does, however, clash with the episode length. Most episodes last around an hour, frequently longer, and watching the same emotional shades in the same episode over and over again without disruption for an hour is like watching paint dry. The problem here isn’t all of what I listed; these are mostly personal preferences that some may enjoy. The problem is that even with these qualities and differences, Black Mirror is still being recommended to Twilight Zone fans.

Just because a work of media is of the same format (speculative anthology) does not mean it satisfies the same itch. If someone watched The Twilight Zone for the dystopian episodes like “The Obsolete Man,” or “It’s a Good Life,” or warnings of technology like “The Lateness of the Hour,” (which is a hilarious episode to take as a serious critique against technology), then the connection between Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone is natural to them. But The Twilight Zone had more episodes than those three. Ask 100 different Twilight Zone fans which episode stands out the most to them, and you’ll probably get 50 different answers (I’m not going to pretend some episodes aren’t more popular than others). Ask 100 Black Mirror fans which episode stands out the most, and they’ll probably say, “The one where a politician has sex with a pig.” Black Mirror has two tools at its disposal: shock value and contemporary despair. I have no interest in being bludgeoned to death with either of these.

I ask that Black Mirror fans try to understand their relationship with the genre. Just because The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror are the most popular shows in said genre does not mean they share additional similarities. I also ask that they understand that Black Mirror is not an objective upgrade from The Twilight Zone just because Black Mirror’s differences are more enjoyable for them. I suggest that fans of both shows watch other series to better understand what would actually be relevant to recommend, instead of just suggesting one show to fans of the other. Shows like American Horror Story, The Outer Limits, Solos, and Love Death & Robots might really scratch an itch you didn’t even know you had.

#black mirror #the twilight zone #twilight zone #anthology tv shows #sci fi #science fiction #media criticism #tv show review #Again #sorry to black mirror fans #but please watch other shows #or at least check them out

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movies-tv-more · 2 years

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GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES season 1 posters

#guillermo del toro's cabinet of curiosities #cabinet of curiosities #guillermo del toro #lot 36 #graveyard rats #the autopsy #the outside #pickerman's model #dreams in the witch house #the viewing #the murmuring #horror tv #anthology #netflix #tv show poster

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ilovemesomevincentprice · 8 months

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Vincent Price - Alfred Hitchcock Presents; The Perfect Crime (1957)

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movie--posters · 18 days

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I got a friend watching Beyond Belief, I'm watching Highlander with her husband while rewatching Buffy by myself, another friend is watching Murder she Wrote and another is watching X-Files and yet another is watching Star Trek: Voyager. Everyone I know is watching shit from or that started or aired in the 90's. No matter who's house I go to it's 90's time. Are we nostalgic or did TV peak?

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screenshotsonpinterest · 12 days

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Please attach all pjo edits to The Prophecy by Taylor Swift down below, thank you

#percy jackson #pjo #percabeth #pjo tv show #percy jackson and the olympians #pjo hoo toa #Taylor swift #ttpd the anthology #the prophecy #taylor swift ttpd

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horrorlesbians · 2 months

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having an oc is all fun and games until you can't fucking draw

#🦌#vivian lecter you will never be famous bc I can't draw #redacted character i am brainstorming for a future true detective season you will also never be famous #i should just make my own investigative anthology....bc ive got now two tv show ideas that are about murders and crime #and investigators being a little deranged

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rickchung · 3 months

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True Detective: Night Country (prod. Issa López).

An inverse of the first season's sweaty Louisiana masculinity, this season is set in frozen darkness during the annual month-long period of continous nighttime in a remote Northern Alaskan town as López both enhances and subverts what intially drew audiences to pulpy detective drama.