Narrating Illusions: A Critical Analysis of The Hyperrealities Constructed Within the Narratives of the Black Mirror Series

This study seeks to examine the manner in which hyperrealities are constructed within the narratives of the Black Mirror series. Hyperreality refers to a distorted condition of consciousness that is unable to discern between the real and the illusion. The French postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that within the present-day technologically simulated world of hyperconsumerism, human beings have often misplaced their capabilities to distinguish the virtual from their material realities. Baudrillard contends that this distortion of reality has thus engendered the production of the simulacra that perceives the hyperreality as the real in its place. Within today’s hypermediated postmodern world, Baudrillard’s theorisations have attained much validity in examining the fast-paced fluctuations of the socio- cultural fabric of human existence that desires for a simulated and virtual way of life. Particularly, the anthological, speculative and science fictional television series Black Mirror (2011-) created by Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, uniquely interrogates, and extrapolates upon the obsessions and phobias surrounding human relations with technology. Accordingly, this study argues that a close reading of the visual text depicts diverse ways in which hyperrealities are constructed within its dystopian narratives that ultimately induces the audiences to renegotiate their conditions of existence. Hence, across the predominant application of Baudrillard’s theorisations, the present study will investigate the hyperreality production in the Black Mirror series, in order to analyse the ways in which its characters and spectators are simultaneously dislocated from their realities, whilst embracing a dual existence within the spaces of the real and the illusion.