Leon Yablonovskiy
ENG 2150
Professor Graves
Assignment #1
The way in which social media and technology can inhibit one’s health and well being is fairly ambiguous since it is a relatively new phenomenon. Social media is somewhat a new invention yet it has quickly become so ingrained into so many of people’s lives. Most people do not go a day without checking their Instagram, opening a Snapchat, updating their Twitter, or sending a message or posting on Facebook, and others do not even go an hour without doing so. If we go back just a decade or fifteen years, social media was not as broadly used by the masses and nowhere near as many people had a means to access social media, as well as, the internet as they do today in the new generation. The effect this could potentially have on our modernizing society is profound.
The show “Black Mirror” is a series developed in the United Kingdom and broadcast via the Netflix platform exclusively. It is often described as an anthology, which roughly means several works grouped together, as the episodes of the series are not related to one another. You need not watch them chronologically in order to understand them or the plot. The series goes in depth as a commentary on how the dark intentions of humankind, as well as, all the modernizing technological inventions and innovations collide. The series is set in the future, however, it seems to be the not so distant future as the show portrays. Every unique episode in one way or another shows the protagonists trying to fight different kinds of technologies who have turned toxic. Some episodes, such as “Hang the DJ”, focus on technology with regards to social media which modernized to contain all kinds of new invasive software, living with it, and fighting it.
In the fourth episode, of the fourth series, “Hang the DJ”, people live inside a matchmaking system which tells people who to date at specific times, for specific times, and where to go. Two strangers would get a ping from a circular voice active touch screen device telling them exactly where to go and who to meet. It would schedule the introductory date at certain time and certain place. The two people would meet and they have the option of knowing right away how long their relationship will last or they can choose not to check, which can affect the duration of the relationship. Relationships can last as short as a day or as long as a of couple years, after enough relationships the system will choose two people to marry assessing the compatibility. When the couples date, everything is planned out by the system, the system even has its own system of self-driving cars to deliver people to where it schedules them to be. The two protagonists Frank and Amy start off dating and enjoy their time together, however, the system decides their relationship was to end. Amy kept getting hit with meaningless thirty-six hour relationships, where all they would do is go out and have sex , then sleep. She was miserable, but so was Frank. He got hit with a long-term relationship that was toxic. They system finally matches them again and they decide not to check when it will end. Frank has anxiety and decides to check without Amy’s knowledge, and due to that action the time goes from very long term to over. The two realize they do not need the system to know they love each other and in order to be together they must escape.
The twenty-four hour relationships can be a reference to apps like Tinder, designed for quick hookups, because as the show suggested all the people did in their one day relationships was eat, go home, and have sex. These types of relationships generated by Tinder could be fun for a night or one night stand, or for a short amount of time, but they aid in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS, herpes, syphilis, chlamydia, etc. The psychological damage can also play a role, not having anything solid. Matchmaking services such as Match.com and eHarmony come to mind as they use algorithms to match people, however, at the same time encourage people to go on as many dates as possible to find the one. The other reference being made here is that all these relationships started online by social media and matchmaking services are really superficial and usually do not go well or last. In the end of the episode, the couple breaks out of the system, out of the social network spotlight in everyone’s eyes, and only then they can exist together happily. It turned out to be a part of the system itself though, that in order to find true love a couple must disobey and breakout of the system. The escape out of the system is rhetoric which says one has to leave the world of social media to find true love and be truly happy.
Stromae, is an international pop music star hailing from the Brussels Region of Belgium, where he speaks predominantly French. Stromae is his stage persona, a play on the word “maestro”, his real name is Paul Van Haver. Most songs from Van Haver can fall into the category of dance music, however, they have been referred to as “suicide dance” due to the underlying meanings of the music. His most famous songs sound very upbeat, as dance music usually is, however, the meaning is always dark, or about some sad topic. For example, the song “Tous Les Memes”, was Van Haven summarizing toxic relationships, in “Papaoutai” he tells a story of an absent father, and in “Alors On Danse”, which had a version with Kanye West, he talks about divorce, unemployment, debt, etc. According to The New York Times, “It is a mournful anthem that evokes unemployment, divorce, debt, the financial crisis and a sort of resigned hope “to forget all our problems”; it reached No.1 on the charts in 19 countries. Still Mr. Van Haver has no desire to be a ‘salesman of the crisis,’he said in an interview here, and his music is by no means intended to intensify European pessimism, although he has at least once called his genre ‘suicide dance.’,”(Sayare). Stromae defends his music with the claims that the songs are about dark topics, however, focus on perseverance and the idea that “it’s life, move on.”
Van Haven’s song “Carmen”, the eighth song of the “Racine Carree” album, is a modern take on “Habanera” from the famous French opera also entitled “Carmen” by Georges Bizet. According to NPR, “And if his tune “Carmen” seems vaguely familiar, it’s because the track is a reworking of an operatic classic, the “Habanera” from Bizet’s opera Carmen,”(Tsioulcas). Stromae, has retouched and repurposed the song to be about Twitter and its lasting effects on a person and on society. While it is aimed directly at Twitter, it can be an allusion to all social media in general. According to NPR, “Stromae’s ire isn’t aimed solely at Twitter by any means. Instead, it’s targeting the endless pull and false fronts of social media in general,”(Tsioulcas). The song creates many indirect claims of how you have to be careful on Twitter and social media, and how it can control what you love and what you consume. The music video has powerful symbolism as well showing a young boy and young bird grow. The boy walks around on Twitter and is constantly on his phone gaining followers, likes, and tweeting, retweeting, and more. As he grows taller and skinner, the bird grows taller, fatter, and angrier. The bird is with him constantly twenty-four hours a day/ seven days a week. He finds a girl in the park and they hit it off, and become boyfriend and girlfriend. The girlfriend begins to get sadder and sadder as the boy spends all his time with the bird. It shows the bird separating them on the bed. It eventually takes the boy and the girl ends up being trampled on by many other birds. It rides on his back and eventually gets so big that it crushes him, crushing his back. As he could not carry the bird any longer, it puts him on its back and carries him around. It eventually takes him to his death dropping him into the mouth of an even bigger colossal bird to be eaten. The bird races with other birds carrying famous figures such as other pop stars, reality stars, and even the Queen of England, to throw them all into the big “Mama” bird’s mouth to quench its insatiable hunger. The power of social media to take control of many aspects of our lives and impact us so negatively is blatantly evident.
The subtle references of the video have far greater meanings than portrayed just for fun and entertainment. The story within the video about the boyfriend and girlfriend situation portrays how relationships are held in the modern day. It is a great representation of the theme that social media/technology can bring us closer to people far away, and strangers even, yet it can drive us away from those close to us both in terms of those who we love and those in physical proximity. The boy was living a virtual reality on Twitter and putting all his effort into social media, when what right in front of him was a real, non-superficial, person who cared about him and wanted his attention. When he realized it was too late and she was already gone. Not only in romantic relationships does this hold true, but in relationships of friendship and family as well. These days children distance themselves from their families by living their lives in technology that their parents “do not understand”. The toxicity of the superficial relationships that social media brings about can turn healthy beneficial relationships one has with friends, family, lovers, etc. into unhealthy malignant relationships which harm both parties emotionally and physically. The use of the caricatures of public figures, like the Queen of England, could have been used to portray how unrealistic the posts of the upper class is and how unattainable their lives, money, standards, status, and everything is.
To address the lyrics of the song, the chorus keeps on saying that it is how we love and it is how we consume, which means, how we love and consume on social media. Social media has the potential to control what we consume by showing us advertisements, sponsored posts, posts from companies, and posts by influencers who are paid off to post about a product or service despite how useful or effective it may be in real life. Social media controls what we love as well by showing us what is the new trend and what is cool/hip, influencers can literally post something inadvertently telling us what to like. The people we meet online can also become lovers despite issues on unknown false identities, etc. Stromae uses a metaphor to compare love to a child of consumption, meaning a child who always wants more and more choices. And he calls the Twitter bird, a bird of misfortune. Another powerful metaphor Stromae uses is, “plastic smiles are often hashtags”, which can be interpreted as how people live fake, or “plastic”, lives on social media to paint the picture of a perfect life to live their lives as virtual realities and make others jealous.
The effect social media has on our society is evidently profound in the modern day, however, with technology, becoming far more advanced as well as invasive, the impact it has grows. It is becoming more and more integrated in our daily lives and will inhibit normal human functions. The creation of all these superficial relationships via social media gets in the way of humans being able to interact as they were meant to. The superficial lives people paint on social media make themselves feel better about themselves for a moment but sad inside in reality, and they make others feel even worse about the unattainability of those fake lives. This generation is rightfully known as that of anxiety and depression. Humans are simply not in control anymore, technology/social media is.
Works Cited
Dwilson, Stephanie Dube. “’Black Mirror’ Hang the DJ Recap & Analysis: More Than Meets the Eye.” Heavy.com, Heavy.com, 29 Dec. 2017, heavy.com/entertainment/2017/12/black-mirror-hang-the-dj-recap-review-analysis-meaning/.
Sayare, Scott. “Stromae: Disillusion, With a Dance Beat.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/arts/15iht-stromae15.html.
Tsioulcas, Anastasia. “Stromae, ‘Carmen’.” NPR, NPR, 1 Apr. 2015, www.npr.org/2015/04/01/396789203/stromae-carmen.