BLACK MIRROR: "USS CALLISTER" (2017)
In COM 311 “Digital Media Culture” class, I analyzed “USS Callister”, the first episode of series four from Black Mirror (2017) on Netflix, by applying the concept of power related to the use of modern technologies and virtual spaces, in the shift from real-life to virtual identities.
I analyzed Wark’s telesthesia in relation to the question of power, Deleuze and Guattari for the relationships in the societies of control and Kember and Zylinska for the vitality of the application of the contemporary process of mediation. During my research, I identified the space as an abstract communicational location, a terrain of command and control, and eventually of a game space, instead of being a real physical space.
In the paper, I compared Deleuze’s view of disciplinary societies and societies of control with Guattari’s idea of the city as a place where the individual can explore and live simultaneously multiple realities. The new way of seeing new media in contrast with the old medium, set the specific circumstances in which life is transformed into a medium in specific biological and technical processes, and lastly the critical complex analysis of Kember and Zylinska's processes of mediation applied to the social, political and biological context.
