Ceren Bettemir

Art Culture Technology Assignment

23.05.2013

ANALYSIS ON BLACK MIRROR SERIES:BE RIGT BACK

SOCIAL MEDIA REPLICA IN THE ATTIC

Be Right Back is the first episode of the Black Mirror sci-fi mini TV series second season. In
this episode; Charlie Brooker, the creator of Black Mirror series, is making a criticism on
decision making of technology usage, the dilemmas of real identity and representative
identity of social media, limits of artificial intelligence, cloning and technology as a
psychological cure for grief and missing lost ones. It points to the contemporary societys
reconstructing their eternal identity through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, e-mails, chat
rooms. Because these mediums are saving our talks, memories, the people that we know, the
things that we like. They are keeping everything that we uploaded till we updated. Through
social media, we are getting more emotionally involved and connected with technology as we
give more information about our lives and ourselves. It is a system that improves itself and
gives more benefits as we give more information. But are these the real emotions or
information that we have in real life, or we are just replacing our real identity with more ideal
public identity? This episode is about the confrontation of the society with the absorbed use
of technology that is hard to resist. This what if? story has dystopian and utopia
qualities, commenting on our techno-consumerist society, fearing and warning us with the
conflicts of hyper reality environment.
I separated the story in three parts through the time line; the real Ash, the avatar Ash, the
replica Ash. My comments on their context are below the parts through the themes under
simulation, artificial intelligence, and problems of immortality.

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Art Culture Technology Assignment

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THE REAL ASH

The story begins with Ash sitting in a car, looking and concentrated on the tweets in his
IPhone. The radio is giving a new about the invention of artificial intelligent organs for those
whom needs organ transplant. Martha knocks the door couple of times but he doesnt
realize her. At that point, we think like what a careless boy that lost in his IPhone. And soon
we learn that Martha and Ash is a young couple that just moved into Ashs old empty family
house far from city. When they arrive home Ash sees a photograph of his childhood and
sends a tweet titled as Funny. But he remarks that actually this photo is taken after his
brother died, and it is a fake smile. He remembers her mother, and her way of dealing with
death by putting his brothers photographs to the attic. The couple has average sex at that
night. The day after, Ash goes to work, and unfortunately he dies in a car accident. In the
funeral of Ash, Sarah recommends Martha to try a program/ chat booth that she can talk
with her husband. Its an artificial intelligence program that is mimicking a person by the
information shared and left in social media. Even though Martha refuses to use that
program, Sarah signs up Martha. Now, Martha is full of grief, facing with the reality of the

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Art Culture Technology Assignment

23.05.2013

ended life of Ash, in an empty old house that Ashs history remains. After she learns that she
is pregnant, she needs and decides to talk with the booth.
Ash is a critical character that uses social media any time. And he thinks social media as an
entertaining or funny (humorous) platform as he thinks people will found his photograph
funny. He loves her wife but he doesnt care about her enough because it seems like his life
is separated in two, his social media character is stealing his real characters time and actions.
Till this moment we also see some kind of interfaces like; automatic cars navigation screen
(like a racing game interface), Marthas drawing-design path that applied with colored pens,
pregnancy test with a moving image of baby. These interfaces are the imitations of the real
road, real pencil and paper, real baby. This is so close to current-day world controlled by the
principle of simulation. As Baudrillard thinks that the real has become our true Utopia.
However Utopia that is no longer in the realm of the possible, that can only be dreamt of
as one would dream of a lost object.1(Baudrillard, 1994) This also brings the question of If
there are no longer realities, are we living in the dystopian world through this simulation
world theory?
This episode also reminded while I was fifteen, I was creating avatars as an imitation of dead
artists from my country such as Kemal Sunal, Fikret Kzlok in Sims Game. Even though it
is an immature action to set avatars, there is this tendency of dream of the lost people, the
mixture of reality and its representation through the fiction and imagination. Sarah has the
tendency to break the distance between dead and alive. The borders, the distances are
already gone with the Internet. But what about when it comes to the reality of the ended
life? Are we going to accept the game is over or find a solution in to the cloud? Sarah
says that there is no reality in her life no more, the people around doesnt seem real to her.
Because of her paranoiac and oppressive manner, we understand that she has psychological
problems; she doesnt accept the real world. And she affects Marthas decision-making
process with the word of mouth power, as a trend hunter friend, which is close to todays.
The need process is an infinite process, as we are buying new laptops, new mobile phones,
new something. And finally Martha needed to use the chat booth, which is a new
invented need, but which becomes an addiction as she starts to use.

1 Jean Baudrillard, Simuacra and Science Fiction, Simulacra and Simulation (1994): 123.

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THE AVATAR ASH

Martha and avatar/simulacra of Ash gently start to chat each other. Martha becomes
addicted to talk with the booth day by day. She uploads more content (videos, photographs,
talks) to upgrade the avatar. The program gains sound recognition of Ash, and they start to
talk on the phone as we can experience in Siri application. Martha teaches the avatar some
idioms, private memories of his death husband that cant be found in his social media
history. At one point Martha drops her phone and panics so much. We understand that
Ashs avatar became so internal for Martha that it equals with broking Ash as she
materialized him to mobile phone. She says, I dropped you. There is the reabsorption of
this distance between the real Ash, avatar and the phone. The avatar lives in the cloud
system. It has a decentralized identity of Ash, combination of his pieces; it is already a fragile
collage picture. That was not enough to the progress, and Avatar Ash recommends the next
level: the embodiment of the avatar Ash.
In the scene that Martha is throwing the videos, sounds, and photos from her IPhone to her
laptop, she was feeding the system with the data without any button but her fingers. Its
futuristic and very hyper real way to transfer the data. There is a real environment between
the remediation (IPhone to laptop data transfer). This data transformation has kind of a
sense that Martha founds energy in it. She hopes that the program will learn to sound like
Ash, and it does this perfectly.

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23.05.2013

It becomes an AI robot that represents Ashs mind designed with emotions that Martha
puts in it. It connects with the "aura" 2 theorem of Walter Benjamins, the aura of
reproduction in cultural industry. As there is no more original something that cant be
copied, the original loses its traditional aura and magic. We are more charmed under artificial
places, objects and phantasy places, as we are more fetishes about objects that we consume.
The original artwork is independent of the copy, yet through the act of reproduction
something is taken from the original by changing its context. The avatar Ash is the artificial
intelligence and the copy of the original mind. It is a science and feeding system mix as
Noam Chomsky defies. It is a technique that can recognize the language, predict the future
sentence to say, make voice adjustment and most significantly analyze the data out of the
massive memories.3 Also it can come up with the human intellect, the intellectual capacity of
Ashs humor. It is a piece of computational cognitive science. Now she can speak with the
AI Ash 24 hours as a therapist. The avatar Ash has utopian quality in terms of machine
learning, cognitive sciences.
Nevertheless Marthas situation is another criticism about an undesirable dehumanized
society. The lonely modern lives of us locked in houses, there is less real relationship and
sharing of the emotion anymore. Even Marthas friend recommends her a program rather
then seeing and talking with her. Programs are taking place of our friends, we listen our
laptop talking with IPhone. We also have an ability to lock our friends in phone calls, emails, and Facebook comments.
First, I was thinking that socially pleased people uses the social media sites more than asocial
people. But it is controversial; the meaning of being social and asocial has been changed
through the massive usage of social media. The more audience we have, more photos we
upload, it is making us more social-net worked, it doesnt matter if we are social in our real
life or not. But the qualities of socializing in real life and Internet have different concepts
because of the simulation and real life dichotomy.
Anyhow Avatar Ash has a good level of communication intelligence through sympathetically

2 Oliver Grau, Spaces of Knowledge, Virtual Art: From Illusion To Immersion (2003): 239.
3 Noam Chomsky on forgotten methodologies in artificial intelligence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyTx6a7VBjg

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chatting with Martha. It is a purely artificial thing in Marthas life; pleasing her with listening
and creating the intelligent thoughts of Ash. However there is still skepticism of intelligence;
as she asks, did you looked up it?(Googled from Internet) But when the phone breaks
down, the paranoia of losing the lost one arises. Martha decides to take the risk of next level:
meeting with the replica of the Ash

THE REPLICA ASH

The corporation sends the replica of Ash with a cargo. Avatar Ash gives directions to
Martha about how to make it alive (on). She puts the body in the sink, adds water and
electrolytes in it, in a dark bathroom. After waiting a while, finally she sees her husbands
copy in the stairs. He seems exactly like Ash, but in a good mood day. Because the androids
appearance is the out come of the social media photos videos of Ash, as we cant put our
crying or sad photos to Facebook. He is biologically magnificent as he is able to add and
remove textures in his skin, doesnt need to sleep, eat, thirst or going to doctor as computers
do. Its organic as human, yet artificial, creation programmed as human. Even though it is
biologically perfect, he is lack of Ashs daily life activities and memories. Instead of being
Ash, he starts to behave like a servant robot as Do you want to eat something, I can clean
it. So it cant mimic Ashs rebellious or unique character exactly. Because of this Martha
doesnt get used to replica, as she says, you are not even half of Ash. She tries to get rid of
him, however she cant do it ethically. She wants him to jump over the mountain, to kill
himself, the replica accepts his human masters order. But Martha stops him to die, getting

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Art Culture Technology Assignment

23.05.2013

angry, as Ash doesnt accept it just because she ordered him to suicide. At the end, we see
Martha and her daughter are celebrating the birthday of daughter. Her daughter can only see
his fathers replica in weekends. However as she is a birthday girl, her mom accepts her wish
to see his father. They go to attic at where the replica Ash is going to live his life all alone, as
old and useless furniture.
In this part, the borders between artificial and real are broking down with the incarnation of
dead Ash. It is like a struggle between human and materialization of human; natural and
technological ones. Information seems more and more to take the place of the 'soul', the
'mind' or anything else once considered to be at the core of our existence. However in this
case, information cant take place of the soul or mind of a human existence. Moreover it
creates a problem over the natural flow of death. Technological progress creates an
alternative life for the sad people who are in grief, but it doesnt fix their sadness. The utopia
of eternal life turns to dystopia. The utopia of never losing a loved mind and soul turns to
failure. I found the Guardians post interesting about Baudillards thought about himself and
death, as we connect it with Be Right back episode;
A man from the audience, with the recent death of Jacques Derrida in mind, mentioned
obituaries and asked Baudrillard: "What would you like to be said about you? In other
words, who are you?" Baudrillard replied: "What I am, I don't know. I am the
simulacrum of myself." 4
I think it is very powerful sentence because it has some mind tricks. Actually who are you
and what are you are not the same question as Baudillard answers the persons question as
what I am. Simulacrum is a theorem that Baudillard redefined for postmodern society.
What I understand is: What I am; is the phenomenon of myself. Looking from outside; Im
the representation/ product of myself. Also my philosophical production is more important
than what I am as a being. There cannot be reliable definition of who we are. We as
humans are not capable to understand our Being, because of this we cant define or know
ourselves. It means that technology cannot exactly copy a human being by using the data of
this person. A human being materialized as Facebook avatar or Twitter account. I wanted to
relate this dialogue with this episode of Black Mirror. Because the story goes on with this
tension Who is Ash as human, Is the social media replica or avatar will be like Ash?. Bu

4 http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2007/mar/07/guardianobituaries.france

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logically it cant. Because Ash has a lot of personas in life: as a husband, mothers son, xs
friend, zs colleague His Facebook-Twitter identity is just a piece of his social
representation. It is not even real. Replica Ashs bio robotic company using feelings of the
people in grief by promising: she/he will right back. Also object able things are taking our
attention; we want to try the new technology, new something as we are more fetishistic
about objects and new technologies.
In mythology, Gods and Goddess have power to give life to an object or a person, make
their lives longer or shorter. Tithonus story has some similarities with Be Right Back. The
beautiful Goddess Eos, fall in love with a mortal man named Tithonus. She realizes that her
love is getting older and closer to die. She begs to her father Zeus to make Tithonus
immortal. Zeus accepts her daughters wish. But the she forgets to wish immortal
youngness. Because of this Tithonus has to live in oldness and pain forever. Artificial Ashs
future like Tithonus, turns to a nightmare. Martas wish to bringing back her husband from
death ends up living a life with a creepy replica in the same house. Ashs artificial copy is
more and more reminding his absence of reality and originality. There is again this message
of Eternity is not a good thing for mortal humans. The replica Ash is the victim of media
materialization. He is sinless as in Asimovs robot concern: robots for the benefit of future
generations. In the ending scene, we can imagine like maybe there are lots of abandoned
replicas in peoples attic, garages, storages, solitary places.
Be Right Back is a warning about our near future. If there is a birth control in modern
society, is there going to be birth control of replicas or robots in the future? If there is going
to be a birth control of replicas, who is going to control it; community, government or
military? Are we able to bring back the political leaders such as Osama Bin Laden, Franco or
Hitler by their AI robots? How is going to be the user guide of Franco? Immortality is
something that shouldnt have given to the human control I think. We should foresee the
result of the decisions we make. Yet there is not a pure technological decision, it is always
connected something else that we need. We shouldnt manipulate or be blind to our weak
sides to be able to live in more conform. We should also live our emotions and maybe share
it with a good friend and see that there is nothing afraid of being human.