WATCH

Arkangel.” Black Mirror. Season 4. Episode 2.

• Obviously this episode has a good deal to say about surveillance and control. One of the most formative ideas in terms of surveillance and control comes Foucault in his description of the “Panopticon.” You can check out the wikipedia articleLinks to an external site. which is really comprehensive.

As we have talked about, one of the tricks of Black Mirror is to show you a world that at first seems foreign to ours, but as you consider it further ends up being closer than you first might have thought. This episode in particular works in this way, save for the Arkangel system almost everything in this world feels akin to ours. So, let’s focus on this surviellance architecture present in Arkangel. Your task is to come up with an exhaustive list, and I mean exhaustive (like think of all the things you can) of the ways in which youth today are survielled by society. Make this a list, name the thing, and briefly describe if necessary, no need for commentary, we are just after all the ways you can think of. It can be difficult to see some of these things, as they seem normal, so you will want to talk to friends about things that happened to them, but also talk to people from a different generation as they will be able to perceive the changes better (like I never had to answer a cell phone call from my parents when I was out with my friends in high school, cause I didn’t have one). So talk with lots of people, from different backgrounds and different generations.

Finally take your best one from your surveillance list (and by best I mean worst one, like the most egregious one)