<i>Black Mirror</i>: “The National Anthem”. Arte, media e la dissoluzione della democrazia

Pierluigi Musarò

doi:10.13125/2039-6597/1337

Pierluigi Musarò Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/1337

Keywords: Black Mirror, pop politics, reality show, democracy, social media

Abstract

Black Mirror is a British television anthology series, created by Charlie Brooker, which shows the dark side of life and technology. Although each episode has a different cast, a different setting, and a different reality, they are all about the ineffable power of technology and social media in our own lives.

The paper focuses on the first episode of the anthology series (The National Anthem), which was first aired on 2011. The episode is a political thriller in which UK Prime Minister faces a huge and shocking dilemma when Princess Susannah, a member of the Royal Family and a media celebrity, is kidnapped. For her safe return, the Prime Minister must have live sexual relations with a pig on national television.

Investigating the paradoxical cooperation between multiple media platforms and their influence on public opinion, the paper describes contemporary technological, cultural, and social changes, with a particular attention to the relationship between citizens and politicians.

Analyzing the humiliating performance of the Prime Minister as an extreme artistic creation, the paper shows how the logic of the reality show, typical of the pop politics, has contributed to exasperate the contemporary institutional crisis.

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Author Biography

Pierluigi Musarò, Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna

Pierluigi Musarò is Associate Professor of Sociology at the School of Political Science, University of Bologna, and Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University, and at the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science. He has written widely on media and humanitarian movements, NGOs campaigns, migration, sustainable tourism, ethics of consumption, and social responsibility.

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Black Mirror: The National Anthem. Art, Media and the Disintegration of Democracy

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References