Through the Black Mirror

Terence McSweeney is Senior Lecturer at Solent University, UK. He is the author of The 'War on Terror' and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second (2014), Avengers Assemble! Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2018) and editor of "In the Shadow of 9/11": American Cinema in the 'War on Terror' Era (2016).Stuart Joy is Senior Lecturer at Solent University, UK, where he teaches Film and Television. He is the co-editor of, and contributor to The Cinema of Christopher Nolan: Imagining the Impossible (2015).

• Introduction: Read that back to yourself and ask if you live in a sane society, Terence McSweeney and Stuart Joy.- Part I.- “The National Anthem”, Terrorism and Digital Media, Fran Pheasant Kelly.- “Fifteen Million Merits”: Gamification, Spectacle, and Neoliberal Aspiration, Mark R. Johnson.- Enhanced Memory: “The Entire History of You”, Henry Jenkins.- Part II.- Making Room for Our Personal Posthuman Prisons: “Be Right Back”, Andrew Schopp.- Charlie Brooker’s “White Bear”: Ideological State Apparatuses, Perversions of Courtly Love, and Curatorial Violence, Paul Petrovic.- Political apathy, the ex post facto allegory and Waldo’s Trumpian moment, Terence McSweeney.- We Have Only Ourselves to Fear:  Reflections on AI through the Black Mirror of “White Christmas”, Christine Muller.- Part III.- The Planned Obsolescence of “Nosedive”, Sean Redmond.- Augmented Reality Bites: “Playtest” and the Unstable Now, Soraya Murray.- Shame, Stigmaand Identification in “Shut Up and Dance”, Stuart Joy.- Unreal City: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and Posthumanity in “San Junipero”, Isra Daraiseh and M. Keith Booker.- Deviating The Other: Inspecting the Bounds of Progress in “Men Against Fire”, Ana Dosen.- On Killer Bees and GCHQ: “Hated in the Nation”, James Smith.- Part IV.- Dethroning the King of Space: Toxic White Masculinity and the Revised Adventure Narrative in “USS Callister”, Steffen Hankte.- “Arkangel”: Postscript on Families of Control, George F. McHendry, Jr..- The Sovereignty of Truth: Memory and Morality in “Crocodile”, Jossalyn G. Larson.- Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before: Relationships and Late Capitalism in “Hang the DJ”, Aidan Power.- Killing the Creator in “Metalhead”, Barbara Gurr.- Hope, with Teeth: On “Black Museum”, Gerry Canavan.- Change Your Past, Your Present, Your Future: Interactive Narratives and Trauma in Bandersnatch, Terence McSweeney and Stuart Joy.