Charlie Brooker is not infallible: all the seasons of ‘Black Mirror’, even the three episodes, have been irregular. And I would say that all episodes that I have personally considered to be more unsuccessful or clumsy have in common the reasons that I will discuss about this fifth chapter of the third season, Men Against Fire.

This story pushes us sharply to a dystopia in which there are creatures called Roaches (cockroaches) that are persecuted in a systematic way by the army. Persecuted and killed. The soldiers have implanted a chip in their body that allow them to access detailed information of each case and serve as operations support.

What you do not know these members of the military is that that chip interferes with your brain at a deeper level, modifying what you perceive your senses. Eliminating sounds and smells not desired, modifying the appearance of their enemies, and by managing what they see or dream of.

As an idea, this approach is so terrifying is exciting and touches on many fronts. On the one hand we are faced with a harsh criticism of how the institutions deal with the limitations moral of the soldiers and the consequences of that are suffering because of war. People who are forced to kill others and or are unable to, or end up suffering from psychological consequences difficult to treat. The government prefers to deceive and dehumanize the population in order not to have to deal with veterans of war-torn, or with soldiers who refuse to kill.

The fact that Stripe is given to the program voluntarily without knowing what he was getting into it also says a lot of what leads some young people to sign up. In the video itself that Stripe looks unbeliever can see to a young lad who spends all, they probably had no other outlet better than that, and not precisely oozes vocation.

Over all that we encounter in this story is a reflection on the dehumanization of war. It is appalling to think that they are developing helmets for military with visors that obscure the face of the enemy, something that is not so far away from the technology that in Men Against Fire transforms human beings into monsters aggressive and creepy.

Is the graphical representation of the discourses that advocate the genocide. Here the excuse they are apparent physical conditions desfavorecedoras as diseases or abnormalities, but any reason whimsical is capable of being crossed out. Biological weapons are a reality and are already investigating viruses that attack genetic characteristics of concrete, so that in this sense there is also more science fiction.

The case is that we are facing a new form of totalitarianism that uses technology to create an army that is practically playing a video-game. In fact, the choice in the direction of some of the sequences reinforces this idea. By day, they kill bugs. For the night, have a dream, to the letter.

one would think that with all these ingredients, consider to Men Against Fire one of the episodes most failed of the season. Brooker is so focused on presenting his ideas that he neglects the development and contextualization. Although it has a outstanding capability to do a reflection about how man is a wolf to man and the technology is just another tool that we have to harm us, we lack fine-tune any of the particular stories that you choose to convey these ideas.

Here I failed a lot of the development of the context and the characters. Wasted the opportunity to use Stripe as a window to all the slopes that exist in this dystopia, for to give more perspective to the ideas through the development of people and the environments that shows us, both on the part of the military base, the village or those hiding-places from the cockroaches.

It has been heard a lot about predictability in terms of the episodes of this season and it is that at the end several of the episodes stay in with the idea that they play without giving the human dimension. Sometimes the narration is too cold and it is something that is evident when you compare it with the episodes most memorable of the season, as a Nosedive, San Junipero or Hated in the Nation.

‘Black Mirror’ is always relevant and recommended. Not even I would say that your episodes more loose are expendable because it shows consistently that always has something to contribute. Presents ideas that generate discussion, or lead you to think. But it is not always caught in the narration in itself and it is then when it keeps the story and the episode on the whole excited about. By the way, that set of plans end of Stripe in front of the house reminded me of ‘The Congress,’ from Ari Folman.

In Go Tele! | Criticism of the episodes of the 3rd season of ‘Black Mirror’

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The news ‘Black Mirror’: The dehumanization of the war in ‘Men Against Fire’ was originally published in Go Tele by Adriana Left.

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