Decades of movies that explore the potential of machine consciousness—Blade Runner; Ex Machina; I, Robot; and many others—have tended to treat the arrival of said consciousness as a matter of course. Theirs are worlds in which society is able to sympathize with, and even socially accept, a true artificial intelligence. Recognizing AI’s presence as inevitable, of course, does not make it less anxiety inducing, either in fiction or in reality.
Black Mirror has never been subtle. Charlie Brooker’s famously bleak Netflix sci-fi series has skewered the role of technology in our lives—dating apps, surveillance culture, social media—across its seven seasons; it has shown us how our overreliance on the convenience of the digital world can harm the real one. Black Mirror is also often self-referential to a fault, dotting its episodes with Easter eggs to other installments, building a large shared universe.
This article contains spoilers through the seventh episode of Severance, Season 2.
The promise of Severance is a seductive one: The titular procedure separates a person’s work self from the rest of their identity, granting them a literal work-life balance. Lumon, the biotech company that offers severance—which involves implanting a microchip into employees’ brains—markets it as a method to free oneself of difficult feelings or experiences.
David Lynch famously abhorred explaining himself. “Believe it or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film,” the director once said of his esoteric debut feature, during a 2007 interview. When asked to elaborate, he replied, smiling: “No, I won’t.
Dune: Prophecy opens with a thesis statement. It comes as the Reverend Mother Tula Harkonnen (played by Olivia Williams), a member of the powerful, quasi-religious order known as the Sisterhood, instructs a group of novices in the subtle art of Truthsaying, which is used to determine whether someone is being dishonest.