Black Mirror: Allegories for the Atomised

by Greg Singh

Overview

Black Mirror: Allegories for the Atomised addresses the ways that media and communications technologies shape our relationships with society, with others, and ultimately, with ourselves.

The main themes and discussions of this book are inspired by the imaginative storytelling and self-reflecting, wry, textual strategies and representations found in the Channel 4/Netflix global hit, Black Mirror – a key touchstone in popular culture. Moving beyond the conventional parameters of Television Studies scholarship, this book takes an interdisciplinary approach informed through depth- and Self-psychology, Science Fiction Studies, Science and Technology Studies, communitarian ethics, and the Philosophy of Technology. Greg Singh conducts a critical inquiry into those aspects of memory, identity, surveillance, simulation, and gamification prevalent in the series, which shape our reality and call into question our assumed notions of personhood.

This unique interdisciplinary examination of the cult series will appeal to scholars, students, and fans alike in the fields of film and television studies, philosophy, depth, and humanistic psychology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138288119
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/30/2025
Series:	Routledge Focus on Analytical Psychology
Pages:	150
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Greg Singh is Professor in Media and Society, and Programme Director for Digital Media, based in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Stirling, UK. He is author of Film After Jung: Post-Jungian Approaches to Film Theory (Routledge, 2009); Feeling Film: Affect and Authenticity in Popular Cinema (Routledge, 2014); and The Death of Web 2.0: Ethics, Connectivity, and Recognition in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2019).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Themes and Concerns in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror (Ch4/Netflix, 2011–present)

1. Memory, Identity, and Personhood 

2. Surveillance, Control, and Satisfaction 

3. Simulation, Labour, and Gamification  

Conclusion: “It Feels a Bit Like an Episode of Black Mirror” 

Bibliography 

Index

Editorial Reviews

'Black Mirror: Allegories for the Atomised is a brilliant exploration of the shifting relations between culture, technology institutions and our identity. While keeping the television series centre stage, Singh eloquently unravels the complexities of the changing power dynamics in our technologically mediated era. In so doing he illuminates how Black Mirror prompts further consideration of ourselves and our agency in the post-digital age.  This is cutting edge cultural criticism whose publication could not be more timely.'

Luke Hockley PHd, Emeritus Professor, University of Bedfordshire, and Honorary Professor, University of Essex 

 'For all its science-fictional trappings, Black Mirror’s morbid realism is very precisely about the here-and-now, the years after we kind of gave up and drifted into somehow pretending that all this [*gestures*] was the least bad of all possible worlds. Brooker’s show and Singh’s smart little book take us on a guided tour of identity identity, memory, desire and affect in our technologically-saturated, totally surveilled and utterly insidious dystopia. Read it and weep.'

Mark Bould, Professor of Film and Literature, University of the West of England

 

From the Publisher