Black Mirror: The Entire History of You Essay

Introduction

The Entire History of You is the third episode of the first season of the series Black Mirror. The episode was written by Jesse Armstrong and was released on December 18 2011. The episode is set in the near future where technology has advanced to the point where people are fitted with implants to help them have a perfect memory of the things they see and hear and only lose the memory if they choose to delete it. The implant is called a "grain", and it is fitted in the back of the ear. The grain also allows someone to playback the recordings of their own actions and what they see and hear. This act of playing back the recordings is called a re-do. The story revolves around a young lawyer, Liam, who after attending a work appraisal, that he feels did not go as well as he had hoped, goes to a dinner party where his wife, Ffion, has been invited by some of her friends. At the dinner, Jonas, one of Ffion friends, talks about his personal life and how some times he masturbates to re-dos from earlier relationships. After the party, Liam and Ffion return home and enquires about Ffion's previous relationship with Jonas. Ffion tells Liam that she had had a relationship with Jonas that had lasted a month. Liam then plays a re-do of Ffion telling him that the relationship had lasted a week. To get the real truth, Liam goes to Jonas' house in the morning drunk to confront him. He forces him to wipe all memory of his wife and heads back home. While he was making Jonas clear any memory of his wife, he caught a glimpse of the two having sex 18 months prior. This makes Liam confront Ffion about the affair and Ffion is forced to have a re-do of the affair in the screen in their bedroom for Liam to see. From this, Liam starts to question whether their daughter Jodie is his. These facts become unbearable for Liam, who takes a razor blade and gorges the brain out of his head. In this paper, the importance of memory and how it plaid a role in the lives of the characters in the episode will be analyzed.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Importance of Memory

Without a doubt, memory is vital to the lives of human beings. It enables us remember skills that we have learned all through our lives. The memory of the skills can be recalled and used easily. An example of a skill that no one would be able to use in case we did not have memory is driving. For one to be able to drive, he not only needs to remember the road signs and the road laws but also how to actually drive a car. This shows the importance of memory in our day to day lives even though we never give it much thought.

Without memory, we would not be able to speak as it relies on the use of vocabulary and language rules from our memory. Language dictates the interaction of people and the ability of people to understand each other. This is not only the case with orthodox language but also for unusual languages like sign language and gestures. The reason why the use of these languages is understood by people is that other people remember the vocabulary. When a word is said, the recipient accesses their memory and relates the word that has been said and the meaning that they remember. Without memory, there would be little to no interaction between human beings, and we would be no better than inanimate objects.

Another importance of memory is to maintain relationships with other individuals. Relationships are based on the ability of one to remember the little details that are shared amongst the two. An example is a friend. Two people become friends because they are able to remember aspects of their behaviour that bring them together. Without memory one would not be able to know these things. Furthermore, memory enables us to know how we are related to many people. An example is one is able to talk to their father with respect because they remembered that they are related to one another and one is expected to respect their father. Without remembering, human relationships would be not only hard to maintain but also hard to start.

Maintaining law and order is also another area that relies on the use of memory. People are able to identify vices and crimes in the community because they are able to remember something similar that happened that was wrong. Courts are one place that relies a lot on the memory of the witnesses, the prosecution and the victim to make a judgment. Without memory, the victims would not know to report the culprits of a crime and the witnesses would have no recall of the incident. Furthermore, the judges and lawyers would not be able to remember the laws and even the fact that they are judges and lawyers.

One of the most important aspects of memory that often gets overlooked is the importance of forgetting. Forgetting enables us not to have a constant reminder of the bad things that happened in the past. An example of such is in trauma patients. After some time these patients forget the traumatic event that happened and even when they are reminded, they have no recall completely. This shields them from having to relive the same ordeal all throughout their lives. Although often villainized, the ability to forget is one of the most important aspects of the human brain.

Immersion in the Film

Immersion is defined as complete mental devotion to reaching a certain goal. Immersion can also be termed as obsession. There are several types of immersion showed in the film. The main is the immersion of Liam to find out the truth about Jonas and Ffion. All throughout the movie, Liam is portrayed as an obsessive guy who obsesses over the smallest thing. An example of this is when he overanalyzes every detail of the interview that he had. After the dinner party, Liam question his wife about the relationship that he had had with Jonas. One can argue that Liam becomes more intrigued by the conflicting information that Ffion had about the relationship and aims to find out the truth. He goes to Jonas' house in the morning drunk and orders him to delete all the re-dos that he had of his wife. Whilst doing this, Liam gets a glimpse of Ffion in their matrimonial bedroom in Jonas' re-do. He heads on home to confront Ffion and inquire about the paternity of his child. In the end Liam finds out the truth that he was so obsessed to find; that Ffion cheated on him and that he might not be the father of their daughter Jodie. The truth becomes so unbearable that he decides to remove the grain.

Another immersion that is evident in the episode is the immersion of the society to technology and especially to the grain. In the movie we see that majority of the population has the grain implanted in them and the few that do not have the grain are seen as strange. This is evident at the dinner party where a woman stated that she had her grain violently removed. Everyone in the table looked at her with fascination amazed by the news they just received. One of them even states that going grainless is common with hookers. This shows that people that are grainless are often regarded as people with something to hide. Another example is when the police hang up on Jonas' girlfriend because she had no grain and was not able to provide evidence of what was happening. Furthermore, after the interview Liam goes to board a plane, and he is asked to a re-do of the past week. It can only be assumed that people unable to provide re-dos are not allowed to have access to basic transportation. Even the sole fact that the police do not help someone that is in imminent danger because she does not have a grain shows how much the society in the episode is immersed in the grain technology.

Privacy Issues

One main concern with the technology in use in the movie is the privacy concerns that its use raises. The grain enables people to record all that they see no matter how private it is. The police can request for the footage, and one is expected to hand over all of the information in the grain. One concern is that the grain can be stolen by unscrupulous individuals. An example is the woman in the dinner party that confessed to not having a grain. She went on to say how she lost her grain. She said that someone stole her grain in order to watch her re-dos and fantasize to them. This breaches her privacy as someone has crucial information like her banking details and address. Another privacy concern is that people can expose to third parties what they were doing with someone else. An example of this is when Liam forces Ffion to show him a re-do of the time she had an affair with Jonas. This is a breach of the privacy of Jonas as he did not sign of on him being seen by another person.

Another privacy issue is the authorities getting entire re-dos of citizens no matter the scene. An example is when Liam goes to the airport and an entire re-do of the past week is requested. This makes him provide all his memories over even though some of them might be personal like when he is with his family. Furthermore, someone is not expected to delete memories. During the interview, the interviewer tells Liam that he hopes he they would not find any major deletions in that quarter. Liam tells them that they would not. From this scene, it is obvious that Liam was not allowed to delete memories, even some that he felt would be personal. Since he had deleted some of them, he is not very optimistic about the job as he says in the party, he was a lawyer that would soon be unemployed.

Hybrids

The fact that people and technology have combined to create a new entity that is unable to forget anything makes the resulting entity a completely new sort of hybrid human. What makes a human is the ability to make decisions and especially our memories. Our character is shaped by the memories that we have, and some of the memories that we would have had are forgotten for the betterment of the individual. Having an implant that enables one not to forget anything is transcending the part about being human. What makes a human are organic matter, and once a foreign body like a computer is introduced, then the human being is no longer there and is replaced by a hybrid. In the episode, people that once had the grain can suffer severe eyesight problems and even risk blindness once it is removed. This shows that people with the grain have grown so intertwined with the technology that one cannot separate the two without damaging one or both entities.

Escape From Reality

In the episode, people often escaped from reality by finding a more pleasant memory and focusing on it. The most prominent example is at the dinner party with Jonas. At the party, Jonas talks about how sometimes when his girlfriend has gone to bed, he remains behind watching re-dos of more enjoyable times. He tells the others that he finds himself drifting into romantic scenes that he had with previous lovers despite the fact that "there is a beautiful woman upstairs waiting to have sex with me." He says that he at times finds himself masturbating to these enjoyable scenes with previous lovers. Through re-dos, he finds a gateway to escape the reality that is his life to previous events and relationships that were more pleasurable. Despite the fact that he knows they are not his reality, he prefers to bury his head in the sand and live as though it is the reality.

Another scene where the characters are clearly trying to escape from reality is the scene where Liam and Ffion are having sex. When they are having sex, their faces are turned away from each other, and each one of them is having a re-do. We see the re-dos that they are having is previously in their relationship where they had the romance and the spark. Instead of both of them facing reality and working on their relationship in order to have the relationship that they had previously had, they would rather run off to their memories in search of the better past times. This is also the nature of the grain. The grain enables people to have a copy o...