The Entire History Of You — A Black Mirror Review
Let me take you forward to a time where you can rewind your memories whenever you like. That’s the Black Mirror episode “The Entire History Of You”. This episode searches the potential impact of screens and futuristic technology of rewinding your memory at will and projecting it on a screen on a tech angle—the storyline centres around the protagonist Liam Foxwell, an emerging young lawyer.
The Interview
The opening scene shows a job interview. Liam is the one who’s getting interviewed by three corporate giants. Liam is asked if he’s okay with some of the company’s policies which may be unethical to outsiders. He agrees with the company management on that, which gives a plus point to him in the interview. At the end of the interview, one of the interviewers clues him in, saying, “Look, really hope to ….. look forward to seeing you again”.
While getting in the taxi going home, Liam backtracks his memory of the interview, playing the verse “Look, really hope to ….. look forward to seeing you again”. over and over on a digital screen which seems like an iPod, checking whether he’s got the job or not based on the exact words that came spurting out of the interviewer. He does this rewinding by a piece of equipment that connects to an implant in his head known as the “grain”.
Apparently, in this futuristic society, almost all the citizens have done this surgery to implement this computerised “grain” inside their skull. Throughout this episode, it shows the pros and cons, the ethical issues of this revolutionary technology. Playing back, which is known as “re-doing”, is going down memory lane.
The Dinner Party
Starting as an orderly dinner party with friends and family, it gradually descends into chaos, not physically but inside the mind of Liam. As Liam enters the dinner party, his wife “Fi”, who already is there, welcomes him. We can scrutinise a stranger named “Jonas”, who seems exceptionally cordial with Liam’s wife, Ffion. Jonas says he loves to go back to memories of his previous relationships through the grain and enjoys watching them for his gratification. Liam’s wife cracks, laughing at Jonas's joke, which seems rather unfunny to everyone at the dinner table except for Fi. After the party, everyone goes back to their households, but Jonas comes with Liam and Fi. Liam despises Jonas’s company, so he politely says they have their babysitter inside their home and blatantly implies that Jonas shouldn’t come with them.
Home sweet home
Liam arrives home and starts accusing that there’s a relationship between Jonas and Fi. He replays the entire dinner party and starts detecting exciting observations. For one, his wife’s facial expressions seem extremely joyful talking with Jonas, but once Liam enters the dinner party, her face seems to go blank. And at the dinner table, Jonas says, “ I’m staying faithful to my cornflakes right now”. As I mentioned earlier only, Fi laughs at this joke. Liam starts getting obsessed with this idea of infidelity and starts drinking from midnight till the next day morning. And he asks their babysitter if that joke made by Jonas is humorous.
Home invasion
The crazed and obsessed Liam gets in his car and drives it to Jonas’s apartment. First, he tries to talk friendly, but suddenly he lashes out at Jonas and tries to hit Jonas while trying to kill him with a broken glass liquor bottle. He threatens and demands Jonas to show all the memories of Fi currently under his memorial possession and delete them in front of Liam. For a brief moment, the memories between Jonas and Fi are displayed on a screen, then Jonas deletes them. Liam goes back to his house confronting his wife and shows a shot from Jonas’s memory interface that is seemingly 18 months ago. In that picture, a particular painting can be recognised as the painting hanging in their bedroom , implying that Fi had a sexual relationship with Jonas inside Liam’s own home 18 months ago. This leaves Liam shattered with unsureness whether his baby is his or Jonas’s. This results in a breakup in the marriage resulting in Liam forcing Fi to leave his house.
All Alone
The final shots show Liam bustling rooms in his house, and through the grain, he revisits memories attached to those places. He can see all the memories related to those rooms as bright as day, all the happy memories he spent with Fi. In another shot, it is shown that in reality, Fi has left, and Liam is left alone in the house with the overflowing memories literally. Not being able to endure all those memories which are crashing down in his head, Liam takes shrapnel and cuts open the area near his ear and removes the grain once and for all.
Revolutionary tech idea
This episode explores the relationship between social constructs, technology, memories and infidelity. In The Entire History Of You, we’re introduced to a highly intimate form of technology yet seen — a miniature computer attached to the behind of the ear, silently recording our memories like history itself. These memories can then be searched and re-inspected like video clips on an iPod; anything we’ve ever experienced can be called up and watched again and again. Given that nowadays, people love to share their entire life experience on social media like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, this technology of recording memories isn’t too much of a stretch that is very much plausible soon. People crave attention and show society that they are having a fantastic time. This demand is catered by all the social media companies in the world right now. Even though this technology can bring one significant advantage like recalling valuable data in the past to make the future a better one — for example, remembering the parking lot position of your car when you are on a shopping spree, and the location escapes your mind— it encompasses darker and murky consequences of memory recall. Even though people think that the natural process of fading memories is a disadvantage, it is not a bad thing. In the final scenes in this episode, the grim reflections and terrible consequences of this technology are shown. No matter how the technology has evolved, it doesn’t matter if it makes neuritic cracks in the human mind, ruining his relationships with society. So it makes it crystal clear about the importance of ethics that should be addressed when developing new technology.
