Netflix’s Black Mirror: “Black Museum”

As this episode progresses you can really see the way that the futurism of Black Mirror in general coupled with the episodes use of neurotechnology, works to represent the way our society enslave and dehumanize people of color.  The episode opens up with a girl named Nish, who we later find out is there to get vengeance for her father – a convicted murderer – who was tricked by the museum owner (Rolo Haynes) into giving up his digital consciousness post-execution in exchange for money for his family. What we soon find out is that Haynes’ only motivation for keeping Clayton’s consciousness improsioned is so that he can profit from his enslavement, as people pay to see him suffering on the other side of this glass screen.  Although the entire “Black Museum” itself is filled with futuristic/Black mirror elements, the aspect of an entrapped Clayton seems to  mirror the prison industrial complex which profits from the disproportionate incarceration of Black people. The episode ends with Nish freeing her father’s consciousness and replacing it with the consciousness of Haynes, all while doing so with the disembodied consciousness of her mother inside her own head – creating a sort of Afrofuturistic aspect of Black female liberation and power that spans between generations.