Beyond the Black Mirror: The Mythology of the Future in Modern British Fantasy Series

Linchenko Andrei Aleksandrovich ORCID: 0000-0001-6242-8844 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor, Researcher, Lipetsk Branch of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation; Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy, Lipetsk State Technical University. 398002, Russia, Lipetsk region, Lipetsk, Tereshkova str., 17, sq. 104 linchenko1@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Prepared with the support of RFBR grant No. 20-011-00297The topic of the future in culture is not only the "horizon of expectations", which R. Kozellek wrote about, but also various ways and strategies of forecasting.

Addressing the topic of the future is no less a practice of cultural orientation in time, a kind of way of forming a collective sense of time and understanding the current temporal situation. It is important to emphasize that cultural orientation in time goes far beyond the limits of scientific reflection on time and its modes, turning out to be the full "work" of the whole culture. A special role in this regard is acquired by cinema, which has not accidentally received the status of "temporal art" since its foundation. In our article, we will focus on a modern science fiction series, the important role of which is connected not only with the very orientation of such a series on the mode of the future, but also with the specifics of the temporality of a modern series that creates a different sense of time than in fiction or documentary films ^{[1, 2, 3]}.  

The series "Black Mirror" (Charlie Brooker, Channel 4, Netflix, 2011-2019) can rightfully be called one of the most notable fantastic TV projects of recent years, the genre of which can be defined as science fiction, dystopia, and as a drama and thriller with elements of satire. This series, which has collected many awards, could not but remain unnoticed in the Russian and foreign scientific community. At the same time, the attention of researchers in different years has been attracted by both general philosophical issues of interpretation of the series ^{[4, 5, 6]} and the study of individual problems of society in the future ^{[7, 8, 9]}. No less controversial are the moral issues raised in the work of Charlie Brooker ^[10]. A separate monograph abroad was also devoted to the analysis of the series in the focus of modern critical media theory ^[11]. At the same time, revealing various aspects of the futuristic relationship between man and technology, the researchers paid less attention to the problem of representation in the series of the future itself and its modalities, as well as the temporal situation behind it. Curious conclusions regarding the topic of interest to us are found only in a few foreign articles. Thus, in his work, Kim Jin, analyzing the appeal to the processes of algorithmization of friendships, artificial memory and gamification of social practices, emphasizes the duality of the series. The article notes that on the one hand, the series criticizes the digital technologies of the future, and on the other hand, the series invites the viewer to "accept" these technologies to a greater extent, "normalizing" them ^{[12, p.110]}. In another article, the features of time are analyzed within the framework of the multiplicity of spaces of the event life of the heroes of the series, where virtual spaces and their forms of temporality are becoming more and more independent from the topos of real life and even compete with them ^[13]. We fully agree with the point of view of foreign authors linking images of a fragmented future with individual technologies ^{[14, p.17]}. At the same time, the discursive space of the series, despite the difference in the technologies themselves reflected in it, still allows us to talk about more general types of modality of the future, which we would like to analyze in this article.     

It would be a simplification to talk about the representation of the future in the series, as if it were another scientific model or forecast. It would also not be an exaggeration to say that the representation of time in cinema is more of a kind of social mythology, created not only for commercial gain, but also, in our opinion, acting as an instrument of cultural orientation in time. Elements of such orientation can be both postmodern irony and satire, and metamodern sensuality, appealing to responsibility and sincerity. In this regard, the purpose of this article is to analyze the features of the mythology of the future and its modalities in the series "Black Mirror" as a tool of cultural orientation in the modern temporal situation at the junction of postmodern and metamodern discourses. Such a statement of the subject and the main purpose of the article required us to address the specifics of the modern temporal situation and current strategies for shaping the image of the future in modern culture. The next step was related to the analysis of how much these strategies were in demand in the "Black Mirror" as a vivid example of a new series combining postmodern and metamodern trends in the cultural articulation of images of the time. Then, using the example of three selected episodes of the series, the author turns to the very specifics of the mythology of the future and its modalities as ways of cultural orientation in modern social time and space.         

The image of the future in a modern temporal situationSumming up the long-term discussions in the field of interpretation of the modern temporal situation, Aleida Assman points out to us the fact of breaking the connection of all modes of time: past, present and future.

The temporal regime of modernity has been destroyed, which is associated with the growing influence of the present on the future and the past. At the same time, she notes that "the severed connection of the past, present and future cannot simply be restored, they have to be connected anew. To do this, it is necessary to redefine the content of the concepts of "past", "present" and "future", which is the task not of individual specialists in the theory of time, but of society as a whole" ^{[15, p. 255]}. A. Assman discusses on the pages of his book the well-known phenomenon of presentism as a new regime of historicity of the modern era. And here it is based on the arguments of Francois Artaug ^[16], who, characterizing presentism, wrote that modern society makes the present the object of worship. In this regard , the work of F. Artoga echoes the research of David Lowenthal, who offers us another interpretation of presentism. The main thesis of D. Lowenthal's book is a detailed confirmation of the fact that modern culture is engaged in the appropriation of the "past", turning it into a "heritage" that is preserved and adaptable to modern needs. In his interpretation, inheritance turns out to be a "secondary cultivation", a form of its reintegration into the modern social context. The past is a "foreign country" for the author, but as a "legacy" it turns out to be "quite familiar and familiar" ^{[17, p. 7]}.

Similar ideas are voiced by Herman Lubbe, who conducts an impressive diagnosis of modern historical culture and shows various forms of presentation in it. He reduces these forms of presentism to seven basic concepts. The first of them is "preception" – anticipating the idea of contemporaries about what future generations will be interested in in their own history and reflected in the relevant practices of such anticipation. The second is the "reduction of the present." If earlier, "the present as a period of time marked by the constancy of important cultural and historical elements, extended for more than a millennium and a half. The space of experience was very vast, and the horizon of the future corresponded to it in width and content," then "in a dynamic civilization, a lot of its elements are growing, still belonging to the present and yet firmly related to yesterday or the day before yesterday" ^{[18, p. 96]}. The third concept is "expansion of the future". It means that in a situation of a sharp reduction in the present, the future is coming faster, but it turns out to be less predictable, generating the need for constant monitoring of working time, as well as leisure and leisure time. The fourth concept is "the growth of a multitude of relics" – an increase in the number of socio-cultural elements that, due to the intensification of changes, lose their original functions and become part of the museum heritage: "civilizational dynamics is accompanied by the progressive museification of our civilization" ^{[18, p. 96]}. The fifth concept in G. Lubbe's dictionary is "evolutionary illaminarity". It points to the impossibility of understanding the unidirectional movement of the historical process, calls for taking into account the fact that with the dynamics of modern civilization, its multidirection increases. Another sixth concept is "network concentration". It describes the fact of increasing social and economic interdependence of individuals, regions and institutions. However, the phenomenon of cultural extraterritorial homogenization generated by this fact in relation to access to goods and information causes a desire to preserve and actualize the features of local elements and their versions of the past. And finally, a German researcher writes about "empirical apocalypticism" - a modern form of waiting for the end of the world, based on scientifically-based forecasts of the consequences of nuclear war, climate change, etc. On the pages of his book, he does not tire of emphasizing that in our "dynamic civilization" it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict the future, and it itself serves as a source of risks, alarming expectations. These thoughts are successfully complemented by the Russian scientist Andrey Oleinikov, who points out that modern interpretations of the future are becoming "another name for the designation of contingent." He notes that the current understanding of the future "either goes beyond the framework of the modern "regime of historicity" concerned exclusively with the present, or reveals its extreme hostility towards it, forcing it to recognize its randomness and variability <...> the future acts in the present itself, undermining it from within" ^{[19, p.58]}.

Another important marker of the modern temporal situation is the recognition of the fact of the multiplicity of times in culture, as well as the divergence of temporal regimes. These theses are primarily related to the criticism of the concept of "modernity" in the works of Peter Osborne and Berber Bevernage, who indicate the preference for using the concept of "fiction of modernity", referring to the idea of "a living disparate unity of many times." In this case, modernity turns out to be "co-temporality" and is based "not on a simple unification" in "time, but on the unification of times" ^{[20, p.15-36]}. Hence, as B. Bevernage shows, allocronism results – the denial of equality in time between cultures: "phenomena that are associated with the past among representatives of a certain class or cultural group in a certain region of the world may well be perceived as modern by other classes and groups" ^{[21, p.83]}.

Leaving aside the issues of political settlement and synchronization of various temporalities in the projects of B. Bevernage, D. Fabian and P. Osborne, we will focus our attention on the consequences that the interpretations of the future receive in this situation.

Firstly, the fact of the multiplicity of tenses indicates a similar situation with the future, the multiplicity of modalities of which is quite clearly visible in the situation of asynchronous time rhythms of the present. In this regard, the conclusions of the Russian researcher Vasily Syrov, who suggests talking about the non-linearity of the past as a series of historical breaks and the corresponding indeterministic interpretation of the future, seem important ^{[22, p. 117]}. He emphasizes that "in the light of the idea of heterogeneity of time, and hence the denial of unification of the past and present, not all time lines and not for all should be considered completed" ^{[22, p.119]}.

Secondly, the widespread opinion in the literature about the instability and mobility of boundaries between time modes clearly indicates the role of the socio-cultural context of constructing these boundaries, which was well noticed by researchers Chris Lorenz and Marek Tamm. They believe that the modes of time should be considered as forms of social action and in connection with the projects of specific social actors ^{[23, p. 511]}. No less interesting are the studies of Russian scientists pointing to the importance of the world of objects in constructing the boundaries of modern temporality ^[24].

Thirdly, the future is presented today not so much as a smooth transition to new social forms, but as a discourse of "overcoming" the present on the way to a widely understood situation of "future" ^{[25; 26]}. So, in his recently published book "Goodbye, Capitalism", Jerome Bache suggests that we "rediscover the future": "And this is possible only on condition that if it is endowed with a new way of existence and a new regime of the future is developed. We have to avoid the eternal present, characteristic of postmodern capitalism, which grinds all alternatives and condemns us to a neoliberal "NO FUTURE" as heavy as a millstone, but nevertheless we must break with the prepared future of modernism, built on confidence in progress and faith in the inevitable coming of a radiant tomorrow. The future must be accepted in all its uncertainty and unpredictability, but at the same time it does not become less conceivable and less imaginable in its very openness, full of threats and hopes" [Cit. according to: 19, p.67].   

A peculiar reaction to such interpretations of the future was not so much the desire to distance oneself from the interpretation of the future, as to turn the conversation into a plan for classifying the main strategies of its interpretation related to the analysis of institutions and practices of the manifestation of the future in the present. We find a similar train of thought in the book by John Urry, who separately dwelt on the methods of shaping the future that are important for our subsequent research: a) extracting lessons from previous concepts of the future; b) "failed" future options; c) forecasting dystopias; d) producing new utopias; e) extrapolating; f) developing scenarios ^[27]. In our opinion, some of these methods could be especially relevant for understanding the functional component of the series "Black Mirror" as a tool of cultural orientation in social time and space.   

The series "Black Mirror": between postmodern satire and metamodern dystopia The series "Black Mirror" consists of five television seasons united by a common theme of human transformation and human relations in the context of the development of individual technologies.

At the same time, each episode is in no way connected with the previous ones and is a separate episode. As Evan Kindley emphasizes, dystopias are always a "difficult genre" for television, since they rarely "end well" ^{[28, p.45]}. It is not surprising in this regard that Charlie Brooker chooses this format, which has already shown its effectiveness in the Twilight Zone series, which aired on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The comparative analysis of the two series has repeatedly become the subject of research ^{[4, 10, 11]}. Without dwelling in detail on this aspect, we will only point out an important remark about the generational aspect of studying the two series: "if the Twilight Zone reflected the existential fears and fears of the Cold War of the baby boomer generation, then the Black Mirror expresses the philosophical fears and technological fears of millennials of the twenty-first century" ^{[11, p.8]}. A comparative analysis of the two series also allowed researchers to identify a number of "cross-cutting" topics: a) human identity and authenticity in the context of new technologies; b) culture of supervision; c) society of the spectacle and hyperreality; d) alienation and loneliness; e) technology and existence; f) dystopian future.  

          In our article we will consider the series "Black Mirror" as both a postmodern and a metamodern project. As is known, Frederick Jamieson, describing postmodernism as a process of "spatialization" of culture, primarily associated it in art with the loss of historicity, affect and depth ^[29]. The loss of historicity seemed to him a crisis of historical thinking, the prevalence of space over time. In other words, it was about a series of sensations "sliding on the surface" and representing a large number of "split" versions of the present. Thus, in his chapter with the characteristic title "Nostalgia for the Present", analyzing the novels of F.K. Dick, F. Jamieson shows that both the image of the past (historical novels) and the image of the future (science fiction) turn out to be peculiar ways of "blocking" historicity, turning into "realism", "into a frank representation of the present" ^{[29, p.565]}. At the same time, such "splitting", according to Parry Anderson, turns out to be the dominance of schizophrenia as a way of perceiving the world: "... mental life becomes chaotic and convulsive, subject to sudden mood swings somewhat resembling schizophrenic splitting" ^{[30, p. 76]}. As a consequence, there are two more processes: the attenuation of affect and the disappearance of depth. The first is a designation of the superficiality of the postmodern view of the world, which has become a "set of texts and simulacra" ^{[29, p.99]}, and the second is a situation of the loss of the "surface" of an artistic work to represent certain fundamental processes and attitudes to the underlying reality, "soil" ^{[29, p.94]}. All these signs of a postmodern vision are quite clearly visible in various episodes of the series. Firstly, the series is a total extrapolation of the present, when the situation of the present is transferred to the future (which is thought linearly as John Urry described it in his book) ^{[27, p.147]}. This extrapolation in the series takes the features of hyperbolization of the present and its forms. It is significant that most of the described technologies of the series are technologies of our present, which have received some improvement and consequently change social relations.  Secondly, it would not be an exaggeration to say that one of the dominant attitudes in the series is the attitude to shock the public, when the assessment of the consequences of the impact of technology on human relations is deliberately radicalized. In this sense, it is worth fully agreeing with the opinion of the influential British newspaper The Guardian, on the pages of which the recently appeared fifth season was described as "sweet, sadistic and extremely impressive" ^[31]. We emphasize that the opinion about the "sadistic" orientation of the series has been voiced more than once in scientific research: "The Black Mirror series is constantly provocative and clever, but it is spoiled by a certain sadism. Brooker enjoys torturing his characters and sometimes the audience" ^{[28, p.45]}. Thirdly, the series was originally conceived by Charlie Brooker himself as a critical satire on the lifestyle in modern consumer society ^[32]. In this regard, despite the large number of dramatic moments, the series is ironic about the future of humanity. Indicative in this case is the absence of a general atmosphere of catastrophism of what is happening, which can be easily seen in numerous dystopias of the past. The heroes of the series simply live their lives, finding themselves in situations that smart technologies create for them, and often joke about them.

         At the same time, it would be wrong to consider the series only as a postmodern project. This is due to the trends that appeared in art and cultural life at the beginning of the XXI century, which received the name of metamodernism from the light hand of Robin van den Acker and Timotheus Vermeulen. Russian researcher Alexander Pavlov rightly believes that "metamodernism is always a fluctuation (oscillation) between the irony of postmodernity and the sincerity of modernity" ^{[33, p.15]}. According to him, it is still difficult to call metamodernism a philosophy, but nevertheless we can talk about a "strongly updated" theory of culture and an aesthetic concept reflecting a new structure of feeling (post-irony), most noticeable in cinema and literature. Foreign theorists of metamodernism themselves do not tire of repeating that it does not replace postmodernism, but rather develops alongside it ^{[34, p.63]}. The fundamental intention of metamodernism in this case is not irony over anything, but experiencing the situation together with the characters. In the language of Luke Turner's Metamodernism Manifesto, one could briefly characterize metamodernism as a synthesis of enlightened naivety, pragmatic idealism and moderate fanaticism, oscillating "between irony and sincerity, construction and deconstruction, apathy and attraction." This is exactly what the main work of the metamodernism theorists, published in Russian in 2022, shows, and rehabilitates historicity, affect and depth in different contexts ^[34].

         Taking into account the above, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the "Black Mirror" is also a metamodern project. Firstly, this is indicated by the very representation of the future in the series. Despite significant skepticism about the future, which clearly follows from the finale of most of the series, the series leaves the future "plastic". In this case, we are talking precisely about the metamodern plasticity of time, when the past and the future do not assume an infinite series of forms, but represent "limited flexibility" ^{[34, p.127]}.  In our case, this manifests itself in the future as a limited set of opportunities that the series offers to the viewer. An example of this is the episodes "San Junipero" and "Hang the DJ". In the first case, the future gives us access to the world of virtual self-disclosure of disabled and elderly people. In the second case, human feelings are stronger than artificial intelligence, acting as an electronic adviser in the search for a potential spouse. Secondly, the series "Black Mirror" and its characters fully refer to the understanding of the metamodern affect, which Alison Gibbons says: "the metamodern affect is situational; it is both ironic and sincere, skeptical and outspoken, solipsistic and striving for connections with others. But first of all it is empirical" ^{[34, p.314]}. We are talking about a situational model of subjectivity, shifted from central positions and finding itself in living experience. It is characteristic that the characters of the series are not fatalists, but find a new reality in everyday situations and with an unusual enthusiasm for dystopias. Interaction with the technologies of the future for them is primarily a bodily experience. Thirdly, in addition to criticizing technologies and the lifestyle changing under their influence, the series contributes to the "normalization" of our attitude to the coming society ^{[12, p.110]}. However, it would be a mistake to think that such "normalization" is a simple acceptance of a new reality. Rather, we are talking about an attempt by the series to once again update the topic of personal responsibility for the use of advanced technologies.

         A sense of sincerity and a sense of responsibility, characteristic of the metamodern reading of some works of modern cinema, allow us to raise the question of the series "Black Mirror" not only as a commercial project, but also as an instrument of cultural orientation in a modern temporal situation. In the German dictionary of philosophical concepts, the verb "orient" is interpreted in four meanings: "1. Movement or gaze in order to determine the direction; 2. (for oneself or for others) to seek direction; 3. To inform, teach; 4. To coordinate with the program (e.g. in politics)" ^{[35, s.479]}. The need to highlight cultural orientation is indicated in their works by Jorn Ryzen ^[36] and Werner Stegmaier ^[37]. The latter in his book highlights the universal structures of orientation and gives an impressive classification of forms and types of social orientation, traces their influence on the processes of collective and personal identification. The connection between ethical orientation and responsibility is pointed out by Russian researchers, who note that "the question of responsibility should be posed as follows: what functional system, to what extent an individual person is integrated and engaged, and what ideas about norms guide him at the same time" ^{[38, p.17]}.

         The most important task of cinema as an instrument of cultural orientation in time is the representation of the current temporal situation and the formation of a new sense of time (accelerating, slowing down, splitting, multidirectional, etc.). It would not be an exaggeration to note that due to the specifics of cinema itself as an art form, one of the main ways of forming cultural orientation is a myth. And here we will start from the interpretation of the myth in the works of Roland Barthes, who noted that "... the myth is a communicative system, a message. Hence it is clear that it can be neither a thing, nor a concept or an idea: this is a form, a way of designating... the myth hides nothing and demonstrates nothing – it deforms; its tactics are neither true nor false, but a deviation" ^{[39, p.289]}. Another important aspect of modern mythology, noticed by R. Barth, is the understanding of its discursive nature. The modern myth is no longer a collection of big stories explaining the world, but just a discourse, a corpus of phrases, a set of stereotypes that do not always fit even into the narrative as such. Sergey Zenkin, the translator of Roland Barthes' works into Russian, points out another important feature, subtly noticed by the French thinker: "Modern myths serve not to resolve, not to eliminate contradictions, but to "naturalize" them, "neutralize" and justify them; remaining primarily a nominal discourse, not a verbal one" ^{[40, p.19]}. In our case, this means that cultural orientation in time does not necessarily have to be identical with rationalization. Similar thoughts are found in the work of the Italian researcher Chiarra Bottici. She believes that the meaning of modern myths is to provide answers to fundamental human needs. These myths not only give things meaning, but also give them significance ^{[41, p.124]}. Moreover, she suggests to see in social mythology, which she considers on the example of a political myth, a communicative process, defining it as work on a common narrative that attaches importance to political conditions and the experience of a social group. From this point of view, we can see not only how the myth is "produced", but also how it is perceived. For us, this means that the series "Black Mirror" not only scares and shocks, but also seeks to "normalize" relations with the multimodality and multidimensionality of the future.

         The mythology of the future presented in the series "Black Mirror" primarily represents the situation of the multiplicity of modalities of the future. However, this series of modalities is not infinite. From the point of view of the function of cultural orientation, we could distinguish the following modes of the future: the future has come, the future is in the present, the future is coming. It is within these modalities that we will see images of a fragmented and situational future associated with the moment of meeting a particular person and a particular technology, as well as the very situation of acceptance/overcoming of the future by a person.

         The discursive nature of modern social mythology actualizes the methodological significance of critical discourse analysis, which continues to be an effective methodology for analyzing and interpreting the mythology of modern TV series, which we tried to show in our recent work ^[42]. As in our previous work, we started from the methodology of Siegfried Yeager. The German theorist uses the definition of discourse given by Jurgen Link, noting that discourse is "an institutionally consolidated language that defines the structure of social actions and, thereby, influences the relations of power in society" ^{[43, p. 34]}. The main objective of this method is to analyze typical textual and figurative-symbolic fragments (fragments of discourses), represented in the symbolic space of a communication message and containing various types of references to the same topic. As Z. himself writes . Yeager, this general theme acts as a kind of discursive strand ^{[43, p.38]}. In our case, the above-mentioned modalities of the future are such discursive threads. Methodology of Z. Yeager and F. Mayer assumes a structural analysis that allows you to identify the main topics, their headings and subheadings, elements of the transmitted structural values of each block of information, as well as elements of the values transmitted in the series not directly. Further, the series is analyzed within the framework of rhetorical means and relevant information messages (types and forms of argumentation and argumentative strategies, logic and composition, implications and insinuations, collective symbolism and metaphors in language). The final procedure is the comparison of the studied information sources, the identification of ideological influences and the selection of typical fragments of discourse that make up the discursive thread. We have chosen three episodes from the first three seasons as sources for our analysis.

Nosedive: The future has comeThe series "Nosedive" (translated from English.

"Dive") is included in the third season and is dedicated to an episode from the life of an English girl Lacey, who works in an office and lives with her brother. Lacey longs to move to a more spacious apartment and dreams of a relationship with men. The society in which Lacey lives embodies a new form of social order, where a person's behavior is regulated by his social rating, available for viewing by others. A high rating implies great career, financial, cultural and even transport opportunities. Lacey is struggling to increase her rating and counts on her participation in the wedding of her childhood friend – beauty Naomi. Lacey's brother, who spends all his time in Internet games, is skeptical about Lacey's desire to link his life projects with a high rating. Lacey is preparing a wedding speech, but gets into a series of unpleasant events that reduce her rating several times. Her friend Naomi forbids her to participate in the wedding on this basis, but Lacey still comes to her in a state of strong alcoholic intoxication and eventually ends up in prison.

The structural analysis of this series allowed us to identify three main semantic blocks reflecting the intention of Charlie Brooker. The first semantic block is a set of episodes that draw us a harmonious society of the near future (the world of cozy cottages, cafes, electric cars and hypertrophied politeness). Lacey and others exchange likes, which increase their social rating. It is significant that the eye of each of them sees his interlocutor in the context of information about his current rating. Lacey receives an invitation from Naomi to the wedding and negotiates a new home, which is unavailable to her due to the lack of several numbers in her rating. The culmination of the first semantic block turns out to be an argument with his brother, who tries to prove to Lacey before leaving that the rating does not mean anything. The next semantic block is connected with Lacey's journey to the wedding venue, when a series of unpleasant events reduces her rating to a minimum value. The series shows how the decline in the rating gradually closes for Lacey not only human contacts, but also opportunities to use convenient transport (plane, train, carsharing). The culmination of the second semantic block is a conversation with an elderly lady, a truck driver, who tells her about her way of giving up social rating. This climax triggers Lacey's rethinking of her current state. The third semantic block is connected with the finale of Lacey's mental transformation, when, despite Naomi's refusal, she arrives at her wedding full of guests with a high social rating and delivers a completely different speech full of descriptions of suffering in her childhood and deceptions on Naomi's part. The culmination of this block turns out to be Lacey's prison cell, where she rethinks her situation and allows herself an obscene altercation with a neighbor. A number of meanings that are not directly affected by the series pass through all three blocks (gender issues, loneliness, rental housing).

The analysis of rhetorical means shows an increase in the number of obscene statements as the semantic line of the series develops, which allows us to see the process of transformation of Lacey's behavior as a process of internal emancipation. That is why the finale of the series, despite the negative fact of prison, turns out to be a kind of culmination of this emancipation. In the series, there is a significant contrast between the inhumane social rating, dressed in stylish clothes of the characters and the untidy clothes of the brother of the main character and an elderly lady truck driver, indicating to Lacey the possibility of freedom from social rating and treating her like a human being. This contrast is maintained by director Charlie Brooker in relation to the theme of the apartment, which Lacey's dreams are connected with. Cozy cottages of the world of social rating contrast with the finale of the series, where Lacey's emancipation takes place in a cell, which turns out to be the freest place for her on Earth.

The central symbols of the painting, passing through all the semantic blocks, are Lacey's children's toy – a rag doll that Naomi once helped her make and the text of Lacey's wedding speech itself. It is significant that these symbols indicate both an ironic attitude to the topic of friendship through the prism of social rating, and indicate the topic of sincerity that exists in addition to the rating. It is the placement of a photo of a child's toy in social networks that helps to restore friendly relations between Lacey and Naomi at the beginning of the film, and at the same time Lacey deliberately posts a picture of the toy in order to get the maximum number of points in the social rating. The bridesmaid's speech that Lacey is supposed to deliver also changes. If at the beginning of the film she is full of pathos and emotional attachment, then at the end it is a speech of despair, where she fully expresses her contradictory feelings for Naomi.

Foreign colleagues quite rightly believe that the main ideological message of the series is the criticism of the social credit system (Zhima), which has become widespread in China in recent years ^{[12, p.116]}. We also agree with Matt Hills, who notes that the series contains implicit criticism of American IT corporations that are improving Internet control practices every year ^{[44, p.114]}.  In this regard, it is reasonable to ask a question about the model of the future that this series represents. And here we can switch our attention to the main discursive thread of this series. The series "Dive" shows us a picture of the very near future, in relation to which we can say with full confidence that it has already come (the future has come). This is the future that is already with us now, because it has already actually taken place and lives with us in the present. The time in which Lacey and her entourage live is marked as the very near future, which corresponds to the main idea of the anthology.  

The Entire History of You: The Future of the PresentThe series "The Entire History of You" (translated from English.

"Your whole story") appears before the audience in the first season and is devoted to the history of the crisis of relations in one single British family. The action takes place in the very near future in the English province, where Liam and Fiona live, as well as their young daughter. Almost all residents of the country have built-in implants that allow them to repeatedly scroll through memories and share them with each other. This contributes to the disintegration of the family in the film. In the course of a number of situations, Liam accuses his wife of infidelity, comes into conflict with her lover, Jonas, and eventually loses his family. 

 Unlike the previous series, where we had to independently identify semantic blocks, in this series Charlie Brooker himself divides the picture into four parts, with which we will correlate the main semantic blocks of the film. The first semantic block is associated with the beginning of a crisis in family relations due to the frivolous behavior of Liam's wife with Jonas at a party, which contributed to the growth of jealousy on the part of Liam. This jealousy comes to him later, when he constantly scrolls through the memories and revisits them again. The second semantic block depicts the unfolding of a family drama, when during the day Liam, drinking a large amount of alcohol, continues to reproduce memories and analyzes subtle details of the behavior of his wife at a party. The third semantic block is connected with the expansion of the family crisis, which affects other characters – Jonas and the nanny of the family. In front of the nanny, a drunk Liam finds out his relationship with Fiona. In the course of repeated flashbacks, he discovers that in his absence Fiona meets with Jonas, goes to him and forces him to erase all of Jonas' personal memories of Fiona under threat of reprisal. The culmination is the fourth semantic block. After receiving some of Jonas' memories, Liam finds out that he is not the father of his child. Liam forces his wife to restore and demonstrate these memories, which lead to a break in the family. The final scenes of the film show an empty house and a lonely Liam, who constantly reproduces the happy moments of family life in his memory. Realizing the futility of such a development, Liam rips the implant out of his neck. One of the topics that the film does not directly raise is the topic of the privacy of memories. So, Liam faces two situations in the series that call into question a person's right to privacy of personal memories. In the first case, by participating in employment negotiations, he agrees to have his personal memory scanned by the company for the last year. In the second case, he is forced to allow the scanning of his memory for the past week by airport security officers, who thus exclude air terrorism.

The analysis of rhetorical means shows that the intensification of Liam's verbal aggression and the unfolding of family drama is always accompanied by an appeal to artificially preserved memories. It is significant that step by step, convicting his spouse of infidelity, Liam does this by referring to the reproduced memories. Individual fragments of these memories are processed and enlarged. This brings both success in the investigation, but at the same time increases the conflict.

The central symbolic meaning in the series is acquired by the artificial memory control device, which appears on the screen in almost all episodes in each semantic block. It is the ability to reproduce absolutely all memories in each semantic block that turns out to be a catalyst for destructive processes and deviant behavior. It is indicative of the fact that the amount of time that the characters of the series spend in the space of artificial memory is not inferior to the time spent in real communication with other people or household members. It is no coincidence that foreign researchers have repeatedly written about "memory overdose" in relation to this series ^{[45, p.63; 12, p.112]}. Nevertheless, Liam's family drama ends with his renewal, as he decides to remove the chip and thereby proves to be stronger than artificial memory. This clearly indicates the dominance of the theme of the search for sincerity in relation to technology and the ability of a person to overcome them.

It is not difficult to notice that the main ideological background of the series is the criticism of the theme of the "memory boom" in modern historical culture. In this case, we are talking about criticism of life-logging, and criticism of Google Corporation, which today offers new ways of storing audio-visual information. Equally important in this regard is the criticism of the problems with the privacy of personal data in the context of the transition from organic to digital memory. And here we fully share the opinion of colleagues ^[45] who analyze the series in the context of research by Andrew Hoskins ^[46], Alison Landesberg ^[47] and Ann Reading ^[48] on connective memory, digital memory instability and memobilia. Discussing the current trends of digital memory studies, the question is raised in foreign literature that the series as an alarmist project marks a noticeable shift towards hyperconnectivity, datafication and new parameters of personal biography. At the same time, datafication marks the stage of the emergence of a new social framework of memory, when a number of memory institutions turn out to be irrelevant in the light of the availability of everyone's personal memory and the ability to reproduce all memories in a single digital archive ^{[45, p.69]}.

Turning to the main discursive thread of the series in relation to the image of the future, we find a different modality of its representation than in the previous case. Despite the fact that artificial memory technology clearly hints that the action takes place in the near future, the unfolding relationships, clothing style, cars, household items in the film point to the present. The focus on the future, even in the light of the technology being discussed, also seems questionable due to the popularity of the topic of life-logging today, as well as Google's efforts to create cloud memory. In this sense, the series does not so much show the future as it exaggerates the present and its current problems. The heterogeneity of social time in this case is felt with special force, because in fact only one technology in the film is in the focus of significant innovations, while all other objects, people and relationships have practically not changed. This allows us to say that this series actualizes a special mode of the future – the future in the present or the extended present.    

San Junipero: the future is comingEpisode "San Junipero" (translated from English.

"San Junipero") is one of the most discussed in modern works devoted to the phenomenon of the TV series "Black Mirror" ^{[6, 10, 13, 44]}. First of all, this is due to the fact that the series blurs the levels of sacredness in modern culture and, as Matt Hills believes, "asserts mass culture (the materiality of the 1980s, video games) as a kind of consumer religiosity and sacredness" ^{[44, p.115]}. From this point of view, consumerism today turns into the formation of a new religiosity "outside confessions", where "the consumer's life itself is something religious, <...> consolidating certain commitments stronger than almost any other acts of social participation" ^{[44, p.115]}.

The plot of the series "San Junipero" is dedicated to the story of the relationship between two girls – Kelly and Yorkie, who communicate and get closer in the virtual city of San Junipero. This city is a medical program where the digital souls of the deceased, the elderly and the disabled, who are in a vegetative state, live. The program is owned by a private corporation, which allows live patients to visit this place no more than a day a week. After death and with the consent of the patient and his relatives, he is completely transferred to the world of San Junipero, whose main task is entertainment for its inhabitants.

Despite the fact that Charlie Brooker himself divides the series into weeks, thereby marking the possibility of meetings between Kelly and Yorkie in San Junipero, our structural analysis revealed three main semantic blocks. The first block represents the acquaintance of the main characters and the development of romantic relationships between them. However, at some point Kelly disappears and Yorkie has to look for her in different eras – the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and even in the 2010s. The peculiarity of San Junipero is that the patient chooses his own era for nostalgic therapy. The culmination of this semantic block is the gap between Kelly and Yorkie, when it turns out that one of them is a seriously ill pensioner in a hospice, and the second is a disabled person who is in a vegetative state in one of the clinics for the elderly. It is at this moment that they decide to meet in real life. The second semantic block is devoted to the topic of meeting the main characters in the real world. Kelly learns the story of Yorkie, who has been bedridden for over 40 years. So that Yorkie can fulfill her dream of euthanasia, Kelly takes her to wife. However, in the future, she refuses her full relocation to San Junipero because she believes that she should, like her husband, just die. This decision by Kelly marks a break in their relationship, where Kelly talks about duty, obligations, love and responsibility towards departed relatives. This sequence openly refers to metamodern sensuality and appeals to sincerity in the face of virtual immortality. The third semantic block is the process of Kelly's doubts, which eventually still chooses digital immortality and decides on euthanasia.

The central symbolic significance in the series is acquired by the city of San Junipero itself, which turns out to be not only a symbol of digital immortality, but also, as Sarah J. Constants, but also a symbol of creating a topography for a new subject ^[13]. This subjectivity mixes the past and the present, where the status of an elderly person coexists with his eternally young digital copy in San Junipero. This subjectivity corresponds to a special heterotopia of space, which, according to the American researcher, consists of four toposes: ordinary life, the space of a nursing home, a server room where there is a transition to virtual reality and the San Junipero space ^[13]. Even more interesting in this regard is the temporality of the virtual city, where each resident constantly chooses the era where he would like to be. In such a situation, the boundaries between the modes of time are practically erased, and it itself turns out to be multidirectional and dependent on a new subject. Even the anthropological boundaries of the subject's time, related to his biological age, fade into the background. The very existence of the subject in San Junipero turns out to be eternal as much as the digital archive of human subjectivity allows.

The analysis of the ideological side shows a dual picture. On the one hand, the series focuses on the utopianness of the idea of "digital salvation" and immortality, since a significant part of the residents of San Junipero are increasingly slipping towards radicalization of their entertainment needs (the image of the Quagmire club in a virtual city). On the other hand, Kelly's final choice – to stay with Yorkie in the virtual world and continue the relationship clearly indicates Charlie Brooker's desire to get away from the final evaluation of this technology. This makes the San Junipero series both a utopia and a dystopia. 

The main discursive thread in relation to the image of the future, revealed by us in this series, points to a future that has yet to appear (the future is coming). Even in comparison with other series, the picture "San Junipero" in its interpretation of the future within the framework of nostalgic therapy technology looks quite radical. Note that in the picture there is not even a hint of an attempt to tell the background of technology, which we could fully see, for example, in two parts of David Cameron's "Terminator". An even greater radicalism of this version of the future gives an emphasis on a new subjectivity, which generally leads to the absurdity of the idea of the duration and direction of time (including the psychological sense of time by a person).  

Despite the fact that each modality of the future represented in the series has its own specifics (the future has come, the future of the present, the future is coming), it would not be an exaggeration to say that all of them in one way or another are projected onto the present. In this regard, the series uses the method of extrapolation of the present to form the expected images of the future in the form that D. Urri wrote about it. On this path, "Black Mirror" continues to remain primarily a dystopian project and actualize the future that we would like to see, to which we are accustomed. However, by creating images of the expected future, the series again refers to the discourse of consumer society, when the desired image of the future is actualized within the preferences of the target audience.   

The modalities of the future that we have identified, represented in the series, do not allow us to talk about their hierarchy, as if we were solving another grammatical problem by agreeing tenses. It is significant that Charlie Brooker does not give even a small hint in the series about when these technologies appear. In this regard, it is very important to comment on the researchers pointing out that the chronology of the emergence of the future remains unclear in the series, since the future shown in the "Black Mirror" may come in 10 minutes, or it may come in 10 years ^{[4, 10]}. The discourse of the future turns out to be completely dependent on individual technologies that fully or partially reconstruct the context of interpersonal and social relations. In this regard, the idea of heterogeneity of social time and, as a consequence, the multiplicity of future modalities finds its most vivid embodiment in the series.

Thus, the modern temporal situation indicates heterogeneity, multidirection, multimodality, asynchrony of social time, destruction of boundaries between its modes, as well as congruence of the future. A significant marker of the modern culture of time is that each social actor creates its own representation of social temporality, each of which turns out to be a kind of practice of cultural orientation in modern social space and time. In this way, the series "Black Mirror" as a tool of cultural orientation primarily addresses the mythology of the future, which simultaneously problematizes the future, making it the subject of satire and irony, but at the same time normalizes the images of an unstable future. This situation allowed us to see the series "Black Mirror" as both a postmodern and metamodern project, when the dystopian interpretation not only scares and shocks, but also seeks to form a collective sense of multimodality and multidimensionality of the future. In our work, we analyzed three discursive threads in the series, referring to the future that has come, the future of the present and the future that is coming. At the same time, the main method of "working" with the future in the series is extrapolation of the present. The analysis of discourses showed that the series reproduces the idea of the future as a fragmentary, asynchronous progress of individual technologies that change interpersonal relationships and social order to varying degrees. In this, the series reinforces the already comprehensive sense of the contingent nature of what is happening, to a greater extent pointing not so much to the need for a person to actively choose his future, as to the possibility of consuming various modalities of the future, depending on the current social agenda and personal preferences.