Black Mirrors: Reflecting (on) Hypermimesis

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Abstract

Reflections on mimesis have tended to be restricted to aesthetic fictions in the past century; yet the proliferation of new digital technologies in the present century is currently generating virtual simulations that increasingly blur the line between aesthetic representations and embodied realities. Building on a recent mimetic turn, or re-turn of mimesis in critical theory, this paper focuses on the British sci-fi television series, Black Mirror (2011-2016) to reflect critically on the hypermimetic impact of new digital technologies on the formation and transformation of subjectivity. It argues that emerging forms of digital simulations do not simply set up a realistic mirror to “reality” restricted to aesthetic “representation” (Auerbach 1953); nor are they confined to the disembodied sphere of “hyperreality” that goes beyond the logic of “imitation” (Baudrillard 1981). Rather, the digital simulations reflected in Black Mirror dramatize the performative powers of hyperreal simulations to retroact on reality to form and transform increasingly mimetic subjects. I call this technological process of transformation “hypermimesis” (Lawtoo 2015, 2018), to indicate that it is located at the juncture where hyperreal simulacra and mimetic reflexes meet and reflect on each other.