I have a very intense attraction/repulsion relationship with Charlie Brooker. There are parts of his work that disgust me to the point of embarrassment and others that evoke in me an admiration without nuance. I can’t believe the author of this pinnacle of humor entitled “Philomena Cunk” is the same as the author of this simplicity full of half-baked gas station jokes entitled “Don’t Look Up”. Something similar happens to me with his great work “Black Mirror”: there are episodes with applause and others from which I dropped out after 20 minutes because I wasn’t able to take any more cheesy stories about Pedrito and the technical wolf.
Fearing the digital leviathan, I’ve peeked into the new season of the show with the remote in case I had to turn it off in an emergency, but the first episode, Joan is Awful, struck me as a masterful piece of terrifying humor be , to the level of a Peter Weir or a John Landis. Many of you already know what it’s about: A terrible little boss watches a series about her life, about what she did that day.
Since he has no obvious thesis (the best Brooker is the one who tells without preaching), everyone drew their morals. For me, the story flirts with a pervasive vice in political discussions: the inability to come out of oneself and the need to see oneself reflected in the opinion of the other. Instead of debating, discussions are simulated with imaginary enemies (a Martínez el Facha, a Quico el Progre) who reduce the opposite ideas to absurdity, so that the others always seem stupid and we seem impeccable. By withdrawing to our ideas without confronting them with those of others, we become the horrible Joan of the episode, who one day appears on screen and only sees a cynical and cruel version of herself.
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