Chin !

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Cody Chin
English 115
Professor Glenn Collins
22 October 2015
Multimodal Essay

The Black Mirror episode, The Entire History of You depicts that there are
existing double standards in our culture, regardless of what laws or bills that we pass; gender
roles will always exist with or without the implementation of cyborgs in our society. In the
episode, there is a small grain implanted behind the a persons ear, which has the ability to
record, hear and see everything they do throughout their day. The grain allows the person to
replay their memories before them or on a monitor where they can erase or alter the memory,
called a re-do. The memories can be shown to others only by will. The main characters in this
episode are Liam and Ffion, who are married couple with a baby. During dinner, Liam sees his
wife, Ffion and Jonas intimately talking to each other, which causes Liam to get suspicious.
When Ffion is confronted by Liam at home, it is revealed that Ffion and Jonas had a long history

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and has dated in the past. Liam then discovers that his child might not be his when a drunken
Liam threatens Jonas and forces him to reveal his memories with Ffion. Once home, Liam
demands and basically rapes Ffion to replay the intimate memory of Jonas and her conceiving
Jodie, his daughter.

As cyborgs, the gender role males and females are still applicable in that society. There
was no dramatic difference with the depicted Black Mirror society and our society today, except
for the grain. Women still conformed to societys expectations, such as the women were wearing
cocktail dresses at the dinner party and the babysitter was female. Males in Black Mirror, wore
suits and went to work, giving the illusion that men still provided for their family. This is called
gender expression which refers to the ways in which we each manifest masculinity or
femininity. Each of us expresses a particular gender every day
by the way we style our hair, select our clothing, or even the
way we stand. Gender roles within our species will always be
present. The idea of gender role, lies within our predecessors.
No matter how many times someone tries to eliminate the

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gender role, its main idea will always co-exist with what ever thought process you program.
Biologically, males and female have a distinct anatomic and physical appearance/
difference. It is expected that as cyborgs, our features are exaggerated, such as the pictures
shown. The female cyborgs chest and figure are evidently unalike; the male cyborgs figure is
more masculine and the chest is significantly flatter. In Black
Mirror, these idealized versions of cyborgs are not how they
are portrayed; they are shown as normal human beings with
all senses.
The characters technological enhancement of the
grain gives no right for Liam to force Ffion to reveal her
personal memory to him. Liams use of force and violence
towards Jonas and Ffion showed that the characters nature
is no different from our current worlds human nature. He had he right to know if Ffion had
cheated on him and if Jodie was not his biological child, but he had absolutely no right to force
the information out of her in that way. Laws such as the privacy law, protects a persons
confidentiality. According to HG.org, Privacy laws are those laws which relate to an individual
or business entity's expectation to be left free from scrutiny or public exposure in their daily lives
by either the government or other members of the public. Since, there is no real difference
between the gender roles and human nature from Black Mirror and our world, I believe these
laws are still relevant.
The implantation and function of the grain creates the expectation that the power roles
between male and female would be equalized due to the memories being open for public view,

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but unfortunately it does not. Because all of the persons memories are exposed, they may face
scrutiny and judgement from others; their own thoughts are never kept private.

http://www.hg.org/privacy.html
http://gillfoundation.org/grants/gender-expression-toolkit/gender-expression/
http://thestake.org/2014/12/29/black-mirror-episode-3-the-entire-history-of-you/
http://forum.reallusion.com/126843/Cyborg-male
http://www.gemmagrace.co.uk/Credits
http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3d-max-female-cyborg-elettra/662303
http://tvn.sagepub.com/content/14/2/106.full.pdf+html