Episode Reflection- Callie Strini

The Be Right Back Black Mirror episode was certainly interesting. What are my thoughts exactly on this episode? Well, I'm not even sure if I know myself. The episode begins depicting a young happy couple living what seems to be a normal life; later, the husband wakes up to drive their rental car back to where it belongs, and never returns. The brokenhearted widow finds out she is pregnant, and her depression worsens. Her friend tells her about a new technological advance that can trace all her husbands social media accounts and allow her to communicate with him through a chat or phone call. Although at first hesitant, the widow finally decides to chat her dead husband, Ash. She becomes familiar with this device and seems to be enjoying talking to his activated voice everyday. The voice tells her she can kick it up a notch and explains how she can have a body put together that looks just like him; she agrees and activates his body( This is when the episode became more eerie). The new Ash sounds and looks like the old Ash, but you can tell something is missing, the android acts sort of robotic and monotone. She soon becomes upset because she realizes the android is like the old Ash, but does not have him all there, like some specific gestures and thoughts he would have. She tries to get him to jump off of a, but is not strong enough to go through with it. The episode jumps farther into the future and in conclusion we see that she hides him in her attack, only letting her daughter see him on the weekends. At first this episode troubled me greatly, and I thought the idea of bringing alive an android to represent someone who had deceased was wrong and would never happen; however, after discussing the episode in class, I realized this may not be as crazy as it sounds. As Dr. J stated, a hundred years ago, people probably thought the idea of hearing another person through phone/machine was weird and unlikely, maybe even scary. Now we can relate this to our present situation, while we sit here and think about how creepy it would be to have a robotic technology represent someone in our lives who had died, this could be the norm for us in the future. Personally, I believe if this ever became reality, I would not activate or bring back someone from the dead in the form of an android. I believe we go through hardships and deaths in life for a reason, and part of that reason is to become mentally stronger human beings, therefore, I would not bring back someone I knew in the form of an android, because it seems it would make moving on more difficult. What are your thoughts about this episode, and if you had to bring back someone in this way, would you?