Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the symbolic significance of light and darkness in the life of modern humanity. In order to analize this problem, the author turned to “Black Mirror”, a sciencefiction anthology released by Netflix company. This popular series creates pessimistic and dystopian picture of life in a high-tech civilisation. The future in the serial appears as a multidimensional matrix, the elements of which form intricate correlations with the nowadays world. One of the most commonly echoed themes in the episodes of “Black Mirror” is the human being in the world, whose functioning is determined by a nonlinear space with conditions of artificial lighting, when the natural change of day and night matters no more. Darkness and light appear here as symbols that have different, sometimes polar meanings. In search of their identity and a bright future, human constantly returns to the Plato’s cave, but instead of the shadows of divine light on the stonewalls, he sees only flickering pixels. From this perspective, “Black Mirror” is a hopeless attempt to return to the original cosmogonic harmony of light and darkness. Unfortunately, this is the labyrinth without exit, since there is no way one can find the true essence of being in the distorted chronotope of social networks and virtual reality.