“Social media will tempt you to think you can (or need to) be omniscient, omnipresent, omnicompetent - in short, that you can be like God. Watch out: that’s the serpent’s oldest move”. - Matt Smethurst
This adaptation invites the viewers to reimagine Snow White from the Evil Queen’s perspective and how the story would be possible today where state-of-the-art technology can turn what was once taught to be only possible through magic into reality. Here Queen Grimhilde, or just Ms. G, is the developer of the artificial intelligence she refers to as Black Mirror, a direct reference to the Netflix series. The AI was designed to calculate beauty based on genetic traits, facial symmetry, body proportions, and followers. Ms. G created it for one reason alone: to find out who was the fairest of them all, essentially validating what she believed to be true.
I connected the theme of Black Mirror, a mirror to the emptiness of the soul, to social issues. Social media makes it easier to compare what we have with others. The lack of diverse representation in the fashion and beauty industry places pressure on people to conform to strict beauty standards. Advertisements sell products and services that promise to solve our problems.
At the end of the day, whatever we give the power to validate us, we also give the power to invalidate us. I present the story in a tale as old as Genesis in the hopes that it would help hold up a black mirror to ourselves.
Music: Remembering Her – Esther Abrami
Sound effects: Thunder 1 – TechnoMania
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