The plot of the Black Museum is very similar to the episode White Christmas, with cookies, digital human consciousness, being confined to devices where they are trapped throughout time. I could guess where the first story was going: it was predictable that the doctor who could feel other people's pain would become a masochist/sadist. The scenes of him self harming were gruesome and I had to use fast forward to get through them. It was no surprise to me he'd end up killing someone to get off on the pain and terror of his victim.
The second story seemed a bit of a retread of White Christmas. I felt for Carrie being put on pause for weeks and then being transferred into a stuffed monkey and only being able to express "Mommy loves you" and "Mommy needs a hug". Evidently Rolo Haynes didn't think forward to what would happen to Carrie as a plush animal when her son got older. I guess he never saw Toy Story and the toys' heartbreak when Andy got too old to play with them and ended up giving them away to the Daycare Center.
The final story of .Clayton Leigh being tortured by being electrocuted over and over again is really disturbing. Some of the reviewers have pointed out the elements of racism and the museum visitors taking glee in not only pulling the lever of the Chair on Leigh but also taking home a souvenir of Leigh screaming for eternity. The sadism is upsetting, even more so seeing Rolo Haynes allowing white supremacists to fry Leigh for longer than the safe maximum and damaging his digital self to the point where he can no longer recognize his wife and daughter. Seeing the museum visitors and the white supremacist happily shocking Leigh reminded me of the Milgram experiment, the social psychology experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s. The participants were told to obey an authority figure who instructed them to give shocks to a person: the shocks were simulated but the participants believed they were real. The results found the participants were happy to please the authority figures by increasing the strength of the fake shocks to levels that would have killed the person if they were real. I first heard about them as a student in Israel: our teacher told us about them as part of our lessons about the Holocaust. I've just finished reading the novel Zone of Interest by Martin Amis, which is set in a Nazi concentration camp. The museum visitors happy about taking home their glass globe of Leigh screaming forever shook me up even more than Amis describing the Nazis laughingly torturing Jewish prisoners and discussing the murders of thousands of people emotionlessly, as work tasks. Douglas Hodge does a fine job revealing Rolo Haynes' callousness and his sickening exploiting the ghoulish voyeurism of the museum visitors. The episode builds to a satisfying climax with Clayton's wife and daughter having their revenge, Haynes receiving his just deserts, Carrie finding new life beyond the perspex cube of the exhibits and the museum being burnt down: satisfying climax from the plot point of view, that is. Black Museum is going to haunt me for a long time as it testifies to how people can.be inhumanely cruel to others, particularly those seen as inferior and no longer human, like Carrie trapped in a toy monkey- and those who in history were seen as subhuman, hated, and marked for persecution and extermination.
The second story seemed a bit of a retread of White Christmas. I felt for Carrie being put on pause for weeks and then being transferred into a stuffed monkey and only being able to express "Mommy loves you" and "Mommy needs a hug". Evidently Rolo Haynes didn't think forward to what would happen to Carrie as a plush animal when her son got older. I guess he never saw Toy Story and the toys' heartbreak when Andy got too old to play with them and ended up giving them away to the Daycare Center.
The final story of .Clayton Leigh being tortured by being electrocuted over and over again is really disturbing. Some of the reviewers have pointed out the elements of racism and the museum visitors taking glee in not only pulling the lever of the Chair on Leigh but also taking home a souvenir of Leigh screaming for eternity. The sadism is upsetting, even more so seeing Rolo Haynes allowing white supremacists to fry Leigh for longer than the safe maximum and damaging his digital self to the point where he can no longer recognize his wife and daughter. Seeing the museum visitors and the white supremacist happily shocking Leigh reminded me of the Milgram experiment, the social psychology experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s. The participants were told to obey an authority figure who instructed them to give shocks to a person: the shocks were simulated but the participants believed they were real. The results found the participants were happy to please the authority figures by increasing the strength of the fake shocks to levels that would have killed the person if they were real. I first heard about them as a student in Israel: our teacher told us about them as part of our lessons about the Holocaust. I've just finished reading the novel Zone of Interest by Martin Amis, which is set in a Nazi concentration camp. The museum visitors happy about taking home their glass globe of Leigh screaming forever shook me up even more than Amis describing the Nazis laughingly torturing Jewish prisoners and discussing the murders of thousands of people emotionlessly, as work tasks. Douglas Hodge does a fine job revealing Rolo Haynes' callousness and his sickening exploiting the ghoulish voyeurism of the museum visitors. The episode builds to a satisfying climax with Clayton's wife and daughter having their revenge, Haynes receiving his just deserts, Carrie finding new life beyond the perspex cube of the exhibits and the museum being burnt down: satisfying climax from the plot point of view, that is. Black Museum is going to haunt me for a long time as it testifies to how people can.be inhumanely cruel to others, particularly those seen as inferior and no longer human, like Carrie trapped in a toy monkey- and those who in history were seen as subhuman, hated, and marked for persecution and extermination.