This post contains spoilers for Black Mirror: Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too
Black Mirror – Season 5 is now out!!! 3 new episodes, 3 new stories! And out of all the episodes, the one I was looking forward to was S05E05 – Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too.
A lonely teen becomes obsessed with a robot doll based on her pop star idol, Ashley O — just as the real Ashley’s life begins to unravel.Black Mirror: Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too (Netflix)
Premise
This episode is basically Hannah Montana meets Hatsune Miku with that usual dark Black Mirror flare. It’s about 2 girls – Rachel, a girl with no friends, who idolizes her pop star idol Ashley O. Meanwhile, Ashley wants to escape her time in the spotlight and her current identity as a teen pop idol. In the episode, we get to see both girls’ story and how their world starts to meet.
Why I like this episode so much (or in this case: was looking forward to it the most) was because of 1 reason: Miley Cyrus was going to be in it! Just by seeing the trailer, I was hoping for ‘Hannah Montana but DARKER!!!‘ (And yes, they delivered).
Virtual Pop Stars
Black Mirror is known to commentate and mess up how we view technology. And there were some cases where what they presented ended up being true. An example is the Season 3 episode: Nosedive and how it’s similar to China’s social credit system.
To me, Season 5, Episode 3 is now commentating to the rise of virtual stars and possibly also twisting it to see how far it could go. And I have to say, I love that they did this as I am a fan to 1 virtual star that’s super popular: Hatsune Miku. But at the same time, being able to create virtual singers that look real.
The Hatsune Miku/Vocaloid Aspect
Who is Hatsune Miku?
Hatsune Miku is a very popular J-Pop singer who is 100% virtual. She’s made through a program called “Vocaloids” and song producers can make her or any other singers in the Vocaloid program sing any song they wish. Her most popular song is “World is Mine”
I will admit, I was a HUGE FAN for Hatsune Miku. I used to own a cosplay that cost nearly P2000 (Philippine Pesos) [$55 AUD] from Comic Ally. And don’t get me started with my iTunes library.
I was even lucky to meet Hachioji P (a famous Vocaloid/Music Producer in Japan) and was able to get a signed CD back in 2016.
Hatsune Miku is famous around the world, with concerts in Asia and even reaching the USA at one point. The singer performs via holograms on stage so costume changes are quick and techies are able to make the changes magical (as it’s all holograms).
I’d also like to point out the rumors about Elvis and Michael Jackson having each and every syllable recorded/obtained and it’s possible for other people to create songs using their voices. I really don’t know if this was true though… but that was a giant rumor back in the day. Or the fact that virtual concerts exist for singers who can no longer perform.
Aimi Eguchi – the CGI singer
Aimi Eguchi is a singer for the J-pop band AKB48. She is composed of parts of former members of the J-pop girl group and her voice was provided by another member of the group.
Basically – they made a fake/virtual singer look real.
Scary right???
So why am I telling you this?
This episode talks about how Ashley’s Aunt/Manager was willing to create a virtual singer out of her using technology. And knowing how good the Vocaloid program is and how many music producers made a career out of this… it’s possible that this will happen.
One of the main messages that you hear EARLY ON in the episode is how Ashley composes her music through her dreams. That once she gets an idea, she needs to immediately capture it.
“You know how I wrote all my early songs in my dreams, recorded them and put them on YouTube? Well, that song is me saying “look how far I made it. And if I did it, so can you”– Ashley too ( Rachel, jack, and ashley too)’
It’s then seen later on that the manager, as well her “team”, need (the original) Ashley to be unconscious to extract data out of her mind. And that data is her song compositions. They’re digging deep into her subconscious just to make a profit.
The dark truth of the music industry
One of the final things I want to point out is how dark the music industry can be as presented in the episode. In this day and age, we have the choice to remain independent or to sign a label. And sometimes, signing up to something could lead to having to remain a certain image in order to to appeal to the masses.
Hatari – The award-winning, anti-capitalist, BDSM-inspired, Icelandic performance art group, has an unreleased song called ‘Klámstrákur‘. Under the comments of a deleted audio recording of their live performance in Eurosonic Noorderslag (so not this one in this post), someone analyzed the song, saying it’s about how Klemens (the singer) enjoying his “Hatari persona” and how Matthias (the guy screaming) is somewhat disappointed towards Klemens, telling him he’s a “porn boy/Klámstrákur“.
You can read the open discussion over on Reddit. But a lot of the discussion is about the idea of selling your image or sticking within a profitable persona.
Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too showcase this dark side of the music industry… or any entertainment industry for that matter. Once you have a set image and it’s somewhat sellable, as much as possible, you have to stick with it. You either enjoy it or be ashamed of it and try to escape it.
And Ashley, she tries to escape it but is stopped by her aunt.
Overall
I really liked this episode a lot and the way Miley Cyrus portrayed Ashley was on point. I feel like Miley somewhat relates to what Ashley has been through when it came to her escaping her image as “Hannah Montana/A Disney Girl“.
This episode was not as dark compared to other episodes and Bandersnach but I did enjoy it and love seeing how it compares and is similar to what I’m aware off in the music industry.
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