“Arkangel”: Postscript on Families of Control

This chapter analyzes “Arkangel,” the second episode of the fourth series of the British anthology series Black Mirror (2011–). The episode, set in a fictional dystopian future, imagines the intersection of surveillance, technology, and parenting in a world where a parent can opt-in to omnipresent real-time monitoring of their child's respiration, heart rate, bloodstream (including screening for illicit substances), and view a live video feed of what a child sees at any given moment—all without the child's knowledge or consent. As the name suggests, Black Mirror works rhetorically to encourage some degree of self-reflection around our emerging dependence on social-surveillance technology. This chapter develops the concept of Surveiller-Parenting—a network of surveillance norms, practices, and technologies which encourages parents to place their children under intense surveillance—to understand emerging trends in parenting today and “Arkangel.” In this chapter, I argue that “Arkangel” expresses contemporary anxieties about fragmentary and disparate techniques of surveillance by constructing a future of intensified networks of control which link the families, schools, and corporations under the logic of late capitalism.