![]() Britney Spears has been in the news lately for reported mental-health medication struggles and for seeming to chafe against the conservatorship her family set up-thereby taking control of her finances-more than a decade ago. It’s a zany story that’s rich with real-world resonance. The robot and the two sisters then embark on a heist to rescue the real Ashley. Meanwhile, Rachel’s Ashley Too-accidentally freed of the “limiter” programmed into it, thereby unleashing the full Ashley personality-learns of Ashley’s hospitalization on the TV. Brain-wave scanners extract new tunes from the incapacitated songwriter, production software makes those tracks more radio-friendly, and holography generates a larger-than-life replica of Ashley that can tour the world. The management team then uses technology to digitally resurrect Ashley in a more pliable form. These two narrative threads-the suffering star and her worshipful fan-converge when Catherine responds to Ashley’s rebelliousness by poisoning the singer, sending her into a coma. Turns out that slogans like “If you believe in yourself, you can do anything” aren’t always what people need. Ashley Too’s encouragement gets Rachel to perform a dance routine in the school’s talent show, but her clunky performance results in humiliation. Shy and unpopular at school, she finds solace in Ashley O’s inspirational messaging-even if Ashley’s music makes Rachel’s indie-rock-loving older sister, Jack, sneer from her side of the bedroom. One of those fans is the 15-year-old Rachel. Crossed between an Alexa and a Furby, it’s imprinted with Ashley’s personality (building on previous Black Mirror episodes about psychic cloning) and merrily chitchats with fans who buy it. The latest brand extension for Ashley is a toy robot called Ashley Too. But Catherine, her aunt and manager, stymies her ambitions both with an ironclad contractual agreement and with a sleazy doctor who keeps Ashley on a diet of docility-ensuring drugs. Behind the scenes, though, Ashley wants to change her sound, as expressed when she looks yearningly at a rock club and when she writes a pining ballad about feeling trapped (it’s another Nine Inch Nails tune, 2005’s “Right Where It Belongs”). In the episode, Ashley O is a popular entertainer who sings upbeat, empowering lyrics aimed at young female fans. It’s a testament to the way that “rock” can work as an aesthetic, an emotional mode, that meshes with candied sing-alongs-a potential symbiosis that “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too” ignores on its way to its simplistic, if amusing, pop satire. But “Head Like a Hole” is also, underneath the industrial guitars and grunting singer, a really fabulous, energizing pop song. Not only does Reznor’s music already seem like the sonic expression of Black Mirror’s bleak outlook and techno-thriller aesthetic (isn’t every installment, in some way, about “Happiness in Slavery”?). Not only does it express the Netflix episode’s themes of greed and resistance (“God money, I’ll do anything for you!” goes the first line). “Head Like a Hole” is a perfect pick for a touchstone here. By the end of the episode, when Ashley O has achieved liberation from her villainous manager who wanted her to only ever make bubblegum music, she rocks out at a dive bar, playing the Nine Inch Nails original. ![]() ![]() Trent Reznor’s sneer of “Head like a hole / black as your soul / I’d rather die / than give you control” becomes “Hey I’m a ho / I’m on a roll / Riding so high / Achieving my goals,” delivered by Cyrus in a pink bob and silver bodysuit. ![]() It’s also explicitly a rewrite of “Head Like a Hole,” the 1989 Nine Inch Nails hit anti-consumerism rant. If the jingle that Miley Cyrus’s character Ashley O sings over the course of the Black Mirror episode “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too,” sounds familiar, that’s not just because it’s meant to scan as a generic pop song. This story contains spoilers for the episode “ Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too” of Black Mirror’ s fifth season.
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