Filter in the Non-fiction and Film Killers of the Flower Moon and Netflix Black Mirror

Applying the theories of Film Studies and Feminism, this chapter explores the theme filter of law and racism in the film Killers of the Flower Moon (directed by Martin Scorsese, 2023) and the theme of filter and AI in Black Mirror (Netflix 2023). The film screenplay of Killers of the Flower Moon is based on the real-life historical “Reign of Terror” murders in America described in the 2017 non-fiction Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI written by David Grann. Filtered by history to focus on Mollie Burkhart’s family members being all murdered stories, this film reflects the true U.S. history of American Native Indians the Osage people’s being murdered and genocide in Oklahoma in the early 1920s by the White men’s conspiracy. In the Science Fiction futuristic world in Netflix Black Mirror (2011–current), filtered by social rating in “Nosedive” (2023, season 3, episode 1), lives, and purchase activities, such as buying airplane tickets, social communication, and climbing social ladder, are all filtered by computer big data. Dating and relationships are calculated and filtered by algorithmic intimacy in “Hang the DJ” (2023, season 4, episode 4). In Black Mirror, “the truth of fact” is confirmed and filtered by replaying the Grain implant behind people’s ears in “The Entire History of You” (2023, season 1, episode 3; “History”). “History” also delivers a timely lesson given recent discussions over the “right to be forgotten” in Europe. Concerning of AI in “Be Right Back” (2023, season 2, episode 1) of Black Mirror, Martha, the female protagonist, purchases the AI robot of her deceased boyfriend Ash in which the company has already uploaded with his photos and films while he was alive. The issues of grief and solace of oblivion are discussed. Unlike the narrative of Grann’s nonfiction interweaving with present events and recollection, the film directed by Martin Scorsese represents tragic history chronically. Director Scorsese’s film Killers of the Flower Moon collaborates with the screenwriter Eric Roth to add more complexity of cruel characters to increase the dark humanity. In order to cash in the Osage’s oil headrights and life insurance money, the character Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), playing the shifty World War I veteran as if a coyote, and Burkhart’s evil rich rancher uncle William K. Hale (Robert De Niro), playing as if a Sicilian American Mafia leader replacing himself from a cowboy by suit as a “high-class gentleman” (Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. New York: Yearling, Random House, 2021: 23), conspire to kill Mollie’s family members and other Osage tribe people. Filtered by law and racism, although the Federal Government of the United States signed the law of the obligation with the American Indians, but the U.S. Federal Government failed to do “the duty of protection” to the people of the Osage Nation specifically, “betrayed” to let the systemic genocide of the Osage happen. The wealthiest Osage (American Indians) in Oklahoma who had been driven from their lands in Kansas in the early 1870s in poverty were blessed by God to give them vast black oil deposits on their land in north Oklahoma were brutally murdered by the greedy White men in the early twentieth century. Filtered by Feminism to break the myth of the happily-ever-after marriages, Director Scorsese has the courage to cinematographically represent the history—the white men in America married the Osage wealthy women and committed the heinous crimes of murders for getting the headrights and profiting off American Indians’ money. In terms of film studies, Director Scorsese’s film at the first two parts follows the traditional genres of Western Films and Hollywood Classical Detective stories, but undermines it in the last section containing the stage performance and the radio announcement. As if in the style of “a play-within-a-play,” in the stage performance and the radio announcement, Director Scorsese shockingly yet candidly points out that all the white in the town in the county emerge as complicit with the crimes aided by the Federal Government’s wrong policy. This chapter also explores the film shooting techniques, vintage-inspired techniques, camera, editing, cinematography, Western film iconography, images and symbols in the fire scene and the last scene, sound effects, including Scorsese’s surprising choices in the film is to play a small role as a radio announcer who reads Mollie’s obituary. What else is filtered in Killers of the Flower Moon and Black Mirror?