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Saturday, November 26, 2016

Cruel and Unusual Punishment?

Out of all of the Black Mirror episodes we have viewed in class, "White Bear" definitely left me feeling the most uneasy. The major connection the "watcher's" had to their cellphones in this episode was especially disturbing. In this day and age cellphone technology has advanced so much that many people cannot survive without them. So this aspect, is really what started the strange punishment Victoria had and that was alarming to me. So the episode starts off with a woman waking up in a house with her memory erased. She looks around to try and remember who she is and she experiences a sharp pain and a loud sound and she remembers she has a daughter. For the remainder of the episode, she is on the run and slowly but surely recalling certain parts of her memory. The unusual part is that she seems to be the only person being "hunted." However, she was surrounded by bystanders! These weren't your ordinary bystanders, these people had one goal in mind. That goal was to capture Victoria being tortured on their cellphone cameras. For the life of her, she could not understand or fathom how all of the people surrounding her were not helping her. Clearly, this punishment was specially crafted for Victoria and her only. More of her memories came back and she continued to run from the hunters. Eventually she was captured. Oddly enough, once she was captured, she realized she was on a stage.. in front of a live audience. The people that had been hunting her all this time joined hands and took a bow. Victoria was beyond puzzled at this point. After they had taken their bow, they began to explain to the woman why she was there. She was informed that she witnessed her daughter be tortured by her boyfriend and instead of helping, she recorded the whole thing.. So then it all made sense. She was being punished for what she did to her own daughter by having the exact same thing done to her. The crowd shouted "murderer" in the distance. The audience was in on the punishment too. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment... I personally believe that yes, Victoria did in fact deserve punishment of some sort, but the punishment she received was extreme to say the least. It is puzzling and unsettling that an entire community would dedicate multiple days of their own personal lives just to assist with the punishment of one woman.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

i shared the same sentiments. However, I would just like to point out that wasn't her daughter.

Nicole Johnson said...

I agree with you, what Victoria did was horrendous to say the least but her punishment was exactly what you said, "cruel and unusual."

Unknown said...

I also think that the relationship between the onlookers and their cellphones in uneasy. I mean, just standing and recording without doing anything? Letting go of all emotions to just stare? Its very creepy! I've wondered if the people who were onlookers really act like that or was it just for the sake of her "punishment".