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Sunday, November 27, 2016

Cruel and Unusual


White Bear was a very cruel episode, the form of punishment was unspeakable. The fact that they would subject her to that punishment, or should I say torture, is uncalled for and wrong. No matter what she did, no one deserves that type of punishment. The question was brought up in class of what if it was her boyfriend, the man who killed the little girl, instead of her. That does not make a difference to me. It is wrong no matter how I look at it, how can a human subject another human to such torture. How are we any better than the murderer at this point? From my point of view, we’re not.

I asked my roommate to watch it with me so that the ideas would be fresh in my mind. She wanted to know if we had gone back to the medieval ages? In what world is that really justice? I understand that the little girl had to endure this day after day for months on end but Victoria has to suffer this fate every single day without the memories. That may be better for her to not remember but that is a lot of stress on her mind and body. From what I can gather her boyfriend’s trial pended for six months, does that mean that she has gone through the White Bear episode every day for the past six months or even longer?

In the United States we believe that when people go to prison we are rehabilitating them but that is not the case. If we were we wouldn’t have as many repeat offenders. We need to rehabilitate prisoners so that when they reenter the world they are a new man or woman. Everyone makes mistakes, just some cost more than others.

Did Victoria murder the little girl, no. Did she stand idly by and watch as her boyfriend brutally murdered an innocent child, yes. Should she be punished is not the question. She should be, but to punish someone in such a way as to make an amusement park out of someone’s mistake is unjust and morally wrong.

Victoria said that she was under his, her boyfriend’s, spell. Maybe she was delusional or maybe she has a psychological problem. Did they run a psychological analysis on her? Maybe she was at her psychotic break and if not then, then after she definitely was. The White Bear is a very emotionally pulling episode and the director did a great job of pulling at your emotions, making you feel for Victoria.

3 comments:

Rafaella Angelidou said...

I believe that the most fair punishment is being forced to endured what victim endured, no matter if she actually killed the girl or not. She was there and she a participant on the crime. But I do agree with you that people should forgive criminals and give them a chance to become better people.

Unknown said...

I feel that turning the murder and torture of a small child into an entertainment as a themepark, is a cruel and insensitive way of attempting to extract justice just imagine the emotional effect of this on the parents of the child killed. The whole concept is a messed up screwy idea, that serves no purpose except vengence. If they wanted to make her feel the child's pain then kill her once in the same exact manner without the entertainment aspect of a themepark.

Anonymous said...

If she truly has no memories of her own of the killing, how can she be held responsible for something that her current self had no part in doing? Yes her treatment was barbaric and so was the act of the murder, but are the people forcing her to relive this any better than her? It's not justice if they are making a profit from her suffering, like you said.

Of course this is fiction, but how do you think that in this society the rulers deem killers and law breakers as non-humans? Could this be how they are ok with this sort of treatment of the woman?