Dark Nature

White Bear, in my opinion, was a look into human nature. It made me contemplate what justice and boundaries are. White Bear took viewers on what seemed to be a puzzling journey of a woman trying to find her identity and memories. In actuality, it was a mere form of entertainment for a tv audience in the show's story. The story followed a woman, later revealed to be Victoria Skillane, one of the storyline's country's most despised criminals, waking up and struggling to remember who and where she is. When she wakes up, it appears that she tried to commit suicide. As she makes her way through the apartment and outside, she realizes that something big has rocked society to its core. She comes across an ominous symbol on the television in the living room and sees it again on a man's mask who's out to kill her for some reason. 

While escaping the man shooting at her, she attempts to get the bystanders' help to stop him to no luck. She makes her way through town and finds safety for a moment with a woman named Jem. She explains the symbol and that its put most of the population into a trance where they record anything & everything that they see. She goes on to explain her plan to take down White Bear, the tv center where the symbol is being broadcast from. As Jem and Victoria barely escape the masked shooter, they find themselves in a predicament where their "knight in shining armor" (getaway driver) turns out to be like the bystanders. They narrowly get away and start to make their to White Bear. Throughout the story Victoria has brief flashbacks of her memories but can't explain them. Fast forward to Jem and Victoria arriving at White Bear to stop the symbol broadcast, Victoria follows Jem through the station when Jem disappears to take down the armed bystanders. Victoria is by herself when they appear and has a fight-or-flight moment of instinct where she takes the gun from one of the masked bystanders. When she fires the gun it turns out that it's a confetti gun and the reveal  takes place. 

The whole story that the viewers have seen up to now has been turned on its head. Victoria is revealed to a criminal who assisted in the kidnap, torture, and murder of Jemima, a six year old little girl. Everything that's taken place has actually been part of Victoria's punishment for her crimes. It's been a form of entertainment to watch her relive everything that she put Jemima through. The ringleader of Victoria's punishment elaborates on who she is and why she's been going through this. He clarifies that her punishment is, from what it appears, to be everlasting. The thing that struck me about White Bear is that no one questioned whether or not when her punishment was the right amount to balance out her crime. The fact that the town's population played along for an immeasurable amount of time was flabbergasting. It was just a form of entertainment for them. 

White Bear gave a look into true human nature in the way that the audience was never satisfied with how many times they had Victoria re-experience her punishment. It showed an unquenchable thirst for entertainment at the cost of a person's psychological wellbeing. The town's residents focused on making sure that she was punished daily and lost sight of the fact that she was a still a person. They lost sight of her humanity and treated her punishment as an object of pleasure. I totally understand taking responsibility for one's actions but, the main thing that White Bear showed me was that people never reached the point where they thought her punishment was enough. It was an unending cycle of punishment and I felt like she never really learned from it because at the end of each day her mind was wiped clean. The film also showed me that justice has a different meaning depending on the society it's attributed to. Mainly, White Bear exhibited that we have a wicked, unending desire for bad events to continually happen in front of us for entertainment no matter if it's justifiable or not.