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Monday, November 28, 2016

In the film White Bear, a woman wakes up in an unfamiliar setting with all of her memory seemingly erased. She wakes up in a tub with pills around her and bandages around her risk, and has no idea how she wound up there. Inspecting the house only lets her find the picture of who she believes to be her daughter and the symbol played on the television. By leaving the house, she can see other people, yet the do nothing but watch and record her on their phones, ignoring her cries for help. A figure comes in a car with a gun and chases her, leading her into another group appearing to be hunted. Making it away with the another woman, she is headed towards White Bear, where the symbol she saw on the television is being broadcast. The other woman believes this to be what is zombifying the onlookers, leading to the hunters being able to hunt down others not affected by the images. She arrives there and attempts to shut down the broadcast, but is jumped by a group of hunters. Grabbing the gun she shoots an attacker, but only confetti comes out and suddenly the scene changes as if at a play. The head has her bound to a chair, and she watches her videos from a phone played that she is told she filmed. As it turns out, she was helping the man in the video kidnap and film the child, and then later she filmed him beating and then killing the girl. This event was all staged for the audience, who were the onlookers, as a sort of punishment for her watching the little girl and doing nothing to help her. the event is then restart with her memory being wiped and put back in the tub. 
This punishment follows a eye for an eye philosophy on an extreme scale, meant for punishing severe crimes. While the first time done would be very grey on how to view the punishment, the number of times she goes through this, as indicated by the calendar, suggests that this is less punishment for her and more for the entertainment of the audience at the park. This no longer would be a punishment also as she has no memory, is shown at the end, and the has her memory re-wiped. She would not have a chance to change how she acts or thinks, and is no longer the same person that committed the crime of watching. So, this as a punishment accomplishes nothing to do with a positive task, and would not be productive, or humane towards the woman. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

you are very right sometimes people misconstrue the concept of an eye for eye n tooth for a tooth, its meaning is to extract no more vengence than the infraction originally incurred, in other words only an eye for eye and no more than that one eye. This is definitely not achieved in White Bear. The sentence is not equal justice.