In this week’s episode of Black Mirror, White Bear, I cannot help but be frustrated and confused as to why I have not fully processed what I watched. What I mean by that is, after watching it, I was unsure whether or not I would call what the episode portrays as “justice.” According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, justice is defined as a “just behavior or treatment.” Although the main character, Victoria, is a witness to the death of the little girl in the video, people do not stand with her. Instead, they give justice to what happened to the little girl by giving Victoria the same treatment. With the treatment, they wipe her memory and make her feel helpless while someone chases and hunts her down to kill her. However, she doesn’t get killed. She lives. She lives and she forgets. The treatment she has is all an act and entertainment for a crowd, and everyone is in on the act except Victoria.
For me, I understand and see why the treatment Victoria receives is considered justice, but I still have an uneasy feeling when it comes to knowing her memory is wiped and people are watching it for entertainment. In addition to this, she has to constantly repeat what the little girl went through. When reaching the end of the episode, I did not feel it was justice. In the beginning, I felt sorry for her, but when the episode revealed what she did, I did not feel much sorrow until they wiped her memory again. Also, when she said, “Just kill me now,” it made me feel for her. When realizing she goes through this every day, it felt like torture rather than justice. She is not only tortured through the memory wiping, but there are onlookers and bystanders who feed into her torture by not helping her. Instead, they are there filming her, laughing at her, or standing there doing nothing for help. Her treatment is no longer a fight for justice, but it has been translated into punishment. I could not imagine having to relive a mistake I did every single day, only to forget it before the end of the day. I could not begin to imagine people who choose not to help me when I need it. What she goes through is torture, and she is helpless to it. Whether or not one believes she deserves it or not, she is still a human being capable of emotions—even if she did make a mistake—I believe she does not need to be put through the torture and reliving her mistake every day and forgetting what she did. The constant torture every day does not need to benefit and please a crowd if they’re only getting a laugh out of it. Here are some pictures I wanted to share that are similar to how the onlookers are bystanders to Victoria's pain.
3 comments:
I loved, loved, loved the images you included. It serves as a great visual aid for what I tried to express in my post. Great image to depict with one of the biggest issues of the episode.
I truly admire your post. I had a similar mindset about the episode in comparison to our reality. And the pictures you used to prove your point, marvelous! I had a difficult time distinguishing Skillane's "punishment" from being either an actual punishment or just entertainment. I believe they were trying to give her a taste of her own medicine because all she did was film everything that happened with her phone, so that explains the behavior of the bystanders and the role they had to play, but still, it is very peculiar of White Bear Justice Park to create such a thing to torture Skillane.
Absolutely amazing blog post Kristine! You did such an amazing job expressing how even though she witnessed and recorded such a henious act, she is still human at the end of the day. It is no where near, for me, considered justice punishment.
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