Living Your Own Hell

During this shock inducing episode of the Black Mirror, we are lead on to believe that a woman has assisted in the murder of a young girl whom she and her husband kidnapped. She is put on an open to the public, psychologically torturous trial that was treated as a source of entertainment for its viewers and participants. When the woman wakes up she has no idea as to where she is or what is going on, but she has memory flashbacks every so often that shed dim light into the even darker situation. The people running the ‘show’ give her just enough information on her past so that she knows something is off. Throughout the program the participants and producers are giving her subconscious cues through the means of names and symbols to trigger her flashbacks. When she finally reaches the end of the program everyone mocks her and makes her feel like a criminal. The thing that everyone seems to be missing is that she can’t genuinely remember that she killed this girl. Why should she be punished for something that her current self didn’t do?

Her torture is thought to be justified because they think they are punishing the person responsible for the crime, but in actuality the person who helped kill the little girl hasn’t been there for a long time. The woman didn’t have a single memory of the actual kidnapping of the girl, let alone the filming of the murder. In her current mentality, she obviously doesn’t seem to be dangerous or capable of harming anyone. She wears a crown of thorns (more literally a shock crown) and is called evil for her old self’s actions. While the people punishing her are doing the same thing that her past self did, if not worse and are calling themselves the good guys. There is a huge amount of irony about the entire plot once the whole picture is revealed to the viewers.

Would capital punishment be a better option for her in the real world? Yes, if they could without a doubt prove that she was still in the same mental state. There should be due process for this woman, but it seems that there has been an executive order somewhere down this chain to condemn her to this torture. Instead of having a court hearing or evening have the mercy of being killed, she is a daily program that normal everyday citizen can come and watch twitch and squirm. Much like an animal in the zoo or a specimen under a microscope. It really makes you wonder what type of world the creators of the show had in mind for such an episode where this is a common occurrence.