In the “White Bear” episode, a young woman named Victoria
awakes in a strange house with no memory of who she is or how she got there. As
she walks around the house and the surrounding areas, she finds clues about her
past and sees that she is being followed by “hunters” and “bystanders,” people
recording her on their phones. She meets up with other people who tell her that
some type of infection is spreading to people through their phones. One of the
survivors lead her to a facility that supposedly transmits the infectious
transmission, but they are followed by the hunters. Victoria is able to grab a
gun from one of the hunters and shoots him, but confetti comes out. It is
revealed that the entire episode was a scenario made up by people wanting to
punish Victoria for her crime of murdering a child. It ends with people
throwing fruit at her while she is being driven back to the house to get her
memory swiped.
The idea of a theme park based off of mocking and punishing
a woman is disturbing. It seems hard to think of people who would actually pay
to participate in Victoria’s daily torture. If this were to exist in our world
today, I have no doubt people would participate in it. People want revenge and
will justify their actions as bringing justice to the little girl Victoria and
her fiancé burned to death. As was mentioned in class, attending public executions
and humiliations was a common event throughout many cultures and in time.
Victoria’s daily routine may seem like torture to others,
but it is kind of hard for me to see it that way. At the end of each day, her
mind is wiped and she relives everything like it was new. She has no memory of
her crime and is only shown at the end of each day. If Victoria was constantly
running from “hunters,” who she believed would actually kill her, and did not
have her mind wiped, then I would think it was torture. Her suffering is bad,
but she will always forget about it when the show producers wipe her mind. A
question that comes up due to her mind erasing is whether or not she should be
punished for her crime. She has no memory of what she did and may not feel
guilty about her crimes. I’m not sure whether or not she should be punished if
her mind does get wiped at the end of each day. I think Victoria punishment
should have been dealt with differently and without the use of a memory wiping
machine in order to punish her for her actions.
3 comments:
I think the torturous part of it all is the constant trauma she is feeling. Being thrown into a world where you know nothing about yourself or anyone else and people are trying to kill you all while searching for your "lost daughter". And although her memory is wiped clean, the memory wiper seems to be extremely painful like we saw at the end. But I do see your point that if she doesn't know that she is repeating the same life every day, is she knowingly being tortured? Only the outsider knows what is really happening and to us it sounds terrible because she has to relive it over and over again.
Victoria's punishment is cruel and unusual, especially since she has no memory of committing the crime. She believes the little girl she had videotaped was her daughter. By the end of the day, Victoria is physically exhausted and emotionally, mentally strained. Every morning, she wakes up with throbbing pain and no memory of her life. Though she does not remember anything, she is constantly experiencing heartbreak and mental and physical breakdowns.
Lauren and Piper, I see the point y'all both make about Victoria waking up in pain, having fear of being killed by "hunters" and believing she lost her daughter, but I agree with Lauren's point about having an outsider perspective. I believe it sounds horrible to us, and it probably sounds worse with since we know that she is reliving it everyday. It is torture to us, but I don't know if it is torture for her.
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