The "White Bear" episode of Black Mirror tells the story of an amusement park, whose employees carry out a repeated form of justice against a young women that daily consists of her memory being erased, the park visitors filming and not helping her while she serves as the victim of a large fear act, and her public humiliation as she is reminded of her crime in the real world. The ideas of these punishments comes from her involvement during a child's murder whom her husband killed while she filmed and did not take action.
Based on today's large perception of justice, this daily form of justice seems to be taken too far in this situation. The park does the punishment to her daily an erases her memory so she repeatedly falls victim to a recycling act. What she goes through in one day brings a great deal amount of pain to her and she never actually gets to learn and grow from her past mistake. She instead, falls victim to an amusement park using her criminal actions as an excuse to humiliate her, as a means to attract visitors and consume profit. The woman failed to take action by filming her boyfriend murdering a child, and the visitors participate in the same type of failed action by filming her and refusing to help her which raises many questions of hypocrisy against them.
The woman has fallen victim to a large scapegoat system due to her involvement in the murder of a child, even though her boyfriend did the worst deed by being the one to actually kill the child. Yes her actions were wrong, but the punishment she receives is a direct result of the society trying to punish her even more harshly because her boyfriend is no longer alive as he previously committed suicide in his cell. The society wanted to make sure that she never had the same chance to do the same as he had done and so they established the amusement park to trap her and punish her daily. Her boyfriend would have most likely received a death penalty and his actions plus his succeed angered the society so much because they had felt that justice had not been properly served and so they sought to give out a harsh punishment against his accomplice, his girlfriend.
Justice is a value that has evolved throughout history. Justice in past times often meant harsh retribution and eventually it evolved to retribution to a less degree of punishment. Today we seem to have it narrowed down as punishment that repays the action evenly; however, much corruption exists in today's justice system as just like in "White Bear," the people being punished are being used as pieces to make profit by the corporations owning the prisons, the media, etc.
2 comments:
Hypocrisy is a massive issue in the White Park Justice Park because of the failure for one to act on a horrible situation unraveling before someone (bystander effect). I also believe that because the husband committed suicide to evade justice, Victoria's punishment is far more cruel. The punishment suits those giving it, acting as an ease of pain from the crime by distracting it with vengeance upon the criminal. Rather than making the punishment an action that would help change or correct the perpetrator for the betterment of society, it is mainly used as revenge for the primary criminal action that had taken place.
Socrates sought to show us that justice ought not be to the advantage of the strongest, it is not doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies, and it is not solely paying off your debts. In the White Bear society, the punishments they choose to inflict on Victoria completely misalign with the Socratic view, so we need to recognize this as unjust. Justice has not only changed and evolved over time and through various cultures, but it's also been denied to stigmatized people every step of the way. Eventually we have to start evaluating and recognizing the injustice we see right in front of us and calling it out for what it is. Our prison system at this point is a tax-funded business that unjustly destroys families and ruins lives to make a buck off cheap labor. White Bear isn't too far off from where our society will end up if we forget what justice is.
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