Cruel and unusual punishment is punishment prohibited under the 8th amendment of the Constitution. It prohibits punishment lie torture, deliberately degrading punishment or punishment too severe for the act. The reason cruel and unusual punishment is not accepted -apart from the Categorical Imperative that we would not be able to will the maxim of the actions as a universal law- is the fact that if it occurred then in the end we would become just as horrible as the people who committed the crimes. The Black Mirror episode we watched this past week in class explores the idea a new version of what some people, myself included, considered cruel and unusual punishment.
In this episode we are introduced to Victoria. She appears to be completely out of it, not remembering anything at all of where she was. She asks people for help and they ignore her and continue filming her. She quotes "Can you help me, I can't remember who I am." In the end we discover that she was a criminal and she is forced to relive the psychological torture or everything her boyfriend did to the poor little girl. Although some would agree that this torture is alright, I don't believe so because one, her memory is wiped every day, if this were not the case, and it was done one time then maybe people would say that "alright she deserved that and she lived through what the little girl did," but wiping her memory becomes too extreme in my opinion. 2, the people are becoming worse then she was because they are engaging in this act and becoming bystanders. They are trying to "will" the maxim, which should not occur. I guess part of the reason I empathise with Victoria is the fact that she no longer remembers what happened in the past, she is no longer that same person, so it is not fair to force her to go through that psychological torture. The fact that we saw the humanity in her in the beginning of the episode is what did it for me, and like Dr. J said, you don't get to see the humanity of the people in jail. I just did not find her punishment at all fair.
4 comments:
I agree this is an example cruel and unusual punishment, when her memory is erased every night she has no memory of the crime. The punishment in this incidence does not fit the crime. I feel what Black Mirror does so well is make us think about what is going on around us and how it affects us in today society.
I love love love how you included things from past lectures like Categorical Imperative to really show how cruel and unusual Victoria's punishment was. I also agree with the how you said we saw her humanity at first and we had mutual caring attitude towards her because no one is helping her.
Yes ! I couldnt agree with you anymore on the unfairness of this punishment. You would think that a society that cares and loves for their children would have morals and understand the wrong doing in wiping her memory. It is just so hard to get the pount across since it seems hypocritical of us to not approve of the memory swipings but approve of execution. Both take the humanity of the people away. But i still feel as if the swiping of memory is allowing for a beastful mindset of a human to be developed.
Aylin, your post was exactly what I was thinking about punishment! I could not have agreed with you more about the example of very cruel and unusual punishment. That is what I think is really good about this series; it makes you really think about the society we live in and do we agree with how things are run. I think a lot of times people ignore that aspect of American culture.
Post a Comment