In White Bear, a woman who had committed a heinous crime was given an equally, if not more so, punishment. She had to relive what torture she had inflicted, with an audience watching and video taping the whole show, and without receiving anyone's help. We have these ideas of "fair" punishment and of justice, but in reality, how is it up to us to decide who deserves what punishment? That being said, I do not think that criminals should never be punished, but I think that the problem with our justice system is that for a criminal to receive a "fair" punishment, we almost lower ourselves to their levels in order to do so, which both defeats the purpose and makes us hypocrites.
The scary part is as horrendous as this punishment in the movie was, I can see this happening sooner rather than later in our own country. Although there is the part in our Constitution that forbids cruel and unusual punishment, and even though I do not personally believe that such a cruel punishment is ever justified, I can definitely see that not only would a lot of people support such a concept, but that people would come in droves to watch justice be served.
In the media today, there is so much violence. Not only do we see violence on the news and on social media, but there are also shows completely dedicated to watching criminals be tried and punished. It is so easy to deny that I would go and watch, as I am sure it is easy for others to deny it, but how is that any different than watching it on the television?
People try to distance themselves from the violence, while also reveling in it. Maybe it is easier to hide behind a screen while ravenously binge watching all the Cops and Dateline our brains can handle, but that does not make it any less cruel or hypocritical for us to judge those pictured on the film White Bear.
We, as twenty-first century human beings, have to get a handle on our moral values, including punishment. Just because the prison system is crowded is not a justification for us to make entertainment out of their crimes, whether we are actually there like the people in the film, or whether we watch it on TV religiously every Friday night. There is no justification for cruelty, and the truth is, cruel and unusual punishment makes us "innocents" no better than those who commit the crimes.
2 comments:
That's a fear of mine too: our system is getting so out-of-hand that something like this could actually happen. Imaging Americans doing this to a criminal hurts me to think of but I can definitely see it happening. We like to watch others suffer in a sick way, which is proven through the popularity of those violent, real-life shows like Cops. Our love of these shows comes from the distancing of ourselves from the violence and we see the punishment as justice.
I agree that such cruel and unusual punishments should never become commonplace - but you have to consider, was what the woman did to that little girl an unusual and cruel punishment in itself? Nay, even worse than that since the little girl didn't deserve it. I think it's debatable whether it was fair or not what the woman deserved, even with how harsh it was.
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