White Bear

This was an episode that was centered on the concepts of crime and punishment. It raised questions as to what is appropriate for certain crimes. The judge said that what they would do would be “proportionate and considered”. But are we really sure that is what is happening is proportionate. She has lost her memories of the crime as part of the punishment, and does that affect what is proportional. We are also meant to assume that she is in fact guilty of the crime she has committed. In the episode, it is said that she claimed to be “persuaded” by her fiancé to help in the killing, but are absolutely sure this is what happened exactly. We did not witness all of the evidence in the trial because it was not shown in the episode, so we only hear it from the other characters. We are told that she pleaded guilty, but was that all that happened. There have been real world cases in the past where forced confessions have been used to get someone convicted of a crime in court. A similar thing happened in with a group of people known as the West Memphis Three, where one of the accused was heavily persuaded to tell things that were later revealed to be untrue, by the interrogators. And you also have to think about how this fits into the supposed “Near Future”. The other episodes were grounded in a sort of futuristic realism, but this goes into surrealism, or something out of the Twilight Zone. Are we really expected to believe that in the future, entire theme parks and complexes will be made for the sole purpose of providing therapeutic justice onto serial killers? We have had people like this in the past, and we never went to such bizarre lengths to punish them, we either give them multiple life sentences, or a death sentence. And how much was spent on the White Bear Park? The death penalty is just now getting known that it can be more costly in the long run than a regular life sentence, but its probably no where near the amount of money spent on something like White Bear Park.

Another thing that we should maybe think about is us as the viewers of the TV show Black Mirror. The episode Whit Bear was about large amounts of people watching a live “reality show” where someone is unknowingly put through an experience designed to scare them. Questions could be raised on whether they are different from the killer, who also recorded on of the killings for their own enjoyment. What does that say about their society, and about us as well? We are currently watching a show where until we learn the twist at the end, shows “real people” being put through very distressing situations, which resemble actual pain, fear, and struggle. Are we different from the people in the show, and how much do we resemble the killer in that regard.

Another minor topic is the one of not knowing what is fully going on. Because memory loss is a part of the episode, how much do We know is real? We are told in the end that the main character is a killer who murdered someone and is being punished for it, but are we fully sure that is what happened. Because we are learning this from a perspective where we only she what she sees mostly, How do we know that the news reports shown in the end aren’t just manufactured like the rest of the “park”, or that the reactions from the crowd are also real? This could all be a ruse by them, and is part of some more sick society that still gets release from watching the events unfold, but don’t need criminal punishment as an excuse for it to happen.