In the short film White Bear, audiences are introduced to a world where all but a handful of human beings have been brainwashed by a strange organization and forced to into the role of mindless watchers following anyone unaffected by the hypnosis, most of whom have begun treating everyday like The Purge. The film follows a young woman with no memory of this world or her own identity as she struggles to liberate everyone from the effects of this organization. However, just as she is on the verge of doing so, it is revealed that the entire world she has experienced was nothing more than a show put on in order to torture her. This is because she was at one time a heinous and cruel woman who videotaped the abuse and murder of an unknowing child. After doing so she was subjected to a fitting punishment; she is forced to experience the same helplessness and fear that child experienced through fresh eyes every single day, presumably for the rest of her life. At first glance this punishment seems to be purely for the sake of torturing the woman's body and mind through an endless cycle of fear and confusion. And upon looking deeper, it could even seem completely pointless as she doesn't seem to learn anything from this experience. This however, is not true. In fact, it is quite possible that the purpose of this punishment is in fact rehabilitation through incarceration.
While she may not recall every single detail of the days she experiences, our heroine does recall bits and pieces such as her vague memory of the woman who helped her and the bad thing that happens at White Bear. And after the truth of the punishment is revealed and starts up again, the man orchestrating the show makes a comment that on a certain night she is a "screamer", indicating that her reactions to the scenario change with each day. This would imply that though her memory in her conscious mind is constantly being wiped, her brain is still unconsciously adapting to this situation and changing her in subtle ways. At one point in the film, the woman being punished asks the park director to simply end her life, to which he replies "You say that every time". Well what would happen if one day, she did not say this, and instead said plainly and simply that she was sorry. Assuming that this punishment would go on until she died, it is possible that eventually she would learn of what she did and feel sorry about it. As far as the audience knows, she only thinks of the horrors she is subjected to through this process, and not the girl she wronged. So if one day she was about to start over and told the memory wiper that she was truly and completely sorry for her actions, would they still have a need to torture her? At this point, would she finally achieve rehabilitation?
2 comments:
Answering the question of "Would they still have a need to torture her?" The answer referring to the workers of the park is yes. I do not believe that the workers of the park would ever think she was truly sorry for her actions. Even if she said she was sorry every single time, I do not believe the workers would stop the torture.
There is no way to know that her actions do indeed change every day, for all we know, she does the exact same things every day. We have few solid evidence to determine that she even learns from the experiences.
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