In the short film piece of the show Black Mirror we were introduced to a world where justice is painted in a way that is very different from the real world. In this episode "White Bear" we watch as a woman who has no memory of who she is or where she is struggles throughout a town. There are people hunting her with chainsaws, guns and masks for seemingly no reason. We think that our main character is safe multiple times just to be thrust back into panic mode. Throughout the episode people are also recording the things happening to her with their cell phones; they also do not respond to her cries for help while she is being terrorized. The entire time we are made to sympathize with the character, only to find out that the whole ordeal is her punishment for committing a crime that was similar. The day we went through with her, gets wiped from her memory every night and started over the next day.
This is where the question of where the line between being vengeful and seeking justice comes in. With there being two kinds of justice: retributive and rehabilitation based, I think that sometimes the line between revenge and justice get blurred. I personally do not think that the punishment against the main character were appropriate or affective. The purpose of jail and prison are to have the perpetrator experience the punishment of restricted privileges and such that result in their crime. If the knowledge of the inconveniences (or in this case terror) that were the consequence of the crime are erased for the perpetrator's mind everyday where are they to have the room to associate the crime and the punishment with each other? Especially if they remember neither. Even at the end of the film when the woman was told what her crimes were and why she experienced what she did, she begged them to stop not because she had learned a lesson about what happens when you kidnap children and film their torture (which we may assume this isn't a punishment that us allotted to very person who has committed a crime, just this woman for this specific crime). She only begged because she wanted the torment to end. Can we say she learned her lesson if she only remembers the pain from that day, but doesn't associate herself with the act of the crime? Also, if each time she is punished she forgets, how can she retain the information on why she should never commit the crime again? She cannot, which is why this "punishment" is clearly more for the audience's thirst for revenge and not for justice for the victim and her family. Unless the family visited the park everyday, they do not benefit from the exhibition ; the people who visit do because they want to see the woman suffer for her crimes and not necessarily learn from them. She isn't given the mental capacity to remember her lessons let alone learn from them, so we should be able to gather that the "punishment" would continue endlessly since there is no goal but the pain of the woman.
3 comments:
I agree with you. The punishment was nowhere near effective because she can't learn and retain her lesson if her memory gets wiped. All the people wanted was revenge, and even that was executed terribly.
I agree with you on the fact that she can't truly learn her lesson and the seriousness of her crime if her memory is being swept clean on a daily basis.
I agree that the punishment may not be effective in teaching her a lesson, however this could serve as an effective method of scaring off anyone that would commit the same crime.
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