What Makes Them Any Different?

     "White Bear" was a very peculiar episode from the series "Black Mirrors." They're all pretty weird, but this one took the cake. The episode starts with a woman waking up in the middle of a house who appears to have no memory of who she is or why she's there. She immediately begins to notice that she's being filmed by random people but no one responds to her. At the end of the episode, it's revealed that it was all part of some sort of punishment to make her pay for the death of a little girl that she'd kidnapped. Though she took no physical part in it, they considered her guilty because she never stepped in to save the child but taped it all. They made this woman, Victoria, a victim of their enjoyment and stripped her of her autonomous rights and memories. So, my questions is this: what makes them any different? They are even more guilty, I believe, than she is.

     Yes, Victoria did participate in the murder of an innocent child. Yes, she found a sickening kind of satisfaction in watching her fiance torture that child. For that crime, she was guilty. However, they made her innocent when they erased her memories and repeatedly manipulated her mind to fit their theme park and awful idea of justice. They were no longer punishing the same person for the same crime. They were punishing a woman that, with no memories, did nothing wrong. She couldn't even feel guilty, because she didn't know what she did. They took away the only chance that that little girl had of getting justice from the people that hurt her by erasing the memory of the only person left that could pay for it. They are no better than the original Victoria. In my opinion, the guilt is now theirs to take. 

     What they were doing at that park was wrong in several ways. Nothing about it portrayed justice. From the moment she woke up to the time they revealed to her who she was, that woman was terrified. I've refrained from calling her Victoria in this blog because that's not who she was. She wasn't Victoria anymore. They took that, her identity, away from her. Even the "visitors" that recorded everything including this woman's confusion and terror, were no better than the Victoria that witnessed and televised a murder. No one involved in the operation of that park is any different. They are all guilty, not the woman who was now inhabiting the body of Victoria.