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Monday, November 27, 2017

Is it justice?

In this episode of Black Mirror we are introduced to a woman named Victoria. She wakes up in a house and we discover she has amnesia. Looking for help she walks out of the house but everyone she sees is recording her. She soon finds herself running for her life from a man in a mask who seems to be hunting her down and yet everyone around her is still unresponsively recording her. The installment of this episode does such acrobatics with my sympathy for the main character. First I start out feeling sorry for the woman who doesn’t even know who she is. Then I feel even more sorry when I find out she’s being hunted and no one is helping her. Then the MC/ host shows that newscast video, and my sympathies obviously change. I sympathize with the parents of the little girl who died at the hands of Victoria’s fiance (while she taped it, of course). And of course I sympathize with Jemima, the girl abducted, tortured and then killed. And then Victoria’s taken back to the house, and we see the process that the MC goes through to restart everything for the next morning. And seeing all this, I can’t help but wonder does Victoria deserve this? Jemima died at the hands of her fiance, she just taped it happening. This is where the show stakes its claim that the taping of something, the standing by complacently as lives are ruined, is just as bad as the actual action being taped. Which I do agree that her taping it is just as bad but the fact that they erased her memory bothers me. The way I see it is that erasing her memory is the same as getting rid of a bad dream. Like she no longer has to deal with what her husband and her have done. So then the question becomes is it justice to punish someone who has no memory of the crime they have committed? This episode was just an expertly observed and perfectly plotted episode which I enjoyed. It made me feel things for a character that I never have before. My reactions to the people depicted in these 45 minutes swung back and forth, gaining new thoughts and broadening my mind’s horizons with each swing.

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