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Monday, November 20, 2017

White Bear and Profit


In the "White Bear", an episode of the Black Mirror series, the main character named Victoria is subjected to a form of torture. She is forced to relive the same series of events each day with no memories of the previous day. She is seemingly chased by a few people trying to kill her and a group of apathetic people trying to film it. Only to be revealed that the whole thing is an act for the amusement and the reason she is there because she took part in a murder of a child. And the people who were chasing and filming her? They were akin to people going to an amusement park.


I wanted to point there are a few issues with profiting from this type of thing. One thing that was pointed in the class discussion that I agreed with is that Victoria or anyone in her situation can not last forever. With everything going on, she is going to die eventually due to stress and exhaustion. This is going to cause issues with the people running the White Bear Justice Park since Victoria is the main event. The White Bear Justice Park is technically a business. Average people are paying to come take part in the operation of punishing a criminal. If she dies, do they have another criminal to take her place?

There is this question. "How serious does a crime have to be, for someone to become the "main event" of a park like this?" I am asking this because not only is this organization is acting like a business, it is also a deterrent for potential criminals that may take part in a crime similar to or as serious as Victoria's. At least that was the implied purpose for all pictures and video being captured at the park. However, this is counterproductive for a park that thrives on the profiting from criminal torture. If there are hardly anyone committing a heinous crime like child murder due to discouragement, how can the park profit? Do they start using people who committed a less serious crime like petty theft than taking part in a murder (or being on the sideline in Victoria's case)?  The problem with a facility like this is how far would the people running the park go in order to make a profit. They may start with the best intentions but would it stay this?

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