White Bear

In this episode of Black Mirror, we witness the carefully thought out torture of Victoria Skillane.  This story unravelled somewhat out of order to the viewer. The episode opened up with the main character waking up out of a very deep and painful sleep. The first thing she noticed was a pill bottle and its contents scattered around the floor in front of her. She was in such a daze that she was questioning her actions. She breaks free from the chair she seemed to be strapped into and makes her way around this unfamiliar home she woke up in. She experiences extreme thirst for reasons that are discovered later in the episode and she swiftly fills a cup with water and drinks it. Things start to fall into place when Victoria looks at a photo of a little girl and experiences major pain in her head. A peculiar image fills her head and the same symbol is projected on the TV. Victoria has no recollection of who the girl is or what the symbol means. So, out of panic and curiosity, she ventures out of the house only to find her situation getting weirder and weirder. She starts off slow just calling out for help to the surrounding neighbors only to realize that she is being completely ignored by the people in her community. Instead of helping her they have all chosen to record her crying out for help on their smart phones. Then, a car pulls into the driveway and a tall man gets out wearing a mask that resembled the symbol she saw on the tv in the house. The man walks to his trunk and pulls out a rifle and points it directly at the main character. The entirety of this episode is a man hunt of Victoria through a park called Justice Park. There are props and actors put in place to enhance this whole torture experience. So why is Victoria being tortured by the people in her community? Towards the end of the episode we discover that Victoria and her boyfriend have committed a terrible crime of brutally murdering a little girl and recording it. With the boyfriend being out of the picture, the "justice" system decides to exert the ultimate punishment on the only one they have access to. Each day, the city participates in recreating the same exact type of torture for Victoria and then wipes her memory with a powerful machine at the end of the day. I think this is not a form of justice. Yes, she is guilty of a very sickening crime however, two wrongs do not make a right. I think that involving an entire community in this strange form of justice being served is setting a bad example for young children as well as adults. It's interesting that the locals created a park specifically to mirror the same type of scenario there was when the crime went down. I see the point that the city and its citizens are trying to get across, but if they are erasing the memory of the person who is guilty it defeats the purpose. At that point, it seems to be for the pleasure of the actors and bystanders involved in this mistreatment of this woman.