A Justice Park or an Immoral Amusement Park?

The central theme that I saw from this episode of White Bear was justice and what actions are morally right. It questions whether the audience and crew of the White Bear justice park are morally right for inflicting and enjoying the pain and suffering they are causing Victoria? Is our model of a punitive rather than a rehabilitative system is just? And as Dr. J pointed out for us whether Victoria is even the same person that committed the crime she is being punished for?

The role of the audience in the White Bear Justice Park is to have the same role Victoria held in the crime as a mesmerized onlooker. Initially I thought that it was the Bystander Effect that was preventing anyone from helping Victoria. But once the viewers understand the full context of the audience’s presence being something similar to tourists at an entertainment attraction, there is a new sense of group irresponsibility. I would say that the onlookers are desensitized to the actions that they are seeing, partially because of their perspective of Victoria and because of the bombardment of violent things that our society watches as entertainment all the time. There are so many outlets that are depicting violence amongst each other, from video games to videos to TV shows, that we as a society have grown used to seeing others suffering as a form of our entertainment. Any of us could go to World Star and see multiple assaults recorded and uploaded for the amusement of wanting to see two people fight. Those who recorded not only watched a crime happen, just as Victoria, but also uploaded it for the world to see. Yet no one thinks to put each one of them on trial as an accomplice to assault.

Another concept brought up by the film was that the system of punishment that Victoria was held in was strictly punitive. I understand that for minor offenses that we want to inflict the pain that we felt on those who hurt us (sometimes), but I think we can all agree that this system takes it too far. Is there any kind of rehabilitative method that you can come up with for the crime that Victoria committed? (Genuine question because I can’t think of anything.) My view of the legal system would be to have both rehabilitative and some punitive incorporated together, almost in the same sense of how “lower level” crimes are sentenced to time in prison and “high level” crimes receive the death penalty.

Lastly, I want to address the idea of Victoria being a different person mentally than the Victoria that committed the crime because of the shock therapy that she receives every night altering her memory and therefore herself.  I believe that to an extent that she is currently a different person because her memories have been changed so much that she doesn’t even remember relationship towards Ian or Jeima, if she was a mother, fiancé, homeowner, or a criminal. I also believe that because she no longer knows her crime consciously that they are in fact torturing someone who believes has done nothing wrong, and only because of her criminal status that society is not sympathizing with her. In most other cases if anything were to happen to a woman that was not able to recall all of the events we would probably feel sorry for her, just as some viewer did at the beginning of the episode. This could also be because the viewers of the episode first see her as a defenseless woman then a murderer, while those around her first viewed her as a criminal and nothing more. Yet the action is more than just trying to punish Victoria, it is about entertainment, feeling as if they are contributing to the comeuppance of a bad person, of trying to have her pay for not only her crimes but also the crimes of Ian because he “evaded justice”.