The episode White Bear on Black mirror was essentially about a woman who was an accessory to kidnapping and killing a little girl. Instead of being sent to prison she was sent to an alternative solution. White Bear is a place where they punish her for what she did by making her relive a scenario where she doesn't remember anything. She is initially confused and afraid similar to the kid that she kidnapped. The whole scenario was based on her actions. Every day she would wake up to the same scenario and remember absolutely nothing. She basically reliving the day of the incident but in the child's perspective.
It was quite interesting seeing how they dealt with her crime, but instead of prison, she relived the incident in a different perspective. At first, the episode opens up as if she was abandoned in a neighborhood all alone. Later on, people began to show up, but most of them were recording on their phones while she was being chased by a man who was trying to kill her. This is quite similar to reality where people would observe rather than help because no one else is doing anything. In today's society, many people are not willing to take the first step, but would rather follow the crowd instead. In her case, the people that were recording represented her during the incident of the child being kidnapped and killed.
Is it justice or cruelty? The concept of reliving the incident but in the victim's perspective could show the offender how cruel they really are. In other words, showing the murderer or offender how much pain they really caused the victim is a good idea but making them relive it for more than two days can be seen as torture. The concept of White Bear can be similar to the way we teach dogs how to behave by showing them what they did, is wrong. Eventually, you might think if she would ever learn her lesson when she can remember nothing from the previous days.
Also towards the end, it was revealed that she was being observed by a group of people as she went through the whole process. It seems as if she was no longer classified as a human but as property because they used her as if she was some type of animal in cage or artifact in a museum.
3 comments:
the part about teaching dogs is a good comparison, showing them what they did wrong so they can learn, and i do agree, how can she learn what she did if her memory just keeps getting erased. and the comparing to a caged animal is interesting because they hunted her too like an animal so its cool that you compared it to that
I like that you said they treated her as a caged animal, because I honestly believe that it was good that they treated her that way. She deserved every bit of it.
I think it's interesting how you say it's as if she's not classified as a human anymore which the more I think about it, is true. They way everyone treats her throughout the movie is more like property than anything else. Such as when they would feed her only in the scene when she went to the woods as if she was a dog.
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