In the Black Mirror episode White Bear, the main character Victoria wakes up in a chair, unable to recognize her surroundings. Distraught, she gets up to get a glass of water and when she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t even know herself. Throughout the episode, Victoria is chased and with the help of a random stranger, she is saved. However, the random stranger and the people chasing Victoria are actually actors in the White Bear Justice Park. They expose Victoria’s crimes in front of the audience who were following her throughout the chase. In the end, Victoria is attached to a painful brainwashing machine and the cycle repeats.
The viewers are now faced with the most controversial question: Is it justice? Justice is defined by Oxford Dictionary as “just behavior or treatment.”
Well, that doesn’t seem to explain much at all.
That’s because the term justice has vague and subjective meaning. Justice is a combination of just and right actions, and morality. Throughout history, philosophers struggled to define the word and give solid examples of what justice is in a given situation. Morality, right, wrong, good, bad…. These words vary from different people and their background. Oftentimes, what is “just” is the US isn’t considered the same elsewhere. This explains why everyone has such a wide-ranging perspective of whether the White Bear Justice Park is actually just.
With that said, it is understandable that some peers argue that because Victoria is brainwashed everyday, she is technically a “new person,” therefore making the WBJP’s actions torturous. In addition, the actors are exploiting the crime by profiting from it. These two points make it difficult to support the WBJP, regardless of their original intention to bring awareness to Victoria’s devious past and to give her what she deserves.
But is it what she deserves? A few others say “Absolutely.” While those previous points are valid, what is so different from our current justice system? Don’t we find pleasure in seeing people receive the death penalty, or knowing that they’re going to be imprisoned forever? The WBJP is justified in their actions because although not made into a theme park, we pay the justice system with taxes to incarcerate millions. The US prison is designed to be tortuous, and that is not always a bad thing. If you did the crime, you pay the time.
My personal opinion lies in the middle and in all honesty, situations like these that make me not want to think. I don’t want to be seen as wicked, but I have become desensitized to everything, especially seeing the violence and brutality in today's society. Punishment takes all forms and while I understand those who are against the WBJP, if you did the crime, you pay the time.
But no one said how you had to pay.
2 comments:
Very good point on bringing up the tax money that funds prisons. Although this can be just as invalid because as tax payers we don't have direct control of where our tax dollars go to. But I do see what you mean. Very good point.
Wonderful rhetoric, "if you did the crime, you pay the time". I love how you compared it to our current Justice System. This whole post brings up various points that really make me think about how we punish people in our society.
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