White Bear

In yet another unsettling sitting of the sandbox psychological torment that is Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror, played out the events of a disoriented and unnamed young woman who appears to had been attempting to take her own life via drug overdose. As she walks around the house that she awakens in, there is a strange symbol appearing on all of the electronic screens and a strange frequency along with it.

Walking outside, there are several people recording her and refusing to speak to her. Throughout the entire neighborhood, she receives the same reactions before a masked man with the same symbol appears and reveals a firearm and begins to shoot at her.

She makes a run for it and quickly meets another young woman that helps her escape the masked man. She endures another kidnapping, being tortured, and strange new "hunters" chasing her. More confused than ever she manages to escape it all. To add to the dilemma she endures memory shocks of a particular event in her past triggered by objects and words i.e White Bear. She believes she has a daughter she must find. The young woman explains that in order to change everything back the way it was she must help her destroy this transmitter signal. At the transmitter control room, the hunters catch up to them and they finally capture her.

The entire thing was a hoax.

Everyone was in it on her, including a live audience. The reason as she is explained: she is being shamed and forced to relive her being tortured and filmed as she once helped her boyfriend in crime torturing a young girl by not objecting to his actions and even filming the incident. She is brought out to a crowd and publicly shamed before having her memory wiped and reliving the torment all over again.

Brooker is spoonfeeding  themes that have been at center of philosophical debate for centuries to a Netflix audience in a package that even the most shallow of viewers can digest and yield some form of critical satisfaction. In believing one has derived the 'secret' meaning of this ordeal, we arrive at the dispositions of discipline and punishment. If we can at least agree that these are the central motifs of the drama, then philosophical inquiry may take its course. It invites us to ask ourselves

*      What is justice?

*     What is discipline?

*     Who deserves justice? Who deserves punishment?

*      What is punishment? Where is the line between punishment and torture?

These inquiries are core pillars in Plato's The Republic and overall society. Personally I believe individuals who are punished should be conscious of their punishment. It is up to us as viewers, and philosophers in that respect, to draw the line.