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.

Is it justice or punishment?

     When watching "White Bear" we see a woman who was put through a simulation. When the actor, Jem, met the main character, Victoria, she explained that certain people were affected by the transmitter and the ones that were not affected became the "hunters and hunted". As they traveled through different sceneries and situations, Victoria wondered why no one would put their phone down to help them, she was so disgusted that she yanked a phone out of a visitor's hand. When they finally arrived at the White Bear Transmitter she began to feel uneasy and this was where it was revealed to her that this was actually a punishment for her. Victoria looks shocked when she found out what she supposedly did, then paraded around so people could video her. She was taken back to the apartment and given electric shocks to her brain that made her forget so the cycle could start over again, day after day.

      The simulation was supposed to be a punishment for the women and make her feel remorseful for just standing and videoing the death of helpless Jemima but was the park used for the pure enjoyment of the visitors of White Bear Park? Victoria seemed to not have any recollection of this horrid crime until she was told what happened, so is this actually a punishment? Her memory had been wiped, so are we punishing the same person?

Hell on Earth

          This week in Theories of Human Nature, the topic of discussion was, in my own words, the idea of justice and "cruel and unusual" punishment. In class, we watched an episode of the series "Black Mirror" titled "White Bear." In the episode, a woman who played a role in the kidnap and murder of a little girl is forced to re-live the same day over and over. Throughout the day, she is hunted and recorded by strangers and not once is she offered any help. Every day that she wakes up, she has no recollection of who she is or the crime she has committed. The facility in which she is forced to re-live the awful nightmare is considered a "Justice" Park.

         In my opinion, this act of justice is wrong and unconstitutional on many levels. It is morally wrong. For starters, the woman has no recollection of the crime she has committed or who she is; therefore, she has been stripped of her responsibility for the crime because she is no longer the same individual. By taking matters into their own hands, the creators of the park have destroyed the job of justice. The woman has now become innocent and her responsibility, in my opinion, is transferred to those who have stripped her of it. Forcing her to re-live the same day over and over and feel the same humility and guilt is, basically, creating an individualized version of Hell on earth. 

          I believe that the Justice Park is an extreme act of cruel and unusual punishment and is a very inhumane form of imprisonment. True justice should be exercised in the courts and uniformed between like crimes, not turned into a theme park and used as a form of amusement for spectators. In the Justice Park, justice was turned into a source of profit. The actors as well as the on-lookers that encouraged and participated in the facade are no better that the woman they initially intended to punish.