Name: Alexine Jhersy Eunice V.

Hipolito Section: STEM11 Y1-29

BLACK MIRROR:
White Bear
A reaction paper
 Introduction
"White Bear" is the second episode of the second season of Black Mirror, a British
science fiction anthology series. Charlie Brooker, the series' creator and showrunner,
wrote it, and Carl Tibbetts directed it. It first aired on Channel 4 in the United
Kingdom on February 18, 2013, at 10 p.m. According to the Broadcasters' Audience
Research Board, an estimated 1.2 million viewers watched the episode, accounting
for 7.2 percent of the British audience.

Victoria Skillane wakes up shell-shocked on a chair in front of a television with a

strange sign, pills on the ground, and a gauze around her wrists. With memory loss
and flashes of a girl, she walks around the house. She sees a picture of herself, a man,
and a kid on a fireplace and suspects she is her daughter. She walks out of the house
and notices people passively watching and filming her. A man with a rifle pursues her
out of nowhere, and she flees under the gaze of the locals. She meets a young woman
named Jem, who informs her that the majority of the population is controlled by a
signal transmitted by the White Bear, which transforms them into viewers. They try
to escape to a gas station convenience store, where the hunter shoots and kills Jem's
friend Damien. They retreat, and a guy named Baxter stops a vehicle and saves them
from the hunters. But, despite the fact that the man is a sadistic hunter, they manage
to escape. Jem informs them that she intends to burn down the White Bear, and they
proceed to the institution. When they arrive, Victoria discovers mysteries about
herself and the place where nothing is as it appears. When the truth is revealed, the
resulting paradigm shift allows the puzzle pieces to fall into place. Victoria is an
alleged child murderer who is kept permanently at White Bear Justice Park, a kind of
amusement facility where usual people can visit and watch her go through the same
scripted action story in which performers are used to frighten her and put on a show
for the crowd. Every night, the explanation for Victoria's psychological torture is
revealed, and her memory is erased in order to "reset" her mind for the next
showcase. Victoria was guilty of neglecting to help the young girl while her
boyfriend murdered her, instead filming her on her phone. As a result, her
punishment was to be given in the same sort of way. This level of punishment and
justice is far too harsh with too much time and money required. A murderer is still a
human being and no one deserves to be tortured for such an extended period of time.
 Reaction
The thought behind this episode is that the woman was complicit in the murder
since all she did was record the situation while this little girl was tortured and killed.
So the idea is that she is terrified and fleeing from the hunters, while everyone else is
watching and filming her. She's supposed to feel the same way that little girl did:
helpless. She’s yelling for help, but she's not getting it. I was taken aback at first
because this kind of plot twist had never passed through my mind. Knowing that the
protagonist is also the hidden antagonist is perplexing. When I found out what she
did with the case, I was furious because how could she be so heartless and stay still in
that situation? Thus, I believe she is deserving of punishment. Every suspect should
be jailed. The only thing that bothers me is the manner in which she is punished.
Though we may view murder as possibly the very worst crime by a sane person, I
presume many would readily agree that the punishment imposed on Victoria was
way too harsh and certainly not equitable to her crime. When we think about it, our
prisons and rehabilitation facilities house violators varying from rapists to larcenists to
arsonists, they all receive the same punishment of detainment or death penalty. We
do not justify raping rapists as punishment simply because they acted that way.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this episode is how it involves the audience.
Would our sympathies have been so nobly confused if the framework had been
different, with us knowing what Victoria had done before seeing her in the midst of
her punishment? Would we consider her to be deserving of our rage? Would we
perhaps applaud the creators of White Bear Justice Park for the ingenuity of their
punishment? A crowd yelling death threats, people working in the park to brutalize
someone who doesn't realize she's guilty, and the family of a dead little girl we only
see in documentary footage. It actually asks us to sympathize with its protagonist, to
feel sorry for them when a single blunder leads to a horrible, out-of-proportion
outcome. "White Bear" frightens us by puzzling our sympathies and leaving us
outraged with everyone involved. The truth of the matter that it ends with her
punishment being repeated, her mind being wiped, and the entire thing being reset
makes it extremely thought provoking. Is society now worse than she was? How can
she learn from her mistake if she is never allowed to recall it? How long will this go
on? We know it's been about 15 days according to the calendar, but how many
more months are still there? years?

 Reflection
It appears absurd that they would devote so much time, effort, and money to this single
woman's punishment. Don't people commit heinous crimes on a daily basis? Will they create a
hell scenario for everyone who commits a crime? Consider how much money is currently spent
on inmate accommodation, and then consider how much more money would be spent if all
murderers were punished in this sort of way. Is this a fair punishment? This episode appears to
be imploring us that this is cruel, and I feel a kind of empathy for the character throughout the
episode, which does not fully break when I learn what she did. If I were asked whether this
punishment was appropriate before watching this episode, I would have mixed feelings.
However, after witnessing what she had to endure, I made up my mind and agree that this
punishment is unrighteous. Is she the same person she was when she committed the crime as she
is now, after having her mind wiped several times? Is it fair to punish someone for something to
which they have no emotional or mental attachment? Isn't this psychiatric torment? The park
producers advantageously used Victoria as the show's central character in the episode. Even
though Victoria is a convicted criminal, still no one had any right to use her in a sense that does
not benefit her indirectly. In today's society, inmates are frequently obliged to undertake
mundane jobs such as cooking or cleaning bedsheets that benefit either themselves or the larger
community. Victoria is turned into a state slave by putting her to play for no personal gain.
Besides that, torture has always been ethically wrong, even if consent is given. Human beings
have an absolute special property called dignity. The sovereign violated Victoria's basic rights
and failed to respect the innate dignity of human beings by treating her as a lowly human being
and abusing her weakness.

The episode is simply attempting to convey how our pursuit of justice frequently devolves into
a primitive blood lust. A woman commits a heinous crime, and the rest of polite society sees it as
justification to subject her to repeated, indefinite agony that goes far beyond the original crime.
The case exemplifies how, in our pursuit of justice, we can sometimes think in irrational and
unjust ways. Our legal system is constantly in danger of becoming a tool of rabid passions rather
than of sensible and proportionate justice. Furthermore, from an economic standpoint, the
episode can be seen through the profit the park would receive from the people. The profit they
make from people coming in to see Victoria may raise the question of whether it is worthwhile
to put her in the play. Did the money paid by visitors cover the cost of building the park, and
did that cover the cost of keeping Victoria in prison? Is it fulfilling for them to make money by
torturing others? The truth of the matter that it ends with her punishment being repeated, her
mind being wiped, and the entire thing being reset makes it extremely thought provoking. Is
society now worse than she was? How can she learn from her mistake if she is never allowed to
recall it? How long will this go on? We know it's been about 15 days according to the calendar,
but how many more months are still there? years?
 Conclusion
Eventually, the episode was well-received and made several lists of the best episodes
of the series. There's a lot more going on here as well, with the episode addressing it
all from the effects of smartphone technology on a progressively voyeuristic society to
the question of morality and justice in an epoch where criminals and their crimes are
heavily covered and vilified by the media. It made us consider what might happen if
technology and modern civilization were to fall out of our control. It's easy to believe
that we'd never let it get to this point, that we'd never be so evil or be involved in
punishment in the ways that this episode's audience is. “White bear” isn't about a
single person who caused things to go wrong; rather, it's about a whole portion of
society that allowed it to get to this point, a civilization that we could not only
theoretically see ourselves in but are already a part of. This episode manages to be
deeply disturbing by removing any degree of separation in which we might have
found solace. Even if it isn't explicitly about technology, "White Bear" is disturbing,
which fits with the show 's premise; it makes you question what you thought you
knew about yourself. Those of us that witnessed this episode had conflicting feelings
after the episode ended. Part of this emotion could be attributed to our apprehension
about living in a futuristic society where memories could be easily erased. A large part
of our mixed emotions arises from our moral intuition telling us that what we merely
watched cannot be justice, no matter what they claim. Subsequently, the White Bear
symbol means pain, torment, revenge, and sadistic illusion.

"If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us." If one seeks fairness, one
must fight for justice. If we do not maintain this fairness and persist to be cruelly
unjustified in penalizing and failing to respect an individual's basic rights, our morality
will be shattered, and things will spiral out of control. The rule of law will never be on
our side. To this day, it is incomprehensible to me how anyone with a good
conscience could defend cruelty. Torture creates an inhumane connection between
the torturer and the tortured. Torturers must be free of empathy, compassion, and
sensitivity to the physical and psychological suffering of others. Torture victims are
lowered to a state of complete compliance and involvement; they both are and
understand that they are totally at the mercy of their torturer. This is a relationship
that requires both parties to compromise the most fundamental of human instincts,
and those compromises are irreversible.