Am I seriously the only person that found it sorta *beep* stupid that they're gonna keep setting up over and over just for one person?? I understand one setup, one final explanation to what she did, than either life incarceration or death penalty, but to continually reset so many times just seems dumb to me.
shareIf I have to explain it to you, then it kind of defeats the purpose of the social commentary.
So yeah, I'd say it's just you.
Yeah I agree. Its seems like an awful lot of resources to keep that operation going every single day. The fact that they erase her memory at the end of each day means that there is no sort of rehabilitation or any lasting mental torture occurring. At the end of each day she is in the exact same state that she was the previous day.
shareThat's the point....the don't want to rehabilitate her or have her repent. They want to torture her.
share
Yes. They're extremely cruel bastards, and sort of just as bad as that woman they're torturing. Plus since they wiped her memory clean, she's not really even the same person. So they're punishing and torturing an "innocent" person.
😎
Thanks. Glad I'm not the only one thinkin about all that tedious remake.
shareJesus Christ you people are stupid.
shareIt was largely thematic dude, relax.
It's just meant to imply the idea that if you commit that kind of crime, you get to live as a victim of it the rest of your life.
Also, I think you're missing that it's a zoo. Her punishment is just one attraction at this "theme park". People show up to it to watch it happen and participate. I'm sure she does it once a day.
Depends on how much money they are making off of her. It was set up as an entertainment/attraction for the public to pay to observe.
shareWhat you said is the correct way to look at this episode. The social commentary is less about the guilty woman suffering perpetually. Instead, the commentary is on society in at least two ways. One is we are detaching ourselves from people's suffering by taking a video of someone's suffering (like when we video car accidents, fights, crazy things, etc...) instead of helping them. Two is the entertainment we seem to get from (and are willing to pay for) watching justice upon the criminal element in society. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for punishing the guilty, especially when it comes to the safety of our homes, communities, families, etc..., but the White Bear episode shows how we as a people are, and have always been, entertained by public shows of justice; from hangings and beheadings in the public squares of old, to today's televised or video streamed news stories of police chases and shootings (whether justified or otherwise).
Moral of the story: Punish the wicked, but don't be entertained by it.
I would actually counter the view that viewing suffering or recording is automatically a bad thing. It's not as though viewing it means you're enjoying it, or worse, liking that people are suffering.
If you were hanging, would you really want to do so alone in a room, or among people?
Could it not be educational to understand what a car accident actually does to the human body?
Is there benefit from understanding what it actually is like to suffer from somebody who has, or is, so that you might help others in similar situations, or avoid such a circumstance yourself?
In the case of studying accidents or how the body is affected by severe trauma, I do agree there is a benefit as you say.
But the episode in question (if we are to believe the creators of the show that these "Black Mirror" stories are indeed a social commentary on the potential abuses of technology) clearly suggests that the observers of the character being hunted are doing so for entertainment. At the end of the episode, the "actors" in the given scenarios act as if they are in a theme park performing for an audience with full applause, and one of the characters in charge of the "park" is shown giving the paying patrons the three main rules of the park; the last of which is to enjoy themselves. To these patrons, the punishment/justice being visited upon this woman is not meant to be a study, but a show.
P.S. I would not want anyone to watch me hanging, but if I was dying in a hospital room (hopefully of old age) I guess I would prefer my loved ones around me.
i understand that Black Mirror episodes make point by exaggerating situations but in previous episodes they always stayed in the realm of possible. like for example, what can happen if we go down the direction which we are moving right now, maybe invent some software that can mimic diseased person? there could be some arguments against it but its still understandable and certainly possible with lesson to learn
now with White Bear there is no way in the million years that anybody will be okay with torturing someone like that. people protest against smallest things now days, they also protest against death penalties while it serves a purpose. torturing someone for entertainment value has no possible place in our future
what was the message exactly? what were they trying to say? depersonalization? distancing ourselves from others sufferings? maybe but we do it by not looking at it directly. by ignoring others sufferings as if we didnt know about them. by the less we know the less reason to feel bad about others principle. we never watch others sufferings and enjoy it. at least i dont. so there is no threat of doing it even more
or maybe that was depiction of our history? because thats another matter all together. during times of gladiators and such i guess that had some precedent. maybe the message was a warning to not repeat our past mistakes but considering all the prior praise for this episode i was expecting for something more
even more so, all previous episodes were better than this. except first one. i hated pig episode. was also from the realm of fantasy. government has policy of not negotiating with terrorists. there is no way that something like that can happen
You missed the point.
Society is doing exactly what her and her boyfriend did to that girl.
Lying to her.
Torturing her.
Video taping it for entertainment to enjoy over and over and over.
The sad truth is that history repeats itself.
Humans have always enjoyed torturing people and always will.
One crowd always believes they know better.
I believe you just hit the nail squarely on the head there, saturnine.
😎
**SPOILER ALERT**
It's a theme park, White Bear Justice Park, much like Sea World in the respect that they have a new audience for every "show". They have relatively low overhead and no shortage of gawkers, so assumedly they rake the money in, hand over fist. And even though she doesn't fully remember the previous torture, she has "flashes" enough to be afraid of the White Bear place. And even though she doesn't fully remember, she is still tortured over and over and over again, just like as if it were for the first time, so the terror is always fresh and full throttle.
I agree with others here, that the story is more a commentary on the sad state of human beings, who never seem to tire of judging and meting out punishment, whether it's in a Roman Coliseum, from a rope around an oak branch, or in a more sophisticated hi-tech manner such as shown in White Bear.
There are a lot of people who would love to see sentences such as this one, carried out. Not me. I'd like to come out of the Dark Ages and deal with psychopaths in a manner that does not render the justice system as twisted as the criminal.