Black Mirror 2.2. "White Bear"

Professor: Jorge Martínez Lucena

Black Mirror 2.2. “White Bear”

The episode is split into two main parts, separated by a metafictive moment.

1.First part:

BM 2.2 is like an horror film where Victoria Skillane, the protagonist, seems to be the victim of a distopic world. She is pursued by a group of psychopaths who want to kill and torture her while a manifold of techno-zombies film them. This is why the spectator easily empathizes with her, as the victim.

Synopsis

2.Second part:

After the metafictive moment, while the signal emission center transforms itself in a kind of TV studio, the spectator realizes that:

- Victoria Skillane is not only a victim but also a former tormentor.

- The horror movie is the narrative invented in order to punish Victoria in the so-called “White Bear Justice Park”.

- The techno-zombies are not alienated by technology but rather they are people who have been trained in order to behave in an odd way as part of the script.

- The psychopaths are actors who participate in the simulation orchestrated by the park in order to trick Victoria and make her go through this ordeal.

Synopsis

After the metafictive moment we learn something about technologies:

• The screen, the Black Mirror, is performative because it is capable of modifying the behavior of the people in the reality show (supposed techno-zombies don’t talk to Victoria and look at what’s happening through their mobile phone, basically following the rules dictated by the rulers of the park).

Technologies and The Gaze

• Post-modern spectators discover themselves identifying with the unaware techno-zombies. They have been behaving like plain techno-zombies during the first part of the episode (believing the entire simulation that the scripter has prepared for alienating them, misrepresenting reality and the visual reality showed on the screen, enjoying the show, etc.)


But technologies cannot only modify the way in which we look at reality, they can also privilege certain ideas or insights about the way to evaluate reality.

BM 2.2 lets us see how technologies can modify the perception we have about abstract concepts like justice, guilt and punishment.


According to Penal Law, we know four possible reasons for punishment:

1. Revenge: This is a symmetric or amplified (monstruosity) retaliation oriented towards re-establishing the balance lost due to the criminal act.

It is currently associated with ancestral societies.

This punishment includes a ritual of repetition. The characteristics and factors of the crime are thoroughly retrieved in the details of the punishment (White Bear, the forest, the smart-phone filming, the strange image of the tattoo, etc.)

Revenge is present in the punishment portrayed in BM 2.2

Motives for Punishment

2.Prevention: One of the fundamental functions of every punishment is to prevent the same crime in the future. It can be done in different ways:

a) Punishment reaffirms the law: Punishment reminds us about the existence of a legal code.

b) Punishment intimidates every citizen: Punishment makes it clear that everyone who commits a crime will have to pay for that. In order to make this type of prevention work, you will need empathy between citizens and the criminal, which is not so clear when the criminal is considered a kind of non-human monster).

c) Punishment saves people from the criminal: Punishment tries to avoid the repetition of the crime in the future, putting the criminal outside of the society.

Point 2.b is not reflected in the punishment portrayed in BM 2.2 because Victoria Skillane is treated as a monster (lynching, spectacularization and repetition of the crime on TV, the park is plenty of children, etc.)


3. Retribution: The punishment has to be fair, namely, proportional to the committed crime.

The punishment portrayed in BM 2.2 doesn’t reflect retribution because it seems to be infinite. To transform justice into a spectacle means to understand that the punishment is a show that must go on. The psychological and physical pains and damages that Victoria has to go through make her ask the master of the park to kill her.


4. Re-socialization: Perhaps the most typical characteristic of punishment in our modern democratic societies is re-socialization. This means that the society punishes individuals in order to re-educate them. Therefore, every punishment has to take into account this aim: to transform the criminal into somebody who will be able to behave in an appropiate way in our society.

It is true that education is something that always depends on the freedom of the person, but there are punishments which make this kind re-socialization impossible.

In BM 2.2 we can see how a punishment inflicted on a criminal can make her re-socialization impossible (infinite sentence or term, perpetuous erasure of her memory, life in a false and manipulated reality, etc.)


This analysis of the motives of the punishment after watching BM 2.2 leads us to some memories about our recent past in the real world.

1.Media has lead us to consider certain criminals as non-human monsters (against prevention)

For example: the Amstettem Monster or the Cleveland Monster

Punishment, Media and Real World

2.When the crime or the fact to be tried is easily converted into a show, the media tend to promote parallel trials, which hugely modify the life of the impeached person.

For example: Kevin Carter and his Pulitzer prize winning picture (1993).


3.The internet structurally preserves data and news (true or false) for an infinite length of time. This fact can punish somebody infinitely, whether or not they are guilty of the crime.

For example: Dolores Vázquez (1999-2003 in prison)


Black Mirror 2.2. "White Bear"

Education

Transcript of Black Mirror 2.2. "White Bear"