White Bear

So I wrote this on Thursday, but for some reason I thought the deadline was on Sunday, instead of Friday, so I hesitated before posting, to let others go first, making sure I understood the format. Obviously I won't get credit for posting this, but since it was already written, it's no extra work to post it.

White Bear is a film meant to mess with the viewer’s preconceived notions of morality by making an accessory to  a child murder the protagonist. It is easy to sympathize with her because we are introduced to the world through her eyes. She is hurled into the middle of a horror movie plot as a victim. She begins the movie waking up with bandages on her wrists and pills scattered on the ground, so we immediately pity her for attempting suicide. For most of the movie, we assume that this no more than a straight-forward horror story, not meant to do much more than entertain the viewer with spectacle, when in reality, White Bear  flipped this idea on its head, deliberately turning the tables on the viewer and then demanding an answer to the question “How do you feel now?” The truth for me, and likely most other viewers is that by the time the reveal came around we still had overwhelming residual feelings of pity for her, to the point that initially I was even doubting whether or not she was actually responsible for the crime. The following response was that even if she did what they said she did, this was still far too cruel and unusual to be considered “Jusitice.”

    Another important facet of the movie was the complacent nature of all of the spectators, who according to the story in the story fell victim to a kind of zombifying, mind controlling technology related disease. The ironic bit is that the roles they were playing mimicked their willingness to buy into the news program that provided them with self-justification. In the fictional world, the protagonist along with a select few people were immune to this disease, which easily represents people who in our world realize that the media is not always trustworthy. Yet even these people shouted commands in her face while she was trying to think for herself, which ultimately led to her being taken down the wrong path. This can also be compared to the fact that in the real world, people who realize in the real world that not everything is what it appears to be are still vulnerable to modeling their beliefs to others with whom they may share similar opinions. Yet this still constitutes a lack of critical thinking, and can ultimately lead you into thoughts and actions that might not reflect who you really are, also leading you down the “wrong path.”