When White Bears Attack

White Bear, a society’s struggle between cruel and fair.

White Bear, the definition of cruel and unusual punishment, begins with a woman, lost in confusion and waking up with very little memory of to what has happened and who she is.  People chase her with cameras sending signals to the White Bear, or so she is told. The fear that encompasses her all through out the “play” she is in, is her punishment for what she has done.  Her and her ex-fiancé kidnapped a young girl and brought her through the woods where she videotaped this man kill the child.  At her defense, she claims that she was under her lovers spell and that is why she went through with the killing. 

This woman is put through rigorous chasing and fear, imitating the fight or flight response that the young girl went through before her demise.  While everything in the beginning was happening before the plot twist occurred, I began to believe that this film was a cross between the Purge and 1984, with a society completely different than the world we live in today. 

Murder or not, accomplice or not, this was beyond cruel and unusual. The fact that White Bear Park (named because of the little girls white teddy bear) thrived off tourism of people viewing her panic and struggle as entertainment was sickening.  Is prison in this place not bad enough, so you have to torture this woman everyday of her already miserable life for viewing pleasure? 

Something to consider, if the ex-fiancé was still alive, would the punishment be more serious, or is it so cruel because she is the only survivor of the murder? That is something that I wish the film had answered. 

This movie painted the picture of society lack of moral values.  People would come in and bring their children to see violence, as family vacations.  How could any child really grow morally after seeing that that is okay, watch pain and struggle? No matter even if it was a script, it was still used as a tool of torture.  It made me think about how many torture shows and parks that the nation has? If White Bear Park was the only park then, why did they choose to just punish this one woman, why not punish all murders/criminals the same? This begs the questions of; was it because she was a woman, who had participated in this murderous crime? How about was it because she was of a certain ethnicity because everyone in the film was majority Caucasian?

To me, it did not matter the color of the character, the extend of the crime; a person should never have to go through that sort of consequence. Instead, let them be a prison wife, or live in a room where the sun is only seen once a week for an hour. But do not let someone else’s pain be the pleasure of a community.

White Bear

Though controversial, perhaps cruel and/or unusual, the White Park Justice Park provokes self-reflection for the way we, as Americans, turn a blind eye to criminals, or anything outside of our "bubbles" in general. 

While I was taken aback by the plot twist, soon after, I thought, "What an interesting, profitable alternative to the death penalty." Many who watch White Bear may be quick to claim cruelty, but might mean, "Wow, I had to SEE the cruelty" (something they were not prepared for). If citizens promote capital punishment or other harsh penalty, they should be subject to fully understanding the torture and enslavement. 

The "out of sight, out of mind" mentality enabled by group privilege(s) is detrimental to society: because some can choose to avoid harshness, realness, and truth, others are subject to unjust punishment, sentencing, and sometimes death (far before being proven guilty). Our for-profit prison system locks away hundreds of thousands of nonviolent criminals, forcing them into slave labor; then, there is the preconceived notion that they will become normal, likely better members of society upon leaving, yet this is nearly impossible with a criminal record. 

Some aspects of White Bear were hard to swallow, but to me, it inspires some "check yourself before you wreck yourself" as we are not far from this, or align with the punishment more similarly than we admit. The film was creative; I hope that it (and others similar) will beg questions: Is the way we treat criminals just? Are they ALL truly criminals deserving time behind bars? Who are the real criminals…the man with a gram of marijuana or the bystanders who allow him to see prison time?

Empathetically Numb Spectator

White Bear exposes the dangers of chasing the mild amusement of entertainment and reducing oneself to an empathetically numb spectator. This point was illustrated through the story of a woman trapped in the agonizing cycle of a justice system driven by punishment and profit. The most terrifying aspect of this story is the closeness to which it reflects the current state of the United States Justice System. Although, unlike the film, United States’ inmates are not tortured and exploited for purpose of entertaining the public, their detainment is guided by the motives of punishment and profit, through torture and exploitation. 
In the film, the everyday citizens actively and eagerly participated in the punishment of the inmate. Her punishment was molded with an “eye for an eye” mentality. The end goal of her tortuous day of fear and confusion was aimed to force her to empathize with the child she filmed being murdered. In the moment of the child’s death, the woman served as an empathetically numb spectator in the pursuit of heartless amusement and entertainment. Parallel to the punishment of the inmate, the audience of White Bear was forced to empathize with the inmate via fear and confusion. Her heinous crimes were not revealed to the audience until the end. Therefor,  the audience was encouraged to establish a relationship with her and label her as the innocent protagonist for the majority of the film. The audience was purposely mislead by the use of creative plot tactics in the same way the inmate was mislead through the utilization of strategically placed shoes, open gates, and the encouragement of secret actors.

In White Bear, the day to day citizens thoroughly enjoyed viewing and participating in the harassment of the prisoner. They were shown to have watched the torture like it was a play and to applaud the actors at the end of the show for their work of misleading and terrifying the inmate. The justice system of the film seemed to turn a profit by exploiting the inmate’s punishment and sharing it with the public. This is not unlike the United States Justice System in that its goals seem to be to punish the inmates in a way that is beneficial to the general public. Rather than exploiting prisoners for the purpose of entertainment, the United States exploits prisoners for the purpose of production. Prisoner labor is a way to cut costs, increase margins, and exploit the culture of confinement and routine within the prison system. Though highly profitable, it encourages the detainment of nonviolent U.S. citizens and longer sentences, yielding an increase in workers and hours of cheap labor. As a result of systems such as these, the United States has had the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world for over a decade (links below). White Bear exposed ugly truths of modern society through the creative use of deception within the plot and hopefully circumvented the culture of the empathetically numb spectator.

Matt Brint

http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-incarceration.aspx

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289

The Cycle of Punishment and Torture

In the film White Bear there was a justification to the actions that the persecutors where doing, or so they thought. In the United States we see jail or prison as a punishment where the person who was accused of the crime will learn their lesson and not repeat it again. What we should do is get them help so that they can no repeat the same mistake again. The justice system in the white bear movie was very extreme, but like Matt an Gabby said in class, sometimes you need it to be "in your face" for you to realize what is going on. From my perspective of seeing this movie twice now, I have a had time sympathizing with the woman who is being punished. Instinctively the human body will try to survive for as long as it can, and her screaming and panicking makes me feel like she should be punished or die. Even though she was not the one who burned the little girl like her fiance, she is still guilty for not doing anything to stop it. I do not know if punishment this extreme should be taken thought. The objective of punishment is for someone to learn their lesson. There is no lesson that is taught in White Bear, it is pure torture. I do not wish torture on any person, but sometimes torture is good for the betterment of the whole. If we find a member of a terror group and they have information about a bomb that could be used to cause more damage on other people, torture might be the method to extract this information. But the use of torture to get nothing in return is pure cruelty. There is no good that came out of this movie at all. From the beginning the little girl is killed and the lady is tortured. This is a disturbing video for me because there is no closure. It is an endless cycle of hate and torture that has been turned into a business.  

Justified Injustice

Humanity is born of sin, we come from sin. From the moment Adam and Eve bit off of the fruit, we were damned to sin. Naturally, everyone has evil within them, a darkness that hides in the deepest corner of our hearts and minds, of our soul even. It is up to one whether to let that evil that exist within, control us, or be controlled by us. In white bear, the woman is rightly accused for being in compliance with the perpetrator, of recording his evil deeds at the pain and expense of the little girl. She willingly recorded her fiance burning the little girl alive, disregarding and obliterating any empathy for the frightened and forsaken child.
Despite her actions however, I see far beyond the "justice" park's main point; I see the perspective of the people, but also that of society. True she did a terrible thing, an unbearable action that angered that community/country, true justice needed to be served; but despite whatever her wrong doing was, the manner in which "justice" was being exercised was no longer justifiable. Her punishment became an amusement for others and a visitor site, the way in which she was being punished had no ultimate positive effect or reaction.
Moreover, those in charge of exercising the punishment wrapped themselves into it so much, that it no longer stressed any form of justice. It was pure torture to "teach her" a lesson, though that lesson was never truly being conveyed to her since her memory was wiped out every night. She was no longer living under this form of punishment to learn her lesson, but to amuse the public and enrich the park. The people were now practicing the exact same action she did during the incident, only now it was acceptable to society because this woman, was a criminal.
She was evil for doing it, an unbearable human being; she was no longer human in their eyes, she was entertainment... an object... a money making machine... She was a parasite in their community. Those who took part in punishing her, though doing the same thing as she, were "just" people who were doing it to teach her a lesson, or were they? Perhaps they too were exactly like her deep down, they just wouldn't show it, until there was a way to do it without being in trouble or being "unjust". Perhaps they all had that evil within and just needed something to trigger it. They needed to feed the evil within , they craved for the moment in which they could, they just needed the perfect cover up to do it. They needed their unjust desires to be "justified".

Welcome to the blog-home for Dr. J's Fall 2015 Philosophy and Film course! This site will serve as a forum for students to discuss the material we cover in class, as well as a place to raise questions we may not have addressed in class or to make connections between our material and current real-world events. Each week, students will will post a short essay (minimum 400 words) related to the course material before Friday at 5pm and also will comment on at least two of their classmates' posts before the beginning of our Monday evening seminar. Students are encouraged to post or comment beyond the requirements stated here, as frequent and quality blog activity will be rewarded in the final grade.

First, if you don't know ANYTHING about blogs or blogging, there are (fortunately) lots of tutorials out there to help!  If you have a specific question, you can usually find the answer to it at the Blogger Help Center.  For a quick YouTube introduction to blogging, I suggest this video and this one.  There's also a "Complete List of Blogger Tutorials" available.  That's the amazing thing about the internet, of course... you can learn to do almost anything with a few clicks!

Second, you will notice that there are already posts on this site.  Those are from students who took this same course last year.  I leave them up so that you can see what others have written about Philosophy and Film.  You can also read some of my blogposts about Philosophy and Film in the sidebar to your right under "Dr. J's Film Reviews."

It's important to know that blog-writing differs from the writing you might do for "traditional" papers in some ways, but not in others. Here are some things to think about as you compose your posts and comments:

FOR AUTHORS:

• Do not wait until the last minute to write your post! Students should think of the blog as a community exercise. In this community, Authors are responsible for generating that week's discussion and Commenters are responsible for continuing and elaborating upon it. In order for the Commenters to be able to provide the best commentary they can, it is necessary that Authors do not wait until the last minute to post entries in any given week. Like traditional papers, it is almost always obvious when a student has elected to write his or her blog-posts at the last minute, as they end up being either overly simple, poorly conceived or poorly edited. Your contribution to the blog discussion is important, so take care to show the respect to your classmates that you would expect them to show you.
• Be concise, but also precise. The greatest challenge of blog-writing is to communicate complex ideas in a minimal amount of words. It is important that you keep your posts short, in keeping with the blog format, but also that you do not sacrifice the clarity or completeness of your ideas for the sake of brevity.
• Be focused. If you find that your blog-entry is too long, it is likely because you have chosen too large a topic for one post. (Consider splitting up long entries into two or more posts.) It should be eminently clear, on the first reading, what your blog post is explaining/asking/arguing. Use the Post Title to clearly state the subject of your entry.
• Choose a topic that will prompt discussion. The measure of a good blog post is how much commentary it can generate. To that end, do not use your blog posts for simple exegesis or to revisit questions already settled in class. Good discussion-generators often include bold claims about, or original interpretations of, our classroom texts. Connecting the course material to current events or controversies is also a good way to generate discussion. Pay special attention to in-class conversations, as many of the issues that generate discussion in class will also do so on the blog.
• Proofread. Proofread. PROOFREAD. As a rule, blog-writing is (slightly) less formal than the writing you might do for a paper you hand in to your professor. For example, you may write in the first person, and a more "conversational" style is usually acceptable. However, ANY writing with glaring punctuation, spelling or grammatical mistakes not only will be difficult to read and understand, but also will greatly diminish the credibility of its Author. It is NOT ADVISABLE to "copy and paste" the text of your post into blog's "new post" box, as you will inevitably end up with a format that is difficult to read. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the formatting buttons above, and always preview your post before publishing it.
• Make use of the "extras" provided by new technology. When you write a traditional paper for class, you don't have many of the opportunities that blog-writing affords. Take advantage of the technologies available here to insert images, embed video or employ hyperlinks to other relevant materials.
• Respond to your commenters. Authors should stay abreast of all the commentary their posts generate. If you are asked for clarification by a commenter, or if one of your claims is challenged, it is the Author's responsibility to respond.

FOR COMMENTERS:

• Read carefully BEFORE you comment. The biggest and most frequent error made by commenters is also the most easily avoidable, namely, misreading or misunderstanding the original post. Don't make that error!
• Simple agreement or disagreement is not sufficient. Sometimes it will be the case that you fully agree or disagree with an Author's post. However, a comment that simply states "I agree" or "I disagree" will not count for credit. You MUST provide detailed reasons for your agreement or disagreement in your comment.
• Evidence works both ways. Often, the source of disagreement between an Author and a Commenter will involve a textual interpretation. If an Author claims in his or her post that "Advocates of the death penalty are obviously operating within a Kantian moral framework," the Author should have also provided a page citation from Kant supporting that claim. If you (as a Commenter) disagree, it is your responsibility to cite a passage from Kant that provides evidence for your disagreement. For disagreements that are not text-based-- for example, disagreements about statistical claims, historical claims, claims about current events, or any other evidentiary matters-- hyperlinks are your friend.
• NO flaming allowed!:  Engage your classmates on the blog with the same consideration and respect that you would in class. 

Although this blog is viewable by anyone on the Web, participants have been restricted to members of the PHIL350 class only. This means that only students enrolled in your class this semester at CBU can post or comment on this blog. However, anyone can read it, so students are reminded to take special care to support the claims that they make, to edit their posts and comments judiciously, and to generally represent themselves in conversation as they would in public.

I look forward to seeing your conversation develop over the course of this semester!
--Dr. J