In White Bear, we follow around a confused and scared woman as she wanders through a brain washed society. People follow her around with their phones and record her every move but do not try to help her when she calls out. Later, we learn the society we have been lead to believe is actually a Justice Park that has turned this woman's punishment into a type of game show. This brings up some interesting points to be made about society. One, the obsession of consuming spectacles and two, assuming someone else will take responsibility of the situation.
Our phones are in our pockets nearly every second of every day. We sleep next to them, we eat with them. It's hard to find a young person who does not have a Facebook, Tumblr, or Instagram now a days. How many times a day do you walk past a group of people huddled around a device watching the newest internet sensation video? Or somethings happens and your first inclination is to snap a picture?
How many of you watched the Kroger video from a few months back? A mob of high schoolers attacking innocent Kroger employees in the parking lot. I did, it was all over Facebook. People still call the big Kroger down Poplar 'Mob Kroger'. But even though a man is bleeding from his head on the ground in the video, it became a kind of joke. People came running from the parking lot with their phones up and ready. They surrounded the man on the ground, no different that the people in the White Bear Justice Park. You hear the girl taking the video say "Someone should call 911."
Someone else. Not me. I'll just watch.
People don't want to have to be the one to take responsibility, they don't want to get involved. It's easier to simply watch and talk about it later, to just be a spectator. In White Bear, during the credits we see the public getting trained to 'play' in the park. They laugh when they are told she believes the park to be the real world. They play the game and enjoy themselves, taking pictures to remember and then they go home and think nothing of it. Similar to how we can watch videos of people being beaten, or even pull out our phones at the first sign of the something to post online. I'm not saying everyone does this, but its hard to deny it's a trend in our society.
The society as a whole in White Bear and in our own has definitely become desensitized to the brutality that surrounds us. Its like a cell phone becomes a barrier from the crimes in real life as we are nothing but an audience, when in fact we become accomplices by not reporting what has happened, just as Victoria became an accomplice to her murdering fiancé by recording the crime on her cell phone.
ReplyDeleteI think it’s really interesting that you brought upon the point of assuming someone else will take responsibility of the situation. This is a very real issue, and we talked about it in my psychology class last semester. People often think that if some emergency is going on, that “Oh, someone else will take care of that.” There was a girl who was murdered and there were about 8 witnesses who saw the murderer, but nobody did anything. If somebody would have called 911, the girl would have survived. It’s really unfortunate. Especially mentioning “Someone should call 911.” We were told never to say that, but to instead tell a specific person “Hey you, call 911.” Because if somebody thinks that there’s a possibility of somebody else doing something, they’re not going to put in the effort to do it themselves. I think this is a really interesting point because I noticed that people weren’t taking responsibility, but I hadn’t fully recognized it, so thanks for bringing up this point!
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