After it's revealed to the viewer that the entirety of what we've watched has been a reality television show, chronicling the suffering of a woman who was an accessory to a brutal murder, the rest of Booker's metaphor becomes clear. It's unabashedly a prison system designed to create revenue through television and tourism. It could do this as a private company and at no cost to tax payers. This is similar to prisons which already exist in the western world. Turner, the company behind milk and Cartoon Networl, owns some prisons in the USA.
In White Bear there is a civilization obsessed with pain under the condition that they find someone deserving of suffering. It's not worth arguing that it could be speaking specifically to any European country because it's accurately playing with structural issues that exist in nearly all western countries. It's careful to have a woman of color as the victim of this system, which is also statistically a very real problem.
To me, it's clear what booker intends the viewer to think and feel from this episode. The problem I think I'm finding is that people are seeing it as too extreme to be relevant today and are therefore writing off the issues it means to discuss. By making entertainment of the cruelty we need to be dealing with in our own lives right now, it seems to actually be nullifying our senses further, as the "machine" would have it.
I saw the video as very relatable to today and I touched on it in my post. It was about us as a society now that chooses when to solve a problem or not and it is up to us individually to solve some of them that Booker commented on. We all are in this system of structural violence as you mentioned that really is getting some problems shown to light now but we are only seeing the beginning of the shift of where our legal system is being questioned as with the events in Missouri. With the statistics of where 40 percent of the about 2 million prisoners in America are African American, Booker definitely knew what was going on and with the idea of people not really feeling up to paying taxes for so many prisoners, I would guess that some people would think of this form of punishment. As you stated anyway there is a private prison system already using their prisoners as profit makers and with the way the legal system is stated, I would almost say they are going to stay in that labor force because if they have any blemishes on a record after getting out it is rare for them to receive a job with a living wage.
ReplyDeleteI never really considered White Bear to be a satire, but it’s definitely an interesting thought. I agree that it’s an exaggerated look at what society is today. Sociology has shown that technology has definitely made some effects on humans. I think while White Bear is an exaggeration, I do not doubt the possibility of something like this happening in real life.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the information about Turner owning milk, Cartoon Network, and some prisons in the USA was something I didn’t know. I’m glad you touched upon that fact that it’s likely that this isn’t nation specific, as well as the issues of a woman of color being a victim. I don’t find any of the film to be too extreme to be relevant today either, and I think people should really consider and think about the issues this film brings up.