White Bear
White Bear (the second episode in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror series, aired February 2013) asks
important questions about justice and retribution.
Synopsis
Victoria awakes surrounded by spilled pills to discover that she does not know who she is or where
she is or why she feels as she does. Her head hurts. Has she just tried to commit suicide? Televisions
transmit a scary symbol. Her feelings of dislocation and disquiet gradually turn to panic and despair
as she discovers that no one is willing to tell her what is going on or to help her; everyone she
encounters merely films her silently on their mobile phones. Worse than this, people appear with
shotguns and try to kill her; others in bizarre costumes try to cut or beat her. She meets a woman
who appears to want to help her escape. Accepting a lift from another apparent helper, she is taken
at gunpoint with a balaclava over her head to a wood where she is tied up and threatened with
torture. Escaping, her female helper takes her to a facility to shut down the ‘signal’ that is making
everyone behave like this. As Victoria experiences flashbacks involving a man, a van, and a little girl
she thinks might be her daughter, she is not freed but captured and paraded tied to a chair before
an appreciative audience, for whom she is the show.
At this point, it is revealed who she is: an accomplice to her fiancé who abducted, tortured and killed
a little girl. He has died in custody. Victoria filmed the killing on her mobile phone. The audience
screams ‘murderer’ at her. The little girl’s white teddy bear has now become the emblem of a
‘justice’ programme in which Victoria must experience the same confusion, terror and fear of death
her victim went through. After a public vilification and humiliation being paraded through the
streets, Victoria is returned to her starting point. The props are re-set and her mind wiped. While
this is happening, Victoria has to watch her own film of the child’s death, while a new ‘audience’
arriving at the White Bear Justice Centre for the ‘show’ is briefed on what to do to take part in
terrifying her. She will wake, be terrified and run for her life again and again and again, perhaps for
ever.
In religious parlance, Victoria has been sent to hell for her crime. As in the medieval world view, hell
is a place of pain and despair; the final few minutes of non-stop screaming provide the soundtrack to
what such punishment sounds like. There is no hope for Victoria, nor any end to her torment. She
begs for death, but no escape into death will be allowed. The ‘devils’ of this hell, are ordinary people
equipped with technology, come to have ‘fun’ and achieve a sense of catharsis in frightening her,
then shouting at and abusing her. The programme producers and actors are enjoying themselves,
watching her suffer. They feel nothing but contempt for her.
At the heart of Brooker’s dystopian nightmare is a dead child. She becomes a symbol of everything
that should be protected and cared for. She is a little girl playing with toys, trusting adults. Her white
teddy bear comes to stand for her ‘innocence’ and unspoiled world, ironically transmuted into
‘justice’. ‘White Bear’ terrifies Victoria, although she doesn’t know why.
The film suggests that a person who kills a child is beyond the pale. We are so outraged and furious
that the killer is a monster to whom we may do as we wish. Victoria can have no humanity, or
excuse. Her film wipes out all possibility of explanation. She makes no excuses and never expresses
