Abstract
Throughout Black Mirror (2011–), creator Charlie Brooker interrogates themes of technological complicity and wrongdoing, complicating punishment and apparatuses of state justice. In “White Bear,” the ostensible victim, Victoria Skillane, is forced into a state of abject suffering that she performs in an endless loop for the public’s need for release from her—nonviolent—involvement in the abduction and death of young Jemima Sykes. Brooker centers on two central indictments: first, that Victoria excused herself of responsibility over Jemima and merely filmed the child’s trauma; and, second, that visitors to the White Bear State Park remain at such an emotional remove from Victoria that they likewise deny themselves any empathetic connection to Victoria.
Petrovic reads “White Bear” through theories drawn from Louis Althusser’s and Slavoj Žižek’s work. Althusser explores how the state rewards proper subjects who perform particular behaviors in accordance with the state’s larger ideologies. Likewise, Žižek engages themes of control that are commandeered to ensure that the Lady becomes an empty vessel onto which others cast their most abhorrent desires. Ultimately, “White Bear” questions the degree of punishment that should be placed upon any state prisoner, where the mechanisms of retributive justice neglect empathy in favor of perpetuating state ideology.
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Notes
- 1.
Maratea and Monahan offer a brief synopsis of Arpaio’s unique public prison system, writing how inmates were housed “in ‘Tent City,’ a facility where inmates reside in outdoor tents rather than traditional jail cells; installing a jailcam that gave Internet users a live view of the daily life of inmates; requiring inmates to wear pink underwear; reinstituting chain gangs; restricting inmate access to various comforts (pornography, coffee, R-rated movies, and so on); providing exceedingly low cost meals; and sanctioning crime-fighting citizen posses” (2013, p. 264).
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The author thanks the editors and Jeffrey A. Schooley for reading over the essay drafts and suggesting substantive feedback.
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Petrovic, P. (2019). Ideological State Apparatuses, Perversions of Courtly Love, and Curatorial Violence in “White Bear”. In: McSweeney, T., Joy, S. (eds) Through the Black Mirror. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19458-1_6
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