White Bear (Black Mirror)

"White Bear" is the second episode of the second series of Black Mirror, starring Lenora Crichlow and Michael Smiley. It was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and first aired on Channel 4 on 18 February 2013.

Plot

In a bedroom, a woman named Victoria Skillane (Lenora Crichlow) wakes up in a chair to find she can't recall anything about her life. Apparently the result of a failed suicide attempt, Victoria is surrounded by images of a small girl (Imani Jackman)—whom she assumes to be her daughter—as well as photos of her and an unknown man (Nick Ofield). Victoria sees an unusual symbol on the TV screens in the house and a calendar on the month of October, with all the dates being crossed off up until the 18th. Leaving the house, Victoria sees people constantly recording her on their phones. She first asks for help and then shouts at the people to stop recording her, but all ignore her until a man wearing a balaclava with the symbol on it pulls up in a blue Rolls Royce, takes out a shotgun, and fires at Victoria. After being chased by the masked man, she meets Jem (Tuppence Middleton) and Damien (Ian Bonar), who are gathering supplies. The masked man kills Damien, who attempted to save Victoria and Jem, forcing them to flee. Jem explains that a mysterious signal began appearing over television and the internet, turning most of the population into dumb voyeurs who do nothing but record everything around them. Victoria and Jem are unaffected, but are also a target for the 'hunters', unaffected humans who—with society's collapse—can act violent and sadistic without repercussions. Jem plans to reach a nearby transmitter at 'White Bear' to destroy it and stop the signal's effect on the area.

As they travel, a man named Baxter (Michael Smiley) picks up Victoria and Jem. Baxter is also unaffected, but drives them to a forest and holds them at gunpoint, revealing that he was the masked man from earlier. Although Jem escapes, Victoria is tied to a tree and about to be tortured until Jem returns and kills Baxter. They continue traveling to the transmitter, while Victoria has visions of past and future events. When they reach the White Bear transmitter to destroy it, two hunters attack Victoria and Jem. Victoria wrestles a shotgun away from a hunter and fires at her attacker, only for it to spray confetti.

The walls open to reveal an audience applauding after observing the escapade; Jem, Damien, and the hunters are revealed to have been actors in a kind of real-world play. Victoria is strapped to a chair, and Baxter appears and explains everything: the girl Victoria assumed was her daughter was actually six-year-old Jemima Sykes, whom Victoria and her fiancé, Iain Rannoch (the man from the photographs), abducted a few miles from her home. After taking her to a nearby forest, Iain tortured and killed Jemima and burned her body while Victoria recorded his actions on her mobile phone. The "White Bear", originally the victim's stuffed teddy bear, became a symbol of the nationwide search and murder investigation, while the symbol on the screens and on the hunter's mask was identical to the tattoo that identified Victoria's fiancé (who committed suicide in his cell before the trial). Having tearfully pleaded guilty and insisting she was "under Iain's spell", Victoria was given a sentence the judge described as "proportionate and considered": to undergo an experience where she would feel the same feelings of terror and helplessness that the victim did, repeated every day.

Victoria, who still has no clear memory of these events, is driven back to the compound past a crowd baying for her blood (under encouragement from the staff) and returned to the room where she woke up. She is placed back in the bedroom chair by Baxter. As she is shown footage of Jemima, Baxter places electrodes on her head, wiping Victoria's memory of the day's events as she screams in agony. As Baxter leaves the compound to the sound of Victoria's screams, he takes out a black pen and crosses off 18 October from the calendar, getting ready for Victoria to relive the same events the next day.

Over the end credits, we see the staff (including Baxter, Jem, Damien, and the "hunters") of the "White Bear Justice Park" prepare for the next performance. They brief the park visitors who are there to participate in the "show"—in Victoria's experience, they are the strangely unresponsive members of the public surrounding and filming her wherever she goes—and advise them not to speak and to keep their distance while observing Victoria's actions, but that they are welcome to use their phones to capture the experience. The episode ends as it began, with Victoria waking up in the bedroom chair with no memory.

Production

Brooker revealed in October 2016 that the twist ending was not in the original script, and it was only when they were scouting for locations on a former U.S. Air Force base that he came up with it.^[1] Moreover, he revealed that he had never changed a script so much late in the production.^[1] In a further interview, Brooker revealed that he had further ideas of where the story could go in a sequel. The location for the episode no longer exists.^[2]

Critical reception

Jane Simon of Daily Mirror said that the second episode of the second series, "White Bear", lacked the "instant emotional tug" of the series opener, "Be Right Back".^[3] She went on to say that, a third of the way through the second episode, she had lost hope of it concluding well, "[...] the acting was unbelievable, the script was riddled with horror-film cliches, the violence was a bit over the top [...]", but that by the end "I turned out to be absolutely dead wrong on every single count." She ended the piece with "It’s another work of dark and twisted genius from Mr Brooker." The A.V. Club rated the episode a B+, stating that "“White Bear” is, by a significant margin, the most disturbing episode Black Mirror has produced...The twist is a smart one, brilliantly concealed and smartly revealed, but once the point is made, it is made over and over again."^[4] Den of Geek said that "Once again, strong ideas, intelligent writing and great direction came together to create a disturbing reflection of the present."^[5] The Telegraph gave the episode 3.5/5 stars, and wrote that the episode "was an exciting and efficient piece of narrative rug-pulling that mocked, above all, our insatiable, voyeuristic, neo-Medieval thirst for supposedly "real-life" pain and humiliation repackaged as entertainment. "^[6]

References

External links

• "White Bear" at the Internet Movie Database