Back in the 80’s there was a scaremongering campaign in the UK against the so-called video nasties; violent and extreme horror films for the most part. It ended up with many films being banned on the grounds that since the advent of video it was easier for children to get their hands on such movies. The idea couldn’t have been more of a text book example of “Won’t somebody please think of the children!” if it tried, but censorship eventually let up and many of the films banned had been re-released. For a long time, we thought of the entire incident as an embarrassment, a short-lived triump of the morally uptight and righteous prudes who thought they should be in control of what people watch, and one we wanted to forget.
Enter: Torture Porn
Today, we’ve got the latest incarnation of the video nasty debate, only this time we’ve got a much more seditious term for it. In a fit of moralistic posturing, critic David Edelstein coined the term “Torture Porn” and from then on fans of violent cinema have been under some very harsh criticism. Now, when I said that the term was seditious, I’m not saying that lightly, I really mean seditious in a big way.
What the term does, is liken violence to pornography, and this conjures a very specific sense of deviancy with the fanbase and makers of such films. A lot of people now think that these films really are pornographic in nature, and that the people who enjoy them are actually getting off sexually to the gore and violence, in effect that there’s a very large extreme sadist market in the population as a whole, and that those people are actually acting out their fantasies by watching these movies.
With this idea of deviant behaviour firmly implanted in the minds of some people, I’ve noted that internet discussion groups have exploded with trolling and abuse towards posters. In a discussion on the film Audition, I have personally been called mentally ill for liking the film, and ran into plenty of other comments calling myself and others sick, and calling the directors smut peddlers, idiots, sickos and just about everything else under the sun.
I really think that with the sheer effectiveness of such a seditious term, that if it were applied in the video nasty era, the whole moral crusade would’ve been much more successful. Instead of thinking of the children, they would have been thinking of a subculture of latent serial killers!
Missing the point
Of course, if you’ve seen any of the films that are being called Torture Porn, the very idea is ridiculous and laughable that they are pornographic movies marketed towards this imaginary mass market of sexual sadists. Take Hostel for example, where a group of Americans are tortured and killed by sadists who pay for the opportunity. The exact kind of deviant that some people think are the fans of this movie, are presented as the antagonists; they are the bad guys!
I think it’s pretty clear that the film doesn’t present torture as a good thing, and to suggest otherwise is frankly stupid. Infact, if we look at director Eli Roth’s previous film Cabin Fever, where a bunch of friends renting a cabin in the woods are being killed off by a flesh eating virus, and we apply the logic that Hostel is for torture fetishists, then the logical conclusion is that Cabin Fever is a pornographic movie for people with a flesh eating virus fetish!
Now ask yourselves… Is the virus in Cabin Fever presented as a good thing? I think the resounding answer would be no. So how then does Hostel present torture as a good thing? It doesn’t. To make another example of that kind of logic, it would be like saying Saving Private Ryan is a porno for those who get turned on by nazis.
Blown Out Of All Proportion
Indeed, I believe that’s exactly what’s happened with this whole “Torture Porn” escapade. Things have been blown incredibly out of proportion. One of the films under fire from the moral crusaders is Saw and it’s subsequent sequels, and I had recommended to a friend of mine who’s also a big movie buff, but she didn’t want to see it at first. She eventually took a look, and then told me how shocked she was about how controversial the film was, as it was nowhere near as gruesome as it was made out to be. Infact, in her estimation, there was very little gore at all.
I think a lot of the hysteria over the films are imagined. I’ve heard people going on about how a character in Saw cuts off his own foot, but the reality of it is we don’t actually see it happening. We see him about to do it, we see the aftermath, but when he’s actually hacking away, we see a reaction shot of his face and we hear sound effects, but we do not see the deed itself. The power of imagination can’t be underestimate here, so if someone watching the movie closes their eyes or turns away at that point, in their imagination they see something much more vivid than what’s displayed onscreen.
The call for Justification
One thing that annoys me terribly about the whole debate, is the issue of justification. People are constantly asking why is are the levels of violence nessicary? It’s silly, because when you think about it, what is nessicary in the first place? Is a film nessicary? Do people need to justify it’s existance? No. It’s art, and art needs no justification, nor should it need to be nessicary.
People go on about films being nothing more than violence for the sake of violence. I say, so what? What are comedy films but humour for the sake of humour? Why does that not come under such criticism? There’s drama for the sake of drama, and if we take things further there’s music for the sake of music and sport for the sake of sport. Something for the sake of it isn’t a bad thing.
Source: moviesfilmsandmotionpictures.blogspot.com
