'Torture-porn': can it possibly be something we want to allow?

Cafe Society
1

I recently came across this article
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtmlxml=/arts/2007/07/01/svtorture101.xml discussing the new breed of ‘torture-porn’ films, Hostel one and II, Saw, Captivity etc (at least part of it, there was an extract in www.TheWeek.co.uk)

Now I have young children with no babysitters nearby and don’t get out to the cinema much, and I should say up front that I haven’t seen any of these films, so the first thing that surprised me was that these seem to be, in essence, films about people being tortured and killed with little else. Why would anyone want to go and see them in the first place? I’m trying to remain open-minded but it’s utterly incomprehensible to me that this might make entertaining viewing; can anyone explain the appeal? I’ve seen a couple of the Scream films a few years ago, so I’m not entirely immune to the appeal of the slasher genre, and it seems that these are just a step further on; take Scream, place it in a confined space with a killer more in the foreground and, I guess, you’ve got one of the films mentioned above. Of course, I suspect that you would also have to make the violence significantly more graphic.

My concern is linking sex with this sort of violence, humiliation and degradation, usually (I suspect, and I say again, I haven’t seen any of them) of women (All quotes from the Telegraph link above):

Personally, I’m of the opinion that people are influenced by what they see on screen; not that your average well-adjusted person is going to be converted to a serial-killer-lunatic by watching one of these films, but I do believe that this sort of stuff contributes to a desensitization to violence. McCartney (who wrote the article) points out that these people are de-humanised, and that, I think, is a key point: as long as people are depicted as merely sentient meat (in essence, I suppose, what we are)

[aside] read this, really funny http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.shtml[/aside]

but without feelings and a history (for example, did Roth stop to imagine the pain that, had it been real, the cheerleader above would have felt? Did it matter to him? Or was she just a prop, in the same way as the carving knife and the trampoline?) then this sort of thing becomes more approachable.

The characters in these films obviously get a kick out of inflicting this torture; should we be worried that people want to watch these films and vicariously take a part in this? We all know what mass appeal sex has (just title a thread ‘Sex’ and check the number of views) but I think we should be concerned at the link to this sort of extreme violence. As long as there’s a market for it these films will continue to be made (although hopefully the genre will lose its appeal before too long). I’m a believer in the ‘I may disagree with what you’re saying, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it’ maxim, but I’m genuinely torn as to whether this stuff should be allowed.

Any thoughts?!

2

What do you mean when you say allowed? Do you mean that it should be banned? Should people who make such movies be sent to prison? Is this a road you want to go down?

3

As long as we live in a culture where violence is more readily accepted than sex, there will be movies like this. Show a woman get killed, R rating - show a woman’s vagina, and X rating. Fucked up, isn’t it?

4

When Luis Bunel and Salvador Dali cut open some chick’s eyeball with a razor, it’s reagrded as one of cinema’s crowning golries. The same thing these days is “torture porn”. Go figure.

5

So then since this recent spate of films is so popular, we should see a corresponding upswing in violent crime? I’m skeptical, but might be interesting to check out.

6

“Allow”? Well, it’s that darn free speech thing. Those movies aren’t my cup of tea, either, but they can’t do more damage than “American Idol”.

They do sound like really unimaginative storytelling, though.

7

Besides, far be it for me to defend a movie I could just barely sit through, but there is at least a little bit more going on in Saw than just watching people get tortured to death, especially in the third one.

8

Gory horror films and ‘torture porn’ is a new thing? Huh seems I’m misremembering all the slasher magazines that would lovingly describe EXACTLY how blood soaked and torture filled the next film was going to be.

Seriously I hate this endless cycle of trying to blame entertainment medium for various ills in society. It’s like saying the Romans were murdering conquerers because they watched gladiators kill each other. Not that they enjoyed watching gladiators because they were murdering conquerers.

Violent crime has been steadily decreasing ever since the FBI started tracking it and has been proven to be far more linked to poverty and drugs. This generation that has been so totally destroyed by video games, the internet, TV and horror movies turns out to be the least violent so far. We need to give this meme a serious rest and realize that violent offenders usually have much bigger problems then if they saw Hostel II or not.

And finally I think this generation is more sensitive to violence. Look at wars the rather small causalities in Iraq wouldn’t have even accounted for some of the smaller battles in the Civil War. Things that would have gone unnoticed in just a few generations past are considered outrageous and intolerable today.

9

Yes. First, only under the most extreme circustances do I support censorship; this isn’t one of them. Second, given the power I can just imagine how such authority would be used; a documentary on torture inflicted by the US ( or your country ) or it’s agents would conveniently be declared “torture-porn”, loudly decried and suppressed, without them even having to admit it was political.

10

I think the original Saw was actually quite good, more of a psychological thriller than a slasher flick. Not so for Saw II and Saw III. The latter two are basically snuff films. (Yes, I know that they’re just movies, and there are no RL deaths. Don’t be pedantic.) The entertainment comes, not from the story, but from watching the spectacularly gruesome deaths that are inflicted on the characters.
Being a freedom-loving American, I can’t possibly support banning such movies, but I do consider them to be the lowest form of entertainment, lower even than reality television.

11

How can we not allow it? When they wrote the bill of rights, it wasn’t to protect everyday day speech, it was to protect the most egregious speech. Now I can’t think of a genre I hate more than horror, but I’m not going to tell someone they can’t watch it and I’m certainly not going to tell someone they can’t make it.

12

We do have weird attitudes about sex and violence in the US. I was in a DVD rental place the other day, and a young kid was trying to rent one of these torture-porn movies. (I forget which one.) The clerk told him he’d need his parents’ permission. So the kid goes out to the car and gets his mom. Mom sticks her head in the door and this conversation ensues:

Mom: Is there any sex in the movie?

Clerk: No, it’s just very violent.

Mom: But there’s no sex, though?

Clerk: No.

Mom: That’s fine, then.

WTF? You have no problem letting your preteen kid seeing people tortured to death, but you don’t want him to see a naked breast?

We are so screwed up.

I have never understood the appeal of these movies, and yes, I do worry about people who enjoy them. What kind of person gets a vicarious thrill from torture and gore?

13

On reflection, probably not, no.

Skeptical about an upswing in violent crime? Yes; there’s almost certain to be no trace of it. But my own observations tell me that people are influenced by what they see, I find it hard to believe that all this violence can be absorbed without side-effects by all of the people all of the time.

What? I haven’t seen any of them, and part of the OP that seems to have gone by the way is asking why (assuming people know broadly what they’re letting themselves in for) why exactly people go to see this stuff?

I’m not blaming the entertainment medium for the various ills in society; quite the reverse in fact. I’m asking what kind of society are we living in that can not only create this stuff, but enjoy it?!

Again, I’m wondering what it is about society that makes people want to consume this stuff; having said that, of course, the people that choose to make it are as much a product of society as I am.

I think it’s a faintly ridiculous comparison. In the first instance, it’s been a long time, since people have happily gone to die in a war: ‘The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/ Pro patria mori.’.
Not only that, but, whatever the rights and wrongs of wars per se, Bush’s war on terror has been dubious from the start. No one wants their contemporaries to die, but defending one’s country from a foreign aggressor is one thing, dying in Iraq under present conditions is quite another. If I thought that there was a real danger of this country being overrun, I would like to think I’d go and do my bit to defend it, not only for the sake of the country but for my wife and kids; if I died it would be a necessary sacrifice (certainly not sweet and honourable). I don’t think that’s what going on in Iraq, ,and that’s why people are concerned.

14

Actually, the generation of people in their teens and twenties are a smaller proportion of the population, and people over the age of 40 are a lot less likely to commit crimes. I’m not sure how someone could measure how violent a certain age group is compared to another, but it would be interesting.

I’ve posted it before, but what the hell it’s a good story. I was watching a slasher flick on AMC one OCtober, and there was a scene where a girl is killed as she’s getting out of the shower. The broadcasters scrmabled her breasts as she was being hacked up.

I should also point out that I consumed a steady diet of slasher flicks in my adolescence. I don’t know about these films, but it seems like more of the same. Maybe our OP can expand on why these films are different.

15

I’m not a big fan of excessively gory horror films, but the answer, I think, is that the vicarious thrill comes from knowing that however gory the picture on the screen is, you get to walk away when it’s over. There’s no easy escape from the horrors of real life, but however horrifying Hostel may be, you go see it and then you go home. Safe.

Or, from someone with some experience in gore:

Omega, the horror film sings in those children’s voices. *Here is the end. * Yet the ultimate subtext that underlies all good horror films is, But not yet. Not this time. Because in the final sense, the horror movie is the celebration of those who feel they can examine death because it does not yet live in their own hearts.

(Stephen King, from Danse Macabre)

16

I can’t speak for the OP, but with the genre-standard slasher flick, there may be gore, but it tends to be brief, you identify with the victims on the run, and the “monster” tends to get killed or at least physically punished. (You might have to keep him alive for the sequel.)

With the new generation of films, the torture and gore are so protracted and lovingly rendered it feels almost like the filmmaker is inviting us to identify with the torturer.

17

While I find the current trend in torture porn beyond incomprehensible - I simply cannot imagine how it can be construed as entertainment - I certainly wouldn’t censor the movies. I choose not to go, or to rent them - pure and simple.

But you can sure as heck bet I monitor what movies my kids get to see…

18

Freddy became quite the antihero for awhile, didn’t he?

Daniel

19

Good point. I might be on the wrong track as to what distinguishes the new generation.

I suppose every generation of horror is more shocking and gory than the last. Frankenstein was shocking when it came out, and is tame today. Psycho was shocking at the time, tame now. In the 70s, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween and Friday the 13th raised the ante. Nightmare on Elm Street and the Candyman series kicked things up another notch.

So in that context, I guess the newest generation is just the next level of violence and gore. And I suppose it could still be kicked up to an even worse level twenty years from now, so as to shock the current generation of teenagers when they have kids of their own.

(Is there an upper limit, I wonder?)

I still think it’s bizarre that we as a society have no problem exposing kids to shocking levels of violence, but heaven forbid the kiddies should see a sex scene!

20

Maybe we ought to consider how media-saturated people, especially young people, are today. It takes a lot to get them to react. In a world like that, “entertainment” gets redefined as anything that stimulates a reaction. Any kind of reaction - doesn’t matter.

Grisly media violence, or grisly sex violence, should be what abortion should be: safe (for the enactors), legal (under the 1st Amendment), and rare.

It sure would be great to survey people coming out of pix like these for their impressions. No leading questions, no “should we this or that,” just “How do you feel after seeing this?” Maybe a 5-step scale over 5 questions: Entertained, Disgusted, Aroused, Enraged, Bored.

Unfortunately that survey would by definition have to take place on private property and would not be tolerated by theater management. Maybe a psych professor and his grad students could do it, but if the findings ever made it past an academic journal, it’d be lawyer-up time.