As many have said in this thread, I am almost entirely against censorship of any kind. However, I wish I lived in a society where such dreck failed to make any money; where no one *wanted *to watch it. I also wish I could fly. I hold the latter to be more likely.
I actually had mustard on frozen yogurt, once. It wasn’t that bad.
Yes, and it’s kind of scary how blasé we are about that as a culture. It probably doesn’t help that the movie industry is still pretty much a man’s world.
The appeal of these films isn’t hard to understand, and it’s not nearly as dismal as a lot of you think. It’s just an endurance test. You get together with some buddies, rent the grossest, raunchiest horror film you can find, and then see who can watch the most without turning away. It’s one of those petty, bullshit adolescent dominance games that just about all boys played in one way or another. I can see it being off-putting when guys past a certain age do it, as it’s a sign of immaturity (says the guy with two bookshelves full of comic books) but it’s not particularly sinister. Doubtlessly, there are some guys who are into this stuff for genuinely sick reasons, but for the most part, it’s just a bit of delayed adolescence.
Then why didn’t they say that?
So how do the Final Destination movies fit into this? Young people are killed in graphically horrific fashion but the perpetrator is the sadistic whim of fate itself. Personally, I find them comical because the Rube Goldberg deaths are just so ridiculous. I mean, geez, any one of those would lead to a lawsuit bigger than the GNP of Spain.
I couldn’t take House of Wax seriously, either (how long can a wax-coated corpse last before decomposition and gas-bloating set in?). As for the Saw films, I’m long-tired of the cliché of the superintelligent sociopath. When I see these movies on cable, I watch for the gore but flip away in boredom whenever somebody starts talking about the killer’s motivation. I’ve only been offended by one death - Dina Meyer is such a smokingly fuckable fox that having her ripped open by giant fishhooks is a criminal act of vandalism.
I didn’t like Hannibal Lecter and I’m dismayed by the increasing laziness among the various CSI-ish shows, which I tend to enjoy when they don’t fall back on the lame “brilliant psycho is planting clues for us to find” bit.
So you’re saying they really are hot sauce?
The ultimate form of censorship is exercised by the person who chooses not to watch.
This statement is so completely bass-ackwards that I suspect that you are joking. But on the chance that you are not, I’ll point out that choosing not to watch is the exact OPPOSITE of censorship, i.e., it is an act of choice. Censorship is denying choice, it is me saying to you, “You cannot watch/read/hear that” eliminating your choice in the matter.
This is precisely the impression I got.
In the first instance, no one has to do anything; anyone who wants to ignore the question can. However, if people want to tell me, I’m interested to know. As for whether we should allow it or not, I conceded above that, IMHO, it shouldn’t be banned.
I don’t think that there is anything anyone could say that would make me want to actually see one. Having said that I can see some logic in the ‘life-affirming’ argument: one goes through this grisly hell during the film and emerges into the fresh air to drive home safely.
Just to clarify, not my term (see the link in the OP), the writer of which is actually quoting someone else again.
Do you really think we’re hard-wired to enjoy violence? I wouldn’t dispute the sex (urge to procreate and all that), but I don’t think I’m hard-wired to enjoy violence; and from the sound of it you aren’t either. Some people clearly do, but one could find someone, I suspect, to enjoy anything you can think of. That doesn’t mean it’s hard-wired, which surely would effect us all?
I don’t think there are problems with comparing wars as such, my point was that a death in a war defending one’s country might be met with less public outcry (though every bit as much personal grief) than a death in Iraq under current circumstances, therefore using the outcry about deaths in Iraq may not be a good barometer of the attitude of the public in general to violence.
I think the urge/taste for violence is reinforced by society - but mostly on a very deep, primal level that people don’t like to think about.
I certainly think we all respond to violence, the ‘fight-or-flight’ response, increased heart-rate, clammy skin etc, and my first though was that that kind of response is a world away from actually enjoying it.
Having said that, I do enjoy a good sword-fight (there were two in the second Pirates of the Caribbean film that I thoroughly enjoyed; one three-way fight, and another with three people swapping two swords between them. Gore, there, though was minimal to non-existent, as I recall. I can’t think of a fist-fight that I’ve enjoyed in the same way.
Maybe I’m just immeasurably more squeamish than I think I am!
Sure, pull the other one! Next you’ll be telling me that sarcasm wasn’t invented by Gen X, but rather is so old that the word derives from an ancient Greek expression meaning “to bite the lips in rage.”
Daniel
First, a nitpick with regard to the OP. I don’t know if it makes a difference (I’m sure you’ll say it doesn’t, but you can’t deny that one of the concerns you stated was about the violence against women, implying – however subtly – that it would be more “okay” if it were men): the protagonists/victims in the first Hostel film were male. The director (or producer or whoever makes these decisions; I could probably find the quote if I needed to) “upped the ante” for the second one by featuring women for the stated reason that it would be more horrifying – we’re less psychologically able to cope with women being tortured. The Saw series included at least as many men as women, and again the first one focused on two men. From the trailers I’ve seen for Captivity, there are both a male and female prisoner.
The point of all of these movies is that they’re horror. We’re supposed to be shocked and revolted by it, and to identify with the victims. While I admit that Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and especially Freddy Krueger became anti-heroes and boderline sympathetic characters as the movies contiued to be cranked out and become parodies of themselves, that’s not the case with Hostel, in which the perpetrators were not developed at all, and were effectively anonymous – making them more terrifying from the point of view of the victims.
Personally, my satisfaction with these films, be they “torture” or run-of-the-mill “slasher” flicks, comes when one of the would-be victims uses ingenuity and courage to fight back/escape and the villains get their comeuppance. Case in point: in the first Hostel, the surviving male victim not only escapes, but goes back to rescue someone else he doesn’t even know. I thought that was a pretty positive message.
OK OK, I didn’t catch your sarcasm.
Sebhal
It is your term. You may not have coined it, but you did title your thread with it. By using that term, in the thread title, you cast the films into catagorey that is, to most people, unredeeable. Yes, you backed off censorship. So should we close this thread?
In America, Porn, is a four letter word. (ha ha) You call something porn and it’s like accusing someone of being a child molester. They are quilty. Forget a trial. Forget any reasonable thought. It’s porn. It’s bad. We’re done.
I challenge your theory that most people are influenced by what they see. I think, most people, realize that a movie is just a movie. How many people watch The Sopranos? How many of them have orginized their family into a crime syndicate?
If you truely believe that the entertainment that people watch, play, listen to, changes their behavior, then I see no other course for you than to be a censor.
You really don’t know what you’re missing. McIlhenny tobasco and vanilla ice cream is the food of the gods.
I’d just like to point out something that doesn’t seem to have been discussed, regarding older horror flicks versus the newer ones: the “old guard” of movies, such as Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and such, do indeed feature stalker-killers. It’s the same with the first wave of more modern horror, such as Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. But there’s another important difference that no one has yet pointed out: all of the movies I’ve listed, the progenitors of modern horror and the more modern ones alike, feature murders, and blood, and even gore, and they tend to prolong the fear of the protagonists. The new wave of horror, such as Hostel and Saw, however, seem to be more about pain rather than death or the fear of death. It’s a little disingenuous to say that “there’s always been gore in movies” without noting this difference.
Now, there were films about pain way back when. Wizard of Gore, already mentioned, is only different from Hostel in the quality of its special effects. And those who claim that the violence in modern horror is misogynistic would probably have a seizure if they saw Bloodsucking Freaks, released in 1976 (it also goes by the titles The House of the Screaming Virgins and The Incredible Torture Show). The only difference between the old and the new is the degree of major studio acceptance; what used to be seen only in the crappy theater downtown now gets Paramount’s name before the credits and three screens at your local Cinemark. Still, the fact remains that there is no new thing under the sun, and such movies are not purely a recent phenomenon.
One thing that may be driving the new surge in “torture porn” is the rise of Japanese horror. Now, there’s loads of Japanese horror (Ringu, Kwaidan) that rely on creepiness and atmosphere to instill dread. But it can’t be denied, if you’ve seen the kinds of titled that come out of Japan, that there’s a certain cultural fascination with pain that we Westerners don’t really fathom. Thus, we get stuff like the Guinea Pig series. Takashi Miike, famed director of Audition, Ichi the Killer, and Imprint (the only episode of “Masters of Horror” that Showtime has refused to show), movies which take torture to levels unseen in Western cinema, even made a cameo appearance in the first Hostel. That had to be a big thrill for Eli Roth.
Anyway, my long-winded point is that these things aren’t new, and as a lover of horror movies I don’t think censorship, self-imposed or otherwise, is warranted. Not even for the worst of the worst, August Underground’s Mordum, which if you think Hostel was bad, would cause your stomach to take a job with Cirque du Soleil for all the flips it’ll do. Mordum is an endurance test for even the staunchest horror fan, and I say that as someone who owns the “snuff editions” of all three August Underground movies.
In conclusion, I think we watch horror movies for the same reasons we ride roller coasters: we like the illusion of danger from a position of safety. It’s thrilling, it gives us a rush. “Torture porn” is just the latest, fastest roller coaster.
The only “torture-porn” movie I’ve seen is Audition. Having seen it I have no desire to see another.
I have no problem with these movies, and I understand the motives of most of the people who want to see them, though I think there is a minority of fans who watch them for masturbation fodder. My one request is that they tone down the ads. I really don’t need to see some girl having her toe cut off while I’m watching a rerun of The Simpsons and eating my dinner.
Also, for some reason I really want to beat the shit out of Eli Roth. I think I could, too.
No, it’s not my term. I quoted it in the title because I was surprised to find it used in the context of a mainstream film. I quoted Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ earlier; that certainly doesn’t make it mine.
I could have titled the thread ‘So, what do we all think of Hostel II then?’ but while I’m interested to know what people think of it and why someone would go to watch it that wasn’t all I’m interested in. The title sets, I think, the tone of the debate, and was chosen for a reason.
If you’re going to judge the title in terms of your cultural orientation, you have to concede that I may have intended something different (something a bit more reasoned) in using it from mine.
Best literary typo of the week! 