I don’t see where Cube comes into the discussion at all. At any rate, defining a genre in this way is useless and arbitrary, perhaps a bit circular.
Agreed, absolutely.
heh. I too hate Funny Games (not because of the content, more because of the annoying ideology behind it), but the rest of Haneke’s movies range from very good to all-time favorites of mine.
Interesting that you mention Hostel 2 - I thought the first was among the most repellent and inane things I’ve ever seen, but the second was quite good.
Curious to see Red State, though I’m not a Kevin Smith fan.
I avoided The White Ribbon because I saw Cache and Funny Games. Both were irritating enough that I resolved to not give one more penny to this jerk, however indirectly.
Do you share my opinion that it is an arthouse torture porn like Salo, or A Serbian Film?
He definitely tends to provoke love-it-or-hate-it reactions. The Piano Teacher is probably his most straightforward movie, lacking the trickery of Funny Games and Cache - you might try that one if you get adventurous.
Since I don’t think “torture porn” is a valid concept, I don’t share that opinion. Superficially it’s got obvious arthouse qualities, and I suppose like the other two titles you name, it places ideological concerns over the advancement of narrative and genuinely compelling characterization. Salo is the only one of the three you name there that I like (out of curiosity, have you seen Salo or Serbian)?
Years ago when the Robert Maplethorpe brouhaha was churning, we considered the difference between pornography and art. No fine line, but when I see porn my reptilian brain shouts “Whoa! Hello.” Art is not necessarily more subtle, but the description “it really resonates: when you go back to it after time, you discover new aspects that you hadn’t seen before” is never used for simple flat-out porn.
So I have no interest on slasher “hold onto your boyfriends!” fare. But there’s much more to 1975’s Salo - or 120 Days of Sodom. Themes such as how, rather than resisting, victims will submit meekly to torture in the hope that submission will make torture more bearable; or how holding so much power over others makes the torturers crazy-drunk with self-justifying contemp for their victims; how their goons will willingly sell each other out to maintain an ever-shifting (actually nonexistent) line between victims and torturer’s assistants. At the end of the movie the two surviving boys simply change the radio to more pleasant music and dance, as if to say “that’s life. May as well make the best of it.”
All these themes were found IRL in Argentina, the USSR, Iraq, etc. etc. That makes it more than just an icky thrill.
I would personally like to meet someone who liked any of the Saw movies or any similar films. I’ve got good money on said person either being psychotic, stupid (actually having a very low IQ) or some sort of sick-minded, twisted human being that enjoys torturing things in real life and already is, or will soon be, a serial killer. The thing I find so bizarre is that 90% of people don’t seem to mind causing harm to animals and creatures, to me that just means they’re one step away to doing it to humans. Of course, on another level, I don’t care as much about people being tortured in real life as I do animals, an animal doesn’t understand, but a person does, so it doesn’t seem as bad. That being said, I don’t like torture at all, I hate it…that could be because I know what it feels like to be tortured, physically and psychologically, and I also know what it’s like to be the torturer. Most people that torture others have never been tortured themselves, once you’ve been tortured, you no longer wish to do it or even see it. Movies like Saw are a disgrace, torture is real, just ask a Vietnam vet, or POW that was over in Japan during WWII, and many would tell you it’s better to put a round in your head than get captured, I know about some guy that’s still pulling bamboo out of his elbows. Give me five minutes with a professional torturer and I will make it so they’ll never harm a fly ever again…that’s a promise :D.
[talking to self] Okay, calm down, Train, just breath, you know this subject always gets you worked up…
No, but like any other film that I choose to see or not see, I read reviews and summaries of the film and decide if I wish to see it or not. I know that I would not wish to see Salo or Serbian in the same way that I know I have no desire to see the upcoming Adam Sandler film Jack and Jill. I didn’t let my general dislike of Adam Sandler keep me away from Punch-Drunk Love or a couple of other films where he was not attempting comedy.
But this seems to have gotten a bit derailed. Whether or not you accept the handle “torture porn”, why do you see films like that?
Well, the first thing I’d say is that you’re 100% wrong there, and if you haven’t seen “any of the Saw movies or any similar films,” you have no basis for assuming anything like this 
Mostly true, I think, but I don’t really see what it has to do with the matter at hand.
I’m just not sure why you’d call movies “torture porn” - a derogatory phrase - when you haven’t seen them. Not caring to see something is fine, but pre-judging it is unreasonable, even if you know with near-certainty that you wouldn’t like it. I’ve been pleasantly surprised too many times by movies I thought I’d dislike (and I’ve found myself revising my own opinions many times also) - I never assume anything in advance of seeing a movie. If it doesn’t interest me, that’s that.
Short answer: I’m intrigued by movies that depict extremes in experience. Fundamentally I’m a gentle soul but I’m drawn just as much to the outré in art as I am to more calming things. And there are any number of other things in movies dismissed by some as “torture porn” that also draw me in: amusing and gimmicky casting (Edwige Fenech, Ruggero Deodato and Heather Matarazzo in Hostel 2), intriguing plot elements (the locked-room mystery of Saw), gorgeous landscape photography (Wolf Creek), intriguing use of philosophical ideas (Martyrs).
I disagree, it has everything to do with it, it’s also the reason why I believe Saw fans to be borderline serial killers or some type of lunatic. The fact that torture is still around to this very day, and torture that only ends in death is by far the worst thing a human being can endure, is tragic. To see it taken so lightly on a film is tragic, but don’t take my word for it, ask a returning soldier from Afghanistan or Iraq who’s been tortured and ask if they’d like to watch Saw…
I have seen Saw 1 and Hostel 1. **The Strangers **falls into the catagory. I did not enjoy these and avoided the sequels.
The phrase torture porn is derogotive but appropriate. In the Saw and Hostel, the torture isn’t a plot device, it is the plot. It is the whole point of the film.
Without it, you don’t really have a film.
I have nothing against folks who enjoy this kind of film.
But if I am stuck in a room with one of them, I will watch them carefully.
Are you talking about in film or real life? Because animals being tortured on screen is still a very taboo thing, something you won’t find in any of the Saw, Hostel, etc. type movies. Animals routinely are the ones to survive some kind of harrowing situation.
Or is this supposed to be some king of vegan thing like “All meat eaters are just a step away from killing humans!!1! OMG! Eating a cow is practically cannibalism, man!”
Wow, what a brave stance to take.
Riiiight.
And without violent crimes ranging from picturesque mutilation to starvation and flaying, you don’t have Silence of the Lambs. And without even more grotesque crimes, you don’t have Seven (not that this would be such a bad thing IMO). And without the brutal strangling of women for sexual kicks, you don’t have Frenzy.
sorry, but that’s pure melodrama.
Since there are no ex-military personnel who’ve been tortured conveniently at hand, I’m afraid I can’t verify what you’re saying here, but I can confidently say that your histrionic claim about those interested in this area of film being “borderline serial killers or some type of lunatic” is incorrect. (Not that the two personality traits don’t coincide in some folks, I’m sure, but we all know what correlation is not).
Sure you can. Any intelligent viewer can watch a movie and see what its purpose was.
Black Swan had a lesbian sex scene but it wasn’t a porn movie. But the lesbian scenes in Sorority Strap-On Party 5* were the purpose of the movie.
*I just made that title up. But it’s probably a real movie.
[Off-topic] Cache is one of my favorite films. I caught it by accident one day on IFC and loved it. I haven’t seen either of Haneke’s Funny Games, but just from the descriptions, they seem in a diametrically different genre than Cache or The White Ribbon. [/Off-topic]
jordanr2, if I accept that “torture porn” is unnecessarily pejorative, can you suggest a better genre name? Or do you not accept that Hostel and Human Centipede deserve their own sub-genre of horror/thriller?
No, they can speculate about what its purpose was. They can even come to a consensus about that with other intelligent viewers. Know for sure, though? I don’t buy it - it’s easy for viewers to find conflicting but equally valid things in a movie. And there’s always the question of serendipity - bizarre moments of unintended grace and beauty that can raise an otherwise banal movie to heights that were never intended, but which it’d be churlish to deny are there.
I don’t think the point of your example’s as clear-cut as you’d like it to be. A director casting Natalie Portman, even if he has the best intentions, will also carry her other baggage as an attractive and appealing actress into the film. Unless you do something like what Patty Jenkins did with Charlize Theron in Monster, and deliberately subdue her beauty, you’re making a film with explicit sexual content, featuring a lovely actress, and that’s gonna hit people on a sub-intellectual level, even if it’s not an outright “porn movie.” By contrast, there’s an entire tradition of directors making overtly lurid and sexy films - people like Doris Wishman, Jean Rollin, Radley Metzger - who’ve been rightly recognized as doing work of artistic interest. No reason the cerebral and visceral can’t co-exist, even if that was no one’s intention going into the making of a film.
I’ve enjoyed a few movies that could qualify as torture porn. Some torture porn movies are good (Martyrs) and some are mediocre (Inside) and some are bad (Hostel 2). I would just categorize torture porn as a sub-genre of horror. Just like exorcism films are a sub-genre, where you have the good (The Exorcist), the mediocre (The Exorcism of Emily Rose), and the bad (Exorcismus). Just because I enjoyed a few films in a particular genre, doesn’t mean I will like just any film in the genre. It still has to be a good film on it’s own merits.
I don’t see why we can’t just call them horror movies.
My issue isn’t that people consider the movies bad (a lot of them are bad), more it’s that the phrase seems meant as a way of dismissing a whole slew of movies out of hand - “oh it’s just torture porn, don’t bother.” This is a stupid approach to take with anything, even a cheap horror film. If it doesn’t interest you, don’t watch it - but if you haven’t given the movie your two hours, don’t pretend to be able to talk about it - it’s that simple. This goes for any area of film: Adam Sandler movies, romantic comedies written by Nora Ephron, structuralist experiments, “Oscar bait” and so on.