Thoughts on "torture porn"
Notice the fact I put "torture porn" in scare quotes. This is because the genre is a myth, made up by pretentious morality police to scare the populace into pseudo-censorship action. Here I will use the word, part as shorthand, and part derisively to look at the good, the bad and the ugly concerning the genre and the reaction it garners.
The Good
- The perception is "torture porn" pushes the envelope. By its mere existence, the genre makes the R-rating a much harder rating, which makes it less likely the censorship of such films as Wild at Heart and Kill Bill vol. 1 will be repeated in the future. Of course, given the MPAA's notorious double standards, this might not be true.
- It makes the P.C. police angry. Do a Google search on the term and you'll find many reviewers and critics who feel the genre is bad, bad, bad because it "glorifies violence against women." I guess male victims of violence don't count?
- Kim Bauer and Lindesy Lohan are victims in upcoming movies! Please, God, let Fred Durst and Eve Ensler sign up for Saw 78...
- The latest line of horror films have done away with the PG-13 horror film market that made a mockery out of the genre for too many years. Think I Know What You Did Last Summer and the films that ripped off The Sixth Sense, as examples.
The Bad
- Notice above I said the perception is that they push the envelope. Truth is, they're pretty tame by 70s exploitation standards. The people complaining that they're just as bad, only with major studio backing, have never seen Cannibal Holocaust, I Spit On Your Grave or even the original 1971 version of Last House on the Left. Most films people have put in this genre show little or no on-screen torture and are mostly advertising teases. (But hey, the gorehounds fell for it twice ie -- both Hostel films)
- The "genre" is nothing new. See above. Even if we're talking mainstream films, victims being tortured to death has been around at least since Silence of the Lambs. Perhaps David Fincher's Se7en is an even more accurate benchmark, which is now fourteen years old.
- Labeling something porn has been a bad cliche for many years now. War porn, food porn, computer porn, etc. Should we start calling romance films "mush porn"?
- The genre is simply a creation for weak stomached reviewers to lump together films they hate. I've seen Kill Bill, Grindhouse, Cabin Fever, The Hills Have Eyes, Sin City and most other recent R-rated films with violence labeled as "torture porn." Much like the old saying that "pornography is erotica that offends somebody," "torture porn" has become the designation of any film that makes a reviewer uncomfortable. I'm still waiting for somebody to call Starship Troopers "torture porn" because of all the gory head shots.
The Ugly
- There is now a spat of horror films that simply use torture and gross-out sight gags in place of scary material. Saw was a great film, but the Saw franchise is now a bloated corpse because it's fallen into this trap. The first Saw film was scary and suspenseful, with little gore, the last two are cartoons with buckets of blood and gore. And even though it's less than 3 years old, everybody is trying to make a buck off the "I can be grosser than you!" game of oneupsmanship that the horror market has become. Horror might not be high art, but it doesn't have to be a copycat of everything else around it, either. And if you want good gross out films, watch the first three films by Peter Jackson. Those are funny, as well.
- Even video games are following suit. Manhunt, a criminally boring game featured a snuff film motif (mostly, I gather, to get people's mind off of how boring the rest of the game is). Now its sequel has been effectively banned with an Adults Only rating, for one images even more extreme content (supposedly a sex club with a secret underground torture room exists in the new one. Gee, how did they come up with that idea?).
- Does anybody really give a flying fuck what a "male" feminist pansy like Joss Whedon thinks?
So the last section is a bit skimpy. But much like the films that get the label, it's hard to write something of any length about this issue without seeming redundant. The truth is, the morality police will always look for something to complain about. Whether that target is American Psycho, the latest gangsta rapper or death metal band, or now the latest horror film staring the latest pop-tart, these people will never shut the fuck up. By giving most recent R-rated films the label of "torture porn," the morality police can simply label anything they don't like, and have a bunch of mindless drones, who never saw the films in the first place, follow suit in protest. Much like the recent flood of horror film remakes (an I Spit On Your Grave remake is coming soon!) it's best to ignore such films and hope horror film directors will get back to making scary films instead of simply gross ones.
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