LOTT D Roundtable: Torture Porn in Horror Today
Published May 19, 2008
Cinema tends to reflect either the banality, the sanctity, or the immorality of our times, and patrons of movies promote the ones they like most by buying more theater tickets, more DVDs, and more Netflix rentals for them. The popularity of a movie will invariably foster more movies with similar storylines, similar characters and action themes, and as many sequels as an audience's attention span will allow. In a word, profit drives the creative ups and downs of cinema. From the independent to the mainstream, whether grindhouse or arthouse, the bottom line accounts for most of what we see and hear in the darkened theaters of Cannes, Sheboygan, and points in between.
With movies affected by the vagaries of social and commercial forces, how do you explain the cross-genre use of torture porn in films like The Passion of the Christ, Saw, Hostel, Wolf Creek, Irreversible? Or even its lesser use in television shows like Battlestar Galactica or 24? How do you justify the extended, agonizing, and too graphic torture of a human being (or human-like being), who is humiliated and vivisected emotionally, spiritually, and physically? Is it a necessary component for high drama, or just a bottom-line feeder? And what does it say about us, the audience, promoting such movies like Saw every Halloween, forcing each sequel to become a more creative evisceration bloodbath?
The horror-blogging members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers give their take on torture porn. One word of advice: this is not a fluff piece of transient newsy gossip, or Twitter-sized comments of self-importance. Brew a nice cup of tana tea and butter your brain on both sides before you begin. Now get nice and comfortable. Ready? Let's begin.
What Dr. Kim Paffenroth from Gospel of the Living Dead thinks...
I would say that if something (text or film) has torture in it because the torture is what is entertaining or interesting about the work, then that is, like pornography, just trash, and watching it is a demeaning and sullying activity.
But for the deeper question of when the story might justify, or even demand, the graphic depiction of torture, I'd fall back on my teaching of (non-genre) literature. Are there examples of graphic torture in "great" literature or "high" (as opposed to "pop") culture? Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple that have stuck with me. The eye-gouging in Oedipus Rex is one. The stake through the head and the head on a platter of the Old and New Testaments, respectively, are others. (I'm not going to go into any of the atrocities from Titus Andronicus, because I think that play does border on the pornographic.)
But the best example is probably Gloucester's torture scene in King Lear. That is a very harrowing and grotesque scene of abusing an old, helpless man, culminating in gouging out his eyes, followed by a bloody sword fight in which Cornwall and another man kill each other. But I think the story fully justifies the scene, both for the depravity it shows in Cornwall and Regan, and for the heroism it shows in the man who attacks Cornwall to try to stop his rampage. It is the turning point of the play in some ways. And also, one should note that there are many more harrowing scenes in the play that include no blood-letting - the "What need one?" scene in which Lear is verbally stripped of his dignity is much more brutal, cruel, and perverse in many ways. A play that can move us so deeply without showing anything bloody surely has the right to occasionally make the ugliness of its dystopia concrete, literal, and physical. The example is especially apt in this context also because King Lear does represent a kind of dystopia - a mad dissolution of all "natural" human ties, together with an apocalyptic dissolution of the "natural" world into a maelstrom that shakes and inverts all the elements.
Founder of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers (LOTT D), expiring writer, and valet to Zombos, the noted B-movie horror actor (to his remaining and decaying fans, at least). Blogging all the horror, all the time.
- LOTT D Roundtable: Torture Porn in Horror Today
- Published: May 19, 2008
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Video
- Writer: Iloz Zoc
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The bathtub scene in Scarface is gut-wrenching because it touches reality. It gave me nightmares afterwards. I'll say that I find torture porn that comes too close to actuality very disturbing. The more fantastic, or ludicrous the depiction, the less it bothers me mentally. But the "real" or more plausible depictions are not to my tastes or nerves.
What also bothers me is the commercialism of it. Saw has become an annual event, and audience pandering keeps increasing the sadistic bloodletting to meet expectations.
But it is so damn effective for a horror film, isn't it? I mean, it churns our stomachs while delivering a WTF "I'm glad that's not me" feeling. Like that roller coaster ride that keeps adding more and more visceral twists and turns to overcome our sensory-saturation by upping the shocks.
Tough call here, but I certainly don't want the horror genre get mired in it just for commercial reasons. I'll take a good old scarefest like The Uninvited over Hostel any day. But will the audience?
being a writer of torture porn with " Snuff." I find it is the most disturbing of the genre, because it can really happen. I sometimes wonder if people who look down on it are really scared by it.
I wrote thisin an article here a while ago, but it applies and is exactly what I was going to say.
I understand this move towards showing gore in movies today and it actually has everything to do with the war in Iraq, to be honest. If one looks at the history of horror movies one cannot help but notice that it always reflects the political atmosphere. The '50s gave us stories of people being controlled by evil aliens at the same time we were afraid of people secretly being communists and invasions from outer space while we feared another global war. Movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Blob played perfectly on those fears.
The '60s saw a rise in the gore and torture films such as Bloodfeast just as Vietnam was getting more and more unpopular. In fact, the gore and torture only increased as the decade wore on. The '70s saw us no longer having faith in our government so naturally the Devil became a major villain with religion no longer being able to protect us in such classics as The Exorcist and The Omen and the '80s saw the birth of the personable killer because the '80s were all about style over substance.
It really is no surprise to me that in the days of Abu Ghraib we are seeing a return to the torture/gore movies. I just wish they would do original stories like Hostel and Saw and leave our classics alone -- no matter how non-classic they may be.
Hey Eric,
I can say that watching torture porn too close to reality scares me quite a bit. Being helpless as anything can be done to you is about as terrifying as you can get.
As silly a film as 1970's THE WIZARD OF GORE is, the antagonist, Montag the Magnificent, rants on and on about participants coming forward to his on-stage nightmares for the sake of satisfying their fellow humans' lust for blood. Despite the horrendous acting, the message was clear: director HG Lewis was continuing to make these films because there was a DESIRE to see them. Of course, I'm sure he didn't think his first effort, 1963's BLOOD FEAST, would snowball to the point it has today, but suffice it to say there will always be fans of "extreme" horror who simply want to SEE this kind of material, regardless of plot or film quality. Surely people aren't sitting through pointless filmfare such as the mainstream Hostel films, to the underground 'guinea pig' series for their artistic value.
While I personally don't care for horror this graphic (unless it enhances the story, such as with Jack Ketchum's 'The Girl Next Door' or is done slapstick-style as in 'Dead Alive'), perhaps the demand for these things speaks of our inherited-depraved nature . . . or just our obscure curiosity.
Nick, I think it's our inherited depraved nature. When torture porn becomes absurdist, it loses its terrifying effect and moves into disgusto territory. Disgusto sells, too. Bottom line; if there's a payin' audience, it will be done.
Back in the 80s I remember watching a few examples of the semi-illicit genre known as the 'video nasty'.
Looking back, the gory 'delights' on view then seem positively tame compared to some of the stuff that's now on offer in your friendly neighborhood movie theater.
Fascinating discussion. I found especially insightful the distinctions of fear, specifically "aversive fear" as the main driver for these films. I just reviewed _The Strangers_ for Down in the Cellar, and though it did not have the gorey excesses of some of its recent ilk, I gave it a low rating because of the protagonists. They were blank ciphers who seemed to be there just to be terrorized. The film's approach was naturalistic, yet the leads were as one-dimensional as any teen fodder at Camp Crystal Lake.
I was more impressed by _Vacancy_, which featured protagonists who reacted with the fight rather than flight response, and showed themselves to be resourceful and self-reliant in harrowing circumstances. This made me identify with, and consequently root for, them more.
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Interesting coincidence. The featured headline on my Yahoo home page says "Most violent game ever?" referring to the new Gears of War video game in which, evidently, one can chainsaw an opponent in half from the crotch up, and then use one half of the corpse as a "meat shield" to absorb enemy fire.
Well, Iloc, I read the entire article, and I came away feeling like only the surface had been scratched. I'm not a movie egghead like you and the LOTT D. I have no deep thoughts to offer, I certainly couldn't find anything with which to disagree. Chords were struck by the Purcell article concerning the topic of separating fantasy and reality. A nice clashing of the two appears in Pan's Labyrinth, in which torture figures a bit too prominently. Who wouldn't agree that the horrors of the real world far exceed anything a fictional movie can bring? Maybe that's one reason I prefer my horror movies to feature supernatural phenomena --- ghosties. Give me a good haunted house story any time and keep the silly Jasons and Michaels and Freddies.
I'm reminded of the Hellraiser series, which depicts torture by demons from Hell, who inflict torture because ... well ... that's their job. There was a definite shock response there, but I could "accept" it, because, after all, that's what Hell is all about, right?
I found Saw, Hostel, and Irreversible to be rather dismal exercises. As disturbing as the rape scene was, I was just as grossed out by the head bludgeoning sequence (with a fire extinguisher?). They aren't "scary." I'm too old, I guess, to get a thrill out of gratuitous violence. Oddly enough, I enjoyed Wolf Creek, maybe just because I find Australia to be fascinating.
The Audition also features unnecessary torture. I'm pretty sure that seeing needles stuck into the face of a bound man and having his feet cut off didn't add a lot to the story.
Zombie movies ... I wouldn't classify them as torture porn. That's just the undead doing their undead thing. And the Rob Zombie movies are so far over the top that their impact is minor, along the lines of the mass dismemberment fight sequence in Kill Bill, Vol. 1. It's all in fun, in other words.
The bathtub scene in Scarface where Pacino's partner in crime gets his arm chain sawed off is far more disturbing than anything I've seen in a horror movie.
All in all, I would have to agree with a few of the contributors that the envelope-pushing gutfest sequences are given more and more attention by the producers in order to cover up the fact that the stories aren't really very compelling. And strangely enough, people will pay to see it. I know I have. But that'll do it for me.
What do YOU have to say about it?
And what did you think of The Blair Witch Project?