goodness knows i'm a fan of a certain kind of horror film.
self-referential horror that makes fun of itself while it scares me? check.
well-written old school ghost stories, vampires, haunted houses, monster flicks, scary cemetaries? i'm all for. (like, The Haunting, The Changeling, Ghost Story, Scream, and even The Exorcist because it was creepy as all hell.)
but there's a certain kind of film i can't stomach anymore: the Saws, the Hostels, the Turistas. all of them. can't. take it. the torture, the eroticized killing, the elaborate fetishistic murder just skeeves me out and makes me hurt the way looking at porn now makes me hurt.
just lately, i've been watching the quick tv ads for Captivity and it turns my stomach: stalker capturing a woman and some guy and torturing the hell out of her. this is entertainment? this is what we need to see to get our rocks off now? woman-hating death porn.
gross.
and, if you read solloway's column, you'll see the grossness isn't an accident. it's done on purpose; it's a thoughtful kind of 'accident'; the misogyny is how the film will succeed. it's built into the marketing and business plan.
sick, really. and if you read here, you'll see that the disgusting dude who created it is counting on our shock and repulsion to drive more people to the film. well, i don't want to drive folks to see the film. i want the film to disappear. so we're thinking about that at the office - how exactly to make it disappear.
but there's a certain kind of film i can't stomach anymore: the Saws, the Hostels, the Turistas. all of them. can't. take it. the torture, the eroticized killing, the elaborate fetishistic murder just skeeves me out and makes me hurt the way looking at porn now makes me hurt.
just lately, i've been watching the quick tv ads for Captivity and it turns my stomach: stalker capturing a woman and some guy and torturing the hell out of her. this is entertainment? this is what we need to see to get our rocks off now? woman-hating death porn.
gross.
and, if you read solloway's column, you'll see the grossness isn't an accident. it's done on purpose; it's a thoughtful kind of 'accident'; the misogyny is how the film will succeed. it's built into the marketing and business plan.
sick, really. and if you read here, you'll see that the disgusting dude who created it is counting on our shock and repulsion to drive more people to the film. well, i don't want to drive folks to see the film. i want the film to disappear. so we're thinking about that at the office - how exactly to make it disappear.
i mean, if the fundamentalists can make a regular old movie about evolution disappear, can't we make a piece of woman-hating crap just fizzle out of existence?
8 comments:
You know, something very similar to the plot of that film happened here in NYC a coupla years ago. Nobody thought it was funny or worth paying for.
What the fuck is wrong with the MPAA that they give Captivity and Hostel: Part II an R rating in the first place? Writing about Hostel: Part II, Entertainment Weekly columnist, Mark Harris, pointed out that the R rating means a parent can bring a kid of any age to these torture porn movies. Can't find a sitter? Go ahead and bring the kids. Why does gruesome, explicit, misogynistic torture porn not merit an NC-17 rating????
What sort of violence would get an NC-17? An actual snuff film? Oh, wait. Those are illegal. So apparently the only thing that gets an NC-17 is sexual content, but not violence with heavy sexual overtones.
MPAA bastards.
I'm with you: like the scary movies; can't stand the torture porn. Won't watch it. And it's wildly successful commercially. That they're deliberately marketing the misogyny has to be some sort of hate speech, no?
I just read the Solloway column. The LA Times ran a story about how those billboards were a "mistake."
The grossest thing about this genre of torture-porn/ ultraviolence/mutilate-the-woman genre is the fawning media coverage of its creators. Think of the "genius" of Tarantino. Eli Roth (not responsible for this one but for the Saw oevre) was profiled in the LA Times sometime in April I think. The gist of the profile was: he's a nice guy: a mensche even, with lefty intellectual upbrining, who is so sensitive, so delicate, he can't stand to watch his own films without puking and so must be an artiste.
And then I'm still suprised at the level of casual misogyny all around us.
super des: i think i read about another case in new york from a couple of months ago - a grad student was attacked in her apartment, tortured and raped for 19 hours or something. horrific.
we see the connection between these kinds of movies and what happens to women, but the men who create these movies don't? do they honestly believe that what they create exists in a vacuum?
orange: i'm constantly amazed that adults would bring small kids to these movies. i was in 'sin city' with a friend and we were stunned that there was a family with small children sitting in front of us. it was an intense film: beheadings, extreme violence, cannibalism, sexy girls. granted, it was highly stylized but if a guy getting his head chopped off makes ME jump out of my seat, can you imagine what that visual stimulus does to a kid?
jeebus.
the whole violence=good/woman getting chopped up= better is just sick. it's a small consolation that the second hostel tanked so bad, but it doesn't stop these smaller filmmakers from making the 'turistas' the 'saw'-wannabes.
and it's because the profits, even if the movie has a bad box office, are really good. dvd and overseas rights are massive money.
global woman-hating torture porn.
i love the patriarchy, don't you?
liza: i think it's hate speech; the hate speech advocates and workers i know in the city think it's hate speech. but the average guy-filmmaker thinks it's hip and edgy to create images of women being tortured.
i can't even feel comfortable saying 'well, if it had a message...' no. there is no message. (if you go to the captivity website, you'll see that they try to bring a 'message' about missing persons and abductions. whatever, you talentless hacks.)
oh, wait. there is a message: 'i'm a total whore for money.'
eli roth can kiss my ass. i remember his first movie about a bunch of campers coming down with some disease and turning into flesh eating zombies. it was the movie that actually brought the extreme splatter genre back. 'cabin fever' - that was the film.
but what sticks in my head is an interview he gave where he said that his biggest challenge was finding an actress who would be willing to do frontal nudity; he sneered at actresses showing some scruples and made it clear that these were the types of movies he was making and that if they didn't like it, screw them and their little girly scruples. he wants the tits.
yeah, his 'leftist intellectual' sensibilities can also kiss my ass.
If y'all haven't yet seen 'This Film Is Not Yet Rated' I highly recommend it in light of this very issue. Not that the film is not a little heavy handed in spots, and I don't like the overuse of the word 'censorship' when a government is not involved (a personal quirk) - but the argument that pretty much the only thing that will get an X rating is female sexual pleasure or consensual gay sex seems pretty much right on to me.
And Kevin Smith's commentary that the thing he thinks should get an automatic X is rape? Again, spot on. I believe he also goes on to state that rape (and he may broaden it to violence against women) has to be the most overused plot device around.
I quit watching Mel Gibson movies years ago, when they all became variations of the "Stuffed in a 'Fridge" trope.
This is so beyond acceptable, and the fact that it received an R is so repulsive, that - I mean - ARGH! Impotent fury. I'm left just hoping it tanks.
atalanta: you're right; it's not censorship when a gov agency isn't involved.
re: female sexual pleasure - in an article i read about one of these types of torture porn movies, the perpetrator is a woman who gets off on the torture/death of her female victim. (was it one of the Saws? can't recall.) but even that was given a pass - i guess the killing of one woman balances the orgasm of another.
Roomie made a point trying to draw a distinction between the novels i read about serial killers and such like that (like the Lucas Davenport series) and she said, So if these movies added a detective, it would be ok?
i said, 'maybe not ok but better; it would get us out of the basement.'
who wants to be trapped in the subjectivity of a rapist/killer?
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