Cinemusings

Look up the term "torture porn" on Google and you'll get about 168,000 hits. Now scan each of those articles for any hint of an attempt to actually define what the writer means when he or she says a movie is "torture porn" and you'll find the number is much smaller. Something very close to zero. Why is that? Critics these days obviously have a deep, abiding love for the term "torture porn," so why aren't they explaining what they mean by it? The answer is simple: Most of them don't really know. Let's fact it, folks, "Torture Porn" is a buzz word these days, and most people who use it would be hard pressed to DEFINE it. I know because I've asked them. Typical conversation represented below:

Me: What does "torture porn" mean?
Them: It means movies like Hostel and Hostel 2
Me: I know what they use it to describe, but I mean what does the term MEAN?
Them: I told you.
Me: No you didn't.
Them: Uh huh! *runs away*

In my opinion, if you can't define a term, you shouldn't use it. People are using this label to degrade an entire subgenre of film, and yes, that makes me angry.

Even if you happen to use the term and agree with it and you know what you mean when you use it, it should make you angry that people are bandying about clucking their tongues in disgust at the entire culture of horror movies because of the actions of a few directors. And they can't even explain WHY. What ties the movie Hostel to the movie Turistas, honestly? I hear the two movies compared often with no mention of their vast differences. Yes, they both feature some stupid U.S. Citizens running afoul of some evil foreigners, but one is trying to make a point about how people in other countries hate us because we exploit them and their resources so one man is fighting back in a horrific way, and the other is making a point about how our society has been corrupted to the point where even human life is a commodity that can be bought and sold for the entertainment of others (and also how some people have become so desensitized to the affects of their actions that torturing and killing another person is fun if it entertains them).

The movies both have extreme violence, but I even if you think the movies are basically the same, I see no comparison to "porn" there, at least not in the way most people seem to understand the comparison. When is the violence in these movies enjoyable? When do the movies make the statement that the violence is ok as long as it entertains people? In Turistas, the victims aren't even tortured, they're killed for a purpose and yes, it's done without regard to their suffering but they're not being tortured for fun.

And whatever you think about Hostel as a movie, there's no way you can say that it's not at least TRYING to say exactly the opposite of "violence is exciting and fun." Hostel sends a clear message that violence is wrong, it's not ok to be entertained by it, and people who are entertained by it are sick and wrong. Perhaps these movies using violence in an attempt to make a statement about how it's wrong are analogous to a parent hitting her children and telling them not to hit, but that still doesn't explain how the movies are analogous to pornography. No one seems to want to have honest dialogue or frank discussion of these issues, they just want to deride the movies and leave it at that, and that's not enough for me.

This derision for the horror genre is nothing new; people have always looked down on horror movies. Any horror fan can tell you that. "Horror" is a broad term used to cover all subjects like murder, the occult, monsters...all things that make us uncomfortable and appeal to basic instincts like the fear of death. Most horror films like to feed off people's emotions, giving us ample opportunities to laugh at the antics of their stupid characters and be titillated by the scenes of nudity and sex, but there is always the undercurrent of dread and indeed most of the aforementioned sex scenes end in bloody death for the characters involved. Because of this macabre bent, fans who keep returning to these films are often maligned for their taste in movies more than fans of westerns or romantic comedies or any other genre. People can't understand why anyone would keep being entertained by fear and death, and they can't accept it as just like any other genre BECAUSE of the fear and death. As a longtime horror fan, I'm used to that derision. But it's beginning to irk me that now even other horror fans are separating themselves by saying "I'm a fan but I don't like those movies." It's fine not to like watching people be tortured, but does that make you more moral than me or others who DO like watching torture movies? Most of the time I identify with characters who feel helpless and who are suffering, and I like watching them triumph and take their revenge. I understand that the movie is fiction, and thus not real, so seeing it is a cathartic experience for me and I respect filmmakers and actors when they can portray torture and revenge with style. What's so wrong about that?

My guess is that "torture porn" is tied in people's minds with a vague sense that these movies are supposed to titillate us instead of disgust us and somehow they're connected with pornography which is sleazy, right? And these movies are also sleazy, right?

I think a great point could be made about how the term "torture porn" applies to some movies (specifically "Murder Set Pieces") and how these movies function in the same way a porn functions. I actually researched this after I first watched the movie "Murder Set Pieces," watching it again back-to-back with a porn movie and comparing the two just to see if my conclusions had any merit. And the two movies were almost identical in set up: characters meet, they have an exciting and intimate interaction, the scene ends with bodily fluids spraying (otherwise known as a "money shot").

Lather, rinse, repeat. The only difference was that with "Murder Set Pieces" the build-up leads to a scene of bloody death instead of sexual release, and the body fluid that sprays is blood instead of semen. I really expected more people to chime in and compare that movie with pornography, but critics stayed largely silent on the subject which was fine with me, because I really didn't think "Murder Set Pieces" deserved any more attention than it was already receiving (I still don't, put simply, it's a piece of poorly crafted garbage). Then critics started dragging some of my favorite movies through the mud and linking THOSE to pornography, and I got upset. Without any evidence that the movies are meant for the sole purpose of titillating us, you have no business comparing them to pornography.

But at least if you made the assertion that these movies excite us in the way that porn excites us and that's disgusting you'd be making SOME effort at identifying what you mean by calling them "torture porn." Most critics don't even go that far. And it's a shame. There's an intelligent discussion to be found somewhere in all these examples, but we're not going to find it in any of the recent diatribes against "torture porn" because people are using the term to incite anger without exploring what it means and how it applies to the films they're trying to degrade. Until we can come to a place where we can sit and have intelligent dialogue about why some people enjoy watching extremely violent movies WITHOUT labeling those who watch the films as somehow morally inferior to those who don't, I don't think we're going to advance much as movie fans, we're just going to stagnate in a sea of issues that we can't discuss without insulting each other. I know from experience how torturous THAT is.

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