A
story is a story is a story.
Fiction
doesn't have to shed light on anything real or espouse any message yet we can fall into the trap of thinking that it is. We
think that what a film shows it condones because the director has
the power of Gods to intervene and make right. We think of a film as
presenting an enclosed view of a subject, a last word that relies on
no context.
The
majority of films are first and foremost stories, visions of things
that just...happen and then... disappear. They are fantasies, inspired by but parallel to our world.
How
can we hold a fiction, and one example of fiction at that,
responsible for something that it was never intended to address and
how can we blame it for what we, in society as a whole, think and do?
There
are always trends in art, be they stylistic or thematic. There have always been
films featuring physical and psychological torture (Wes Craven's 1972 The Last House On The Left is one ) but over the last few
years the numbers have swelled into a loose movement/ sub-genre. They
are more common, more insistent, more explicit. In Saw, Hostel,
Martyrs, Cube, The Human Centipede, A Serbian Film the human body and mind is subjected to prolonged pain and
degradation.
The
umbrella term “Torture Porn”, meant generally as a pejorative,
was coined a few years ago. The “porn” of “torture porn” does not necessarily
have anything to do with sex or sexuality but rather the explicitness
of the material, referring to titillation and quick arousal of one
kind of another – here, through violence.
A Serbian Film
A
section of these films do, however (by the very nature of their
rawness and their will to strip back niceties), have a sexual
connotation, be it direct, through nudity, the choice of nubile young
women and handsome studs for the main roles, or a pervasively teasing
tone.
A
film doesn't have to have sex in it for it to touch upon sex. A
scantily clad woman. Sweat. Beauty lusted after, made dirty, ugly and
destroyed. The name “Torture Porn” puts violence and sex side by
side and in these films, violence and sex do go hand in hand;
violently sexual, sexually violent. They are presented as natural bedfellows.
Where
did this new wave come from? As with all art it came directly from
the success of the first films of this kind to touch shore. Artists and their patrons have to follow the money.
Why
is there money in it? Why do people enjoy these films?
We
are offered the opportunity to visit hell and to come back into the
light alive, to be chopped up into little pieces and surface intact.
They are an adrenalising endurance test that pushes you to a
psychological and physical limit. They have a shuddering and
breathtaking intensity, a morbid sense of exaltation. We are reminded
of our carnal selves, infinitely vulnerable to infinite kinds of
wound.
There
is a shivering buzz in seeing a film with the balls to show
outrageous things. 'Woah! Did they really do that?'
We
like to be shocked.
Shock can be good. If it is uncomfortable and
gruesome it does not mean that it is morally 'wrong'. There can be an
imperative to shock. Shocking practices are best shown straight i.e.
shockingly. Extremes can bring hidden truths home by making them big and
visible. Where are we headed? What, in these awful, horrifying,
situations do we already recognise as dormant or active within us?
Perhaps Torture Porn reflects something in us, and in the
young people at whom these films are primarily aimed. Do we see
people as less than we did? Why are we less disgusted than we were?
Do young men and women exploit and use each other more and more? Are we objects to be
captured? Are we not companions to be cherished? This
poster for Captivity was quickly taken down after complaints:
Why was it ever put up? It's odd and worrying. Is the mirror of film showing us what we look like?
Whether it's only fiction, a throwaway slice of entertainment, or not
is irrelevant; the point is that we would not have been entertained
by these films in such numbers let alone welcome them into the
mainstream with open arms.
* * *
As
I have said, one film may do little or nothing but put together, as a
group of films, they resonate louder.
What
effect does Torture Porn have? Effect trumps whatever the intention
of the film-maker - whatever satirical bent, whatever redemptive
escape or emotional switcheroo. We can always say “it's just a
story”, and it is, but stories can still change us. Illusions with
good intentions can be problematic and damaging in the real world. We
can always say “they are adults” (and yes, the other part of the
audience may already think in demeaning ways) but a steady stream of
fiction presented in a 'realistic' fashion reinforces and normalises
attitudes and behaviours. That goes for anything, not just horror like this.
The
most extreme behaviours won't be normalised but their repetition in films meant to represent a good night out could help to
shift one's moral fulcrum. They could aggravate a disregard or
buttress it with a sort of validation. Film has the cachet of a cool
art form. The worst,
over-the-top actions we see in “torture porn” have at their root
basic thoughts and feelings that emerge more commonly.
Do
we practise on our dolls?
What
is worse is that torture in a few of these films is treated like a
game. The torturer is the self-appointed master and rule-maker. Games
of death. He does it with relish. In Final Destination fate
runs the game and delivers inventive death to squirming laughter.
It's just play-acting but these atrocities are framed in the same way
we frame our visits to the cinema and the same way we interact with
film. It's just a game, it's only play, it's a moral pass.
Final Destination and the puzzle-like torture chamber of Cube
The
victims are cut off, tied up, isolated in stone rooms, abandoned
barns or dark motels. They are alienated from everything they know
and given what amounts to a taste of reality. Their complacencies and their habits are played with and rudely disabused. They
are made to feel more human. They are alive with raw nerves.
Intriguingly, there is oftentimes a complex, sneaky morality at work
in the minds of the torturers (or at least one used as an excuse for
barbarity) – you need to be woken up. You deserve it. You need
it. We the audience only fantasise about giving someone we don't
like, someone whose personality we can't stand, a slap. And here we
have it and guilt-free. What do we do with it now?
We
place a lot of stock on the idea of which characters we identify
with, or are meant to identify with. Are we encouraged to identify
with a torturer or the victim? Do we like the charismatic killer who
dances as he slays? Do we care if a self-centred upstart teenage twit
is taught a lesson? The fact is we identify with everybody. People
are empathetic and therefore will always place themselves in the
shoes of others no matter how little sympathy they have for them and
no matter how the story is skewed in favour of one character.
Whatever
we see can enter into us and alter how we relate to the real world. It can pass beyond the nightmares of typical horror
(checking under the bed for maniac clowns after watching Poltergeist)
and take on a real form “out there”. Even those who abhor films
like these, who would love to see them censored, can be affected for
the worse which is precisely why they fight so strongly against it.
Powerful images stay. They are hard to shake.
I
exaggerate, perhaps. I scaremonger, but it would surprise me if this
constant mortification of flesh and Monsters Inc.-esque
scream-catching did not deaden us a bit.
A
film cannot make us suspend our humanity. It can't make you enjoy
violence or be 'complicit' in it. But it can guide our humanity or
shut parts of it off for a couple of hours. As soon as we enter a
screening we are using different rules of engagement. Different moral
standards apply. We're perfectly behind a smart assassin like 'The
Bride' in Kill Bill in a way we wouldn't dream of being in
real life. She'd be a mass murderer. The issue is when that special
receptiveness unconsciously absorbs radical things which are then,
washed in that fictional varnish that hides immorality, taken out and
released in the real world.
The
intensity of the suffering on show in Torture Porn is being gradually
dialled up as we become harder to shock. Shock turns into
desensitisation. Desensitisation, in films like these, would mean
boredom. Bored, we are unmoved by the agony. Furthermore, with our reactions changing, Torture Porn, or elements of it, will find their
way into “children's” films i.e. certificate 15 and under. They have already.
Hostel II : Images of War and Torture
On
the other hand, for those not desensitised, the torture and indignity
that they witness will become so unbearable that they will have to
switch off entirely, no longer able to place themselves in the
victim's shoes. Paradoxically, this means that the character is
objectified and any positive message about the evil we do, or
any political allegory, will be neutered. It's a Catch 22. The dilemma is about what you show and how much of it you show.
These films can have a serious point, but any point in this genre could cut both
ways.
These films are not point blank morally wrong but
I do wonder why they are made. Why do they think people want to
watch? Why, if it is a woman “tortured” is she always young and
always pretty? Why is it so
relentless?
So,
what does this all say about where we are now? Where will we take
this art? Where will this art take us? Maybe none of it really matters and maybe stories are all they'll ever be.
