Tuesday 6 March 2012

On Torture Porn [Morality Blogathon]


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.

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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.

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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.


16 comments:

  1. Art imitates life. If torture in the name of fighting a war against terrorism is everyday news why wouldn't it reflect the movies made during this time period with a rise in popularity?

    Then the torture porn offered works in a couple of different ways. It might be the usual "scary trip", a glimpse of what might just happen to you in different circumstances with a squirt of guilt for good measure. And seeing as the victims often have a tendency to have committed a "sin" in the eyes of the torturer, you as a viewer can relate and in a way feel cathartic viewing it on the big screen. That old pain/pleasure duality.

    But it could also be that it's become acceptable as long as you are on the winning side (aka. doing the torture) as with the case in the war against terrorism. Then it's a power trip, a high to highlight both your superiority and your righteousness. That's when it becomes a bit scary. But of course to live out fantasies thru film is nothing new or necessary evil. The majority of people watching rough hardcore porn are not rapists, the same with the majority of people watching and enjoying torture porn are not sadistic torturers and murderers. It's again cathartic for a different reason.

    As a last point, the young pretty female that always seems to be the victim in movies like this, is there to act as a "lowest common denominator" (might use the meaning of this phrase in a wrong way but I will explain my point). A victim that can both arouse the majority of men (the biggest group that watches) and be a "hate magnet" to the most possible people watching. Regardless if the issue is beauty, age or gender. If you cast a young beautiful woman as the victim, you have the biggest chance of getting an emotional connection with the audience.

    The problem in this case is that again you relate and root for the torturer as you are envious of the victims beauty, youth or gender (envious of gender in the sense that certain males hate women be it for previous experience of rejection or plain superiority complex). You feel that it serves her right and you enjoy the punishment.

    But again, movies are a reflection of society. Torture and an envy towards young beautiful women that are considered the ideal and pushed everywhere in todays culture, makes the foundation that these movies are made from.

    The million dollar question that you also took up is what do movies like these do to us or rather how do they change our attitudes and actions or do they?

    I don't have an answer to that though, but if movies like these grasp our imagination and fulfill our fantasies, then the "dog-eat-dog" survival of the fittest/strongest polarizing attitude of these movies will be reflected on our attitude towards our fellow citizens. Exclusion rather than inclusion, a decrees in empathy and an increase in moral justification that people deserve their own fate.

    But then again, hate to sound like a broken record but movies reflect the societies they are made in. And the American society has always favored and idealized the individual rather than the collective in a competitive environment where the best will rise to the top at the expense of the others. And I see all those aspects reflected in torture porn movies.

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    1. Batman666,

      I think you are right about torture being in the public consciousness and those feelings of fear/guilt being worked through in film. It is a cycle - art imitates life and then influences it. I mentioned torture in war very briefly (too briefly now that you have me thinking)

      You make a very good point re this/our potential guilt and the perceived sin of the tortured and how it could be cathartic.

      I do think however, watching myself, that there is something more fundamental and permanent at play. Torture in war, yes. Guilt, yes. But a general shift in attitudes too; towards art, towards ourselves, towards each other. I don't know. As you say, it is hard to put your finger on. The "power trip" you talk of, I think, is a symptom of it.

      "But of course to live out fantasies thru film is nothing new or necessary evil. The majority of people watching rough hardcore porn are not rapists, the same with the majority of people watching and enjoying torture porn are not sadistic torturers and murderers."

      Absolutely.

      Interesting thought about the young pretty girl as "hate magnet" and that "If you cast a young beautiful woman as the victim, you have the biggest chance of getting an emotional connection with the audience". There is truth in that.

      Let's not forget that the casts of films of almost any kind (especially in Hollywood, to use a crude stereotype) are generally filled with people of 'above average' attractiveness.

      "...towards young beautiful women that are considered the ideal and pushed everywhere in todays culture, "

      I hadn't really thought of this because I myself am not a woman nor envious in the way you describe. Torture Porn is quite a pot pourri of modern mores and mindsets. Maybe it is the 'genre' most attuned to what is happening right now.

      "Exclusion rather than inclusion, a decrees in empathy and an increase in moral justification that people deserve their own fate."

      Yes. This is like the other, dirty, side of the coin of high school films which always seem about being "in" or "cool" - the tyranny of groups and cliques which leads to acceptance or alienation.

      As you say "I don't have an answer" when it comes to effects but I have suspicions and, most of all, concerns.

      Thanks very much for the comment. You've got me thinking down different avenues and refined a couple of my points.

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  2. Very well said! I've felt these same emotions watching some of these movies, but you articulate it so well. It REALLY annoys me that killings are presented as funny/acceptable because the nubile young victims are annoying, as if they deserve what they get. It's been noted before by people much smarter than I that in the early slashers (Halloween, F13) the youngsters were likeable, and any sensible person wanted them to live. No longer, though. Hollywood (as ever) has to keep escalating the gore to get viewers into the theater.
    My own reason for seeing these movies is being told how awesome they were, how I HAVE to see them; apparently I'm a fuddy duddy if I don't experience them. So I've watched them on IFC or free premium cable weekends, and it's startling how --not just vile they are--but how bad!
    I keep flashing back to Kirby in Scream 4 (I've probably seen it 5 times by now): She's adorable, funny and real and when she gets harmed it feels terrible, as it should! Some of these other movies though, ack I feel dirty just for watching them at all, even for free.
    Rob

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    1. Thank you very much Rob.

      "It's been noted before by people much smarter than I that in the early slashers (Halloween, F13) the youngsters were likeable, and any sensible person wanted them to live."

      I agree!

      These films can be "vile" as you say. You stumble across at night (less famous ones) and all they are is viciousness. The genre has potential, like any other but...

      I too am a big fan of Scream 4 and I know what you mean: if you don't feel bad when one of the main characters is killed then it's less of a horror film to me. You need an emotional connection and to be scared for somebody. Kirby's death was pretty shocking.

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    2. I think what's most compelling to me is the "porn" aspect of the "torture porn" - what does that mean exactly? Personally, I haven't seen enough of these films to make a full-on judgement, but what I gather is that the reason they've garned this epithet is not because of the explicitness but because of their coarseness.

      It brings us back to that age-old question of "What is pornography?" ("I know it when I see it", etc). I submit that the difference between pornography and erotica, perhaps blurrier than some would like to make it, nonetheless resides in HOW the content is presented, not just WHAT is presented. Is the form merely a delivery system for the content?

      If "torture porn"'s critics are correct, then what this "genre" signifies is an elevation of the "what" (the visceral sensation of sadism) over all the other elements, which exist just to heighten the central experience.

      In a way, beyond what it says about society, I think it says a good deal about cinema: namely, that the century-old fascination with the image as an end in itself - that novelty effect which drew in the first cinemagoers and motivated cinephiles and even casual viewers through film's first golden age, and even carried it into the eras of TV and video - is fading.

      Increasingly, the fascination with seeing representations of reality and/or fantasy onscreen is diminished. 3D is a symptom of this, and CGI is both a symptom and a cause - as soon as the "documentary" aspects of movies (even big-budget fantasies had it) disappears, the visceral phenomenon becomes too one-sided, too grounded in illusion, too weighed toward Melies at the expense of Lumiere.

      Torture porn films are hits, among many other reasons, because they can achieve the sensationalism once attributed to movies in and of themselves. It's a new sort of "magic" to replace the old inherent magic of the movies. That old magic is still there for me, but I suspect and worry it's disappearing quickly for many others in a culture of extensive and hyperactive stimulation.

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  3. Joel,

    Great points.

    "...not because of the explicitness but because of their coarseness."

    That's a nice distinction to make and I think you have a point re presentation and content.

    Torture Porn is 'dry' and an 'artier' presentation would probably make it even more distasteful - juicier - despite losing visceral impact.

    "...the century-old fascination with the image as an end in itself... is fading."

    Seeing Torture Porn as bringing "sensationalism" and "magic" back hadn't really crossed my mind. I think it's well worth following that train of thought. I'd have to think more about it before I could properly agree/disagree with you or take it in a different direction. I'll try and get back to you.

    Thanks MovieMan.

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    1. To expand on the second point, I think a quick comparison with the Lumiere train might be illustrative: supposedly the audience members ducked in terror as the train approached, instinctively reacting to what they saw onscreen. The idea of seeing reality represented larger-than-life and "outside of reality" was inherently so shocking that other effects were not needed. And this combined with the at-times-almost-subconscious knowledge that this wasn't (quite) reality created a kind of invigorating disorientation.

      Numerous times, filmmakers and particularly film-financiers have sought to reawaken this sense in viewers after they might have become numb to it. Narrative was a "shock," feature length was a "shock," various techniques from montage to long-takes to moving cameras and so forth were "shocks", color and sound and animation and widescreen were all "shocks", the verisimilitude of neorealism was a "shock," the self-consciousness and playfulness of the New Wave was a "shock", the development of special effects in the blockbuster era was a "shock" ... well, you get the idea. Of course these were all aesthetic developments. But the escalation of content (in terms of its breadth - subject matter - and depth - how far in a certain area films are willing to go) has served simultaneously as "shocks" - and torture porn belongs to this tradition. Perhaps it's not so wise to separate them - any "shock", be it based on form or content (and often the two go together), will be visceral in nature and hence whether you are showing the viewers something new in a familiar way or showing them something familiar in a new way, the effect is similar.

      What makes torture porn risky in this regard (and it's obviously a part of this tradition) is that its emotional effect is so one-sided. In a way this could be seen as similar to the blockbuster model, which entailed a certain (limited) emotional response. Just as that tended to shut down other avenues and cultivate viewers only responsive to certain visceral/emotional stimuli (and disregard the vast majority of movies that fall outside of that) so torture porn could do the same, though I'm not sure its impact would be as widespread.

      At any rate, the advent of any of these "shocks" risks alienation from what came before - just as some people today can't watch silent or black-and-white movies (or think they can't, anyway). Important to keep in mind is not just what paths the new development closes off, but what it opens up (one reason why 3D has maybe never fully caught on, it seems to close off more than it opens up). Something to be asked of supposed torture porn, I suppose: what next?

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    2. Joel,

      "The idea of seeing reality represented larger-than-life and "outside of reality" was inherently so shocking that other effects were not needed. And this combined with the at-times-almost-subconscious knowledge that this wasn't (quite) reality created a kind of invigorating disorientation."

      I think it's a little simpler than that, actually. It was just very lifelike because it is life and moving. There is an instinct to take it as real life until you understand how it all works.

      That kind of shock can never be recreated.

      The sense of depth and movement that Cinema brought to representations of life was unprecedented - before it was just photos and paintings. Life wasn't so vivid. Things can move out of frame in films and disappear. We are used to following something that passes our eyeline either visually by turning our head or aurally. In film you can't so where does it go? It is as if the train (and the people) are going through you because it cannot go anywhere else. It has to be taken into you if it does not carry on visually or aurally.

      "the verisimilitude of neorealism was a "shock," the self-consciousness and playfulness of the New Wave was a "shock", the development of special effects in the blockbuster era was a "shock" ..."

      It is fascinating how we can be "shocked" by what we can already see and feel in real life being shown to us for the first time in art. I can't say I've been "shocked" by a new form I have seen so there might be something cultural tied in here, something of the time (and the people of that time) when the 'shocks' were delivered. I am here in the 21st Century and what shocked people artistically in the 60s won't me even if I've never come across it before.

      This is slightly tangential but when you think of when films were not allowed to show a married couple in the same bed or would never show a toilet, films were keen to not show what we wouldn't show of our own lives for public consumption. Film was the image of how we wanted to be seen or hoped the world would be. We think of film showing what we would otherwise not see but here it was, it's all-seeing black eye being coy and proper. That is interesting morally and I find something to be admired in that.


      "What makes torture porn risky in this regard (and it's obviously a part of this tradition) is that its emotional effect is so one-sided."

      Yes, I put that across in the piece, how parts of you are shut off.

      "At any rate, the advent of any of these "shocks" risks alienation from what came before - just as some people today can't watch silent or black-and-white movies"

      I heard a couple of men in a shop, perfectly intelligent-seeming people, saying that black and white is for grannies and colour basically rendered it useless. To an extent they're right (most directors embraced or were made to embrace colour - black and white, or silence, was never a choice) and I did find it funny,

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    3. I think the "shock" of historic developments can be somewhat recreated when immersed in film history - for example, if I watch a series of b&w films in a director's career and then watch him make his first color film, there's still a bit of a "shock" to it. That's one reason I love chronological approaches to viewing and analysis, it just seems so rewarding to me.

      Also, we move backward and forward. It's funny, the New Wave is in some aspects now "old-fashioned" (the black-and-white, the novelty of certain references etc) but in other ways still avant-garde - 21st century mainstream film is so retrograde and self-enclosed that an early Godard STILL seems like a breathe of fresh air, at least to me.

      Re: the men in the shop, yeah I remember a friend of mine - very smart, very educated (pursuing her PhD in religious studies now, I think) sneering about me seeing a 4-hour film just because it was "arty" (she was thinking of Love Exposure which really isn't arty in the sense she means at all, but w/e). There's the weird, sad attitude among otherwise smart people that movies are just for a laugh, and if they don't reach out and grab you right away with explosions or hot movie stars or whatnot that they're just pretentious.

      It's too bad, because this was not nearly as widespread in the 70s when there was more interchange between the avant-garde and mainstream. Certainly it isn't true now in forms like music, where people (like this same person) would listen to really offbeat things - but apparently not watch them. Things have gone downhill.

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    4. "...for example, if I watch a series of b&w films in a director's career and then watch him make his first color film, there's still a bit of a "shock" to it."

      I had a little of that with Kenji Mizoguchi and Princess Yang Kwei Fei, one of two films he made in colour. The texture and feel of the film was so different and, frankly, worse.

      The French Nouvelle Vague feels half-quaint, half completely fresh even after watching the newest films. When it comes to Godard of course he has progressed his style.

      Love Exposure is very 'accessible' indeed. It is pure entertainment while being v.clever and full of ideas.

      "...if they don't reach out and grab you right away with explosions or hot movie stars or whatnot that they're just pretentious."

      There's nowt wrong with a little bang bang, mind, and those are still the films I look forward to most. What's changed is that I watch all kinds of films from all eras. The action films are the spice in the dish.

      "It's too bad, because this was not nearly as widespread in the 70s when there was more interchange between the avant-garde and mainstream"

      Is that right? Good point about people treating music and film differently. It's to do with the more obvious importance of technology (and how it has changed) in film. The oldness of something smacks you in the face.

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    5. I think it's length as well - it starts with accepting a different-sounding song, then maybe a whole album, then an ouevre. There aren't the same stepping-stones for films. Plus there's the fact that people accept music as a total-sensory experience, whereas movies have the mental aspect to it, because of narrative expectations. Avant-garde music is easier to accept because music itself is already non-representational and intutitive, whereas people go to movies expecting stories first and foremost. Though much of what they take away from it and value most is non-narrative, if the narrative isn't there to begin with in the usual way (and even the slice-and-dice storytelling of the Tarantino era didn't change the bedrock) they get confused.

      Interestingly, I think music videos could have/maybe did serve as a bridge to the avant-garde for this very reason (the music made it easier to accept non-narrative images). Pity that they seem to have faded somewhat from the cultural scene.

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    6. "I think it's length as well"

      Yes. Short films (including short animations)
      are a good place for experimentation - for film-makers to try out new things without worrying about satisfying the same formulas and the same story templates.

      We are more receptive to oddness in a 5 minute film that doesn't need to make much sense or have a beginning, middle and end in the same way as a feature film. A strong or extreme style may become too rich or alienating over 90 minutes. I think, therefore, that shorts, though helpful, are not sufficiently successful as "stepping stones".

      "I think music videos could have/maybe did serve as a bridge to the avant-garde for this very reason... Pity that they seem to have faded somewhat from the cultural scene."

      Music videos have become less inventive and more literal, so to speak.

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  4. While I can understand many of the points here, and you mention many that I agree with, I must say that for me the inclusion of the Cube films, and specifically talking about the first one, because it's not a torture porn film and it doesn't apply in any way on the guidelines we have got in common ground here.
    Cube is, before all and I'll get bullied here, a masterpiece of the sci-fi/horror genre, just because it manages to mix the best of both worlds and it really isn't much of "porn" or "torture" in any way possible, I mean I can see how you can people see it that way, but they're obviously wrong and just want to see what they want.
    Cube is a film about society, above all, and how we try to overcome each other, at first aparenting some kind of agreement between us, as we are kinda working together, but we just want to win ourselves. Now, that is not as far as you and people in the comments have been saying, but the thing is that when they try to apply that trail of thought of being first, it ends as a failure, and it becomes a metaphor of what society is heading towards: autodestruction.
    Of course, I say all of this from the view point of ignorance, since I haven't seen any of the sequels (avoid like the plague some have said), but still for me, the film works as a commentary, even if we see the deaths of characters that have done wrong, something that is abominable to you, but to me it's not bad to see the bad guy die (even if it survives at the end, or it turns up being good, they are all good outcomes to me).
    And when you think about it, the characters in Cube become bad, and so, they die, because the society will die if it doesn't work together. It's almost like the perfect communist movie, and I love it because it's unapologetic at that (Saw is much more dubious in that way, and again, I'm just talking about the first one, because the characters do work together, yet it still ends up badly, so the message and the whole thing becomes more nihilistic, and even if we don't like them dying, we still see it, I see the torture porn in this one, but I still like it because it's well made and it fills you with a sense of dread that is impossible to shake off in a while, and that ia a powerful experience).
    Anyway, I'm being too disperse here. I'm too squeamish to see some of the other films you mention (Even if I did saw both of the Human Centipede films), but still, there's that, I've always been attracted to the genre itself in an analitical sense.

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    1. Jaime,

      Yes, Cube isn't Torture Porn in the way the other examples I state are. It is included because it counts as psychological torture and in anticipation of a couple of points I make later on about games.

      I haven't seen all of it. I have read a couple of people talk of it as an allegory of society's selfishness, ills, prejudices etc. I'd be interested to check it out because any film could be taken for a commentary on society. How deeply does it address specific issues beyond separation/cooperation?

      Is it like Saw, and like the bulk of films like this, in that the characters do not reach understanding and salvation? This kind of story always seems a bit nihilistic (or at least too downbeat) to work as a message because there's no way out and no prospect of the characters becoming "better" to escape.

      "I'm too squeamish to see some of the other films you mention (Even if I did saw both of the Human Centipede films)..."

      I'm too squeamish to watch The Human Centipede.

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    2. Saw is nihilistic, but this one does a shed a literal light on the salvation of the people and in humanity. It also goes on about underestimation, the existence of a superior being and many other issues that are interesting to talk about.

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  5. Jaime,

    That sounds very interesting indeed. I will have to watch it all at some point.

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