Dear Zachary [Morality Blogathon]

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As part of the Movie Morality Blogathon Jeff Pike over at the blog PKCan'tExplain has posted a review of Dear Zachary, a film he says "roots itself with ease and confidence inside the true-crime subgenre of documentary filmmaking, where all talk sooner or later focuses inevitably, and naturally enough, on 'evil' and 'justice'.":

Dear Zachary at Can't Explain

"Because there's no justice here. Morality gets no purchase, and is revealed for what it is: merely good ideas, not mandatory. One person managed to successfully trample the system at large for a few years—separate criminal justice systems in Canada and Pennsylvania—for no more reason than that she wanted to, and along the way she irrevocably destroyed multiple lives and sent many dozen more sprawling in one way or another."

Jeff's Martial Arts Centre is always open for writing and discussion on film and music.

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.

The Shining : Looking At One Image

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This is one of the last shots of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. This is the (driven) mad father whose attempt to kill his family has been thwarted.

The devil's hell has frozen over.

He is frozen in an expression of inhuman rage. A pure emotion, a state.

It is an uncanny and horrifying end to those uncanny and horrifying last days. It is pathetic and blood-curdling. Even though he is gone and seemingly no longer a threat, it is uncomfortable to look at him. He is a beast.

It is humorous too. This is a cartoon villain like the ones with whom he is associated, and who he associates himself with, in the film - Wile E Coyote* or the Big Bad Wolf** - who are never able to catch their prey or satisfy their hungers.

This is an extreme image of the frustrations of an artist paralysed by writer's block.


His eyes are rolled up in death but also as if the awful flame of his ardours have been doused with refreshing cool - he almost looks ecstatic, his mouth slightly open (aaah!)

He is stuck in the ground like a tombstone to himself, an epitaph of insanity written on his face. There is no need for anything beyond "here lies".

Time is frozen. He is the so-called "caretaker" who has somehow been here before. He is being preserved. He is a tombstone to a type of man, perhaps.

There is something monumental here, something larger than life.

Will he come again; will he thaw? The danger is still alive. What is frozen implies life and movement before. Will he, it, move again when spring comes? The ground is angling downwards but it hasn't taken him all the way down into hell/the earth.


* Earlier we saw Danny watching a Road Runner cartoon and we can hear the lyrics "the coyote's after you... when he catches you, you're through."

** When he is standing outside the bathroom with an axe he takes on the role of the wolf "little pigs little pigs let me come in...then I'll huff and I'll puff".

Wile E. Coyote cemented solid in Going Going Gosh!, 
a victim once again of his own trap

Movie Morality Blogathon : 6 - 14 March

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Because I think it would be fun, I propose a stock-take of everything that has to do with ethics and morality in modern film.

As long as it has a moral dimension you can write about whatever concerns you, interests you, gives you hope, no matter how big the pressing issue or how small the pet peeve. Hopefully this can get people thinking and create various debates.

Once you have a piece ready you can leave a link to it in the comments section at the bottom of this post or send me the link by email at srgfilmstuff@hotmail.co.uk. Alternatively (if you don't have a blog, for example) you can send me the full piece and I can post it on the site in its entirety.

Here are just a few of the subjects you could tackle:

The responsibility of film-makers towards us; our responsibility towards a film as viewers; relationships (sexual and otherwise); censorship; the ratings systems; normalising and glamourising; shock value; torture porn; where a film might be immoral or moral; the rating system; what is being shown to children; profanity; dealing with real historical events and people; piracy; what we do with old films and how the moral rules of engagement have changed over the decades...


The blogathon will run from the 6th to the 14th of March.

Thank you.

Helicopters

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Annoying little insect* hovering haughtily above. Spying on us, sniping at us.

Light it up like a firework and bring it down to earth.

What knavery is this to deny us explosion by cutting away before the deed is done (I Am Legend) or worse leave a crumpled heap of metal, dry and unexploded?

If you want a picture of the future of cinema, imagine a helicopter exploding - forever.

Its eye is shining...

 ...is it here for good or ill. Is it here to take us away from this hell...?

 ...and we ascend vulnerable, hanging as if by a string.

A helicopter can be devil, a swarm of death from above, or, in the same guise, angel - mercy and salvation on its whirring wings.

Maybe it is just a mystery...

*A helicopter being looked upon like an insect is an image brilliantly used in the first (later pulled) trailer for Spider-man, when it is caught like a fly in a web that spans the gap between the twin towers of the World Trade Center :

Remakes : Why not?

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Nothing seems to raise the hackles like the news that a film is being remade, with the idea more likely to be scorned if it is a remake of an old American classic or a rushed reboot of a modern gem of foreign cinema.

The Thing, the second remake, after John Carpenter's The Thing, of The Thing From Another World from 1951, has just been released and David Fincher's remake/adaptation of the Swedish film/book The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo followed a few weeks ago. There are plenty more in the pipeline too, such as South Korean Park Chan Wook's Oldboy in the hands of Spike Lee and Japanese manga/anime staple Akira given over to Jaume Collet-Serra. Soon we will discover who will walk in the footsteps of Paul Muni and Al Pacino to play Scarface.

Why not just watch or promote the original? Whither originality? Is it knocked down in the pursuit of a fast buck?

Why might films be remade?

Perhaps the original has a formula proven to be successful. A good idea is a good idea. Take something strong and economically viable and repeat. Take something cult and roll it out. A name, a brand could represent the closest to a sure thing.

Films might be remade for love of the original - to be part, in retrospect, of the process of the object of one's affection, to be responsible for the extension and curation of its life. On the other hand it could be dissatisfaction with the original that drives the project - the ideas were sound but the execution could be improved upon.

Although we tend to poo-poo the idea, different countries do have different sensibilities. Remaking a film in your own language whilst paying attention to cultural nuances will engage more people. Either way, with a new director, actors, director of photography, landscape, language etc nothing could possibly remain the same.

Likewise, we adapt ourselves as receivers of signals depending on who we know is sending it. Would Exorcist II,  feverish and outlandish as it is, be beloved if it were an Italian horror film? Would its oddness, borderline amateurishness, be more easily enjoyed and admired? I hazard to guess 'yes'.

Subtitles, which distract attention from the image and which turn the aural into visual, change the nature of the film more than we might acknowledge. What is written, even with an aural and acted accompaniment, is experienced quite apart to the same thing heard, responding uniquely to their unique forms and the conventional ways of interacting that appear to govern them.

Was Wong Kar Wai's first English language film, My Blueberry Nights, his least successful critically because his poeticism doesn't work in quite the same way coming out of people's mouths (frankly artificial) as opposed to written and underscoring the action with gobbets of charming romanticism? Does the brilliance in his chinese-language films become soppy and inauthentic in the simple step from those white letters (accompanied by a musical, purely emotion-infused vocal murmuring) to the aural plane? What is said tends to have more responsibility to realism and functionality.

Furthermore, and paying no heed to the snobs, there are those who find it hard to watch subtitled films and it is obvious why.

Remakes (or adaptations from one media to another for that matter) offer fascinating insights into story making and story telling. They make you think about how something is put together, about structure, about characterisation, about technique, cause and effect. These are vital educational tools for the young and old - how has Martin Scorsese transposed
The Invention of Hugo Cabret to the screen in Hugo? How has Middle Earth changed through Peter Jackson's lens? What is happening to the frameworks of Rio Bravo as it transmogrifies through Assault on Precinct 13 and the French film Nid de Guepes? How has Therese Raquin, in tone and pungent odour, been transformed into 21st Century South Korean vampire story Thirst?

Remakes, comparisons, allow us to think about the soul of the thing. To think about the craft of art. Riffs and versions on the same idea - Infernal Affairs and The Departed. [Rec] and Quarantine. Not dispiriting. An exciting opportunity.

[Rec] and Quarantine

Once a film has been remade and we have two passes over basically the same material, a HYPOTHETICAL ORIGINAL is born - a ghost but with a form. The hypothetical original exists in our mind even without a remake but a remake brings it into focus. What it is is not so much what the versions share but what they appear to be responding and commenting on. The two films are in fact both versions of this hypothetical original.

The original isn't the be all and end all, its own mausoleum. It is living. Why do Directors remake their own films? Hideo Nakata remade The Ring in America. Likewise Takashi Shimizu and The Grudge. Yasujiro Ozu remade the black and white A Story of Floating Weeds as the technicolour Floating Weeds, Michael Haneke, Funny Games. Leo McCarey's Love Affair was indeed An Affair to Remember. Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much knew it twice, and Cecil B DeMille adapted the play The Squaw Man on three occasions, in 1914, 1918 and 1931.

They want to get closer to the perfection in their heads. They want to take advantage of new technologies. The original is not the original. It is in the mind and out there like a mist. They want another opportunity to revisit the same people and places and make right. Art lets you come back and remould, albeit with new clay.

Even though Alfred Hitchcock himself remade his own films and adapted a vast amount of short stories and novels, Gus Van Sant's remake of Hitchcock's Psycho was greeted by outrage. Is Van Sant's film redundant because it is almost a carbon copy? Far from it. It is redundant because it is not a carbon copy (in terms of shots). If it were it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experiment in which variables could be studied and where the magic of film would be shown to reside between the shots and without their confines.

What is a sequel if not a species of remake?

Do remakes hold back American cinema? Are they made to bury the originality of non-hollywood cinema? Are they supermarkets stocking products you can purchase in delicatessens and selling them cheaper?

           The Thing (2011)

Is it vandalism?

Does it do the original works a disservice? Does it alter the brand even if the original remains untouched? Does it replace the original in the public's mind and if so, would people only be aware of the original because of the remake?

Why are commerce and money dirty words? Art has always revolved, and needed to revolve, around money as a facilitator and a spur. All artists should be penniless, destitute martyrs (warming their hands over their authentic inner voice) in their lifetimes and enjoy fame and fortune from the grave.

When we think 'remake' do we actually think that the films are re-made as if something that was sacred is now sinned against and reanimated as a zombie, abhorrent to behold? No two films could ever be the same. Swapping Peter Lorre for James Stewart, or Tony Leung for Leonardo Di Caprio, brings an entirely different colour to a character. A remake will always be worthwhile. The present doesn't change the past. A remake does no trampling and means no disrespect.

We accept countless incarnations of plays because there is no original performance, and endless repetitions of classical music written before the era of recorded sound.

Film is obviously a special case, but perhaps we could try to forget what remakes might mean and enjoy them for what they are - to use something of the approach we take when it comes to the fertile cross-germination of high art when we think of film, an art that, although it may give us pleasure, we are awfully quick to bring low.