TORTURE PORN

 

Mainstream movies are getting darker and more violent. And as Quentin Tarantino's latest project, Grindhouse, demonstrates, the worst of the violence is often directed at women. Kira Cochrane on the rise of 'torture porn'

 

Tuesday May 1, 2007

The Guardian

 

Talking about his upcoming film Hostel II at a press junket recently, the young director Eli Roth couldn't contain his enthusiasm for the poster devised by the film's marketing team - a close-up of some sinewy, gleaming boar meat. "Any time people see women in a horror film," he noted, "they say, 'Oh, these girls are just pieces of meat.' And, literally, in Hostel Part II, that's exactly what they are. They are the bait, they are the meat, they are the grist for the mill. So I thought it was actually a really smart poster ... and really, really disgusting! I love it."

 

Unless you have a taste for seriously gory films, chances are you haven't heard of Roth. Last year, though, the first instalment of Hostel - the story of a Slovakian boarding house where rich men pay to enact tortures on unwitting victims - was a massive hit, topping the US box office on its opening weekend. The trailer promised that, "There is a place where your darkest, sickest fantasies are possible, where you can experience anything you desire," and the film strove to live up to that promise. Hostel's most famous scene shows a man taking a blowtorch to a woman's face, her eyeball coming out and dangling from the socket. Later, another character snips it off with some scissors.

 

Horror films have, of course, always been full of nasty, misanthropic imagery. In many other films, extreme, sexualised violence against women has frequently been a theme (Clockwork Orange, Boxing Helena and many others spring to mind). But recently the levels of horrific violence on show at the multiplexes - and the sheer cynicism of the films involved - have gone through the roof. And a lot of the most nasty, unrepentant and terrifyingly pointless violence is aimed at women. At least Clockwork Orange had a political point to make. (There can be no excuses for Boxing Helena.)

 

Hostel is just part of a new subgenre of horror films which are so dehumanising, nasty and misogynist that they are collectively known either as "gorno" (a conflation of "gory" and "porno"), or, more commonly, as "torture porn". Other films that make it into the torture porn category are Wolf Creek, Turistas and The Devil's Rejects, with each new film promising higher levels of violence - guaranteeing not just a considerable body count, but long, lingering scenes of terror, torture and pain.

 

In most of these films, both men and women end up being sliced, gored, dismembered, decapitated. In that sense they offer audiences equal-opportunity gore. But it's the violence against women that's most troubling, because it is here that sex and extreme violence collide.

 

The publicity campaigns for many of these films flag up the prospect of watching a nubile young woman being tortured as a genuinely pleasurable experience. So, for instance, a recent US billboard campaign for the upcoming (mainstream) film Captivity featured the film's star Elisha Cuthbert (just voted the 10th sexiest woman in the world by the young male readers of FHM magazine) in a series of four photographs. In the first (labelled ABDUCTION) a black-gloved hand covers her mouth. The second (CONFINEMENT) shows her, with bloody fingers, struggling to get out of a cage. The third (TORTURE) has her face encased in an odd white mask, tubes shoved up her nose, and apparently filled with blood. Finally, under the word TERMINATION, she is shown laid out, apparently dead.

 

The billboard attracted a barrage of complaints, with Jill Soloway (one of the writers of Six Feet Under) leading a campaign against it - the poster was soon taken down. In a piece on the Huffington Post website, Soloway wrote that the images were "the most repulsive, horrifying, woman-hating, human-hating thing I have ever seen in public" and didn't just represent "horror, this wasn't just misogyny ... It was a grody combo platter of the two, the torture almost a punishment for the sexiness. It had come from such a despicable inhuman hatred place that it somehow managed to recall Abu Ghraib, the Holocaust, porn and snuff films all at once." Joss Whedon, creator of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, agreed, writing in a letter to the MPAA, the US ratings board, that the ad campaign "is not only a literal sign of the collapse of humanity, it's an assault ... this ad is part of a cycle of violence and misogyny that takes something away from the people who have to see it. It's like being mugged."

 

Many of today's torture porn films are being made on tiny budgets by little-known directors, but with the release of the new Tarantino/Rodriguez double-bill, Grindhouse - designed as a tribute to the ultra-violent B-movie programmes of old - the trend officially reaches the mainstream. Made up of two films plus a clutch of trailers for non-existent movies, Grindhouse bombed when it was released in the US last month. American audiences were said to have been put off by the three-hour running time, and last week it was announced that Grindhouse will be released in a different format in the UK, the two films sold as separate features. Whether either film is any good is still up for debate - I, for one, found them both suicidally boring. What isn't in question is the disturbing attitude towards women in these films.

 

Grindhouse is, in many ways, a cartoon, and its intersection of sex and violence is meant to be ironic, funny even. It makes multiple nods to parody and pastiche. I'm not so sure that British audiences will share the directors' humour though. As one of the stars of Planet Terror, the British actor Naveen Andrews, has said on the subject of the B-movie films Grindhouse is based on: "Obviously, Quentin and Rodriguez saw some kind of aesthetic in these kinds of films, and for the life of me I was trying to grasp what it was. They were laughing like maniacs and I didn't find it funny for more than like a minute."

 

Over the years, many directors have defended the violence in their films by claiming that it's ironic. But is an image of a nubile woman having her innards pulled out - as occurs in Planet Terror - any less problematic because it has been made in a knowing way? You could argue that it's more problematic. Irony - with its inherent insincerity - can be an emotionally deadening tool, and, in terms of their content, these films are already deadening, de-sensitising enough. The irony just adds another layer of soul-sucking cynicism to the mix.

 

Watching Grindhouse, I felt fundamentally depressed: who would seek out this experience as entertainment? What is more depressing is the fact that such films seem to be part of a wider trend towards the mainstream depiction of women as highly sexualised bait and prey: meat, as Roth had it. Over the past year, for example, we've seen mainstream fashion images that have shown highly made up, designer-clad women being brutalised (Italian Vogue), apparently about to be gang raped (a Dolce and Gabbana ad), and shot, stabbed and electrocuted (America's Next Top Model). On shows such as CSI and its many spin-offs and imitators, the victims of each weekly murder case are, disproportionately, nubile young women. Lisa de Moraes of the Washington Post came up with an apt shorthand for such series in 2005, dubbing that year's programmes the "season of Die, Women, Die!".

 

Of course, watching one of these films won't turn a sane, decent individual into a killer or a torturer, but you have to wonder what effect this widespread meshing of sexuality and graphic violence will have on the young men at whom they are primarily aimed. The clear logic behind all these films, TV shows and images appears to be that if a young, good-looking, barely-clad woman is sexy while alive, she's even sexier when she's being tortured, or when she's a bloody corpse.

 

In an article in Newsweek last year, Tony Timpone, editor of the horror magazine Fangoria, commented that "in 1990, I had to pull my hair out just to find a movie to put on the cover. There were only three or four major horror releases a year. Now there are three or four a month. We're like pigs in slop." That's not a bad way of putting it.

 

Nasty and nastier

Xan Brooks on the history of misogynist violence in film

 

Blood Feast (1963)

Blood Feast was the forefather of the exploitation genre, a strain of low-budget, cheap-thrill cinema that catered to America's burgeoning drive-in market and its attendant teenage demographic. Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, this amateurish, ketchup-drenched affair offered viewers the chance to "witness the slaughter and mutilation of nubile young girls", culminating in a scene in which one victim is pinned to a bed while her tongue is torn loose. Where previous horror films had run shy of graphic gore, Blood Feast laid it on with a trowel.

 

The Last House on the Left (1972)

 

Ingmar Bergman's Oscar-winning drama The Virgin Spring was the unlikely inspiration for this bloody tale of two good-time girls who are raped and murdered while on a jaunt through the backwoods. Creator Wes Craven hastened to explain that the sadistic violence was an artistic response to the war in Vietnam, although this cut little ice with the UK censors, who effectively banned the film until 2003. In the meantime, Last House proved hugely influential, kick-starting a run of women-in-peril slasher movies that stretched throughout the 1970s.

 

Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS (1974)

 

Rob Zombie's spoof trailer for "Werewolf Women of the SS" (in Grindhouse) has a real-life ancestor in Ilsa. She's the jodhpurwearing, cleavage-baring nymphomaniac Nazi who plies her trade as the mistress of a concentration camp-cum-knocking shop (her mission: to prove that women can withstand more pain than men). Don Edmonds' dubious cult offering was shot on the cheap on the discarded set of the TV show Hogan's Heroes, with the extras billed as "Big Busted Prisoners". In a touching display of cultural sensitivity, he went on to dedicate the film to all "victims of the Holocaust".

 

I Spit on Your Grave (1978)

 

This sleazy B-movie outing gained a new lease of life when it was singled out as the archetypal "video nasty" in the early 1980s. It starred Camille Keaton (grand-niece of Buster) as a career woman who becomes an angel of vengeance after she is assaulted by a bunch of brutish yokels. The notorious video sleeve (bloodstained rump, clenched dagger) looks like an X-rated version of that iconic Athena poster of a tennis player scratching her bum.

 

Baise-moi (2000)

 

Baise-moi was a rape'n'revenge saga that attempted to have its cake and eat it; a hardcore Thelma and Louise that dispatched a pair of ass-kicking porn starlets on a mission of reprisal. The fact that the film was French gave it the veneer of art-house class in the UK, where it largely escaped tabloid attention. Moreover, the behind-the-scenes presence of two female directors supposedly inoculated it against charges of misogyny, with one of its creators explaining that "this movie is not for masturbation, so therefore it is not porn". Not everyone was convinced. On its release in France, Baise-moi was dismissed by critics as "a sick fi lm" that "throws sex in your face to sell blood and gore".

 

Grindhouse (2007)

 

Grindhouse is Tarantino and Rodriguez's homage to the exploitation genre: a gleeful double feature that comes awash with vixenish go-dancers and killer zombies; peppered with fictional trailers and spoof commercials. Despite glowing reviews, the wheeze appears to have flummoxed the American public. There have been reports of audiences filing out after the first half, apparently unaware that there was another feature still to come, and the box office has been middling. The production will now be sawn in two and released as two separate pictures. Tarantino's section competes for top honours at next month's Cannes film festival.

 

so 'torture porn' or 'gorno'. Is it a good thing the boundaries of horror movies are being constantly pushed back??? or should they all be banned?

 

and This Is England, why is this an 18 when most of these gorno horror films are rated 18 (and when Alpha Dog feat Timberlake obv is 15???)

A lot of fuss about nothing tbh, I have not read any reports of copycat real life stuff based on any of these movies

A lot of fuss about nothing tbh, I have not read any reports of copycat real life stuff based on any of these movies

 

think its not the point whether there are copycat cases based on specific film as people can be influenced by loads of different things (but its always easy in the eyes of the mejja's moral panic to escape goat the blame one particular film). More the point is that the trend that there's this ultra-violent misogyny happening.

But what harm is it doing if the actions in the movie are not being replicated ?

 

Did the GTA games result in an increase in cop killings ?

Did Carmageddon lead to drivers on roads deliberately running down pedestrians ?

Did Reservoir Dogs lead to mass ears being cut off ?

 

No, so yes while the movies you listed are pretty graphic the fact they are not resulting in anyone being harmed in real life makes me think there is nothing to worry about

 

You talk about the violent treatment of women and so on, erm Straw Dogs mate, its been going on in movies for 30 odd years

Although films can't be blamed for murder etc, sometimes they can be the thing that sends people over the edge.

Although films can't be blamed for murder etc, sometimes they can be the thing that sends people over the edge.

 

Agree there but I don't think film makers should water down movies just because there is a chance they could send someone over the edge I think that that is a risk that needs to be taken

Although films can't be blamed for murder etc, sometimes they can be the thing that sends people over the edge.

 

Many things can send someone "over the edge" though Lucy, if we look at the case of The Columbine killers, what sent them "over the edge" was supposedly a Marilyn Manson album... NOT the fact that they were harrassed, bullied and treated generally like social lepers by their peer group at the school or the fact that the teachers and faculty didn't seem to give enough of a damn to try and prevent the harrassment... The Virginia Tech killer was also a victim of racism, but what do the Tabloids focus on - the fact that he watched "Oldboy"..... <_<

 

^Yeah clearly it's down to parents making sure films are suitable and knowing what their kids are watching rather then watering them down.

Not that normal kids watch a horror film then go out and kill...

i don't think horror movies are to blame at all. i think it's more to do with society and what goes off in the home. we could probably stretch to the idea that people get ideas from horror movies (but that's not much anyway 'cos you can get ideas on how to kill from anywhere), but i wouldn't say they CAUSE these people to kill.

 

i think boundaries need to be pushed in horror too.

 

and like someone said, 'alpha dog' got a certification of 15, but there was drugs, sex and brutal violence in that film....i think whoever decides these certifications needs firing because that film was most definetley not suited for a 15 year old child.

Edited May 17, 200718 yr by Off_Da_Endz

and like someone said, 'alpha dog' got a certification of 15, but there was drugs, sex and brutal violence in that film....i think whoever decides these certifications needs firing because that film was most definetley not suited for a 15 year old child.

 

yeah i noticed that and i couldnt understand why that got that and this is england got an 18. surely seeing alpha dog has got justin timberlake in it it will probs get a lot of interst from girls under 15 who want to be smuggled in to see him. while this is england is about england and has a cultural point.

yeah i noticed that and i couldnt understand why that got that and this is england got an 18. surely seeing alpha dog has got justin timberlake in it it will probs get a lot of interst from girls under 15 who want to be smuggled in to see him. while this is england is about england and has a cultural point.

 

i reckon they did it because of mr timberpussy too. a lot of teenage folk will go and see this film JUST because of him. it's all stupid.

i reckon they did it because of mr timberpussy too. a lot of teenage folk will go and see this film JUST because of him. it's all stupid.

 

saw a guide to recognizing your saints and it had Channing Tatum from step up in it. so obv it attracted a few girls to the theatre who were there to watch their hunk and not bother with the film when he was off-screen instead just talked to each other and to their mates on their phone.

 

(dont know whats worse young girls or old ladies with tea-cosy hairdo for being fricking annoying talkers in films!!!)

saw a guide to recognizing your saints and it had Channing Tatum from step up in it. so obv it attracted a few girls to the theatre who were there to watch their hunk and not bother with the film when he was off-screen instead just talked to each other and to their mates on their phone.

 

(dont know whats worse young girls or old ladies with tea-cosy hairdo for being fricking annoying talkers in films!!!)

 

i hate it when you get folk like that.

 

i went to see "dreamgirls" (a female friend dragged me along. ugh) which stars beyonce and these girls sat next to us and were talking the whole way through it. i was so pissed. i was *this* close to telling them to stfu.

i hate it when you get folk like that.

 

i went to see "dreamgirls" (a female friend dragged me along. ugh) which stars beyonce and these girls sat next to us and were talking the whole way through it. i was so pissed. i was *this* close to telling them to stfu.

 

well with Channing Tatum fans you knew it wasnt the type of film they would normally go see, so when they had their popcorn and realized that their hunk wasnt gonna be on screen 99% of the time at least they left. old ladies on the other hand, now they take hours to get to the bottom of the stairs so try and stay in their seats till light come up :lol:

 

btw i wonder if theres a horro film that has the plot where patrons get toutured if they make a noize :lol:

Talking about his upcoming film Hostel II at a press junket recently, the young director Eli Roth couldn't contain his enthusiasm for the poster devised by the film's marketing team - a close-up of some sinewy, gleaming boar meat. "Any time people see women in a horror film," he noted, "they say, 'Oh, these girls are just pieces of meat.' And, literally, in Hostel Part II, that's exactly what they are. They are the bait, they are the meat, they are the grist for the mill. So I thought it was actually a really smart poster ... and really, really disgusting! I love it."

 

Anyone know when this will be coming out? A friend of mine saw an advertisement for this and said someone's privates were being chopped off in the film. sounds lovely errhh!!

someone's privates were being chopped off in the film. sounds lovely errhh!!

 

Ooooooh, how very "Cannibal Ferox" (notorious early 80s Italian exploitation film) of them.... <_<

 

The producers of this utter trash just disgust me more and more..... An abomination that gives the Horror genre a bad name.... Just like most of the "Video Nasties" that went before....

 

Anyone know when this will be coming out? A friend of mine saw an advertisement for this and said someone's privates were being chopped off in the film. sounds lovely errhh!!

 

28th june :cheer:

i've been waiting so long for this film to come out, cant wait see it, wonder if it'll be as good as the first

Just like most of the "Video Nasties" that went before....

least you could laugh at the cheapness of them.

least you could laugh at the cheapness of them.

 

Good point actually. As crummy as these films were, at least they didn't cost an arm and a leg to make... :lol: