Bad Fandom: Terrified By Torture Porn Twerps

By Rafe Telsch: 2008-06-10 23:22:03

Almost everyone I know goes to the movies for similar reasons. We go to the movies because they entertain us. In the movies exists a world where the good guys win, hope prevails, and love conquers all. Movies make us feel better about ourselves and the world we live in, and sometimes offer that aphorism of wisdom we need to make it through rough times.

And then there’s the torture porn.

I cannot figure any reason why anyone would find this recently-popular sub-genre interesting. Instead of promoting the good in mankind, these movies promote the worst possible traits of the human race. In the real world we take people who kidnap innocent people and torture, mutilate, maim, and kill them and lock them away, even putting some to death. Now a group of filmmakers want to recreate that same concept in a fictional environment, glorifying sick behavior and selling tickets? Even worse, people are buying tickets, maintaining the strength of these kinds of films and ensuring more to come.

Let me be clear – my problem is not with the horror genre as a whole. A lot of horror exemplifies the ideas I first talked about: good versus evil with good eventually winning the day (not always, but most of the time). The protagonists are innocent and bright and the antagonists are truly despicable and vile. Even when it was fun to cheer for the bad guys, we all knew Freddy Krueger was a child molester whose soul was eternally damned beyond redemption. And we knew he’d be defeated by the time the end credits rolled.

Now, with the advent of the torture porn industry those lines between good and evil are blurred. Sometimes the antagonist is stalking characters because of their own character flaws, which make them easy prey. Or, sometimes the protagonist remains an innocent, but has no hope of getting away as they are slowly tortured and mutilated until death. Fantastic. Even worse are the times where the torturer is presented as the protagonist, and we’re supposed to enjoy the sadistic tendencies portrayed on screen.

Unlike the days of Freddy and Jason, movies have become increasingly realistic. Part of the reason we could cheer so easily for Freddy was the camp factor behind his movies’ visual effects. Today, horror auteurs strive to make audiences cringe with visual effects that look like they’re really happening. Lindsay Lohan’s robotic limbs may have looked pretty stupid in I Know Who Killed Me, but the torturer freezing her limbs until they peeled off didn’t look so far removed from reality. Jigsaw’s traps in Saw may require an amazing amount of precognition, but the executions they cause look disturbingly real.

If we can gain positive lessons about life from the movies, what kind of moralistic values are torture porn movies instilling our culture with? Are we cultivating a crop of sadistic killers by allowing these kinds of movies to be made and shown? And before you say this is a huge leap of logic, let’s remember that Beavis and Butthead wound up with a disclaimer at the beginning of the show because people were stupid enough to try frog baseball and set things on fire just like they saw on TV. It inspired stupid people to do stupid things. So did Jackass… and Grand Theft Auto… and the list goes on and on. If people are stupid enough to think cartoons, video games, and moronic stunts are worthy of imitation, is it really logical to think that torture sequences, created in painstaking realism, wouldn’t be? Even if those same disturbed audience members that would burn stuff because some cartoons did don’t pick up ideas for torture from these movies, aren’t they being desensitized to the violence to the point that it holds little significance for them?

Since the money keeps rolling in for torture porn movies we have to assume they’re going to keep being made. Every Halloween brings a new Saw movie and it won’t be long before the underlying twisted moral code is completely removed and we’re just seeing two hours of Rube Goldberg murder devices snapping people’s limbs off.

Maybe filmmakers need to pair up with police and the government to use Hostel 5 and Captivity 3 as a means to keep tabs on the true sickos in our society – the people who are compelled to keep giving these movies their money. Perhaps if we can identify these people before they have the chance to bring the fantasy from the screen to life, the torture porn sub-genre will have done some good. Even better would be to get rid of these kinds of movies entirely. Stop creating fictional snuff-films and get back to villains we can boo at and life lessons we can learn and prosper from, instead of glorifying the sick behavior that should identify the world’s truly degenerate people.

Cinema Blend writers fight back against out of control fanboys in our ongoing series of editorials, Bad Fandom! For more Bad Fandom click here.

RELATED: bad fandom, rant, editorial, torture porn, horror

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William Usher Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 01:49
This article hit the nail on the head.

I HATE torture porn flicks. I think it's the basest form of a genre trying to imitate the sickest forms of life. I can't imagine one person watching Hostel, Captivity or any of those other stupid movies and cheering about how cool they were, yet getting behind McKain or Bush and talking about bringing down terrorists who behead the same kind of people who are victims in torture-porn flicks.

I agree that this genre needs to go away for good. I don't mind bad guys who we - as an audience - sometimes empathise with (i.e., Kevin Costner in A Perfect World,) but this new era of villainery is just a depiction of perverted sadist.

mits777 Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 13:53
I do love a lot of the "torture porn" flicks and I also back Bush and McCain for the war. My feelings on reality and movies have nothing to do with each other. I like a well thought out written story and some good gore every once in a while. There are some exceptions (Captivity) but both Saw and Hostel fall into that category. Its just a release and a form of entertainment. No more no less. Dont read too much into it.

JakeW Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 13:56
I hate the term "torture porn" because its used by anyone who is dislikes a particular horror film. Are you saying you hate sadism in horror movies? Hate movies with elaborate death-dealing traps? Gore? Villains who aren't monsters? Dario Argento (to cite but one example) has been doing that stuff since the 1970s.

If you want to talk brass tacks, the art house film Cube predated Saw, yet that film wasn't labelled "torture porn". Why? Because it was reasonably intelligent. Saw isn't. In fact, all the films you mentioned are terrible ... they aren't disturbing or gross or an indictment on society, just terrible films that make a lot of money from teenagers. Like Big Mama's House or any other low-grade film. And yeah, I hate it too. Poor quality films making a butt-load of money, that is.

"Stop creating fictional snuff-films and get back to villains we can boo at and life lessons we can learn and prosper from, instead of glorifying the sick behavior that should identify the world’s truly degenerate people."

And ma and pa and apple pie.

Peter Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 13:57
I agree with this article.. well said.. finally someone said it. It seems that this subgenre is becommming increassingly popular and people actually sit and laugh at these movies.. and heer the "villain" on..??

It seriously scares me to think that anyone on this earth would want to or could hurt another human being like what we see in these movies..

Think of someone you hold dear, love or just respect.. a family member, a friend.. and then try to think of that person being horribly tortured to death....

how does that feel.. Or maybe that is too far removed for you... try this: Imagine yourself being strapped down to a chair, helpless at the mercy of some maniac who then proceeds to torture you untill you die a slow painful death...

Are we having fun yet?

Grant Says:
June 21st, 2008 at 21:39
Movies are an art form. However you wish to interpret that statement is up to you.

So why get rid of a whole sub-genre just because YOU don't like it?

Don't like a movie? Then don't watch it. You have the right to direct your attention to what you want to. You don't (or rather shouldn't) have the right to be unoffended.

Grow up and start watching things that you like (preferably not High School Musical) instead of whining about things that you don't like.

ps. Peter you need to think logically not emotionally. The films are FICTION. Even when 'inspired by true events' the events are OVER and no whining will ever change that so live with it or go kill yourself. I would be very happy if you chose the latter but that is only because you seem like the normal person that I despise so. It has nothing to do with 'family' or 'love' or 'respect' it is a form of entertainment! Go grow some balls and stop picking peanuts out of shit you stupid moron.

Mr. Outer Space Says:
August 21st, 2008 at 22:32
I agree with the author on this one. Usually, it requires an astoundingly stupid person to pull off the stuff they see in [I]Beavis and Butthead[/I] and anything else that is imitable, and we would think that under most circumstances we shouldn't need to worry about people trying to emulate that kind of behavior, but somewhere in the world there will always be a kind of perverse self-destructive mentally weak person who will see a twisted form of logic in "torture porn horror" and try to act it out for themselves.

Be that as it may, I don't think torture porn horror, or violent cartoons or video games, are responsible for turning people into homicidal maniacs. I just think people who would be homicidal maniacs in the first place are more likely to tune in to that kind of stuff, even if it's just marginally. I know plenty of people who play [I]Grand Theft Auto[/I] and watched (and enjoyed) the [I]Saw[/I] movies who are perfectly adequate human beings in society. As invasive an action as it would be, however, it might not be such a bad idea to keep an eye on the kind of person who consistently tunes in to torture porn horror, if only to discern the Jokers of the world from the casual observers with a harmless taste for the perverse.

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