Philistine critic confesses her shame

I read Hornaday's piece in the Weekend Section on Friday, and I agreed completely with her take on these films. A few years back, I rented "Suspiria" which was the first film in this Dario Argento series. Not only was it horribly violent, but the film made no sense whatsoever.

It's not that I object to violence in cinema -- I think "Pulp Fiction" is a brilliant film and the recent hit-man company "In Bruges" was hilarious. But those films had some point other than the violence or the bad language. Ever watched a movie like "Pulp Fiction" when it's been edited for television? It's still good, because it is a good film. Where as if you edited that gory parts out of "Suspiria" all you would be left with was a stupid movie that makes no sense.

I describe myself as a 20-something horror fan, but it's been a long time since I have actually gone to any horror movies. I HATE torture porn. It's disgusting and leaves nothing to the imagination. I think the last good one I've seen is "The Others." Other older films I adore--The Haunting" and "The Omen"--have been remade to their detriment. I think I've given up hope.

I stopped watching Nip/Tuck a couple of years ago, after realizing it made me feel... dirty. I know that sounds silly, but I literally felt like I needed a shower every time I watched the thing! It felt great one night to just stand up, mid-episode, and turn off the TV. After that, other shows started dropping like flies. Desperate Housewives and The L Word come immediately to mind...

This Washington Post critic sounds like a moron.

Is she really suggesting that she tamped down honest criticisms of a movie because she might be seen as "unhip"? And, what, now, lo these many years, she's liberated to speak her mind? And we're supposed to praise her? Please. Why should any reader trust this hack again?

For the list of really bad horror films I nominate "The Ring".

Did anyone else see this and want to fall asleep? Not only did I find it terminally boring, but stupid as well.

Two words: Titus Andronicus.

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 22:45:39 GMT

I'm not the only one wondering: "What the heck is going on?"

I saw my friend Hugh last weekend at his brother’s annual Australia Day Party. Every year I go through this ritual of hauling out sunny, summery clothes in the dead of winter and it always shocks me out of my lily-white skin. When summer finally does roll around, though, it’s easier to handle the wardrobe transition. Best to get the shock out of the way early in the year.

Anyway, I was talking to my friend who runs several Landmark theatres in the Upper Midwest and I asked him, “What is going on with all these torture movies lately? The levels of violence for entertainment purposes is ratcheting up to really alarming levels. Can you please explain to me how something like Hostel gets booked into the local cineplex?”

“Oh, “ he chuckled, “I know the director. He’s a nice guy. Hostel’s not so bad, now. It’s got some redeeming qualities.”

“You saw it?” I asked, incredulously. “You [a friend of mine?!]? And the redeeming qualities are. . .?

“Well, now, you see, it’s not just dumb teenage girls getting slaughtered. It’s actually privileged frat boy types getting slaughtered.”

“I see. So it’s some sort of geek boy revenge fantasy then?” I asked.

“Yeah, I dunno. I didn’t see the whole thing. During the part where this girl was getting her eyeballs blowtorched, I covered my eyes with my hand, 'cause, you know, I didn't want to watch, and I accidentally popped out my contact lens.” (This is a typical Hugh anecdote.)

“But you said girls didn’t get tortured!”

“Okay, well” he mumbled, “I guess a couple did. I didn’t get to see much after the blowtorch bit.”

I bring up this subject because Arts & Letters Daily linked to an article about the phenomenon of Torture Porn in the movies. I have not seen Hostel, or Saw, or any of their ilk, nor do I intend to. I think that level of gore has always been with us, but just like the special effects in Star Wars has improved, so have the horror effects. And now it’s more accessible, whereas before you maybe had to go to a video store and rent from the low-budget bottom shelf.

I remember one evening back when I was a sophomore in college. I lived in a co-ed dorm and this group of guys we knew had rented some scary movies. A few of my girlfriends and I were invited down to watch. I don’t remember the name of the film; all I remember was some scene in which a young woman’s entire alimentary canal came oozing back up out of her mouth. That was enough for me. The movie scene I could dismiss as so much latex, but what really sickened me was this group of guys who seemed to be enjoying themselves. Critics can blather on all they want about ‘catharsis’, but to me it seemed more like the pathetic end of the genetic line for those fellows, as far as I, a female of their species, was concerned.

I dunno, Max, I rather liked The Ring. The intensely creepy children and Brian Cox made up for a lot of the dumber parts, IMHO. The Japanese original version called "Ringu", on the other hand, I found impenetrably silly and unimpressive.

It saddens me to live in a world where a writer in the employ of a major newspaper uses the word "apotheosis" to sound erudite when she actually means "apogee" -- and no editor catches the error.

My wife's favorite catechetical moment: she was teaching a group of 8th graders at our parish when Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" came out. The mother of one of her charges said that the student couldn't see the film until she (mom) screened it first and determined that it was appropriate. Good, I thought.

The punchline? Mom took them to see "Saw" sight unseen.

I'm with Rod and with the WaPo critic. There are limits to "art."

I also agree with Rod that being a parent typically increases one's sensitivity to violent TV and movies (or should). I would also note that my view of violence changed the day my dad became a victim of violent crime. Dad was attacked at a train station by two robbers who tried to bash him to death with bricks. Thankfully, Dad survived the attack. Once violence is brought home in such a way, its no longer "exciting," "edgy" or "cool." Ever since Dad's close call back in 1968, I've had a very low tolerance for depictions of violence. Sometimes a reality check helps us recognize the depravity of our culture.

For thought's on Rod's movie reviewing, I refer people to alicublog's 3:19pm post today, "THE SIN OF MAUDLIN CLODHOPPER." alicublog dot blogspot dot com.

Probably won't change any minds here, but I have to stick up for Dario Argento's Suspiria - it's a bona-fide classic of surrealist horror. It's obviously not for everyone, and certainly not something I'd let young children watch, but it bears about as much relation to dreck like Saw as a Johnny Cash album bears to modern-country garbage like Toby Keith.

Erin, your sig at the bottom is sufficient for me not to read your post. I'm sure it's as super-awesomely well-reasoned as all your others.

Rod asked: "Seriously, though, does anybody these days watch a film or TV show and say, 'I really shouldn't be watching this, this is bad for me" -- and turn it off?' Does the thought occur to anybody that people ought not to be encouraged to make films in which women are strangled by their own intestines for the entertainment of the audience?"

My answer is, I go to a movie in a theatre maybe once every two years, and I watch little TV that is not ESPN, HGTV, TLC, or CNN or Fox. I watch no network TV. Zip. Zero. Nada. I select what movies/DVDs to buy or to rent based on their reviews, and the lists that they make it on to toward year end, which means that I watch precious few movies in the year they are released. I make judgments for myself based on time spent reading reviews, and not simply from "Christianity Today". I check out "Rotten Tomatoes". I surf Amazon. I look for reviews by Stanley Kauffman of The New Republic in particular.

Here's my thinking in a nutshell. My time is valuable. I don't have time to waste on movies that I would find disagreeable. I don't owe the culture the act of my participation in it. I don't owe Hollywood my hard earned money. I find that if I treat movies and television like I would treat literature -- if it stands the test of time, it might be worth reading -- I'm infrequently disappointed. As a result of this approach, I may be poorly equipped for conversation at some parties, but if that shortcoming is somehow important to the person to whom I'm speaking, we're probably not on the same page.

I'm also somewhat libertarian about this. My wife and I spent our child-raising years largely not watching television (except for sports, news, and the odd special), not going to movies, renting an occasional DVD, and insisting on boundaries for our son that largely lined up with the boundaries we set for ourselves. Funny enough, one consequence was that he became a reader. So when Brent Bozell, for example, launches into one of his mouth-breathing tirades on the state of television during the family viewing hour, I respond with a shrug. If our TV is on, it's probably because we're watching the Nationals get shellacked yet again, or watching the latest "Iron Chef America" or "Design on a Dime".

We're not squares, and we have our rough edges, too. Our son read Narnia at an early age, and we made sure to lay the right books in front of him, but I also introduced him to Monty Python and the Marx Brothers when he was 11. In turn, he introduced us to the Simpsons, and we have watched some of his collection of "Family Guy" shows with him (he's now 24). Under the category of film-with-violence, I happen to think that "City of God" is one hell of a movie, and "Godfathers I and II" are works of cinematic art, and they're not for children or for the faint of heart.

So, yes, I would turn off the TV set, but the trick is not to be watching in the first place if you feel your standards will be exceeded. We all have choices. It's are responsibility to make them and to live by them.

Yes. That was what I said as I was taking my tv to the pawn shop " I just don't need to be watching this". It slipped from my hands before I got it to the vehicle, guess no one else was supposed to watch it as well.

This really is an interesting topic, but a rather large and complex one. The first question that came to my mind: do we really believe that visual images can implant "bad thoughts" in our minds? I don't come down firmly on one side or the other because I just don't know.

I'm somewhat disqualified to discuss horror, because the genre has always been a problem for me. I live with my own mental movies, which can be difficult enough to process, and I've never felt I had the time or energy to get my Horror Film Critic merit badge. As a human being, and particularly as a woman, I often feel that I'd prefer no one ever saw those images. But, as an artist myself, I understand that a lot of people would say that about things I might create, so I also have problems saying "Thou shalt not" even when I don't like the offerings of other artists. What is art vs. what is porn/propaganda is an endlessly interesting subject for discussion, but I don't think we'll ever get a conclusive answer.

I think that often we displace onto works of fiction the anxieties that would better be expressed in relation to reality. Thus, people can be horrified and disapproving of graphic PRETEND violence, while overlooking the burst bodies, mutilations, amputations, stabbings and burnings that take place for real all around us. It's a lot easier to protest horror movies than to notice that real human beings are being made into charred blind stumps by policy decisions made offscreen. One can decry the imagined rape and mutilation of women in countless movies without trying to stop it from happening in real life. Much energy is spent to change the fictional representation of reality, while averting the eyes from the real horror. This I find odd.

And in closing, a thought experiment. Imagine that sex roles in horror movies are reversed--that almost all producers are female, and that the shrieking terrorized victims portrayed in them are almost all male, while their malevolent and powerful tormentors are female. Imagine that horror movies routinely portray little boys being stalked, bound and gagged and sexually tortured and penetrated by women with assorted baroque and scary instruments. Imagine the vulnerable nude bodies of men lying stripped and broken on the ground, their pitifully frail masculinity torn and violated. Imagine lots of women in the audience enthusiastically cheering the masked perpetrators on to more gross-out rape and slaughter. Do you feel any different about the culture that has produced this? Do you wonder what's wrong with them? Or would horror be just as much fun/just as evil but no more so than it is now? I don't have expectations about what your answers might be, but I think they might shed some light on the subject, whatever they are.

Alicia:

Fair enough - like I said, Argento's films certainly aren't for everybody. I also hold him in high regard for his involvement with George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which might be my favorite movie of all time. Again, not for everybody, but that's what makes life interesting.

I frequently choose to turn off the Idiot Box, and I rarely go to the movies any more. I do not care to see people gratuitously killing, torturing or abusing one another. I do not care to see other people having sex with one another. I'm just funny that way. My own mind is capable of generating sufficient crap to make frequent talks with Father after Vespers necessary, without adding to the load by absorbing the twisted dreams of various oddities from Hollywood. I can soldier on, knowing that I'm terminally unhip. Life gives us enough misery and sorrow as it is. Why borrow any more?

I've always thought horror movies were sorta dumb.

They either got you with 'suspense', which in practice meant 'startled you', or they got you with gore. So I didn't really pay much attention to them. I saw a few suspenseful movies, and a few suspenseful episodes of various TV shows, and that was about it. I avoided ones that looks like people would be running around with chainsaws killing people. (Well, I did watch the classic Evil Dead series in college, cause someone did a marathon.) But mostly I avoided 'horror'.

Then I saw a clip of Saw. What the hell? I'm right there with everyone about 'torture porn', because that is what it is. People actually pay money to watch that? I'd pay not to!

Look, one of my favorite shows was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm not opposed to a little bit of blood and gore and violence on TV. I am, however, opposed to people being graphically dismembered and whatnot, because normal people do not find that pleasant to watch.(1)

You can do all sorts of nasty things sight unseen, but showing the blow-by-blow should make people flinch and feel rather uneasy, not staring in rapt attention at the screen. There's a reason that when Buffy cut Caleb vertically in half in the last episode of BtVS, there was a scythe swing, a cut away, and two thumps, and no view of him afterwards, instead of seeing someone actually cut in half, which would have been trivial to do with normal latex special effects, not even bothering with CGI. Why didn't they? Because that would be horrible to see.

Incidentally, I don't know if anyone's noticed, but when talking about horror movie's sexism...Lifetime actually shows 'female' horror movies. They replace physical helplessness, which men fear, with emotional helplessness, which women fear.

It's probably sexist to claim that women and men fear different things, but they do. And, yes, I know women fear physical violence, probably more than men. (So, perhaps, oddly enough, as they are, in a way, used to physical helplessness, they don't fear it as much as men would.) OTOH, I'm not in charge of all this, and I'm not a psychologist, I just know what Lifetime shows, which is presumably what women wish to watch on it.

Oddly enough, they leave the genders the same...the women are still always the victim. OTOH, victims in horror movies are not actually as biased towards women as people seem to think, numerically. Of course, a half-dressed cheerleader might get a five minute chase scene, whereas a random guy might get stabbed offscreen.

1) Unless, of course, it's done in a ridiculously comic manner, like Monty Python did a few times.

The two Dario Argento horror movies I've seen were both utterly worthless. Not even scary, just stupid!

But he co-wrote the screenplay of Sergio Leone's greatest Spaghetti Western: Charles Bronson's "Once Upon a Time in the West." So, Dario can't be ALL bad.

Maybe a man only has so much clever dialogue in him, and Argento used up all of his on that one movie, before he got around to directing horror flicks of his own.

"It's a lot easier to protest horror movies than to notice that real human beings are being made into charred blind stumps by policy decisions made offscreen. One can decry the imagined rape and mutilation of women in countless movies without trying to stop it from happening in real life. Much energy is spent to change the fictional representation of reality, while averting the eyes from the real horror. This I find odd."

Sig, I think you misread the reason for the protests. I believe that these types of films have a deadening effect on the collective sensibility of the people who watch them -- as St Paul puts it, they "sear the conscience." Therefore, in my view, they contribute to the real violence by making many people in the culture immune to the true life effects of it. The result of this is a very sentimentalist, immature mentality towards violence. I know people, for instance, who have seen any number of violent horror movies, but hated the movie "Signs" because the aliens killed the family's dog.

By the way, I believe porn and sexually explicit and/or exploitative material does the same thing to the sexual aspect of sensibility as violent entertainment does to its respective aspect. Hence, I find liberals who moan and complain about all the violence, but not the sex, and conservatives who moan and complain about all the sex, but not the violence, both to be inconsistent.

"I've always thought horror movies were sorta dumb. They either got you with 'suspense', which in practice meant 'startled you', or they got you with gore."

I like a lot of older and older-styled horror movies, which are built around tension/suspense, as opposed to jolts and/or gore. Some examples: The Haunting (Claire Bloom), The Innocents (Deborah Kerr), The Changeling (George C. Scott), The Others (Nicole Kidman), The Blair Witch Project, etc. The most frightening film I've ever seen is David Lynch's "Inland Empire," which is three hours of sheer suspense and dread. There are a few jolts, and not much gore, but I ended up loving the movie and find it inexplicably moving and even cathartic in some way.

**But he co-wrote the screenplay of Sergio Leone's greatest Spaghetti Western: Charles Bronson's "Once Upon a Time in the West." So, Dario can't be ALL bad.**

I was going to say the same thing, Astorian. IMO, Argento's contribution to that film was the only good thing he's ever done.

Rob says: Therefore, in my view, they contribute to the real violence by making many people in the culture immune to the true life effects of it.

Rob, I want to make clear up front that I do give your thoughts here respectful consideration, and appreciate the discussion, though I think that I disagree with you. I'm going to create a bit of a cartoon version of the argument here, just for the sake of brevity. It seems to me that many cultural conservatives take the view that we already have an essentially benign culture, which sneaky, underhanded artists are meanly defacing and polluting with gratuitously demoralizing artworks. Thus, if you could just stop them from filling impressionable minds up with such stuff, everything would return to normal.

The cartoon version of my own impression is that we live in a very conflicted culture that can't make up its mind about how to handle certain things--like violence. Is violence inextricably tied to masculinity? Is it natural and normal? Should we feel guilty about how much our present prosperity owes to violence performed out of sight by our agents or ancestors? And so forth. These questions are stuffed beneath the rug of everyday propriety, but they bubble to the surface in the dreams and nightmares of art. Thus repellent works of fiction are not the source of the infection, but a symptom. So I'd say our problem is that we're already oblivious to--though maybe not immune from--the bad effects of our unwillingness to confront what's rotten around here.

To put it another way, I wouldn't attack the problem by attacking the expression of it. Sometimes it seems to me that cultural conservatives are all too willing to decline responsibility for suffering on a large scale. Again, in the cartoon version: You can't stop war. It's part of human nature. You can't stop religious and racial hatred. Naturally people are going to be in conflict with those who are different. You can't stop male aggression against women. You can't alleviate poverty. It's just human nature, just the human condition, just Original Sin. Etc.

But when it comes to art, all of a sudden they're very interventionist. The artist is not allowed to show what he thinks is inevitable about human nature. The artist does not get to focus our eyes on the shadows and point out the darkness that never goes away. Oh hell no, says the conservative--YOU don't get to set the terms of this discussion. WE will tell you what's allowed to be the human condition. We want to see Fr. Patrick Peyton and the Fighting Irish saying the rosary on film, and none of your bloody eyeballs or we'll go medieval on you with the Legion of Decency.

You can make a lot better case for the harmfulness of porn than for the harmfulness of horror, IMHO, because porn can't be made without actual acts of abuse performed on actual human beings. It isn't latex and corn syrup, alas. Keep in mind, though, that I'M the one who got savaged in the not-too-distant past for arguing against porn. Did hosts of Christian gentlemen rush to my side, as one might expect on this site? One or two did, which I appreciated. For the most part, no. Apparently being a man who is against feminism trumps being a human who is against pornography.

"The cartoon version of my own impression is that we live in a very conflicted culture that can't make up its mind about how to handle certain things--like violence. "

That's well-said (the entire post), Sigaliris. I do agree with you that violence in art reflects what is already in the culture (just like gangsta rap) but I also think it is a vicious circle in every sense - more violent images lead to greater desensitization. It's a little bit like being an alcoholic - someone might start drinking to cope with personal problems that have nothing to do with alcohol, but quickly, alcoholism becomes the main problem that they have to address before getting down to the root of the problem.

I'm looking forward to the day when there is that kind of backlash, and not out of "prudery" but out of the realization that much of the product of this immense "marketing machine" is dehumanizing.

Wonder of wonders, I might actually agree with what you said, Rod--though I wonder if we'd agree necessarily on what those "healthiest instincts" were. But alas, this is the very reason why I don't think we'll see an end to violent media and pornography any time soon--because men (in general) haven't made up their minds that they want to loosen their hot grasp on these transgressive delights. Violent and/or pornographic media are an orgiastic assertion of male dominance and a celebration of male aggression. Conservatives may condemn some particular expression of these things in movies, but they have no intention of turning away from them in real life.

"Violent and/or pornographic media are an orgiastic assertion of male dominance and a celebration of male aggression. Conservatives may condemn some particular expression of these things in movies, but they have no intention of turning away from them in real life."

Yeah, the world would be such a better place if there only wasn't so much goddam testosterone. I'll let this overly simplistic take on things pass (which, by the way, is a nearly verbatim quote from a feminist I know, and almost married), and simply say that any conservative who eschews these things in the media yet accepts them in 'real life' is expressing an inconsistency that is indefensible. In fact, I believe that most consistent conservatives condemn them in the media precisely because they reject them in real life.

Oh boy. Too bad I can't self-edit my post. I think I must confess to a foolish error. I thought you were mysteriously calling some of my remarks a "quote" of your former date. That seemed odd--because, as I now see, that's not what you meant. You were saying that the line about "testosterone" was a quote from your ex-girlfriend. Oh, duh. Now I get it. Please excuse my getting cranky with you over a misperception. I'm afraid that I'm still a little foggy at times, even though I'm off the Percocet. ; )