In defense of "torture porn"/towards a definition of "torture porn"
Not torture porn the genre, mind you--"torture porn" the term.
The Horror Blog's Steven Wintle today called the label an "utterly useless term". If you're reading this blog, chances are you already know that you can't swing a dismembered arm in the horror blogosphere without hitting just that very kind of expression of both dismissal and angry contempt from the cognoscenti. You hear it quite a bit from filmmakers, too.
But why?
First of all, why is it "useless" as a descriptor? You know what it means. I know what it means. We all know what it means and what movies it's meant to encompass. "Torture porn" (noun): Horror films in which the physical brutalization of a person or persons, frequently to death and always while somehow immobilized or held captive by the brutalizer or brutalizers, is the primary locus of horror in the film. I'd imagine the intent would be clear upon introduction to many people who'd never heard the term before--sure, "porn" might give them the wrong idea, but it's a hell of a lot more instantly grokkable than, say, "graphic novel."
My guess is the dislike of the term stems from the facts that it's frequently seen as pejorative, that it tends to lump together films that we horror buffs like (Hostel, Wolf Creek) with films that we don't like (Chaos, the Saw franchise, sequels to remakes of classic '70s genre antecedents like The Texas Chainsaw Massacare and The Hills Have Eyes), and that it lumps together films that, in terms of things like plot structure and financing and intent, don't really have much in common. But isn't all of that true of the term "horror" itself?
On this blog, I myself have tended to use other terms when referring to the movies generally placed under this rubric, like "meat movies" or "the current brutal-horror cycle." But that's because I made them up and like them, not because I have any beef with "torture porn" per se. I know exactly what it means and so do most people who care about this sort of thing.
Own your torture porn, people. Live your torture porn. Love your torture porn!
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Comments (5)
There's very little of the genre I like, but I love the name. It is very clear, and once you've seen anything in it, it tends to be super clear whether a work belongs there or not. Would that more genre labels were so useful.
Posted by Bruce Baugh | September 5, 2007 10:49 PM
I think it's a useful term, too, although I don't necessarily like what those uses are.
So, I think it's often used to dismiss certain horror movies, out-of-hand, as if they're obviously beneath contempt. Which I guess is how the term "slasher movie" was used, so that probably isn't such a big deal, except that calling it "porn" can be a nasty way of dismissing the people who like and defend these movies. That is, "porn" implies that the audience is getting off on the depiction of torture in a sexual way. For any given individual Hostel/Saw/Audition fan this may or may not be true, but, certainly, if my thinking is that you only like Hostel because it turns you on then I can pretty much dismiss everything you're saying about it as a you trying to rationalize some sick fetish you have.
Posted by Jon Hastings | September 6, 2007 11:03 AM
That is, "porn" implies that the audience is getting off on the depiction of torture in a sexual way.
I don't think "porn" necessarily implies people are getting off on it in a sexual way, just that it appeals to visceral basic instincts that have little to do with artistry on the part of the filmmakers, which is also pejorative of course. As an analogy, people might refer to the loving shots of gussied-up food in a commercial as "food porn", that wouldn't mean people were actually turned on sexually by the ads, just that they're designed to bypass critical judgement and appeal to the more instinctive parts of your brain in a way that's analogous with actual porn.
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