In Support of Torture Porn

In Defense of "Torture Porn" It was October of 2004. Brazil launched its first Rocket into space, The Boston Red Sox came back from a 3-0 deficient in the ALCS to beat the evil Yankees in 7 games, the Montreal Expos played their final game, and of course Prince Norodom Sihamoni was chosen as the new King of Cambodia. In that month, we were also introduced to a little independent horror flick called

Saw which would not only generate at least 5 more sequels, but also start a new media buzz word called "torture porn". The popularity of the Saw franchise and the appearance of the film Hostel the very next year lead to a slew of knockoffs featuring people in captivity going through various kidnap and mutilation scenarios and hopefully coming out of them at least a little scathed. The term "torture porn" bothers me and always has.

Since the term was coined by some random film critic (what's a film critic anyways?) the media has been using it as an all purpose symbol of societal degradation AND as a punching bag for senators and parliament members hell bent on taking violent and "culturally demeaning" media elements out of the world all together. Essentially, people (with no understanding of the horror genre) feel like the films that get lumped into this torture porn category (whether they deserve it or not) are lacking metaphor. They exist only as shock pieces and have no cultural relevance or ties to art whatsoever. You know what, maybe a part of that is true.

Maybe some of these films being made do lack metaphor to current social and political issues. Maybe they exist only to shock and awe but what most people fail to understand is that there absolutely must be something else going on here. People are still flocking to the theater to see these movies, and if there is one thing that never lies, it's the all important lord of Hollywood. The Box Office. I could sit here and waste your time and mine throwing stats around about box office numbers, but I don't think I have too. For the last 30 years horror films have been made for low budgets and have yielded high returns. It's not like that's a secret. But looking at these staggering numbers, I feel that it's irresponsible to say that nothing of value has come out of the new torture porn craze.

We have to ask the question that if these films are so disgusting and socially worthless, then why are so many people shelling out their hard earned money to see these movies? It's not like horror is a niche group, everyone at one point or another likes a good little scare or gross out, if for nothing else to say they made it through it. It would be simple to come up with some kind of sociological study that could come to some type of conclusion.

Maybe people are looking for entertainment that's a bit more visceral that on their TV sets. Maybe people want to see someone come through triumphantly from a situation that is more terrible than what that person is going though in their life at the moment. Maybe people are more in tune to the spectacle of it, bringing about the famous "everyone slows down to see the car wreck" idea. Maybe everyone in the world is a sadist.

I don't know the definite answer, but I could make a convincing argument to any of those purposed solutions. Now, in the beginning of 2009 "torture porn" is fading out of the popular media. It's not like tamer films have been coming out lately, it's just that the buzz word has ran its course. This honestly makes me happier that anything considering that I hated the term in the first place. Nevertheless, new buzz words MUST be coined (yes it is actually a law on the books somewhere).

You can't have too many at once (the new one is mumblecore, whatever the hell that is. Is it some kind of hipster cinema? What the hell is a hipster anyway? Like a beatnik?) so just in an attempt not to feel so 2005 the term "torture porn" is dead and no one is happier to see that then me. New horror films will be made and studied and enjoyed without "film critics" jamming their buzz words and useless conglomerate machine's terms down into the non-elitist throats of the populist. These terms are all encompassing and sad. They lump movies into specific categories which shows complete and utter narrow-mindedness rather than one ounce of something clever. It's insulting to the fans and proprietors of the genre.