Torture Porn Read online

  Torture Porn

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  Torture Porn

  Popular Horror after Saw

  Steve Jones

  Northumbria University, UK

  © Steve Jones 2013

  Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-0-230-31941-7

  All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

  No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

  Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published 2013 by

  PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

  Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

  Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

  Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries

  ISBN 978-1-349-33995-2 ISBN 978-1-137-31712-4 (eBook)

  DOI 10.10 7/9781137317124

  5

  This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  Contents

  List of Figures

  vii

  Acknowledgements

  ix

  Introduction: ‘Welcome to Your Worst Nightmare’

  1

  Part I ‘Torture Porn’ (Category)

  1 ‘The Past Catches Up to Everyone’: Lineage and Nostalgia

  13

  2 ‘Bend to Our Objectives’: ‘Torture Porn’ as Press Discourse

  27

  3 ‘No-one Approves of What You’re Doing’:

  Fans and Filmmakers

  40

  Part II ‘Torture’ (Morality)

  Introduction

  57

  4 ‘Your Story’s Real, and People Feel That’: Contextualising

  Torture

  63

  5 ‘Some are Victims. Some are Predators. Some are Both’:

  Torturous Positions

  82

  6 ‘In the Land of the Pig, the Butcher Is King’: Torture,

  Spaces, and Power

  101

  Part III ‘Porn’ (Extremity)

  Introduction

  123

  7 ‘Ladies First’?: Torture Porn, Sex, and Misogyny

  129

  8 ‘Why Are You Crying? Aren’t You Having Fun?’:

  Extreme Porn

  150

  9 ‘You Will Not Believe Your Eyes ... or Stomach’:

  Hardcore Horror

  170

  v

  vi Contents

  Conclusion: ‘Will You Continue?’: Beyond ‘Torture Porn’

  187

  Notes

  193

  Bibliography

  202

  Filmography

  217

  Index

  223

  List of Figures

  1.1 Yasmine’s freedom is hard won in Frontier(s) (2007, France/Switzerland, dir Xavier Gens)

  19

  1.2 The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (2011,

  Netherlands/USA/UK, dir Tom Six)

  20

  1.3 Paying tribute to horror classics: Martin claws at a

  car window in The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (2011, Netherlands/USA/UK, dir Tom Six), a nod to the first zombie

  attack in Night of the Living Dead (1968, USA, dir

  George Romero).

  20

  3.1 The image of a typical Eli Roth fan? Poppy

  in Storm Warning (2007, Australia, dir Jamie Blanks)

  42

  3.2 Life-affirming? Jean tortures Eddie in wΔz (2007,

  UK, dir Tom Shankland)

  44

  4.1 Kate breaks the fourth wall in the final shot of Creep

  (2004, UK/Germany, dir Christopher Smith)

  73

  4.2 Becca feels like she is being watched from afar in Dying Breed (2008, Australia, dir Jody Dwyer)

  76

  5.1 Playing the innocent: Tonya in the opening of Breathing Room (2008, USA, dirs John Suits and Gabriel Cowan)

  85

  5.2 Jennifer hides behind her FBI badge in the final shot of

  Untraceable (2008, USA, dir Gregory Hoblit)

  98

  6.1 and 6.2 Parallel shots, analogous acts: Josh’s throat is slit by the businessman, and the businessman’s throat is cut

  by Paxton in Hostel (2005, USA, dir Eli Roth)

  104

  6.3 Trapped in the expansive outback: Kristie cannot evade

  her killer in Wolf Creek (2005, Australia, dir Greg McLean) 105

  6.4 Martin is attacked after discovering the CCTV monitors

  in Detour (2009, Norway, dir Severin Eskeland)

  106

  6.5 Chrissie dwells on the threshold of escape in

  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006,

  USA, dir Jonathan Liebesman)

  114

  7.1 Geeves castrates himself in Penance (2009, USA,

  dir Jake Kennedy)

  136

  7.2 A background figure walks away from the rape in Irreversible (2002, France, dir Gaspar Noe)

  138

  vii

  viii List of Figures

  8.1 Dirty Harry comforts Nikki Hunter during her breakdown

  in Meatholes 2 (2005, USA, dir Khan Tusion)

  159

  8.2 Lexi Belle must spell ‘fellatio’ correctly to survive

  her trap in Saw: A Hardcore Parody (2010, USA,

  dir Hef Pounder)

  162

  9.1 One of the archetypal stand-ins for Angela in ReGOREgitated Sacrifice (2008, Canada/USA, dir Lucifer Valentine)

  181

  Acknowledgements

  Although I do not have the space here to name every individual that I would like to, I offer my heart-felt gratitude to my family, friends, and colleagues for their support, and not only in the writing of this book. I am sure those individuals know who I am referring to: I hope they also know how much they mean to me.

  Project-specific thanks are due to the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan for their help and support in constructing this book.

  Particular thanks to Felicity Plester, who suggested compiling a monograph on torture porn in the first instance. My appreciation is offered to Peter Hutchings, John Armitage and the anonymous reader who kindly offered constructive feedback on the proposal for this book. My thanks also go to those at Northumbria University who enabled me to take a sabbatical to draft the monograph.

  Above all, I wish to thank my partner, Lydia, whose patience and support know no bounds. This book is dedicated to you, as am I.

  ix
r />   Introduction: ‘Welcome to Your

  Worst Nightmare’1

  ‘Revolting ... repellent’ (N.a. 2008b), ‘poisonous’ (Sarracino and Scott, 2008: 219), ‘perverse’ (Slotek, 2009a), ‘terrible ... ugly’

  (Phelan, 2011), ‘vile

  ...

  distasteful’ (Graham, 2009a),

  ‘rancid ... joyless’ (Hornaday, 2008a), ‘salacious’ (Kinsella, 2007),

  ‘mean, dingy’ (Lacey, 2007), ‘grim’ (Kendall, 2008), ‘nasty’

  (Cochrane, 2007), ‘queasy ... nauseating’ (Bradshaw, 2007),

  ‘woeful

  ...

  despicable’ (Tookey, 2008b), ‘repugnant’ (Holden,

  2008), ‘spirit-sapping’ (Booth, 2008), ‘astonishingly depraved’

  (N.a. 2007b), ‘deplorable ... tasteless ... sleazy and gratuitous’

  (Puig, 2008).

  These are some of the hyperbolic terms used to describe ‘the 21st century’s vilest new genre: torture porn’ (N.a. 2007a). It is hard to imagine that fictional films could warrant the loathing instilled in these adjectives, and resultantly in the term ‘torture porn’ itself. Following David Edelstein’s 2006 New York article ‘Now Playing at Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn’,2 the label has been applied (often retroactively) to more than forty horror films made since 2003. Based on critical responses, one might mistakenly believe that torture porn is wholly irredeemable rather than being ‘one of the major cultural cornerstones of the decade’, as Tara Brady (2010a) has it. How torture porn came to be characterised as unacceptable and whether the subgenre deserves the remonstration it has received are key questions that this book will address. Taking stock of what ‘torture porn’ signifies is crucial, since the trend and the term continue to impact on how contemporary horror-fiction is understood more broadly.

  Although it will be argued that torture porn films have been unfairly dismissed in press discourse, this book does not seek to erase ‘torture 1

  2 Torture

  Porn

  porn’3 or ‘rescue’ films from that category. ‘Torture porn’ is a shorthand label that brushes over the subgenre’s diversity, but numerous productive tensions emanate from collecting texts together under a single banner.

  Labelling texts ‘porn’, for example, is a process of demarcating the border-line between what is ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ in popular culture.

  Since torture porn films are both illegitimated by reviewers and yet also legitimated by their relative financial success, ‘torture porn’ discourse highlights confusions regarding how taboo is defined at present. Rather than using ‘torture porn’ to dismiss these films as critics predominantly have then, this book engages with torture porn, exploring wider conceptual meanings that spring from grouping these films together.

  The vast majority of torture porn’s detractors have failed to adequately engage with the subgenre’s content. Some of the subgenre’s most profitable films have been addressed, but those responses are commonly superficial. Rather than dealing with torture porn itself, the subgenre’s belittlers instead tend to replicate various prejudices about popular violent cinema, duplicating established rhetorical paradigms. ‘Torture porn’ misrepresents the films themselves then, but the label has also been utilised to incriminate the subgenre’s filmmakers and fans. These imbalances will be redressed by analysing ‘torture porn’ discourse, torture porn films, and the broader contexts implied by referring to horror movies as ‘extreme’ or ‘pornographic’. The book is divided into three parts that correspond with these aims. Part I is diachronic. The category

  ‘torture porn’ will be explored by probing how torture porn is situated within critical and generic contexts. Press responses to the subgenre will be inspected in these chapters. Part II is theoretical. ‘Torture’ provides a primary focus for this part, and moral philosophy will be used to illuminate aspects of torture porn’s narrative content. In these chapters, the films themselves will be analysed. Part III is synchronic. Here, the term ‘porn’ is examined via an investigation into the subgenre’s sexual content. Chapters 8 and 9 will then contextualise that evaluation, illustrating how extremity manifests in contemporaneous pornographic and non-mainstream horror films, where sex and violence are blended much more literally than they are in torture porn.

  Chapters 1 to 3 will outline what is meant by ‘torture porn’, exploring issues that arise from using a category-label as the primary means of understanding these films. ‘Torture porn’ discourse discloses less about the films themselves than it does about critical responses to popular horror more generally. Chapter 1 will investigate torture porn’s generic lineage. Critics and filmmakers alike directly compare torture porn to the slasher subgenre, for instance, but do so for very different purposes.

  Introduction: ‘Welcome to Your Worst Nightmare’ 3

  Torture porn’s filmmakers regularly refer to slasher films to demonstrate their genre knowledge, making favourable comparisons between their films and earlier famous horror movies. Pundits have used the same comparisons to denigrate torture porn, painting torture porn as inferior to past ‘classics’. The latter term is not only utilised to refer to influential movies, but also to broadly distinguish between contemporary horror and genre films made more than 30 years ago. This mode of argumentation duplicates the same rhetorical devices that critics employed when disparaging contemporaneous popular horror films in the 1960s and 1970s.

  Resultantly, torture porn’s opponents present the subgenre as wholly different to ‘classics’, and yet the films are also presumed to be identical enough that paradigms established to denigrate earlier horror movies can be applied to torture porn. This confusion derives from a failure to distinguish between (a) continuities within the horror genre, and (b) continuities within critical reactions to horror. Derogatory responses remain remarkably consistent, despite the genre’s continual evolution.

  Torture porn clearly inherits traits from its generic predecessors, but critical narratives do not adequately account for torture porn’s particular configurations and attributes. A tangential paradigm (‘porn’) has been applied to expound changes within horror, but the resulting amalgam is undermined by its imprecision. ‘Torture porn’ discourse is inconsistent because objectors have utilised the porn-horror combination to fit various conflicting agendas and diverse propositions about what makes horror ‘pornographic’. Despite these idiosyncrasies, several dominant trends emerge consistently within ‘torture porn’ discourse. Those commonalities descend from conceptual presumptions about what porn and/or horror are, rather than from the films themselves.

  Thus, Chapter 2 will appraise press reviews and commentary in order to decipher torture porn’s alleged characteristics and the terms on which the subgenre has been illegitimated. Torture porn is surmised to lack substance because the films are putatively constituted by violence. Of particular affront to these reviewers is the mainstream acceptability of such depictions. Critics bemoan torture porn’s presence in the multiplex, suggesting that these films should be marginalised. Their complaints about torture porn ultimately express unease not about filmic content, but about how taste boundaries are regulated.

  Referring mainly to press articles, DVD commentaries, and briefly to online fan forums, Chapter 3 will explore another off-screen factor that has shaped ‘torture porn’: how filmmakers and fans have been addressed in and have responded to complaints about the subgenre. Filmmakers

  4 Torture

  Porn

  have primarily defended their films by distancing themselves from

  ‘torture porn’, or by vindicating their violent imagery. This is unsurprising given that reviewers tend to deride torture porn filmmakers by branding them untalented, irresponsible, and even deviant. Horror fans have similarly been dubbed immature, unintelligent, or perverse for watching torture porn. Fans have also therefore typically dissociated themselves from ‘torture porn’. Many horror fans have co-opted ‘torture porn’ to refer to films t
hat they dislike, consolidating the label’s pejorative connotations. Others concur with pundits’ shared, nostalgic view that liking torture porn amounts to not understanding what authentic,

  ‘classic’ horror (and horror fandom) is. Fan, filmmaker, and critical discourses converge on the point that torture porn qua ‘torture porn’ is contemptible, supporting the notion that ‘torture porn’ is a consistent category, even though these films, fans, and filmmakers have been brought together by an artificial rubric. Surface coherence masks the inconsistencies within ‘torture porn’ discourse, and those tensions are Part I’s nucleus.

  In Part II (Chapters 4 to 6), the films themselves will be examined with the intention of challenging the presumptions outlined in the opening chapters. Chapter 4 will redress two common critical suppositions. The first derives from defences that treat torture porn as an allegory for the Bush Administration’s War on Terror. Numerous scholars have used the allegory interpretation to prove that torture porn films are politically charged cultural artefacts. However, that reading has been reiterated to the extent that the approach ties torture porn into a very specific politico-historical juncture. Cumulatively, those allegory interpretations imply that torture porn is stimulating chiefly – or perhaps only –

  because of the immediate political context. To read torture porn merely as a reflection of its contemporaneous context is to divest the subgenre of its potential long-term meanings. Subsequent chapters in Part II will counter those restrictions, and moral philosophy is used to expand the debates.

  The second assumption addressed in Chapter 4 is narratological.

  Detractors have claimed that torture porn is sadistic, alleging that the films are mainly focused on torturers’ pleasures. This supposition again arises from pre-established discursive narratives. Slasher films, for instance, have stood accused of fostering sadistic pleasure because they regularly include camera shots that emulate antagonists’ first-person perspectives. Numerous critics have vilified horror films for encouraging audiences to ‘identify’ with killers, suggesting that first-person camerawork facilitates sadistic attitudes. This established critical paradigm has

  Introduction: ‘Welcome to Your Worst Nightmare’ 5

  been transposed onto torture porn without examining the subgenre’s content. As Chapter 4 will illustrate, torture porn narratives are aligned with sufferers’ perspectives much more consistently than they are with torturers’.