A lot of people like to throw around the phrase “torture porn” to describe particularly violent horror flicks.  In fact, my recent piece on the greatest horror films of all time features more than a few movies that certain people would categorize as such.  They do this often without knowing where the term came from or even what it really means.  With Halloween upon us, now is really as good a time as any to delve back into this debate that seems to happen every so often within the industry and in the media as well.  I have an issue with the term, and the very idea of it as well.  I feel that it ghettoizes plenty of worthy horror movies into an unsavory category that they don’t belong in.  Honestly, I’ve yet to find a film that compelled me to label it “torture porn”, though I’ll admit that once or twice I’ve come somewhat close to it.  I know I’m in the minority here, but I just don’t like when things are unfairly lumped together.  It’s just lazy on the part of film critics and audience members, and doesn’t acknowledge that these filmmakers have a particular intent when making their films, not just to get nutjobs to get off on murder.  Plus, the phrase itself doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.  Before we go any further, however, we need to understand what I mean by “torture porn”.

The phrase was coined by New York Magazine’s David Edelstein in an article from 2006.  It was entitled “Now Playing at Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn”.  I recommend reading the entire article, which I’ll link to here, but there are plenty of choice bits that I’ll repost here for the purposes of this conversation/piece.  He writes that “As a horror maven who long ago made peace, for better and worse, with the genre’s inherent sadism, I’m baffled by how far this new stuff goes—and by why America seems so nuts these days about torture.”  He goes on to write that “It might be, as a screenwriter friend argues, that this trend is mainly a way of ratcheting up the stakes—that in the quest to have a visceral impact, actual viscera are the final frontier. Certainly television has become the place for forensic fetishism. But torture movies cut deeper than mere gory spectacle. Unlike the old seventies and eighties hack-’em-ups (or their jokey remakes, like Scream), in which masked maniacs punished nubile teens for promiscuity (the spurt of blood was equivalent to the money shot in porn), the victims here are neither interchangeable nor expendable. They range from decent people with recognizable human emotions to, well, Jesus.”  He also wonders the following: “Is there a masochistic as well as a sadistic component to the mayhem? In the same way that some women cut themselves (they say) to feel something, maybe some moviegoers need to identify with people being cut to feel something, too. Maybe. I can think of no other reason to endure Greg McLean’s extraordinarily cruel Wolf Creek.  Edelstein is basically asking why American audiences were embracing a type of horror that he found repugnant.  He seems to be wagging his finger at people who enjoy a violent horror movie.  For example, he writes the following: “Fear supplants empathy and makes us all potential torturers, doesn’t it? Post-9/11, we’ve engaged in a national debate about the morality of torture, fueled by horrifying pictures of manifestly decent men and women (some of them, anyway) enacting brutal scenarios of domination at Abu Ghraib. And a large segment of the population evidently has no problem with this.”  While I respected the decision to write the article when it first came out, and still do to this day, I always disagreed with his thesis and took issue with his decision that there’s a line that movies shouldn’t cross and that if they cross them, they belong in this particular category.  Let’s go deeper…

Some of the movies that Edelstein mentions as “torture porn” are, in no particular order, ‘Hostel’, ‘The Devil’s Rejects’, ‘Saw’, ‘Wolf Creek’, and even ‘The Passion of the Christ’.  Eli Roth’s film ‘Hostel’ was the first to get the term applied to it.  Other films not mentioned in the article but have subsequently been lumped in with it include ‘Hostel: Part II’, ‘Turistas’, ‘Captivity’, ‘I Know Who Killed Me’, ‘Untraceable’, ‘Martyrs’ ‘The Collector’, ‘The Hills Have Eyes’, ‘Rob Zombie’s Halloween’, ‘Antichrist’, and even ‘Grindhouse’.  This isn’t to mention the other films in the ‘Saw’ franchise or either ‘Human Centipede’ flick, as well as ‘A Serbian Film’, of course.  Some of those movies aren’t even horror movies.  The trend seems to be that besides the films that Edelstein talked about, any movie with a graphic scene of violence is libel to be labeled “torture porn”.  What I’m getting at is that these films may be too much for some, but to give the idea that they have no point except to arouse through violence is no good to me.  He also seems to be angry that people like these flicks, but that’s neither here nor there.  I don’t like that people like the ‘Transformers’ films, but to each their own.

One film no one calls “torture porn” is ‘Saving Private Ryan’, but is it not among the more graphic films of all time?  Of course the film has a point to its violence, but doesn’t many of the films mentioned above have a moral lesson or satirical point to its gore?  With the possible exception of ‘The Collector’, which I thought was just plain mean, ‘A Serbian Film’ and it’s predilection for brutal sexual violence wrapped in a failed attempt at social commentary, and crap like ‘Captivity’ and ‘I Know Who Killed Me’, just about every movie up there is made by a director with a method to their madness.  Plenty of them aren’t even graphic at all, they’ve just been ghettoized because it’s easy and convenient, and that’s my biggest issue.  ‘Wolf Creek’ is a beautifully made, if very violent and intense film, and to consider it “porn” and without worth (since who gives value to porn?) is wrong to me.  Edelstein wants to decide what is and what isn’t quality cinema, and I can’t abide by that.  Quality, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  Just like he would probably debate me if I were to call ‘Saving Private Ryan’ or ‘Misery’ (with it’s gruesome leg injury scene) the phrase he uses for things like ‘Wolf Creek’ or ‘Saw’, I feel the need to defend these movies that seem to lack a serious defense.  Sure, horror movie sites will do it, but that’s expected.  Consider this the highbrow defense of a cinema usually considered lowbrow.  We’ve had horror win Best Picture, and if you go back and watch ‘Silence of the Lambs’, it’s plenty violent.  I ask you this, though…is it “torture porn”?  I think not.

I realize this isn’t a really focused piece, but the aim of the game is to get everyone talking, and since it’s a time of the year (especially if you’re reading this on Halloween) when many of these films are getting watched, sometimes for the first time, it’s an apt point to bring this up.  I’ve mentioned in reviews that I don’t buy into the whole “torture porn” thing, but never really explained why.  Well, here’s why.  I have no problem with Edelstein having this opinion, but I wanted to make sure that the dissenting opinion is out there.  Perhaps it’s half a decade too late, but better late than never.  Finally, I’ll just say again that the phrase itself is problematic to me.  Porn is designed to stimulate, titillate, and get arousal out of you.  If these gory films aren’t trying to make a social or political point, they’re trying to see if you’re brave enough to not look away.  It’s the exact opposite of porn.  Anyhow, that’s semantics.  I turn it over to you all now though…tell me what you think.  Do you agree with me, or are some films actually “torture porn” to you?  Have at it!

-Discuss on the Forum!

About Joey Magidson

When he’s not obsessing over new Oscar predictions on a weekly basis, Joey is seeing between 200 and 300 movies a year. He views the best in order to properly analyze the awards race/season each year, but he also watches the worst for reasons he mostly sums up as "so you all don't have to". In his spare time, you can usually find him complaining about the Jets or the Mets. Still, he lives and dies by film. Joey's a voting member of the Internet Film Critics Association as well. Today the IFCA, tomorrow the world!

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