On Torture Porn

It's a great casual dismissal for really gory movies you don't like. Polite company prefaces it with "just", as in "Saw 4 was just torture porn." It's an excuse for cinematic pearl-clutching, as in "have we reached a new low in cinema with this so-called 'torture porn' genre?" At the end of the day, I think it's at best an unnecessary phrase, and at worst a way to delegitimize the use of violence in art.

Apart from dictionary definitions of pornography (which don't strictly apply because they tend to hinge on obscenity), "porn" tends to get used to describe entertainment in which one particular feature gets all the attention - "food porn" for lavish cooking shows, "gun porn" for pulp action novels where weapon loadouts are described more lavishly than the women who provide sexual diversion between missions, "house porn" for home decoration shows. So "torture porn" is, then, a horror movie in which artistic expression, narrative, character development, etc., all take a back seat to explicit depictions of violence and suffering.

In each instance, it's an indication that any artistic merit is secondary to delivery of the particular material of interest. Nobody cares about the cooking technique, they just want to see gorgeously prepared dishes. Nobody asks what the elite commandos do in their spare time, or how they come to terms with their jobs dealing death, they just want to read detailed descriptions of the latest warfighting technology. Porn of whatever stripe puts the satisfaction of the base desire to which it caters ahead of aesthetics or artistic expression.

My objection to the term "torture porn" lies in the effect that this commonly-accepted definition has on how seriously we take horror films (and there's also the distinction between "horror movies" and "thrillers", but that's another post). It delegitimizes horror film as art, and does so by impugning the audience for these films and the intent of the filmmakers.

Don't get me wrong, there are definitely some shitty movies out there that are nothing more than thinly connected scenes of violence and suffering, but are those torture porn, or just badly made horror movies? We don't call dumb comedies "laughter porn", we just call them "dumb comedies." We don't call movies on the Hallmark Channel "traditional values porn", but that's pretty much what they are. And yes, these movies are dumb, cheap, gross, and hollow. That makes them bad movies, not torture porn.

So if calling a certain variety of bad horror movie "torture porn" is unnecessary, then what's happening when a good horror movie gets called "just/nothing more than/another example of" torture porn? I think three things are happening: Function is ignored in favor of form, the audience is underestimated, and the filmmaker's intent is assumed.

We have a weird relationship with violence in America. We abhor it and still can't look away. So as much as we frown on violence, it's one of the first things about film that we notice (well, that and sex, but I don't want to make this more complicated than it already is). Once people start talking about the violence in a film, that's all they can talk about. So anything else after that goes unnoticed, and the entire conversation becomes about violence, so that's all the film is, is the violence. Does the violence serve a function? Who cares? It's violence.

Case in point: Hostel is a very violent movie, and is usually one of the first ones to come up in any discussion of torture porn. I'd argue that Hostel's level of violence is necessary to impress upon the audience exactly how bad Josh & Paxton's situation really is - it's a sharp contrast to the equally vivid hedonism of the first act. It's also a reconsideration of kids on spring break as a commodity - Josh & Paxton are just as much objects for another's pleasure as the girls they're with at the start. Nobody asks why the violence is there, though - they just assume that it's gratuitous. Why does that assumption get made?

Well, that's where audience and intent come in. Part of being an enthusiast of horror film is being an enthusiast of scary things, and that's not always easy to articulate without looking creepy. So it's easy to assume that most fans of horror films are creepy, or are fans for creepy reasons. And some fans (or subsets of fandom) make that easy to assume. To me, these are the people who review horror films in terms of gore, tits, quality of "kills", as if everything else is secondary. If horror films are made for horror audiences, and horror audiences just want gore, then horror films are just excuses for gore. (Not all horror films are violent or gory, and some of the most violent and gory films aren't horror, but again, different post.) If it's a violent horror movie, then it's torture porn. It's product meant to fill a demand, rather than art.

The idea that horror film is just product to fill a demand also delegitimizes director's intent. If it's just product, then artistic intent isn't possible. Calling it "torture porn" prevents any consideration of artistic merit. If the audience wants torture porn (because they're lowbrow and creepy), then what the director is doing is by definition just crass service of that demand. The more a director becomes associates with a particular type of film, the easier it becomes to preemptively dismiss anything else that director does.

Don't get me wrong - there are dumb, cheap, gross, exploitative horror films. There are fans of those films who have very low expectations. I'm not saying that there's no such thing as torture porn or that all horror films are art. But giving bad horror films their own culturally loaded designation muddies the waters. Hostel is worth consideration. Saw is worth consideration. Intense depiction of suffering and pain can be artistically useful. In the words of Rob Zombie (of all people), "art isn't safe." Nor should it be, as easy and comfortable as it might be to pretend otherwise.