When horror becomes nothing more than torture porn
I’m going to regret that title. I know, full-well, I will be inundated with spam — simply because of the word “porn”. But what better way to describe the glut of horror films and books that have turned the tides of my (our) favorite genre? But what is “torture porn”? If you have to ask, you probably don’t want to know.
Watching Megan Fox act is torture enough!
But “torture porn” has nothing to do with pornography. Oh sure there will be sex scenes and, generally speaking, the first girl to show her breasts flopping out of a wonderful Victoria’s Secret bra will most likely be the first to have her life’s candle blown out. But as a rule the two are not mutually inclusive (of course we all know rules are meant to be broken.)
Let me digress just a bit (because I LOVE a good digression). The other night I started reading another book from one of my favorite horror writers, Ed Lee. The book is The Teratologist and is the first book in a long, long time that I couldn’t finish. Sometimes torture just goes too far and the emotional flood associated with it hurts too deeply.
Ed Lee is good at that … pushing boundaries many aren’t willing to even venture near. And Ed Lee is, by no stretch of the imagination, a one trick pony. He doesn’t need to use torture to try to elicit emotion. He can scare you without tying someone to a chair.
Torture Porn is a name I came up with to describe the films and novels that simply rely on torture (in it’s many, horrendous incarnations) to elicit fear. It’s not about fright, it’s about how far a man with a bat or a pair of pliers can go to hurt another human.
But so many have taken up the horror mantel with a torture twist and feel it’s the only path to fear. Why is this? Unfortunately the answer is simple:
We’ve become desensitized. And soon we’ll become desensitized to torture. And where does that leave us?
I don’t want to know.
I’m not completely innocent. In fact, I have an upcoming book (yet untitled) that will skirt around the issue. My plan is to avoid using torture as a tool, but instead use it as a background threat to both the characters and the readers. Make everything think at any moment it could take that dark dive, but only allowing it to gently touch the water with a hint of flesh — a back and forth tug of war with the senses.
But some writers of fiction and directors of horror seem to think the only way they can draw in an audience is to see just how far they can push the boundaries. How creative can we get in our torture? How much can the body take before it breaks?
Some might think this started with the Saw franchise, but I would argue that it actually started with that Stephen King great “Misery”. That film brilliantly illustrated what torture can do to both the human psyche and the viewer. It was hard to watch. But compared to today’s fare — it was a Princesses romp through a wonderful world of Disney made of marshmallows and milk chocolate. Now we have Train, Saw, Hostel, Wolf Creek, and a string of Asian torture films that would make the average film-goer wretch in their popcorn.
In many ways this takes me to a place I don’t want to to — to a place where horror has a bad name, where there is no “Cheers” for the horror fan. When horror becomes nothing more than torture porn, we’ve lost. Not only would that herald in a new dawn for the human race (and it’s newborn lack of sensitivity), it means the purveyors of horror have finally run out of ideas.
I know a lot of outstanding writers and creators of horror. We all have a great deal of creativity left in the well and I hope the reading public hasn’t assumed we’ve all joined the Hollywood horror couture and let our souls bleed nothing but torture onto paper. We’re more and better than that.
To me, horror is about the unknown and the remaking of the human condition, not about breaking the spirit of humanity through nothing more than pain. The shadows and dark spots of life hold much untapped horror and I plan to dig as deeply into them as I possibly can.
The scene below is from Hostel 2. It’s bad enough that it’s almost funny and illustrates exactly my point.
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There is a fantastic film critic on the BBC named Mark Kermode. Look for his podcast. I haven’t had time to listen to it in ages, but he’s known for his rants. He also did his PhD thesis on The Omen, so he’s kind of an expert on horror films. He has the same opinion about torture porn. It makes me squeamish just thinking about these movies. I definitely couldn’t read a book like that. That’s just sick.
I heard a quote once that went something like this:
The fear of torture is much more effective than torture itself.
I hate horror involving torture or gore just for the sake of torture and gore. There’s no rhyme or reason. It’s just how much blood and viscera can we splash around to gross people out? How much can we torture someone to gross people out?
For me, the most horrifying movies and books never show blood at all. They never torture anyone. They just get into your mind and twist it like crazy. They take your secret fears and play with them until you want to cry. Those are the books that haunt you. For me, that’s what true horror is.
Good stuff, Jack. Honestly, it was the preponderance of “torture porn” that by-and-large made me lose interest in the horror genre quite some time ago, without many exceptions.
This is something that has been bothering me for a long time. I was just in a discussion on another site about writers like Shirley Jackson who wrote the most exquisite horror in which the horror is all about the perversity of human nature. As a writer I’ve gotten some outraged emails and reviews from people who want to know how I DARE to call a couple of my stories “horror” — there is no blood, guts, or torture in them (well, okay, one girl cuts up her father and puts him in a meat locker but she was really upset!) For me good horror isn’t stomach-turning, it’s mind-numbing.
Thank goodness I am not alone. I don’t believe in most of those torture situations – and second, it just makes me go “eww” and turn away. I’ve been in situations where I saw real misery and torture and it isn’t much fun and certainly isn’t entertaining. I am far more scared of the mind twist. I just read a book that scared me so bad I couldn’t sleep – because you could never tell if the protagonist was asleep or awake when things were happening. No torture or guts flying around, but psych – OMG – psyched me out.