There is a good, brief article in the March 2008 issue of Vanity Fair (no link) that discusses the cultural origins of the small, important group of horror film directors who debuted in the late 60s – early 70s; George Romero, Wes Crave, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter. It’s an adjunct to a superb IFC documentary on the same subject, The American Nightmare, that dates from 2000. I recall watching it again Halloween night, 2001, with a group of friends, waiting to see if any kids would come by for treats, but John Ashcroft had successfully scared parents away from trick-or-treating, based on no other foundation other than his “Christian” superstitions.
One comment in the article repeated something I’ve had in my mind, inchoately; the notion that this new horror genre of torture movies is pornography to the likes of Dick Cheney. I don’t doubt it. Bush and Cheney are clearly physical and moral cowards, obsessed with the shallow and flaccid American political idea of ‘toughness,’ and they bully as a matter of course in trying to prove their strength. Since what they are actually doing is ordering others to carry out their most inhumane wishes, this makes them both sadists and voyeurs, so it’s a natural that White House movie screenings would feature Saw and Hostel.
What interests me is why these movies draw enough audiences to turn profits and ensure sequels, while movies about the root cause of torture vanish without a trace. America tortures because it can, because it has the power to torture and nothing can stop that. And America tortures because peoples we have conquered don’t understand that we’ve conquered them, that we control them, that they are subject to our power. Now, why we conquered them . . . I have no idea, other than we conquered them to prove our power, and to intimidate. So it makes sense that, since they won’t do what we tell them, we have to torture them to make them understand who’s boss. But no one wants to see this depicted in film, yet they want to see torture. Is this a thrill? I tend to think that it is. After all, torture in popular entertainment is nothing new. The greatest interest and thrill in shows like “Survivor” and “Big Brother” is in the audience enjoying the emotional torture of the contestants. America generally sees people as disposable commodities, so it boils down to the projection of cultural power. We don’t need or even want people to like us, they just want us to like what we like.
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