Comments | elirothfans: I Love the Smell of Ranting in the Morning

malakijr in elirothfans

I Love the Smell of Ranting in the Morning

Aug 17, 2007 15:11

I write a column! It's called "Long Winded" (because, after all, I believe in truth in advertising) and the inaugural column is my rant about Eli Roth and the rest of the "Splat Pack" and how their movies are being labeled "torture porn."

/shameless plug

Anyway, I wanted to post the column here because I'm an egotistical attention whore so you ( Read more... )

Comments 5

rabidgod August 17 2007, 19:38:21 UTC

A+

malakijr August 17 2007, 19:42:27 UTC

YAY

dr_christine August 17 2007, 19:44:21 UTC

you can be an egotistical attention whore whenever you want, bb. as long as you're posting shit like this in the process. :]

again, great article. i'm going to have to keep an eye out for your stuff on that site.

nfctdwthlupinus August 17 2007, 20:32:28 UTC

Bravo! I feel like ducking and running for cover when I let you in on a bit of a secret: I am involved with marketing in the entertainment industry and the phrase "torture porn" was more than likely coined by someone in marketing to draw attention to their movie. I believe that the use of "porn" doesn't actually refer to the sexual content, but rather that it uses the other meaning of "pornographic", which is gratuitous (similar to how people complained Passion of the Christ's flogging scene was pornographic). I believe that other media and certain anti-horror demonstrators have taken the phrase out of context and it's gotten way out of line; thus, making "torture porn" not mean what it was originally meant to mean.

Is the torture pornographic as in gratuitous? Sometimes. However, Roth himself has pointed out that the torture in Hostel is never shown, that only the results afterwards are shown and the audience merely THINKS it's seeing the torture when in fact we are not. And he's RIGHT. You never truly SEE anything of that ( ... )

malakijr August 17 2007, 21:37:30 UTC

Thanks for the kind words! I would have loved to hear the lecture you gave! I don't think people try to discuss this intelligently enough, I think we end up lobbing insults at each other and it doesn't resolve anything or bring us any closer to understanding. It kind of makes me sad. It's a missed opportunity in my eyes because the thing I always loved most about college was getting into discussions in class...I learned more from those than I ever did from lectures, but once I graduated I think I learned that the outside world doesn't want to discuss and understand, they want to label things and be done with it ( ... )