OK, so I’m researching for a paper on torture films for a call for papers. For now, I’ll post some of my considerations on torture. First of all, however, I’m working on torture films and so will deal with the representation of torture in films as an aesthetic practice rather than actual torture such as Abu Ghraib.
I’m interested in films such as the Hostel series, the Saw series, The Devil’s Rejects, The Passion of the Christ, Wolf Creek and similar instances where the torture becomes so prolonged that it turns into a spectacle rather than merely a narrative device to set the scene for the films. What I’m primarily interested in, is the need for such a spectacle, and how this spectacle ties into cultural concerns about torture.
The primary difference between earlier horror films – even gruesome ones such as Last House on the Left – and the new cycle of torture films is the fact that the camera emphasizes the violence and so it becomes torture. It never pans away, leaving us to imagine what happens, nor does it contextualize the violence or the need for it by providing deep, complex characterization. It simply happens almost without reason, yet confronts us to some extent with the desire to see the scenes.
While earlier types of horror films were clearly focalized through the victims and only switched focalization in order to increase suspense, the case is different in the torture films where the focalization is blurred and we as spectators are placed somewhere between the victim and the torturer. When the point for the seeing the film is to see these torture scenes (certainly they are not seen for their inventive narratives or psychologically complex characters), we as spectators become complicit to some extent to the violence occurring on screen. The spectator identification is blurred by this dual focalization and we are sutured into the violence and not just subjected to it.
This brings me on to the transgressive nature of these films, as they work with transgression in a different way than earlier horror films. First of all, the torture films seem transgressive in the way they tantalize us with showing something which is labelled as illegal (although they are of course completely legal, being in fact rather mainstream films). The transgression of torture films is first underlined by the emphasis on reality – in the case of Wolf Creek by being based on a true story – and realistic torture scenes.
However, due to the lack of characterization the films end up being very cinematic in their portrayal of their stories. As spectators we end up feeling that we are seeing a film rather than engrossing us completely in the narrative. The transgression is thus incorporated into cinema culture and so loses some of its transgressive nature – it becomes commodified, but it also becomes safe and harmless, dissolved into a pure spectacle for entertainment which always remains clearly within the boundaries of cinematic form.
This is not to distance myself from these films – I enjoy seeing them – but simply to point out that for all their violence, blood and guts, and explicit torture scenes they are incredibly conservative at heart. They may seem to offend, but as this offense only occurs clearly within the realm of cinema it never achieves a subversive potential.