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kalikshama -> RE: 12 years a slave (2/16/2014 7:52:04 PM)
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Speaking of Hostel, we watched Hostel 2 together a few months ago. While we found some scenes titillating, we wouldn't describe it as porn.
Here's an article arguing that it's not "Torture Porn:"
Free Speech and the Concept of "Torture Porn": Why are Critics So Hostile to "Hostel II"?
...The Cases of "Hostel" and "Hostel II": Anti-Violence Movies Wrongly Labeled "Torture Porn"
For example, it's hardly controversial to convey, as "Saving Private Ryan" did, that it's tragic when soldiers die in a just war. But it is very controversial indeed to say that even the most civilized-seeming people may be lawless sadists underneath, and that this sadism isn't aberrant; it's just an intensification and distortion of other elements in our culture.
Yet that's exactly the message of "Hostel" and "Hostel II" - a message seemingly lost on those who label the movies torture porn. Unfortunately, when these films receive that label, the movies' commentary about the violent extremes that seemingly-civilized people never reaches part of its potential audience, for would-be viewers may boycott the films based on this reductive and unfair label.
Both "Hostel" and "Hostel II' comment on the stereotype of naïve American innocence and jaded European experience. Critics highlight this kind of commentary when it appears in classic literature, but tend to ignore it when they discuss the kind of movies they tend to consider beneath them, and only condescend to review. To illustrate the contrast between brash America and weary Europe, both movies depict small groups of young Americans traveling abroad (men in "Hostel"; women in "Hostel II"). Both groups have an ugly surprise waiting for them: They will be tricked into being the victims of a club, based in Eastern Europe, at which otherwise unremarkable but extremely wealthy men and women torture and kill for sport. Even if the Americans escape, their illusions of safety and privilege will be permanently shattered.
In both movies, there is no possible question about whom the audience is rooting for. "Hostel" has a hero, and "Hostel II" a heroine; both use their wits to escape. No one's sensitivities are spared with respect to the violence to which the lead characters' friends fall prey, and that they themselves either suffer or come close to suffering. In both movies, the lawless parts of the world, where anything can happen and any service is available for a price, are clearly condemned - with "Hostel II" making a very explicit reference to several real-world societies teetering on the edge of total anarchy.
The club members, too, are presented as repellent human beings, pumping themselves up for murder as they would for a sports game or hunting trip. They kill and torture out of weakness, not strength; they are despicable. (One man spews the misogyny he cannot voice in front of his wife, in front of a helpless victim who takes her place.) They are also addicts: In "Hostel," one satisfied club member comments of the charnel house where he's just murdered someone, "You could spend all your money in that place." In "Hostel II," two club members discuss their prior sex tourism, implying that they may well be child molesters in addition to being murderers.
Make no mistake: These are the dregs. And yet, with their athlete-like pumping-up rituals and locker-room bonding, and their hunter-like indifference to the fact that their "prey" has nothing remotely like a sporting chance, they can be uncomfortably familiar, too. And this is where the movie's message comes in: These aren't monsters, they are human being who have let their darkest tendencies go much too far, and who even revel in them shamelessly. Perhaps they are even encouraged by American culture to do so. Their relationship to violence is akin to the relationship of the Michael Douglas character, Gordon Gekko, in the film "Wall Street" to money: Greed is good, and no more explanation need be given.
It thus seems very questionable, then, to deem these movies morally inferior to, say, the Oscar-winning "Silence of the Lambs" -- which makes Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter so sympathetic that we laugh at his puns about "having a friend over for dinner" and cheer his escape. Again, apparently the tacit masterpiece exception applies - or perhaps the movie's lack of realism regarding Lecter's cannibalism saves it; that violence all occurs off-screen....
Read more: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20070716.html
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