Originally Posted by Giganticface
The term torture porn is originally a derogatory term used to backhandedly classify movies centered on torture, that appear to have no merit other than to provide titillation for people who find "people getting tortured" titillating. The first two Guinea Pig films are valid examples, but Hostel is the film considered to have birthed the genre. This is a mistake since the film is not really a torture porn film, and certainly wouldn't have been the first if it were one. The Saw franchise is also mistakenly considered to be originators of the subgenre, mostly starting with Saw II. Both examples are poor because the scenes containing torture, although debatably exploitative, are important elements of a larger storyline.
I've always thought it's a stupid term, and one I refuse to use. My biggest beef is that pornography is real, in the sense that people are really having sex. "Torture porn" is fake. Everyone is acting. No one is getting tortured for real. But people still draw the parallel between getting excited about people having sex, and the same for people "getting tortured." It implies that those who might enjoy a film like Guinea Pig ought to feel some shame. By extension and misuse, it says the same about people who enjoy a Hostel or Saw movie.
Another major issue I have with the term is that it's misleading, and many people think it refers to films containing liberal amounts of torture and sex. If that were actually true of the films it's used to describe, it wouldn't be such a bad term. However, that's not the case, and this ends up grossly misrepresenting these films and the subgenre.
I for one find a bit of enjoyment in some true torture porn films, but admittedly they are pure spectacle and are hard to take seriously because they have no story. It's merely interesting for the special effects, or the occasional inducing of squeamishness. Examples include Guinea Pig (1, 2, and American), Grotesque, The Bunny Game and August Underground. All those films are actually pretty terrible.
On the other hand, I found the concept in Hostel very horrifying when I first saw it, and wondered if that type of killing business could be real. It's not the greatest film, but has some other fun stuff in it, like the gangs of children who extort candy from passers by, and feeds our fear of being stranded in a war-turn country full of desperate people. Hostel 2 was maybe even more interesting with the story that followed the two men who were customers of the killing service, one of which struggles with being conflicted. These films are not meritless torture spectacles, and whether you like them or not, they employ actual storytelling.
I also admit I like the Saw franchise, but those films can be a bit uneven, are primarily crime thrillers, resemble a soap opera in the way each film continues from the last, and are nearly satirical in the way each film formulaically pulls a twist at the end. Still, for me, pretty fun, and certainly not just because of all that mindless torture.
The popularity of those two franchises spawned a wave of copycats, most of which were cheap and failed to tell a compelling story. In this sense, Saw and Hostel did in fact create a subgenre. This caused the term torture porn to become commonplace, and even more incorrectly applied, as reviewers started classifying films like The Devil's Rejects, Wolf Creek and Inside by the term. I even heard one podcast (which I enjoy and respect) classify The Descent that way. Baffling.
So anyway, I hate the term. When I defined the genres for Screambox I refused to use it, even though it was suggested by staff. I find it misleading, lazy and harmful to our genre and I just wish it would go away.
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