A Feature on Eli Roth, Torture Porn, and Boobs!
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It's pretty obvious that Deadline Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke doesn't much care for Eli Roth or his work. Is he just a misunderstood genius fighting against a system that rewards creative drought, or is he just a dense and twisted 'tard? Well, since Nikki prefaces Eli's name with "disgusting" every time she writes about him, we know exactly where she stands, and these days I'd tend to agree, though I don't hold it against the guy.If he wants to write and direct really sick movies and has the wherewithal to get them made, I say give him an award..right after I clean the puke off my shoes.
That doesn't mean I'll go out of my way to see his films, at least of the torture porn variety, but it also doesn't mean I wouldn't have dinner with the guy, work with him, or appreciate his convictions for doing the kinds of movies he wants to do.
With that said, I'm with Nikki and Lisa Schwartzbaum on whether or not Roth's films are "torture porn" and if that term is anything other than a made up epithat used to degrade films people don't like and don't understand.
Quickly so you understand what I'm talking about, Lisa is a film critic for Entertainment Weekly. She wrote a story that dissed Roth, and then Roth wrote post on his MySpace blog dissing Lisa for dissing him, and he also in a general way attacked the people who attack torture porn films. Nikki quoted the two in a post called "More Eli Roth Whining About Anti-Torture Porn Media; Disses EW Female Film Critic" two days ago. I'm not sure what Lisa being female has to do with anything, but on to the meat of this argument.
And did anyone read that absurd article by Lisa Schwartzbaum in Entertainment Weekly, about how she'd never watch a "Torture Porn" film? I think it's time for her to hang up her critic's pen. I mean, seriously, I hate to break it to you Lisa, but there is no such thing as "torture porn." It's a made up term, made up by people who don't understand these movies, who are afraid to even watch them, and who feel some bizarre sense of moral obligation to warn the public about them, despite the fact they don't watch them and never would.
This is probably the only point where Eli Roth and I disagree on things - torture porn is a perfectly apt term, perhaps not for an entire genre, but certainly for both Hostel and probably Hostel II. I've not seen the sequel, but if it was anything like the first then I'm not really interested. I look at it this way, what's the difference between horror and torture porn? In my opinion it would be horror taken to an explicit level without real purpose other than taking it to an explicit level.
To understand what I mean, think of the difference between a sex scene in a movie, and porn. In the sex scene you'd see breasts, somebodies bare ass, two people going through the motions you'd go through while actually having sex. But you wouldn't see explicit shots like the womans vagina spread open enough that you could pause the movie and use what you see on the screen for a college biology class. That's pretty obvious, porn is the movie sex scene taken to an explicit level just for the sake of doing that.
Same deal with torture porn, and in that context, not only does the term have real meaning, I think it's actually approaching a clinical description of the kind of movie that Roth likes to make.
And this is where I diverge from Nikki and Lisa - there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If he wants to make it, and some people want to go see it, that's great. That's the freedom of expression and capitalism doing precisely what they were meant to do. I don't think less of Roth or the people that go to see those films just because I don't like the content.
Sometimes I think Nikki can be a little bit too puritan when it comes to films. She knows the business like nobody I've read, is a fine writer, but doesn't seem to meld with the current generation of entertainment quite as well as I do or people my age do.
There was an incident a few weeks ago where some big-name blogger sent an email to a director asking if the director could slip him some nude shots of an actress in the directors new film, hush hush and under the table. These would be frames from the film that get cut and never used. Nikki nearly went into an epileptic seizure when it was forwarded to her (if the request was unprofessional, it was no more so than forwarding private correspondence to third parties) and she ranted at length about how disgusting she thought it was.
It's not something I would ever do, but it's not exactly some great sin against the world unless you happen to have problems with sex and nudity in a way that would make you thorough drag at a rockin party. "Oh my god, that skirt doesn't come down to the ankles! SINNER! SINNER!!!"
Please. If you're going to demand that bloggers of all people act more professionally, then could we at least grow up a little about sexuality? Must we continue living in the 15th century where boobies are a taboo and lust outside the bedroom is to be looked down upon?
I'm not associating these two things, but it does make sense in a way. I didn't like Hostel because I didn't like Hostel, not because I have some anti-torture agenda. Perhaps Roth's way of doing things are just one generation too new for Nikki to stomach.
Either way, I say bring on the gore and boobies. The market will decide what is acceptable and what isn't, not pundits like us.
September 29, 2012 6:52 PM | Reply