Quotes Regarding the Horror Genre

"We will always probe nothingness and mystery with our imagination; the result will be among other things horror. The tide will rise with the black beauty and perfection of the hag/s characterization an dark wisdom, and the teachings of the vampire's hopeless immortality. As the perfect love story tickles our fancy, perfect horror taunts our fears. Both inspire to new heights and depths. And the human psyche is dimensionless." ~ Fiona

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." ~ H. P. Lovecraft

"This predilection for art that promises we will be frightened by it, shaken by it, at times repulsed by it seems to be as deeply imprinted in the human psyche as the counter-impulse toward daylight, rationality, scientific skepticism, truth and the "real." ... And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo--that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices." ~ Joyce Carol Oates

"Like sex, horror is seductive - enticing the reader to accept the forbidden; allowing a fascination with the carnal, the forbidden; titillating the mind as sex does both the mind and sense. Reading horror is an act of consensual masochism: you willingly submit to the pleasures of fear - scare me! Please?" ~ Paula Guran

"Can there be something tonic about pure active fear in these times of passive, confused oppression? It is nice to choose to be frightened, when one need not be." ~ Elizabeth Bowen

"The problem is that horror is not a genre, it is an emotion. Horror is not a kind of fiction. It's a progressive form of fiction that continually evolves to meet the fears and anxieties of its times." ~ Douglas E. Winter

Saw (2004): the first "torture porn" horror movie

The very first movie in the Saw franchise, released in 2004 has now been seen as the first in a line of ultra-violent, exploitative, explicit, sadistic horror movies coined with the name "Torture Porn" by David Edelstein in New York magazine (Edelstein 2006). After Saw came its multiple sequels and Eli Roth's Hostel and Hostel II amongst others that created a dominant sub-genre in Horror movies in the mid to late 2000's. Known as the "Splat pack" they owed a huge debt to James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the team behind the first Saw who showed with their film that film goers seemed to enjoy the use of sadism in horror movies (Keegan 2006). The Poster for the original Saw. It sets out the nature of the film clearly, that it is about the explicit and exploitative cutting off of limbs, which either disgusts the viewer or appeals to their sadistic instincts.

Saw is about two, seemingly innocent strangers who have been chained to pipes in a dirty bathroom made into a makeshift torture chamber, where in between them lies a dead body with a gun in its hand. They have been put there by the sadistic jigsaw serial killer who places his victims in traps that involve torturing themselves or others in order to survive and escape. Dr Lawrence Gordon, a surgeon with a family is given a choice; He has to kill Adam Stanheight, a photographer chained to the other end of the room by 6pm or otherwise his family will die and he will rot in the room. His family are tied to the bed in their home and threatened by an orderly from Gordon's hospital, who is part of Jigsaw's trap as he is forced to carry out Jigsaw's plan. By playing along with the game Gordon finds bullets to kill Adam using the gun from the body's hand and each find a hacksaw that could be used cut their chains off, except it is not sharp enough to cut through metal but it is for flesh and bone. This is where the title and severed limb in the poster come from. (Wan 2004).

This Prisoner and torture narrative is interwoven with a detective narrative as Detective Tapp and the police are trying to catch the jigsaw killer and he becomes obsessesed in the process after Jigsaw kills his partner in a trap in his lair. Flashbacks used in the film reveal the jigsaw killer chooses victims who lead immoral lives or waste them and through his traps he tries to make them value life by forcing them to use torture to escape. In past traps it is revealed a man who cut himself is put in a barbed wire maze and has to escape before the trap door closes. Only one survives, Amanda, a drug addict because she killed a paralysed victim to obtain a key from his intestines that would take a trap off that would forcibly separate her jaw. It turns out Gordon is placed there for committing adultury although he does not go through with it. Saw essentially implicates all these characters into an intricate trap and forces them to use violence to escape. (Wan 2004).

This is another poster for Saw, which features the tag line "How much blood would you shed to stay alive?", which is the central question of the film as people are made to torture to live. This a key theme of the torture genre as ordinary people are given the means of torture.

The term "Torture porn", which is the genre that Saw has been put into, combines two representations of the body through sex and violence that exposes the privacy of these bodily acts for viewing (Tziallas 2010). It lets people watch explicit, exploitative acts on the body that people should not be allowed to see and this breaks down the boundary between the private and public and lets you know bluntly what is going underneath the surface of society and human nature. Saw is the first film that does not rely on feeding your imagination of the unknown neither does it use suspense or suprise to shock you, it lets you know you are going to see pain and violence and forces you to watch it. It scares by showing violent acts like cutting a foot of with a saw instead of the mystery of where the killer is or what he or she will do next.

It is the fear of the known that this genre plays on and it is argued that the use of surveillance adds the fear because it breaks down privacy and is a source of institutional power (ibid.). This genre is very much linked to 9/11 and the use of surveillance to catch terrorists that could be anybody meaning everybody is being watched (ibid.). In Saw Gordon and Adam are being watched by a camera viewing the torturous proceedings and Jigsaw's lair that Tapp discovers is full of surveillance equipment (Wan 2004). In addition the use of flashbacks asks the viewer to connect the dots to see what happens and so the intricate narrative is key aspect of these films and makes sense of the film's other tagline: "Every Puzzle has its pieces."

Part of the appeal then is not just the invasive nature of the violence but also the idea that they know where the violence is coming from and how it is applied, reducing its uncertainty. But as Wes Craven argued the popularity of the genre came out of the fact Americans were living in a "Horror Show" due to the increased fears of average americans being subject to violence (Gordon 2006). It is just reflective of what is going on in the world and that they are subversive of the immoral Iraq war politics of the Bush Administration as Eli Roth, director of Hostel argues (Keegan 2006;McLintock 2006, 34). This makes torture porn clever rather than mindless and suggests these films are undeserving of this title.

References

Edelstein, David. 2006. Now Playing at your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn. Why has America gone nuts for blood, guts and sadism. New York Magazine, 28 January. Retrieved from nymag.com.

Gordon, Devin. 2006. "Horror Show." Newsweek, 3 April, 60-62. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier

Keegan, Rebecca Winters. 2006. "The Splat Pack." Time, 30 October, 66-70. Retrieved from Middle Search Plus

McLintock, Pamela. 2006. "Blood Brothers." Variety, 25-31 December, 1-2. Retrieved from the Film and Television Literature Index

Tziallas, Evangelas. 2010. Torture Porn and Surveillance Culture. Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 52. http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/evangelosTorturePorn/text.html.

Wan, James. 2004. Saw. DVD. Los Angeles, CA: Lionsgate Films.

Rotten Tomato Reviews of Saw Movies nad Paranormal Activity

For anyone who doesn't know... Rotten tomatoes is a site that compiles all critics reviews of film by stars 1-10. Anything above 6 is considered Ok or Fresh. Anything below is considered Rotten. Its bassicaly like school grades 50's and below are F's. Then they compile what percent of critics called it fresh to see what the consensus is. Below are a bunch of %'s i found.

Saw: 48: Rotten

Saw 2: 35: rotten

Saw 3:25 rotten

Saw 4 : 40 rotten

Saw 5: 13 rotten Consensus: If its plot were as interesting as its torture devices, or its violence less painful than its performances, perhaps Saw V might not feel like it was running on fumes.

Saw 6: 40 rotten

Saw 7: 13 rotten

These movies are clearly awful according to popular critics. So why do people love them?

Paranormal activity: 82: Using its low-budget effects and mockumentary method to great result, Paranormal Activity turns a simple haunted house story into 90 minutes of relentless suspense.

Paranormal activity 2: 60% : Paranormal Activity 2 doesn't cover any new ground, but its premise is still scary -- and in some respects, it's a better film than the original.

So what's this mean? Critics dont like gore? Gore is a cop out from plot? Who knows.

Purpose of choice of Films

These two films exemplify the two spectrums of modern horror. Classic horror films relied on build of suspense, quality writing and great directing (ex. Hitchcock).

Today, it can take much less money or much less quality producers or directors involved. The growth of special effects, especially in regards to gore, has made it a lot easier to please many horror movie goers with the hassle of a good script or any classic facets of good film. Saw is the epitome of this type of horror film. It relies almost all on it's violence and over the top gore in order to scare and attract film goes. We have chosen this movie as opposed to other gorey films due to its wide success and longevity in sequels.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Paranormal Activity which relies much heavier on the classic tools of suspense, buildup and crescendos for scares. It is much more similar to a classic horror film than to most that have come out over the past couple years. It was extremely low budget and highly successful in the box office and critically.

Degredation of women and the genre

Objectification of women and the degration of the genre has been going on for 20 or so years. On google, this is the link I found relating to that. I'm sure more scholarly sources can be found on the topic. Maybe this is why critical reception has gone down so much

Questions we're exploring

These are all questions we hope to gain an understanding of through our research and eventual class discussion of our blog.

1. What does society deem scary? Why or why not?

2. Has this changed over the years? How so?

-Possibly influenced by special effects, make-up, costuming, ect?

3. Horror movie plot lines are continually recycled, yet audiences continue to react to scary movies. Has society become desensitized to such movies? Why or why not?

4. What is it about fear that is so entertaining? The adrenaline rush? The shock factor? The fact that seeing movies is one of the only activities that can create this feeling?

Just some beginning questions to ponder as we continue our research.

Film Threat Review - Paranormal Activity

The author challenges "if you think modern horror has nothing more to offer, try sitting through 'Paranormal Activity' and then thank the filmmakers for changing your mind." The author agrees that the failure of the makers of the movie to admit whether what the audience sees is fiction or not truly works for Paranormal Activity. He explains that whenever any film is compared to the famed Blair Witch Project there is a "collective groan," however, Paranormal Activity was successful in making this mock documentary style appeal to the masses.

http://www.filmthreat.com/reviews/10456/