One Last Hostel-ity
Just thought some of you might like to hear the NPR piece on Hostel II in which I participated.
Here it is.
May 19, 2024
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
You were a horror fan until you saw Wolf Creek and that changed everything?
I think the giveaway was the bit at the end about footage of battlefield deaths being posted on the Internet set to music. Kids used to say that they found horror movies amusing because they were so fake, but now that they’re faced with no fakery they still think it’s funny.
So either these folks can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality, or they think that watching someone die horribly–whether in a movie or in real life–is just as hilarious as watching someone get whacked in the nuts on AMERICA’S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS.
Sounds like we’ve raised a bumper crop of sociopaths.
I also want to point out that the writer of the article got the title of the Pasolini film wrong.
I don’t know what’s more depressing. The fact that I read the article saw the Salo spelling error and instantly knew jeffmcm would point it out – or that jeffmcm pointed out the bleeding obvious yet again. listening to Roth being interviewed on NPR is like hearing a podcast about a Joe Blasco makeup lesson from a young fangoria reader to his three friends.
I pointed out the bleeding obvious because it’s a sign that the writer wasn’t familiar with the topic, and was too lazy to do any fact-checking. Fortunately the article just rehashes the same-old so it doesn’t really do any harm.
“”I don’t think there’s any question that it leads to a certain coarsening of culture,” Poland says. “The question is where that ultimately leads in the spiritual lives … of people watching it. And that’s something we do have to keep our eyes on as adults, I think.””
Spiritual life?
I finally see what Jeff Wells means by the name “Rabbi Dave.”
David — every religious mythology in the world has scenes of torture, just so ya know. It’s to a greater point, yes, but so is the torture in Hostel II, though you’ll never admit it.
P.S. I still like and respect you, Dave. But in suggesting that a not-particularly-unprecedented horror movie represents a coarsening of the culture, you’re way, waaaay wrong.
And using the kind of terminology previously reserved for televangelists and Fox News. Relax. As the ads say, it’s just a movie, and not even a high-grossing one.
Funny, Luke… you have given a large part of your life to “just movies.” Do you place so little value on your time?
Really.
Arguing “so what” is always so easy and so generous to people who will happily coarsen the culture to make a buck or pad their egos. Throwing around “televangelists” and “Fox News” is a cheap insult and suggests that no one on the left actually believes in morality. And that, my friend, is bullshit. You are too smart not to be able to disagree without reducing the argument to such easy spitballs.
In any case, I’ll keep telling my nephew that using the word “bitch” as just another variation on “woman” is not acceptable and you just keep telling people around you that it doesn’t matter because it’s just a word. (My nephew isn’t even that popular!)
Finally, I don’t think of our collective spiritual life as especially religiously based. Religion has been the motive behind many atrocities far beyond any form of art. And you shouldn’t assume my degree of religiosity. The reason Wells calls me Rabbi Dave is because he has no morality other than what serves him and because he is a lazy anti-Semite. (He only hates when its convenient… but hate he does… religion, race, sex, weight, etc) But I am not much of a participant in organized religion after having studied my own religion and others for decades.
I respect you too, Luke. But I dare say that your response to all this is intellectual and not at all emotional. And that’s fine for you. You see this as a professional. But sometimes, a movie is a bit more than a simple professional engagement for me. And guess what… I get to make that call… not you and not anyone else.
And telling me to relax… well, besides the fact that it’s patronizing and obnoxious, it shows a lack of imagination about why anyone else might have an issue. And that is unfortunate.
are you people not paying attention??
if i may be so bold as to defend david poland and what he’s trying to get across with his outspoken critisicm of the scene in h2, which i totally agree with, and is that it’s not the depiction of torture or violence he’s against per se, it’s the CONTEXT in which it’s used, in a totally superfulous, mysogonist, gratuitous, exploitive and titilating manner, with no cinatic purpose other than to show a naked woman being tortured to death by a naked women, which the nitwit of a director is trying to pass off as somehow socially relevent, or even more laughable, as a feminist parable (eli roth reminds me of the stip club owner who tries to convince young women that strip clubs are empowering to women, not exploitive). what part of this don’t you guys get, and how can you possibly defend it? just to be awkward and argumentative? of course every religion has scenes of torture, but it’s in some sort of context, historical or otherwise, not created by a self-deluded hack simply to shock and mass-marketed to primarily young men who are already emmersed in an increasingly warped culture of debasement and exploitation of women and mindless violence. LYT, what makes you so sure this new low of debasement on film does not represent or even perhaps reflect a coursening of culture? what makes you the grand poobah of the cultural psyche? sorry but i had to get that off my chest, you guys are pissing me off.
ps, can’t be bothered checking my spelling when i’m riled up
Hey, Dave, since we’re posting links:
http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/blog/post/676156/The_Loop_One_on_One_with_Eli_Roth.html
Check out the interview about 4:40 in. Fun stuff!
Oh, jeez, Salo. You know, I spent years trying to avoid that film. Seriously: Movies in which people dine on excrement are usually not high on my must-see list. (Insert joke about Hostel 2 here.) But I
Er, that should read, the jury ruled NOT Guilty on obscenity charges.
Thank you, Drew… that was really funny… and not just the talking points game against me… the whole thing was great.
I have to say, that was an unexpectedly strong piece of interviewing on G4. There were some hard questions. And Roth avoided them all as best he could. Excellent.
P.S. I should point out that the studio would not confirm that there were ANY changes from the cut I saw to the final cut released into theaters. That’s why I didn’t attend another screening, which I would have felt obliged to do had the studio said that there had been any significant changes.
There are other facts that would be embarrassing to Roth and others in light of this G4 performance, but it’s too inside. Kicking Roth when he’s down is not my interest here. It’s the movie, not the man.
And kudos to you for taking up the piracy issue, Drew. I guess we won’t be reading any more script reviews on AICN. Congrats.
Just saw Roth’s interview on Conan O’Brien. Dressed in a suit, he noted that he wanted to “class it up” a bit, break the mold of directors going on talk shows with big ol’ beards and “looking like fat slobs.” I don’t know how many directors I’ve seen making the talk show rounds besides Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino, but as annoying as Smith can be, he’s at least got some wit and makes for a good interview. Being smug may make Roth the Fonz of Iceland (I’m sure) but it certainly doesn’t warrant him a repeat appearance on Conan.
BTW, am I the only one who thinks less of a director who craves the spotlight so badly that he does a bit on the talk show circuit? The only one I’ve seen who didn’t seem like an attention whore was Guillermo del Toro on Jimmy Kimmel, but then he’s actually directed more than a couple of films, many of them terrific, and so if anyone deserved to come across as a prick in an interview, it was him. Just wondering.
A couple of things. maybe a bit more than a couple:
To Leahnz:
The contest into which any scene of violence in used in Hostel 2, Heather Matarazzo hanging upside down scene included, is directly connected to the subtext of the movie, which is not actually really a subtext since it’s pretty much in clear view and it’s spoke out in dialogues: “It’s just a business” says one of the organization leaders to Roger Bart, before
Beth is allowed to proceed with…well…you know by now.
To Poland:
Your job, a critic job, is not to become some sort of community moral guardian. It’s actually far from it. I’ll say more: reviews you, or any critic, write in which you’re blinded by moral outrage, are useless, because they don’t tell me about the movie you’re supposed to write about, but they just tell me about you. The movie ceases to exist, or it’s distorted by the bars of moralism. Mind you, not morality. Moralism.
Hoju: I do believe Roth comes across as a frat boy/salesman, in interviews. But it’s because it seems to me, he wants to reprise the role of old school low budget horror tycoon, from the 60s.
The guy did cooperate with Troma, if I remember correctly, in a couple of occasions. It might be a bit of that Lloyd Kaufman’s showman attitude that comes out (Lloyd being the better showman).
Sam… when did I sign off on you telling me what my job is?
I’ve spent a long time covering the business as a journalist and the artistry as a critic and loving movies as a pure amateur, evolving into whatever freaky hybrid I am professionally. I’m not saying that moral outrage belongs in your average movie review in the New York Times… though it’s there in many more reviews than I would ever unsheath it for. But at core, your argument is kind of a wacky concept. The job is to judge the work of others, to offer context and perspective, but not morally? That is the job? Or just when you disagree? (And as smart ass as that question is, I am sincere in asking.)
And while you are free to disregard my occasional moral outrage when discussing a movie (maybe twice a year… much more about the industry and coverage of it), I’m pretty sure you could figure out Hostel 2 from what I wrote. Ironically, I never thought of it as a review when I wrote about Hostel 2 even if I can’t argue that the piece didn’t have many of the features of a review.
I appreciate your seperation of morality and moralism, but that is all in the perspective you bring to it, no?
I am sputtering .. because of anger .. and yet I realize that will only make me come off more stupid. But thank goodness in here .. I was able to understand what Poland says .. so many of you reference things elsewhere that one flounders if they are not in your loop of whatever court room appearance seems to have your ego so inflated about.
All of your seem to be male. Forgive the sexist term but there is very little heart being used in alot of this. I apologize to those who may think I am calling them “male” as something bad. I am not .. but the tendency to be using just your mind .. and not your heart in this dialog .. is I guess because you are competing with other males about details of film stuff .. etc. Not many of you have ever nursed a man with extreme liver disintegration and seen what has happened to the skin and see the pain in the man’s eyes and not many of you have ever smelled old dying flesh or even new dying flesh. Or if you have .. forgive me for sounding so moralistic but that is not my intent. My intent is to tell you to use your hearts. And I know that if any of you were the father of that young boy Nick who was beheaded on TV (which immediately disputes what was said by that intellectual gore critic who I admit was female and sounded about as heartfelt as a robot) .. like that man you would be part of that organization that I have also contributed money to .. as well as to the torture charity … and you would be reviewing stories every day that take place in the congo where men routinely cut fingers off of women and demand that brothers rape their sisters or they are sliced down in front of their sisters … even the wild nature shows have some form of morality where this man said that he would not let the footage of the elephant’s eye be shown … as it stared out at the cameraman .. while 20 tigers ate it to death.
The fear and the despair and the absolute evil in being tortured and destroyed is what we are talking about .. and so many of you are able to mindfully intellectualize the monkey-like interviewing hype that the Roth director comes off like. The Entertainment Tonight awe that the interviewer has as he repeatedly says “when you wake up and press the alarm button” .. .my god what is happening to any of us that we can market this gore and expect that the realization that this is what is happening to people thru out our world as we exist this very second. The screams and pain and ugliness that gives off more and more horror and more and more lack of comprehension that these are breathing heartfelt living organisms and pain begets pain and ruthlessness begets ruthlessness and none of this is evolving our society into anything other than the barbaric and repetitive war-like culture that we still are in .. after how many frigging years??????
Come on for gods sakes .. there are women being tortured and killed for the sake of egos getting some jolt from this just like there is when one of you comes out with some intellectual whammy remark that he thinks is so killer. I realize I come off pathetic but for gods sakes have you ever understood that this is bone crushing painful sorrow to the deepest core of our humanity .. if we keep going like this.
Frigging allow yourselves to cry … for gods sakes .. look at the two faces of the last two marines that were tortured in Iraq .. study them and imagine like unfortunately I could not get away from .. the fear of those young hopeful boys at one time … to feel the life being bled from them .. and understand that movies like this and people who perpetuate them .. are contributing to a more ruthless and heartless society.
About three weeks ago, Joss Whedon issued a fatwa against CAPTIVITY and similar horror porn ( http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271 )in the wake of the Dua Khalil stoning, claiming that the same mentality that desensitizes people to violence encourages them to cheer on those who stone a girl to death for merely being caught in the presence of a member of a despised religious group.
The kicker was that he then claimed that the root of all this is “womb envy,” a mere flip-flop of penis envy where men are constantly angry and misogynistic because they can’t create life. Personally, I think the idea is silly, but if I had to offer an explanation for the sort of misogyny that lies at the heart of horror porn I’d have to say it’s resentment, because (straight) men feel so dependent on women for their own sexual pleasure. I believe it was Bill Maher who said “For a man to walk into a bar and attract the interest of every woman he would have to be a conqueror, but for a woman to attract the interest of every man all she would have to do is her hair.”
Oh gosh I understand that. I do. I mean this sounds stupid .. but I have 2 older brothers and the first is gay and the second is not .. and I am essentially the 3rd boy .. but not. I am not gay but at the heart of all of us is merely the .. and yes .. I know this sounds so hokey and so 60’s and so throw-uppy .. but I am sick of everyone AVOIDING the issue of the heart and of the feeling of just being loved .. and surely I do understand each and everyone of us .. whether we are some old grizzled archaic Taliban warrior with his barbaric sense of codes or whether we are supposedly “out” as either heterosexual or homosexual … bottom line is it is about the heart and some acceptance physically and emotionally and pschologically. And we have in this “sophisticated” culture of ours gone into the depths of depravity to seek out that which supposedly is about part of each and every one of us …
and we can either tell ourselves that we are depraved deep down .. or we can tell ourselves that we are not. That we are about the heart and which ever way we want and choose to be sexual. But my god … we have got to start making some choices that are above barbaric .. that are above influencing us above being barbaric. And it is not about puritanism or whatever that word might be .. it is about humanity … and trying to evolve into something more than just flesh and bone and brain matter. Maybe some frigging soul too. Because energy is never destroyed and it is not created .. our energy goes on … in some way .. and we take with us .. that which we feel .. that which we try for … we leave our energy and our thoughts and our hearts hopefully .. and just this with flesh and pain .. is so about death. And not going on.
Energy can’t be destroyed, but it can most certainly dissipate into oblivion.
i’m a girl, jammer69!
and i hear you. i asked if everyone in here was a bloke too when i put in my 2 cents worth, because the opinions in here seem quite male-centric, no offence to males as i’m extremely keen on the male of the species.
Well if I had to boil everything down to energy and to what power certain energy equates to … I would still say that holding some value in living things is more productive in creating energy than holding some value in non-living things. Insects, animals, fish, human beings are higher in energy than just rocks. Course everything breaks down to carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen but what then puts these molecules back together to make something alive? Is it some measureless value? Like soul?
Okay that’s stupid or maybe it is not but bottom line … art that desensitizes living things in their appreciation for other living things can only lead to less living things. And I think that one younger radio jock’s first reaction to the beheading of the young boy named Nick .. I think that was a direct result of this culture and the fact that we are creating people who are desensitized to torture. Torture is death and there are REAL death flicks and all of this is just ugly and not challenging in anyway that stimulates imagination or that inspires artistic creation. When I was young I went to see 8 1/2 by Fellini and Rudolph Nureyev and Baryshnikov and as films got darker and darker .. I never remember benefitting from it.
David, I never meant to tell you how to do your job, but when you write a piece and you publish it, or you post it, people who read it will tend to have an opinion on it.
I stand my ground on what I say. Any kind of piece on anything, that focuses primarily on the moral outrage of the writer toward the obejct of the review tends to be useless to the reader.
Because that outrage it’s like a wall you cannot climb. Beyond that wall there’s a work which may be worthy or not (in the case of Hostel 2 I feel it’s worthy, in the case of the first Hostel, I felt it wasn’t), but that you didn’t touch
either way with what you wrote. And specifically, in the case of Hostel 2, I read your piece first, and then I saw the movie. And the movie I saw was completely different. Really, something completely alien to what you posted on this site.
I’m not saying that you don’t have any right to feel what you feel. That’s absurd, of course. But what you feel can cloud your view on things, in certain cases. That’s only human, but it’s also true.
I’m personally outraged by the political use of violence in a show like 24. Because there it’s used with a speicific purpose and with a political agenda directly connected with the moment of history we’re living in, an agenda I find abhorrent, and that’s my personal view on the matter. But if I wrote a piece on the show focusing solely on that, well…That piece wouldn’t be of much worth, in the sense that it wouldn’t give the reader a clear view of the subject at hand.
I actually think you can give a much more complete view of the rather schizophrenic, dual, politics of the show, without even mentioning the use of violence within it.
Peace
There’s a difference between a critique and a review. I wouldn’t mind reading a critique of the politics in 24, but I’d be an idiot if I thought it equated to a review of the entire show.
Eli Roth just posted a myspace bulletin….I’ll cut n paste it. He even includes a snipe at you, David! Forgive me if someone already posted it in another thread:
Subject Last chance for a while to see one of my films…
Body: Hey Everyone,
I’m in Paris, doing press for the French release of Hostel Part II, and tonight I’m off to Rome for the last leg of the press tour. After that I’m going to take a long overdue break, since I’ve gone from one film to the next without stopping, just to recharge my brain a bit.
I want to thank all of you for your kind e-mails and incredible support for the film. However, piracy has become worse than ever now, and a stolen workprint (with uninished music, no sound effects, and no VFX) leaked out on line before the release, and is really hurting us, especially internationally. Piracy will be the death of the film industry, as it killed the music industry, and while it makes a smaller dent in huge movies like Spider Man 3, it really hurts films like mine, which have far less of an advertising and production budget. Not only that, critics have actually been REVIEWING the film based off the pirated copy, which is inexcusable. Some of these critics I have actually known for a few years, and while I wouldn’t dignify them by mentioning them by name, I know who they are, as do the studios, and other filmmakers, and they will no longer have any access to any of my films.
What I’m saying is, this is your last chance to see one of my films for a while. If you haven’t seen it, go now, because after next weekend the film will be gone from theaters. There are too many other summer movies coming in, so basically we get two weeks in cinemas, and then the film will live on DVD. I am not directing CELL any time soon, and I most likely will take the rest of the year to write my other projects. Which means I wouldn’t shoot until the spring, and you wouldn’t see a film directed by me in the cinemas until at least next fall. If everyone on my friends list went to see the film this weekend and brought a friend, it would make a huge difference. Bring a non-horror fan – try to convert them. It’s the only way these films will live. But right now the R rated horror film is in serious jeopardy. Studios feel the public doesn’t want them any more, and so they are only putting PG-13 films into production. The only way to counter this perception is to get out there and support R rated horror. It’s the only message they’ll hear. People love the movie, and even though it only cost $10 million dollars (as opposed to the other summer tentpoles which cost $300 million), and has already earned its money back, if it’s not a massive money earner then they’ll just continue to make the same PG-13 films everyone complained about a few years ago.
To counter piracy, fans can flood file sharing services with fake Hostel II downloads just so no one can ever actually get the movie, but the only thing that really makes a difference is supporting the movie in the theaters. Also – the theater OWNERS know this as well. If horror movies aren’t bringing in customers, they’re not going to program them. If we are going to send them a message, we have to do it with our wallets, and we have to do it now. I’ve done all I can to make a great film for the fans, as violent and bloody and fun as possible. The rest is up to you guys…
Thanks again for all your support,
Eli
Well, RudyV, the line between a critique of the politics of one thing and its review is actually very blurry.
If that thing is also about to be released a couple of days later, it’s even more blurry, but that’s besides the point.
The point being that even if I write a critique of the politics of 24, I can’t do it while blinded by moral outrage. Because it would be a rant. It would be about me.
In Ken Russell’s The Devils, which I mentioned in another blog entry as well, there’s a scene of torture near the beginning, which is quite disturbing because Russell actually shoot it sexualizing it a lot. He really does that, much, much more than Roth.
Now, The Devils, which by the way it’s a masterpiece about organized religion, political power and their lethal close relationship, got reviews (or critiques of its politics if you will) in the tone of “this movie has been made only for sadists and pervs”.
Now, what does that tell me? It indirectly tells me that the film hit a nerve with the reviewer. But then what more? And if you write a whole piece in which you basically remain within the borders of that sentence, what’s the use of that piece for the reader who wanted to delve more into the film?
Same thing goes for Hostel, same thing goes for everything.
Write about the politics of Hostel 2. There is something to write about that. But that something has nothing to do with how you feel seeing Heather Matarazzo hanging upside down.
“Write about the politics of Hostel 2. There is something to write about that. But that something has nothing to do with how you feel seeing Heather Matarazzo hanging upside down.”
Disagree. Strongly.
For me, it is the politics of that choice and how it was delivered that forced me, in my mind, to write about it. It’s not Israel and Iraq, but it is much more than “just a movie.”
DP: as someone who spent the last two weeks defending Roth and his movies, I would just like to add that, while the intensity of your feelings was clear, the argument that you were making as to why the particular scene was offensive was, to me, unconvincing.
“What I’m saying is, this is your last chance to see one of my films for a while. ”
Awesome!
But it’s one scene, David. One single scene. There’s no other moment like that in the whole film. I could see your point, if it was a recurring theme, if you had a series of set pieces, of scenes, and all of them more or less rotated and moved in the same direction.
Or even if that scene was somehow the core of the whole movie, and everything else build up to that.
But neither it’s the case. And of course that moment is there to shock people, and to give some old exploitation flavour to the whole thing, but even within that, it’s not something that comes out of the blue. It’s a recreation of an extremely gruesome real life case in which an aristocrat woman preyed on lower classes girls, within a movie about a globalized organization of business men from all over the world, preying on lower classes people, and operating through market rules (the bidding, the pricing, the negotiations). The only girl who survives is the one who belongs to their class and can negotiate and buy her way out. She can afford it and she joins them to save her neck. And Roger Bart loses because he got the one victim who’s above him on the social ladder.
Now I’m not saying Hostel part 2 is not a slasher film. It is and that’s what it wants to be, and that’s perfcelty fine. But there’s something beneath it and it’s not a “let’s-get these-girls-and-do-nasty-things-to-them” kind of movie. It’s not Ilsa.
I see a pattern in the lame attempts to justify movies like Hostel 2. What the defenders of the movies are terrified to talk about are the personal moral questions raised by watching (and enjoying) them.
Instead, they hide behind straw men such as “censorship” and “Fox News/The Right Wing”, as well as pseudo-intellectual justifications for torture porn. They deploy the bogus “Hostel is no worse than x” argument. They even talk about torture imagery in religion (oh please, spare us.)
But not one of them seems to want to deal with the simple question of whether it’s even remotely healthy and normal to derive pleasure from watching scenes of brutal torture. Oh, sorry, can’t we raise that issue? Are we going to treated to sermons about the First Amendment? That’s just another tactic to divert attention from the real question. Not all that is legally permitted is morally justified. Legal does not equal good. A country where every last dot and comma of moral judgement is covered by the law would not be a free country; freedom entails the responsibility of making some individual moral judgements. It does *not* give everyone carte blanche to do whatever they like within the law and expect there to be no moral consequences. Society cannot look on impassively as sick, depraved human behaviour is touted as entertainment, as people are invited to “enjoy” realistic images of mutilation. Fans of this stuff clearly want to shut down the public debate about whether this is acceptable. Well, you can’t. You’re damn well going to have the debate whether you like it or not.
Okay. Yes, it is healthy and normal to derive pleasure from watching scenes of brutal torture – within a fictional narrative framework, and knowing that the ‘pleasure’ is more complicated than mere spectacle but as something involving audience identification in a complex way.
Your turn.
Y’know, Eli, your shoulder wouldn’t hurt so much if you simply put down the cross.
So what is the “complex audience identification” in Hostel Part II? Are you seriously trying to tell me that the people who enjoy watching this sort of movie do it for the “complex audience identification” rather than sick pleasure from watching blood, gore and the suffering of others? You might want to claim that, but I’m sorry, I simply don’t believe you. It’s just another pseudo-intellectual attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
That is correct. You identify – well maybe not you, but I – identified with the victim, not the victimizer. The pleasure is, if anything, masochistic. When you go to an amusement park, you get on a roller coaster. You don’t get in line to run the controls to the roller coaster.
But I suspect your mind may be made up already.
I don’t see how riding a rollercoaster has anything to do with identifying with victims. The excitement on a rollercoaster comes from the thrill of exposing yourself to danger. It’s something to do to yourself, not something done to someone else. You are contradicting yourself. According to your logic, watching Hostel Part II would be more like taking the controls and watching other people scream. Except that they wouldn’t just scream, they’d die in a horrible accident too. And you’d watch every bloody moment of it.
The only way both things can be explained as “masochistic” is if you feel the pain of others suffering and derive joy from it. That, to me, sounds exactly like the profile of a torturer. There’s plenty for the rest of us to worry about, right there, without you saying anything else.
You accurately describe the experience, yet refuse to draw the appropriate conclusions.
“…yet refuse to draw the appropriate conclusions”
Jeff get the pole out of your arse and that log out of thine eye!
He doesn’t agree with your assessment!
Geez!
“refuse” Jeff and one isn’t drawing the “appropriate conclusions” on a public blog?!
by the way…i don;t necessarily agree with Lord Liverpool’s take on it…
“DP: as someone who spent the last two weeks defending Roth and his movies, I would just like to add that, while the intensity of your feelings was clear, the argument that you were making as to why the particular scene was offensive was, to me, unconvincing.:”
Jeff – that’s because you are completely incapable of being cognizant or open to any point that is counter to your own.
Furthermore, what’s clear to anyone that’s spent anytime here is that you always take the contrasting side not because you believe in it, but because you love to listen to yourself argue, just for the sake of arguing.
Because of this character defect, I don’t think anyone takes you seriously anymore.
Maybe you should try saying “Good point! I hadn’t thought of that!” more in your conversations?
One can only imagine the wonders it would do for your social life, much less your virginity.
There, D. Murphy – that’s how you smack someone online. Pay attention. We expect wittier retorts from you.
And no Jeff, I don’t really think you’re a virgin…
It’s hard to want to take you seriously, THX, since you only show up to reprimand me on what you think is poor behavior.
Lota: Lord Liverpool follows, almost to a t, the argument that I was making, yet somehow draws the exact opposite conclusions.
I’m sure we’re all sick of this discussion (I’d much rather discuss the real best horror movie of the year, 28 Weeks Later) so I’ll say that I’m done with it at this site now and people can visit my own blog for anything ffurther.
It doesn’t really matter which way you bend and twist the argument, I’m still calling for the men in white coats.
Let’s check Collins on masochism:
masochism n.
1. Psychiatry. an abnormal condition in which pleasure, esp. sexual pleasure, is derived from pain or from humiliation, domination, etc., by another person.
2. Psychoanal. the directing towards oneself of any destructive tendencies.
3. a tendency to take pleasure from one’s own suffering. Compare sadism.
And this is your case for the defence?!
But I think where you’re really at is here:
sadism n.
the gaining of pleasure or sexual gratification from the infliction of pain and mental suffering on another person. See also algolagnia. Compare masochism.
Sorry, even Collins can’t help you here (gasp, not even Collins?).
I don’t know of any reason to continue a discussion with someone whose mind is made up, so best wishes.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. *My* mind’s made up?
On this we agree: further discussion is pointless.
Yes, but I am more open to discussion and openness on these concepts than you are.
Is this Dr. Sinclair?
I thought we agreed that the discussion was over? Who is Dr. Sinclair?