A rant for a rant

Last week, Pajiba posted this review of the latest entry in the probably fading torture porn genre, Captivity. The piece, written by Pajiba creator Dustin Rowles, essentially tortures the movie right back -- it's a prolonged pummeling of the movie's suspected misogyny. It is not poorly written and its hatred for the film is not unfounded. Its contempt of other moviegoers, however, is. Rowles refers to Captivity as "morally criminal," "a cinematic cesspool where only sick fucking degenerates can get their rocks off" and "some sick fuck’s idea of recreation." Similarly, the Sunday Times review (as pilfered by the New York Post) opens, "If you want to see the sexy blonde from 24 (Elisha Cuthbert) held captive in a dungeon by a psycho and subjected to various disgusting torments, then rush to see Captivity. Alternately, seek psychiatric help."

Oh, we back on that again?

I've said this before (so stop reading if you're allergic to redundancy), and I'll keep saying it as long as there are people arrogant enough to speak out against others' non-harmful forms of diversion: an interest in torture porn doesn't make you sick. It doesn't mean that you want to live vicariously through anyone in these films. It doesn't mean that you emotionally engage with such films, even. In fact, the best way to take in extreme cinema is to utterly divorce yourself emotionally from it (take it from someone who knows) and experience it as that: extreme cinema. My question going into anything like this isn't, "Can I take this?" but, "How is the director going to try to gross me out? What products of his [it's always a his!] imagination will he represent on screen? Could this movie possibly forge a new level of tastelessness? Please?" Do you see how there's a degree of removal there? I suppose I'm a scholar of the Last House on the Left school of viewing: I just keep repeating to myself, "It's only a movie. It's only a movie."

But really, if someone were to watch a movie like Captivity for some sort of vicarious thrill, who is anyone to judge? How can we put a meter on morbidity? Because life is temporary, we're necessarily obsessed with death. Whether you're watching torture porn or rubbernecking at a car wreck or reading Greek tragedies or visiting your grandmother or attending church, you're consuming death. One man's roadkill is another's meal is another's entertainment.

And really, Captivity isn't worth the outrage anyway. It's not just shit, it's a patchwork of shit (a more thriller-y version of the film was released last year in Spain; reshoots were done after to include the torture scenes and the result is a slipshod mess of a plot that would make Saw's Jigsaw wince). As I've conveyed above, when it comes to films like this, instead of being scared or disgusted, I find myself more often thinking about why certain things are supposed to be scary or disgusting. Spending any time pondering Captivity, however, would be a waste as it is neither. The fact that it's torture porn is set-up enough for the movie -- within minutes, Cuthbert's model/actress character Jennifer is captured and put through an endurance test of sorts as she repeatedly comes close to being tortured to death, but never quite gets there. It is suspense-free and any feeling of dread is quashed by the stride we see Jennifer taking this all in between tortures. Rowles colorfully says that Captivity "makes Saw look like motherfucking My Fair Lady with an industrial metal soundtrack," but that's giving Captivity's sense of the extreme too much credit. First of all, no one dies until all the torturing is over. And second of all, Jennifer is never too badly hurt because that would make her, like, not as hot anymore. She's merely annoyed for a while. The most potentially disgusting scene, in which her captor makes a milkshake of body parts to force feed her, is so overt in its attempt to nauseate and red-paint obsession that it feels like the cartoonish work of a booger-fingered child, or maybe Barth of You Can't Do That On Television.

As for its alleged misogyny...well, maybe it's there. The kidnapper-torturer-brothers have a huge problem with their mother, and I can't think of a bigger symbol for womanhood. Still, as they force Jennifer (and, of course, us) to watch videos of herself between tortures, it's clear that she's an arrogant dimwit ("I was a rebel in high school. Always had a bra strap showing," she says in a clip that's supposed to be taken from a televised interview). The film, then, is more anti-asshole than anti-woman. If offing her means I don't have to fucking listen to her say stupid things or act poorly, good riddance.

I saw Captivity because I heard it was particularly tasteless and gruesome and I have a genuine curiosity in how far people can stretch the limits to what's portrayed onscreen, and not because I want to chop people up. And so, Rowles offended me for being so arrogant as to suggest that the proper only way to experience cinema is the way that you experience it. But more than that: he offended me with his exaggerations, his labeling of the film as "repellant," "horrid" and "thoroughly unpleasant." It did not live up to his anti-hype, and I left the theater so disappointed, I wanted to kill. 

Comments

[Polycarbonate greenhouse]

Thanks Mary! I remember that night like yesterday when they were all sitting in the dark with flashlights. Some how our kids turned out okay! Hahaha!

[cable lock]

A whole bunch of stores have already started with the Christmas displays here, too. What's up with that?