In Continuum.

Torture Movies

We all have our own definitions of movies that are torturous. The term 'torture' comes from the same root word as distortion, or twisting. In modern definition, it means anything that causes us to have physical or mental sufferings one way or another. With that said, there are a multitude of things that can create the same effects on us, both physically and mentally as mentioned before. The sound of nails being scratched over a chalkboard for example, the sound of pigs being slaughtered in the slaughterhouse, or even the thought of injection at the local clinic. As long as it makes you feel uncomfortable, it is torturous. That is also the case for movies as well, a medium that we are familiar and have been accustomed to. The medium has been in existence since the early 1900s, and has been in existence and flourished over the century. From those silent movies to movies with written dialogues on black screens, to those black and white movies and slowly to the colored ones we see today. Films have come a long way since its beginning, and so has the genre of movies over the years. The truth is though, there has yet to be a new genre of film ever since the genre of Mockumentary was created by director Rob Reiner in the mid-eighties - a kind of documentary that contains fictional facts, and are often comedic in nature.

But a new kind of movie has been in existence, hidden amongst the banner of other genres that we have yet to discover. Innocently, we take in this genre of film without knowing its lasting effects on us. The side effects may not be immediate, but every time we watch these movies, they have their effects on our lives one way or another. The films I am talking about are these so-called "Torture Films", a genre of movie that has risen in popularity over the years. Of course, the term "torture" in this context can be greatly subjective. Seeing a film about the holocaust may be a torture to some, but to others it may just be a very accurate documentary of historical events. To my father, 'torture' movies can be movies with a lot of talking, the kind of movie that induces him to fall asleep on the couch. That is my father for you, the kind of person who prefers movies with plots based upon anything that happened after 1990. He judges the quality of the movie by the hairstyle of the characters, the type of cars they are driving. He cannot stand period dramas, nor can he take a movie without explosions. He loves those, and anything on HBO with those qualities are good enough for him. Anything else - becomes torturous.

We are speaking of 'torture' in the conventional sense, the kind of torture we read in history textbooks, when some prisoners are brought into underground dungeons for torture. It is the kind of torture that involves hooks and knives, a lot of needles and a lot of blood. These are not the kind of things we'd like to see in real life, but the ability to suspend reality in films allows us to watch these torturing scenes played out on a giant movie screen in the comfort of our seats. Humans have this sick inner desire to drown themselves in blood, to laugh hysterically in the sight of blood. But of course, with the act of torture being condemned these days in our social norms, it is always a little queer to be the odd one out, to be the one that enjoys the sight of blood and to relish in the presence of it. Those who likes the sight of blood and death will be automatically labeled as perverts in our society, psychopaths who have the potential to become homicidal in the future. Our social and cultural norms do not have room for such a barbaric act in real life anymore, but the same cannot be said about the reality that exists in the movies. Just as long as there is a rating plastered to the film on movie posters, anything goes.

In the past, executions of prisoners were done in the public. To the executioners, their intentions were to warn the public in one way or another. Very much like the Chinese saying that goes," To warn the monkey, kill the chicken". The same can be said about humans, whereby other humans who have done wrong in the court of law are put before the public eye as an example to all. To tell others that if you commit the same crimes, you will end up on the stake and burnt alive as well. From the audience point of view, they could have very well avoided such a social event in town. They could have stayed at home, minded their own businesses instead of going to the town square to watch those executions. But you start to wonder why people cared so much about executions in the past, why people liked to see somebody else get tortured or get burned alive. My theory is that humans are naturally attracted to something they do not see on a day to day basis. If a guy has warts growing all over his body, we might be disgusted by the thought, but at the same time inclined to see him with our own eyes. If we are told that there is a human head found in the drain somewhere in our neighborhood, we'd be inclined to see it with our own eyes. After all, we don't see a man with warts all over his body everyday, nor do we see decapitated bodies very often. The same can be said about executions in the past, or those torturing sessions that the people of the past loved to watch. It was their form of entertainment, the biggest television back in those days. They loved the sight of guts being dug out and blood gushing out of those wounds. Humans love the unusual, especially those unusual things that happen to fellow humans.

But of course, in today's context, such acts are condemned everywhere - save in some selected countries around the world. People are still being stoned to death publicly in some Middle East countries, people are still being whipped in public because they stole an apple from the local market. But still, in general, such acts have been condemned by all to be inhumane, to be morally wrong. Today, when you commit a crime somewhere, you will be brought to jail and whipped a dozen times over until the skin on your buttocks split and the raw flesh exposed. Everything done behind thick walls of the prisoner, under the supervision of only a few people in the crime and punishment systems. At least in Singapore, being whipped is still a tradition in law enforcement, and not to mention the fact that the country executes its criminals on death roll by hanging them. Such things are still happening even in a civilized country like Singapore, but everything behind thick walls and closed doors of course. You are not going to see such a graphic display of violence on Orchard Road anytime soon, for example. So without the exposure of such acts, the people become accustomed to the fact that torturing is bad, that torturing is something that we should not enjoy, that we should shun away from. But of course, you can only oppress so much instinct at a time. We still love the sight of blood gushing out of open wounds, and that was exactly the reason why "Faces of Death" was being produced and made into documentary films in 1978 for the very first time.

In order to curb this urge inside all of us as humans, the urge to watch something out of the social norms, we look to the movies, where everything is possible with make-up and special effects. It is possible to watch someone shoot someone else in the head, or see one guy pierce another with a sword without much disgust or guilt. To us, as long as we know that they are just pretending and that no humans - or animals - were hurt in the process of making the film, then everything becomes A-OK. Of course, gun fighting and sword slashing are just some of the elements that make a film good, and they are essential in depicting the stories. I don't suppose it is possible to depict the holocaust during World War Two without showing dead bodies of Jewish prisoners, or is it possible to depict William Wallace's heroisms in giving freedom to Scotland without showing what the British army did to the Scots. Such violence are sometimes necessary to the plot, and some of it are actually historically correct - especially in the case of The Passion of the Christ. Of course, some atheists out there may argue that the torturing of Jesus Christ never actually happened, and the account was greatly exaggerated over the years. After all, no living human can endure such great amount of torture and still be able to carry the cross up onto the hill and then be nailed to a cross - and still live for a few hours before eventually dying. Then again, I don't suppose Jesus Christ was ever - in any one time - and ordinary human being.

Filmmakers these days are exploiting this urge inside us humans. They have found out yet another way to earn a hefty load of money, and that is to provide movies with a lot of torturing scenes that will attract people from all over the world. Such a trend is not something new to the world of cinema, but it has been especially so in recent years. Saw was probably the very first movie in recent years to provide this form of entertainment to the general public, a movie that involved two men being trapped in an abandoned toilet and chained to rusted pipes. The only way out would be to saw through their legs with rusty saws provided. Of course, other victims also have to go through traps being carefully calibrated by the antagonist of the story, going through a maze of razor-sharp wires and to step over pieces of broken glass - naked. Humans love to watch others being tortured somehow, and we love to watch it in some perverse way. The film 8mm starring Nicholas Cage was a prime example as to what humans would consider to be 'entertaining'. The famous line from the movie paved the route to understanding this mentality very well - "I'm trying to understand!" The truth is, we all are Nicholas. We all are. After all, you start to wonder why the hell would someone pay for a video that involves young women being killed. Sometimes, traditional porn that involves nudity and sexual intercourse just aren't enough anymore.

Just take a look at the current movie trailers being flashed out at Apple.com/trailers. Twenty movie trailers are being shown on each page at any one time until new ones replace the old ones. From that page alone, two movies are about pure human torturing. The first movie - Funny Games - is a remake of a German movie made in 1997, about a family being tortured by two teenagers both physically and mentally in their weekend retreat. Another film is Untraceable, about a murderer that posted the video of a man being chained up in an empty room on the internet, with a device being wired to a counter that traces how many hits on the website there are from all over the world. The faster people from all over the world visits the website, the faster the man dies from the poison being injected into his bloodstream. It just sounds awfully like another sequel of Saw, something from the cutting room floor of the original Saw makers, and are now being made into films one by one. Another psychopath trying to play a game with innocent protagonists, another inspiration for potential psychopaths in our society to do the same to real people. That is not to mention the other movies we have seen in recent years, putting torturing scenes into the cinemas for the general viewing of the public.

Movies like Captivity, Vacancy, the horrendous Saw sequels, and not to mention Hostel. Everything screams of torturing these days, and the only way for this movie to make more money than the other would be to have a more unique torturing method, a method to create a slower death with more blood drained out of the human body at the same time. And the audience flocks into the theaters to catch these fake deaths, and everybody feels better because their urge to see death has been satisfied for two hours in the cinema. The movie studios earn an awful lot of money, and everybody is happy at the end of the day. But one starts to wonder if it really is necessary to have this genre called "Torture", if it is not going to have a lasting effect on our society. I am all for originality, and I am a fan of the original Saw to be honest. But when other movies are exploiting this genre and taking it to a level that is below our humane levels, you start to wonder if it is all necessary - especially when these bad counterfeits are so appalling in nature that they are not even worth the time for you to download them illegally over the internet. They are just - even in cinematic terms - that bad.

So yeah, I am still trying to understand this trend of ours, as humans. Why do we love to watch things like that in the cinema, when they are exactly the kind of things that we wouldn't want to watch in real life. Of course, you can always argue that it is fake, that none of those things actually happen in real life. But what if they do happen in real life one day, who are we to blame? People enjoyed those movies, people watched those movies in the theaters, the movie studios make even more of those movies as a result to make even more money, and thus provoking the society to accept that torturing is a social norm. We are slowly being conditioned to think that torturing in movies are normal, that it is just another movie genre that we enjoy. But the truth is, we really don't need these movies in our theaters, especially these movies with all gore and no plot. Whoever that has "Hostel" in their top ten movies of all time should be given a tight slap across the face and forced to watch the Godfather trilogy over twenty times. Our society is sick in this way, but of course nobody is going to do anything about it. Money is king, and torturing movies are making a lot of people - kings.