‘Ladies First’?: Torture Porn, Sex, and Misogyny

Abstract

Although Edelstein (2006) uses the ‘porn’ metaphor to portray contemporary horror as ‘extreme’, he remains vague about what constitutes gratuity, and why he employs ‘porn’ to convey excessiveness. His incendiary article dwells on moral ambivalence more than gore, and he barely mentions sex. That foundational imprecision is evident in subsequent conflicting interpretations of the ‘porn’ in ‘torture porn’. First, torture porn has been characterised as horror in which images of nudity and/or sexual violence are given precedence (Dipaolo, 2011: 208; Bor, 2007; Cochrane, 2007). Second, torture porn is indicted for showing nonsexual violence in such gory, close-up detail that its aesthetic is akin to pornography. Torture porn filmmakers are thus accused of emphasising ‘lush, saturated close-ups of oozing, gaping wounds’ (Schiesel, 2009; see also Terrell, 2009). Edelstein’s (2006) comment that director Gaspar Noe ‘rub[s] your nose’ in Irreversible’s violence may have influenced this line of thought. These proposals corroborate the insinuation that torture porn’s violent spectacles are excessive, being unnecessary to convey narrative meaning. Graham (2009a) refers to violence as replacing narrative meaning, citing ‘home-made YouTube montages simply comprising torture scenes from the Saw films’ as evidence that torture porn fans regard gore sequences as the equivalent of feature-pornography’s sex scenes.

Ridley in Matchdead.