Hostel #1; Depravity Reigns
With an entire family (mother, father, two little girls) in Virginia bound and slaughtered in their home by burglars on New Year's Day; an earlier trio of quadruple murders around the country; and the hideous escapades of Joseph Edward Duncan who last year broke into a home and bound and beat to death 3 people so he could kidnap and repeatedly rape two children, eventually strangling one of them - one would think there would be general revulsion at yet another film glorifying demented thrill killings. One would be wrong - apparently we can't get enough of it.
What about the critics? One might think the same crowd who thought The Passion of the Christ an unseemly gore-fest would roundly denounce the blood-and-guts of this latest trash. One would be wrong again. To be fair, not all critics felt the movie to be within the bounds of good taste. But what bounds? Nathan Lee in the Times said "no civilized person will remain unscathed by the film's relentless bigotry - this is one of the most misogynistic films ever made." Ah yes, we can always count on the Times' critics to relentlessly enforce the bounds of propriety!
What about the critics? One might think the same crowd who thought The Passion of the Christ an unseemly gore-fest would roundly denounce the blood-and-guts of this latest trash. One would be wrong again. To be fair, not all critics felt the movie to be within the bounds of good taste. But what bounds? Nathan Lee in the Times said "no civilized person will remain unscathed by the film's relentless bigotry - this is one of the most misogynistic films ever made." Ah yes, we can always count on the Times' critics to relentlessly enforce the bounds of propriety!
posted by ziel | 1/09/2006 08:31:00 PM
5 Comments:
Stephen King put it very well many years ago. Horrifying movies are a form of comfort in scary times because we know they are just movies. When the day's filming is done, the actors wash off the fake blood and go on their merry way. Knowing this somehow makes it easier to deal with real-life mayhem.
Peter
http://journals.aol.com/r32r38/Ironrailsironweights/
I can see large numbers of people going for trash, but what disturbs me is the fascination the critics have with it. Most of the criticisms of "Hostel" slams it for being too tame - not daring enough in its depravity. But have two young men traveling in Europe refer to unattractive women as "beasts" - whoa, whatch out!
...what disturbs me is the fascination the critics have with it...
I think Steve Sailer said something about this, along the lines of movie critics, watching movies all the time, become pretty jaded. So they're grateful to anything that offers them something new or scandalous--provided that it's not Christian or conservative, of course.
Here's Sailer on Passion vs. Kill Bill.
oops - http://www.isteve.com/Film_Kill_Bill_versus_The_Passion.htm
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