It’s unsurprising to learn that the big names in the so-called “torture porn” movement are all blokes. Known as the Splat Pack, James Wan (Saw, Dead Silence), Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes), Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel), Greg McLean (Wolf Creek), Rob Zombie (House of 1000 Corpses, Halloween) and Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II-IV) all specialise in a brand of horror that leans heavily on sadism and graphic onscreen gore – the more creative and toe-curlingly disgusting, the better.
Eli Roth met a wave of criticism for the gender roles in Hostel (2005), a film in which all the women are either sex workers, hypersexualised and morally repugnant, strung out on enough narcotics to render them completely obsolete as anything other than onscreen ass, or all of the above (with the exception of two Japanese twentysomething tourists, who are portrayed as giggling and coquettish – the stereotypical western idealisation of Japanese women as schoolgirlish and subservient).
Roth, being a sensitive chap at heart, created Hostel Part II as a response – kind of like Neil Marshall hopping from Dog Soldiers to The Descent. Nice try, Eli. The gender politics are equally terrible in Hostel II. I know – “I can’t believe it!” said absolutely no one.
Now, horror isn’t the most feminist genre, but it’s my genre of choice. Female nudity, themes of female virginity and scenes of a sexual nature are prevalent in horror, from chaste Janet Leigh’s infamous shower scene to the chesticular fireworks of Piranha 3DD. Sex and death – the circle of life, as Sir Elton calls it – are intrinsically linked, and often sit well side by side. We all know what the phrase “torture porn” refers to, but there’s a problematic duality created by suggesting that sadistic violence and sexual gratification are titillating in the same way. It reduces the whole horror genre to something akin to Bizarre magazine: Blood! Tits! Tits covered in blooood!
Hostel opens with an unsympathetic bunch of lads on tour as they weave through the streets of Amsterdam. The group laugh at sensitive, still-getting-over-his-ex Josh (Derek Richardson) for suggesting they take a break from smoking pot and chasing skirt to check out a museum or two. Then they fistbump and hi-five their way through the Red Light District. It leaves us all feeling well primed for the next hour and a half of blood, guts and dismemberment because they are quite possibly the most unlikeable people in the history of humanity (apart from Jeremy Clarkson, who retains his crown of The Worst).
“Paying to go into a room to do whatever you want to someone isn’t exactly a turn-on,” says Sensitive Josh, and we all cock our heads and recognise that he is definitely going to die. The anti-sex work comparison drawn between prostitution and the premise of Hostel – the rich paying high prices to torture and kill others – doesn’t go unnoticed.
Loutish and drunk, the lads are denied entrance to their hostel. As a rain of glass bottles smashes around their feet, an eastern European tourist offers refuge in his hostel room. Here, Sensitive Josh awkwardly explains the definition of ‘clitoris’ (“Women have it? It’s like right near the labia? Like, it hangs?”) and talk naturally turns to sex.
“Looking for girls?” their new friend Alex asks. He then creepily shows them photos of himself having sex with women “so hot, you won’t believe it”. He explains that the women of Bratislava “go crazy for any foreigner. You just… take them.”
After hearing one of the most chilling phrases in the history of patriarchy, off the threesome go to Bratislava. A creep on the train confirms that eastern European women are smokin’ hot and DTF. He then places a hand on Sensitive Josh’s thigh and Josh reacts as though he’s just had his Achilles tendons cut (and we can be accurate here because that is exactly what happens to him approximately twenty minutes later).
This brief moment of casual homophobia is not to be overlooked: Josh, the sensitive one, the most respectful and the least sexually repugnant of the three, later places his hand on this man’s thigh in a sincere yet hesitant apology – moments after being called a “faggot” by Paxton. “I would have done the same thing at your age,” the man says, regarding Josh’s extreme and aggressive reaction to the hand-on-thigh moment from before. “It’s not easy, but from my experience, choosing to have a family was the right choice for me. Now I have my little girl, who means more to me than anything. But you should do what’s right for you.”
Hold on, what? It’s no coincidence that the next shot is of Josh ‘making his choice’ – on the brink of having sex with an incredibly attractive woman. Because of course, sexuality is a choice and the option of having a family is strictly for those that choose ‘straight’.
Anyway, the hostel is everything they imagined and more: slender young women shoot them come-hither looks, are totally chill to hang out in the spa with their tits out, and laugh at their inane jokes. Reader, our trio of lads go dancing, pop pills and eventually fuck their roommates to Willow’s Song, the alluring siren’s song performed by Britt Eckland as she seduces the copper in 1973’s hit cult flick The Wicker Man (incidentally, another movie about a community seducing and eventually murdering outsiders).
The problem? These are not sexually liberated tourists, having a laugh and shagging a bunch of goons for the fun of it. They, like Willow of The Wicker Man, are duplicitous: the sex is the primer for the betrayal, because we all know that sexually liberated women are up to no good.
- Come back tomorrow for Part 2, in which Alice looks at Hostel II – and its more prominent female characters – in more detail… EDIT: Read Part 2 here.
- By day, Alice Slater is a writer and bookseller from London. By night, she is a horror film addict who always keeps the lights on. She writes for Mslexia and Drunken Werewolf, and she blogs about veg*n high jinx at SmokinTofu.com.
Innocence and Sexualisation
The vigour with which some people are prepared to attack moves towards more open, honest and comprehensive sex and relationships education is baffling. What are they so afraid of? Educating young people about safer sex doesn’t lead to an increased sexual activity (that’s from this great Avert resource, by the way). Two words that pop up fairly regularly in the fog of general objection are ‘innocence’ and ‘sexualisation’. I think they’re masking other, simpler causes for so much reactionary guff, but let’s have a look at them anyway.
The idea that the ‘innocence’ of children must be protected at all costs is absurd. Innocence in the criminal sense is a good thing to hold on to, of course. But innocence in the wafty Victorian lamblike sense (aka “freedom from guilt or sin through being unacquainted with evil”)?. I fail to see the value of being ‘unacquainted with evil’. Knowing about sex isn’t the same as having sex. And also: SEX ISN’T EVIL, GUYS. Besides, it’s a bit of a risk, if you ask me, turning someone loose in the world if they have no concept of evil. They’re in for a nasty shock and quite possibly some dangerous or exploitative situations. Likewise someone who has been kept in the dark about pregnancy, STIs or abuse. Even if you’re working with some kind of arcane points-based system of morality, how can you get your approval for being without sin just because you don’t know what sin is? That’s like congratulating someone on not eating the cookies they didn’t know were there.
Anyway, that’s enough poptheology. Next: ‘sexualisation’, on which I basically agree with Laurie Penny that the word is a “troubling piece of cultural shorthand” which
suggests that sexuality is something that is done to young women, rather than something that they can own and control: that they can never be sexual, only sexualised. This is not a helpful message to send to girls as they begin to explore their sexuality.
The moral panic over “sexualisation” assumes instead that sex is only ever damaging to young women, and that having sex or behaving sexually must be resisted for as long as possible. The problem is not, however, that young women are “growing up too fast” – rather it is that they are growing up to understand that they are erotic commodities, there to be used and abused, shamed if they express legitimate desires of their own, and taught to fear their own bodies.
Child sexual behaviour is complex and difficult to discuss, but it exists. Children have this weird habit of growing up. And it doesn’t work the way the Sun would have it – every girl is an innocent princess until a few moments past midnight on her 16th birthday, at which point it’s A-OK to start slavering over her. Seriously, until 2004 plenty of Page Three girls were 16. There were even 16th birthday specials in some other tabloids. Your, er… your double standard is poking out, by the way.
Ewwww Isn’t Good Enough
Critics of broader sex education have done a pretty good job of cosying up to some quarters of the feminist movement, and I’d love to believe that concern over women or children’s wellbeing lay at the heart of the Bailey Review and the media outrage. But it doesn’t. Sexual conservatism is shorthand for a certain kind of morality, and this is a holier-than-thou contest fuelled by the crippling shame and squeamishness about sex that is our shared cultural inheritance. That’s why we feel the need to keep any notion of sex away from children for as long as possible, because on some level, we do think there’s something bad about sex. What other explanation can there be? An otherwise sensible, right-on and feminist former manager of mine once insisted we end a teabreak conversation about how often you should have a sexual health checkup, saying “Can you just stop talking about it please? It makes me feel all ewwww.”
Well, feeling ‘ewwww’ has created a dangerous situation. Without giving children and teenagers a safe space in which to discuss and learn about sex, relationships and sexuality we are creating a vacuum that will be filled by three things: a) whatever their parents choose to tell them; b) all the shit teenagers talk to each other; and c) ideas about sex derived solely from cultural representations of it. Advertising and porn are the big guns here. The version of sex in most porn and advertising isn’t particularly safe, consensual, varied, respectful or even likely to be that much fun (good luck to any women planning on having an orgasm) and the additional messages it peddles about gender identity, power, race and sexual orientation are pretty unhelpful.
Some Scary Numbers
As well as the great Tory terror of teenage pregnancy *cue Hammer Horror evil laughter and lightning strike* this is a public health issue. Although last year there was a small decrease in the total number of STIs diagnosed in England, 2010 still clocked up 418,598 new diagnoses, and the under-25s experience the highest rates of STIs overall. In 2008, the UN reported that globally only 40% of young people aged 15-24 had accurate knowledge about HIV and transmission, while the same group accounted for 45% of all new HIV infections. SRE also presents an opportunity to undermine the stigma faced by people living with HIV through education about transmission without moral judgement. (Stats from here.)
This is important, big picture, long term stuff. It’s very hard to unlearn attitudes and prejudices formed in your early life, and not everyone has an Usborne Guide To Growing Up at hand (even that magnificent volume had its blind spots – Miranda reminded me of the ‘kthanxbai!’ box-out on homosexuality…2 ) But there are excellent people fighting the good fight who deserve your support. Here’s a linklist – go show them some well-informed, safe and respectful love.
Campaigns, Organisations and Events
- Education for Choice
- A rallying cry by Zoe Margolis on Comment is Free
- Petition for 21st C sex and relationships education
- Sex Appeal comedy fundraiser
- National AIDS Trust campaign to get HIV education into classrooms
- Brook
- FPA
- HIVAware
- Avert
Resources and Badass Sex Educators
- Vagina Pagina
- Bish
- Scarleteen
- UNESCO International technical guidance on sexuality education: an evidence-informed approach for schools, teachers and health educators
- Sexedukation
- SRE Project
- Contraception Education
- Dr Petra Boynton
- Dr Petra’s Twitter list of sex educators
- Ed’s note: I can’t bear linking the Mail and am still in mourning for IstyOsty, but search and ye shall find; it’s titled “Casual Sex and ‘Bad Touching’: Guess What Your Eight Year Old Is Learning At School These Days”. *facepalm*
- Ed butting in again: has this been expanded yet? Anyone seen if they’ve revised it to be even slightly less heteronormative? *shuts up*