Genre is not just in the entertainment/calendar section of the paper. Here's a pretty interesting piece in the LA Times op-ed section about torture in films.
The memorable quote:
"In the age of Abu Ghraib, the unashamed passion of torture-genre groupies is mainstream and normal. Aintitcool.com commentator "funnyhat," writing about "See No Evil," a torture entry from last summer, is confused by anti-torture opprobrium. "Why does everyone call it 'torture porn'?" funnyhat asks. "It's entertainment, not a fetish! 'See No Evil,' while not the greatest movie, was a great step forward for horror fans who love our torture."
"I love to torture!" Bela Lugosi shouted in a quaint (like the Geneva Convention) 1935 chiller called "The Raven." "I tear torture from myself in torturing you," Lugosi added, showing a level of insight denied current films, whose best critic could be Limbaugh. "You ever heard of emotional release? I'm talking about people having a good time," Limbaugh said of the Abu Ghraib pranksters in 2004.
... Torture is what we watch acted-out in front of us as we sit in movie theaters eating nachos. Torture is serial and endless, like entertainment, and comes to us in the guise of fun, as it did at Abu Ghraib. The two are beginning to merge."
So is the public's interest in torture as genre directly related to Abu Ghraib? I think that's simplistic, as anyone who has seen Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction or Audition (all pre-9/11) will tell you. In fact, going back to an earlier post about the tendency to wax nostalgic, I'd say this op-ed writer wants to assert that the torture films of earlier eras somehow "meant" something more, compared to the Abu Ghraib era films. Any of you reading your Black Dahlia books might feel differently.
What is interesting though is the discussion of torture genre as entertainment vs. fetish. (And its nice to see Lugosi quoted, even if there were better quotes from his other Poe film, The Black Cat.)
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