Can't Stand it No More
Jul. 15th, 2007 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
botiasI just read Dustin Rowles review of Captivity at Pajiba.com. I have also read Joss Whedon's similarly inspired rant about violence against women that has received such support.
I feel that both this rant and Joss Whedon's have a sexist logic underlying them. Others have pointed out that objecting to the films because the torture object was a sexy young woman is sexist. I agree. The notion that women should receive special treatment or respect that men do not, presupposes an inequality between men and women. Objections should be on humanist grounds.
People have rebutted by saying that only men (bad, wrong men instructed by twisted, woman-hating culture) like torture porn and THAT is why these films are about men hating women.
In my experience this is demonstrably false.
If people will venture to read fan fiction and erotica written by women, it will not take them long to discover that lots and lots of women like to fantasize about attractive young people, usually men, tortured in a sexual way, often with the victim then having sex with their captor or presented as getting off on the torture.
I would love to see a day when women have the opportunity and daring to make expensive movies about their "sick depraved" sexual fantasies instead of only being able to express themselves in the anonymity and low cost venue of the internet.
I feel that both this rant and Joss Whedon's have a sexist logic underlying them. Others have pointed out that objecting to the films because the torture object was a sexy young woman is sexist. I agree. The notion that women should receive special treatment or respect that men do not, presupposes an inequality between men and women. Objections should be on humanist grounds.
People have rebutted by saying that only men (bad, wrong men instructed by twisted, woman-hating culture) like torture porn and THAT is why these films are about men hating women.
In my experience this is demonstrably false.
If people will venture to read fan fiction and erotica written by women, it will not take them long to discover that lots and lots of women like to fantasize about attractive young people, usually men, tortured in a sexual way, often with the victim then having sex with their captor or presented as getting off on the torture.
I would love to see a day when women have the opportunity and daring to make expensive movies about their "sick depraved" sexual fantasies instead of only being able to express themselves in the anonymity and low cost venue of the internet.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 07:26 pm (UTC)In my experience this is demonstrably false.
You know, this was not a point I expected to hear anyone raise on my Flist, but you're right, and there's even been scholarly treatises on the subject which question the whole sadistic-male-gaze theory (http://www.amazon.com/Men-Women-Chain-Saws-Gender/dp/0691006202/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-9808695-4393429?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184699520&sr=8-1), which neither Whedon nor this author seems to have heard of. Odd, that, since JW's own work dabbles in exactly that area, challenging genre conventions about who you identify with in a horror scenario.
Not having seen the picture in question, I can't really say whether it's sexist or not, but what I could make out of the plot in between all the reviewer's ranting, it sounds like your typical rape-revenge plot, dialed up to eleven, and generally, the point of those movies is to make you take the vicitim's side, and get off on seeing her revenge. And, just like fanfic, the worse and more fucked-up her treatment is, the greater the catharsis. (JW can't possibly pretend he doesn't know that works, considering all he put Buffy through over the years.) Obviously, it's wholly possible to give such films a skew that's more about the torture part than the revenge part, although I kind of find that hard to swallow from a Larry Cohen script, since he's a well-established horror writer/director on all sorts of challenging subjects (The Stuff, It's Alive, God Told Me To, etc.). I'd have to see it to know.
I'd be really interested to see a review from a woman, someone who watches horror. That I'd be curious about.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 09:34 pm (UTC)I will have to check out your link. :) I haven't seen the film either, but the plot does not sound sexist. Person tortures person he/she is sexually attracted to. The torturer is a het man so he tortures an attractive women. Woman is not rescued (by a man, like say the reviewer or Whedon who are riding valiently to her rescue) she is not broken by what a bad, bad person did to her; she escapes under her own power and gets revenge. I can't help but compare her ordeal to what ME put Buffy through over seven seasons, most often from the hands of males. Captivity chick is forced to shoot her own dog for example; Buffy is forced to run a sword through her lover.
I think the prevalence of this sort of film from the male viewpoint has much more to do with repression of women's sexuality and artistic expression than it has to do with man hating women (any more than women hate men anyway). I have always been interested in human sexuality, but fandom has shown me that the difference between men's and women's sexual expression is much more subtle than I think most people realize.