This Hostile World- Violence Against Women

[max sg]

I'd like to share this article here:

I am deeply offended by the current trend in films and television of excessive
violence towards women. I believe there is a connection between misogyny and
homophobia, and when a society becomes more aggressive in its attitudes towards
women, gay people are vulnerable. The current "torture porn" genre is
problematic.

From the article:
"If you have a sister, a female cousin or an aunt, then you know a woman who has been sexually abused or raped. You mother may be a survivor of rape or incest herself. You may not have had any way of knowing this about her unless she told you, but perhaps one day as a child you snuck up behind her to surprise her, and she burst into tears and left the room. Or you heard her calling out in her sleep because she was having night terrors, an aftermath of rape. She may have slept with the lights on. Your daughter, who suddenly seems withdrawn, may not be able to tell you that her boyfriend forced her to have sex with him, or that a male teacher touched her inappropriately after school. You may have a girlfriend who refuses to have oral sex and won’t talk about why; who cries during sex and can’t stop, who doesn’t remember anything about her childhood before the age of six. If you’ve lived next door to a woman who is being battered, you my have heard shouting or screams coming from her house at night, or seen a police car in her driveway. If you have any women friends or you work with women, then you may know someone who has come to her job bruised or with a broken limb or blackened eye because of a violent partner. You may also know a woman who is missing or who has been murdered."


This Hostile World
http://hostileworld.blogspot.com

[Mythsaje]

1. I never got slasher films

and I can't stand the "genius" Tarantino. He played the psycho-sick brother of Clooney's character in From Dusk Til Dawn entirely too well for my taste. I wanted him dead three minutes into the film.

I have never watched the Hostel, nor will I see its sequel. The Hills Have Eyes is currently On Demand, but I won't watch it.

I prefer kick-ass female characters. None of mine would make good victims, nor would they abandon another to such a creature as described. Not in a million years.

What I don't understand about this blog is the disdain shown for movies that don't have these issues. What's wrong with "obnoxious" kid movies? Hell, I LIKE a lot of those movies. I've seen Over The Hedge three times so far and still laugh my ass off.

And superhero flicks at least try to teach kids that some things are worth fighting for.

I'm not a big fan of romantic comedies, but that's because nearly every damn plot's the same. Boy meets girl, boy lies to girl or girl lies to boy, and hilarity ensues until the lie is revealed. Then, at the end of the movie, a big dramatic gesture makes it all come out all right.

Bleh.

I can't tell by this blog what movies you DO like.

[Chulanowa]

2. I don't mind "slasher" films...

Where the cheesy red corn syrup and the latex severed limbs are flying and dude in a hockey mask is popping out of the toilet or whatever. I've been known to watch a whole day of flesh-chomping, one-lining, breast-exposing zombie flicks.

But I will not watch Hostel. I will not watch Saw. Nor any of their sequels or spinoffs. While I don't mind spectacles that are meant to be over-the-top and show it frequently (a category that, for me, includes The Hills Have Eyes, and Rob Zombie's pair of splatterfest movies) but I will not watch those two and their like, because, well, it's snuff film.

There is a vast difference, for me at least, between slasher flicks, and the Saw-type movies. With a Slasher, you have a plot, weak as it may be. Bad evil Guy, whether it's a menace in a mask, an army of the undead, or a troupe of inbred serial killers, is on the march and causing problems, and eventually cross paths with our plucky young (or not...) heroes. Some of those heroes will die, and all will get the bejeezus scared out of them. In the end though, they win (...or do they?)

With the second class of movies, though, it's nothing so much as a montage of various means of torture and death. You sympathize with the slasher victims. You cheer for them to get out of the locked bathroom or to find the car with the keys in it. With the Saw-type movies, all you've really got is this gnawing sense of being violated, yourself... because there's really no escape for the people on the screen, yet you still try to sympathize with them. Or worse - maybe you don't.

That said, I don't believe these kind of movies cause that sort of outlook. I think they expose it. Art, even the gross grungy stuff, is a look at the society that produced it. We live in a period where rape and murder of prisoners is not only accepted, but even encouraged! And that's within our own prison systems, to say nothing of our secret ones, and even the not-so-secret ones. We live in an environment where we're told we must kill, and kill, and kill again because our "freedom" depends on mass slaughter. Our culture has discovered sex sells - whether it's an emaciated chick with big tits, or a brainless man with lots of money and scruffy cheeks, and that objectification grows ever more prevalent.

People - men and women both - are now objects. props in our day-to-day quest for satisfaction for whatever it may be - sex, entertainment, money. If someone is a problem, well, they should die, or at least be locked away and tortured and raped and starved. They are "of no worth" and so this "just punishment" is warranted. Right? Welcome to the corporate culture of America, where the "human face" is a Wal-mart smile

[Mythsaje]

4. I don't know...

Maybe it's the gamer in me, but it always struck me that the characters in slasher films were committing suicide by stupidity. The first couple, I suppose, were random chance, but after that if the bad guy got them, they were being remarkably dumb.

Never, ever, watch a horror flick with a gamer. And I don't mean it in a video gamer sense. Any old-school table-top gamer worth his or her salt would make short work of any insane killer running around a camp, abandoned house, or old factory. Weapons and materials for traps abound.

Basic rules:

Stay vigilant. This is no time to be screwing around.
Never go off alone. Guard each other's backs, be aware of all possible hiding places.
Never approach the downed monster/villain without a weapon.
Hit 'em again to make sure.
Never run UPstairs.
Stay out of the basement.
Guard the exit/entrance if at all possible.
Get the hell out of there AS A GROUP.

Looking at it from that perspective, it's pretty pointless "entertainment." It's not entertaining, it's irritating.

I thought Saw was interesting because it's a puzzle-box. Okay, it creeped me out as well, but there were some of the situations that could have been defeated, had the victim had the imagination or patience to pull it off.

I think perhaps one of the reasons all of this bugs me so much is that it subtly reinforces the meme of us as victims. At the mercy of people more ruthless and dangerous than ourselves. And, worst of all, all too often that is the case.

I think that itself may be as dangerous as rendering SOME people immune to the horrorific images. If you make people feel helpless and powerless, likely to freeze in shock and fear, you turn them into prey.

Bad idea.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Gee, that sounds like me

Incidentally, my gender is male.

The world is, in a sense, turning on itself.

The problem isn't "testosterone" -- it's flesh and blood. And it's a lot more serious than sexism.

Yes, there are things that are more serious than sexism. The suicide of our species, for example.

--p!

[bemildred]

5. I'm a guy. I think these movies and things are immensely stupid.

And not entertaining at all.