In my research the family and its blood-lines, roles and functions are manifest throughout horror stories. The sexually free young woman is often punished for her straying against the male patriarchal family dynamic. Sickness runs in the blood Halloween, Friday the 13th, and also such as early horror tales of gothic nature, vampires, poe's work etc. The ethos of modern life are again worked out with betrayals from the greater political and scientific establishments with corporate greed as sanctions for eveil doings such as in 28 days, Resident evil etc. There are many reflective elements and wether purposely planted or subconcious, they refelct the current reality.Hopefully...in an entertaining not preachy manor...!

I actually wrote a very similar article about a year ago pertaining to the prevalence of so-called, "torture porn" flicks. POLITICS OF TORTURE PORN by Hunter M. Daniels The current crop of so called �torture porn� films are to be expected. A situation like that shown in the phenomenally popular �Hostel� and �Saw� franchises is a reaction to stresses of the world. Tom Savini famously commented that all of his effects work was based on what he saw, and took meticulous photographs of, in the Vietnam War. The prevalence of the Slasher genre in the 80�s is often seen as a reflection of the societal backlash from the sexually open hippy era to a point where sex was again something to be feared. The slasher, reinforcing these values was a creation of cold war paranoia. Freddy, Jason and Michael were just manifestations of the seemingly indestructible force of communism�a monolithic beast ready to destroy the All-American kids and take away the future of an entire generation. In the slasher films the enemy was clear and the motivation was simple because America knew �They� were the bad guys and we were the good guys. Things were clear cut and there was a linear path between problem and solution. That is no longer the case. Today, we have been weaned on paranoia. Anyone could be a �sleeper-cell� hiding in our neighborhood. Anyone we pass on the street could be planning to make some homemade explosive and put it in his or her shoe. The enemy is no longer a nation. No longer some clear cut �Them� whom we can gather together to hate. We have been taught that the Muslim faith is not the enemy (while simultaneously told that it more or less is) and that we cannot possibly try to fight a war against the religion. So what are we left with? �Saw� and �Hostel� and �Turistas� especially all deal with this problem. Where once the teenagers who had committed some sin would be punished while the sober virgin would survive now the victim is most often a completely innocent person. Also, the murder is not its own end any longer, the torture that comes first more than the inevitable final blow is the focus. Terrorism works this same way. It is not the number of people killed, it is the fear this instills in those still alive. It is important to note the prevalence of the idea of games in these films. From an outside perspective, there is a sort of art and beauty to the simplicity of the 9/11 attacks. The most effective moments in the �Saw� films recreate this effect. Basic tools turned against their makers. A child�s clay made into a facsimile of a bomb. Box-knives into weapons used to kill thousands. A videogame as instruction. All of these become puzzle-pieces to the twisted games of the madmen on screen in these �torture� films. And the monster is no longer some giant oaf. He is smarter than you, and in the case of Jigsaw and the Doctor in �Turistas� he is going to literally convert you to his way of thinking. To ignore the messages of a film like �Turistas� or any of the other torture based horror films is to ignore what could well be the central problem of our modern world. Horror films are one of the most telling signs of what a society is grappling with at any given moment, even as, or perhaps because, they are rarely appreciated until generations later. �Turistas� is the latest entry into the torture horror subgenre. However, unlike its predecessors, this film seems almost uninteresting in its� gory bits. There is a feeling of an adventure chase film from the 80�s with organ removal added onto it. Like many similar films, �Turistas� starts off with some somewhat developed main characters traveling abroad and finding their way into what amounts to a Venus fly trap. Here, the twenty-somethings are Caucasian tourists in Brazil who are abducted by an evil doctor who wants to take their organs so that they can �give back� to the country they are taking so much from. When this film was released there was some talk of it being racist or unfair to Brazilians. But to interpret the film in this manner would be to deeply undersell its point. Ultimately, this is a film about xenophobia. Brazil is used as a sort of shorthand for the protagonists eroticizing foreign culture while extolling their own ethnocentrism and assuming that the locals will just do whatever is requested because of the European nation�s dominance in South America. One man sleeps with a woman presuming she must want him because he is a foreigner and is shocked to discover that she is a prostitute and wanted him for his money. The underlying irony is that in either situation, her agenda is identical. It is also worth noting that only one of the main characters even bothered to learn Portuguese, while the others continually yell in broken Spanish, unaware of their own idiocy. �Turistas� deals with deep seeded issues of disenfranchisement and subjugation. The organs taken from the youths are little more than extensions of Shylock�s demand for a pound of flesh. The Brazilian characters are almost never subtitled and most of the discomfort and terror that an audience is likely to feel results from our collective ignorance of foreign cultures. The assumption that people outside of our own circle of European white culture are somehow less civilized or boorish is played off of to great effect. Our own ethnocentrism is challenged with the character of �Kiko� who is at first played for comic relief because of his fractured English. He seems almost slow or �special� if you will. As the story progresses however, he is shown to be the moral center of the feature, choosing to protect the protagonists from a fate too terrible for words. This is certainly the best looking of the torture horror films (thanks to the steady directorial hand of John Stockwell) and for as much as it has been compared to �Hostel� and �Saw� it is more derivative of �The Texas Chainsaw Massacre� than anything else. Even with these faults and the added baggage of abundant brutality towards women and some logical jumps in the narrative, �Turistas� stands on its own as an above average thriller thanks to its claustrophobic and tense final act where the surviving characters desperately try escape through a series of underwater tunnels. The tension is palpable and effect is gripping. �Turistas� is not a revolutionary film but it is definitely underrated (IMDB currently has it listed at a 3.0 average). There are some excellent set pieces and plenty to think about if you look beneath the surface. http://www.collider.com/dvd/reviews/archive_detail.asp/aid/3687/tcid/3

ugh...wall of text. how do I delete that?

Jeez, post your article on your site or on a blog. You are certainly a master of the obvious.

well, I did, but I also write for this site too on occasion.

Well, if I've interpreted your thesis correctly, the conflict at the heart of this essay is to what degree worldwide atrocities influence the fiction displayed in horror films, and if they're necessary or relevant to audiences. I don't wish to discuss terrorism in too great a detail however, since it's effects on films has in my opinion, been minimal. Rather than hurting the industry, it has provided a theme for a few filmmakers to explore. One that has come into awareness within the past few years, but in fact predates film history altogether. Now to answer what I believe is the most impacting and challenging question posed in your article. "What is the relationship between horror in the world and horror in the movies?" I would choose to define it as a symbiosis. With the absence of violence or any apt understanding or concept of it, I confidently believe that it'd be impossible to concieve of any violent fiction. Therefore it's a complete and inseperable influence, that has the potential to operate the other way around. Which brings me to a fiercely debated topic of discussion in and of itself, which is this... Do films saturated in graphic, violent imagery provoke violent urges in an impressionable minority? Undoubtedly and most unfortunately, yes. A dejected few commit new and absurd acts conforming to the aforementioned, thus adding to the already expansive pool of bloody history. This is how one can understand the dynamic at play. Films serve to affect and invigorate those who come to admire them... In varying degrees. It so happens the root of many of their themes are based off conflict. Having said so much, and fearing RONOFTHEDEAD'S intolerence of comments exceeding a sentence, I'll end with this... Violence, while an ugly enterprise, has a presence in film that is necessary and relevant for the reason that it sells us on the authenticity of the simulated excursions, and spine-tingling fears we confront, and conquer vicariously through them. P.S. Hunter, I get you dawg!

Steven! It's great to see you writing a blog. Drop me an email soon... and check out my own blog, Genre Hacks. genrehacks.blogspot.org Talk to you soon, - Sean Hood

The link between film violence and real violence is similar to the link between book violence and real violence. It is the person, not the medium, that creates actions. The medium MAY influence a person's activities, but only to the level that that person allows themselves to be influenced. For example, a person already disposed toward murdering their wife may see "Strangers on a Train' and see this film as somehow reinforcing his intentions. Another person sees the same film as merely entertaining.To the extent that violence exists in our society, so too will the media reflect this tendency. The more we see of it, the more we have a taste for it.

Has anyone here made it out of grade school yet? I'll come back when you do. Until then don't speak of horror or violence when you have no real concept of its nature. Just partitioned theories and loose associations of violence and what media has whispered in your ears enough times to listen. Horror doesn't need you theorizing on its existence or source or nature. It was here before you and will be here after this incarnation of existence has fizzled and run its course. Horror is a deity and mankind still an amoeba. To be pretentious enough to think you can dissect it into neat categories is offensive and pompous on a level no machine could ever register or test could ever answer. We're an army of ants on a typewriter, just hoping the weight of our efforts push the right order of keys to explain ourselves to something that already knows what it is. Go Relax. Horror will show you what it is when it is ready. Until then you can do nothing but wait.