Sado-porn
So, I rented Hard Candy last night. Interesting movie – a “tables turned” scenario in which the predatory pedophile photographer becomes the victim of the protagonist fourteen-year-old putative victim. She tortures him, subjects him to a pseudo-castration, and eventually coerces him into suicide. She’s the hero.
And it struck me – this is the essence of sado-porn. Anything is acceptable, given the right context. We’re supposed to be cheering for the young heroine, as she drugs the adult man, ties him down, plays out what he believes is a castration surgery, and then pretends to dispose of his testicles in the garbage disposal. Watching this movie, it’s apparent that any act, no matter how grotesque, sadistic, or violent can be not only acceptable, but laudable. The audience, horrified at the depravity of the victim, is supposed to cheer.
More overtly horrifying examples of contextual manipulation come to mind. The Sharon Tate murder, for example, or the social milieu that must have made Auschwitz possible, or perhaps the gassing of the Kurds, or Pol Pot’s antics in Cambodia; horrifying acts deemed laudable within a carefully created context.
Any given act can be considered socially desirable, given the right context: the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oklahoma City or the World Trade Center.
The destruction of Iraq, the corrosive impact of the Homeland Security Act, or the election of a petty, brutal little man to the highest office of the most powerful country in the world.
What separates the heroes and the villains? When does is an act of sadistic aggression, or wholesale destruction, become unacceptable, regardless of provocation? Apparently, the answer is never. When pushed sufficiently to the edge, any act becomes acceptable.
If this premise is accepted by a sufficiently large group of people, then they are fodder for manipulation. So long as there is a sufficiently persuasive despot who can instill a sufficient degree of fear and paranoia, any act of aggression can be recast as an act of self-defense.
The protagonist in Hard Candy is afforded the license of the righteous victim, and we identify with her.
A movie is such a little thing, isn’t it? A contrived scenario, whose purpose is to titillate, or entertain. This is just one little piece of sado-porn: extreme dehumanization of a dehumanizing villain. But this is the same phenomenon that promotes genocide – we only find the impulse laudable, because of the context from which we are viewing it.
This is the point on which there is no separation between the political right and the political left – no-one questions the process, only the context in which the impulse to objectify and destroy the villain is employed. Both parties condone vigilante justice, so long as they can identify with their respective victims, and the context in which victimization is viewed can be manipulated to justify a like response.
And until we recognize this, the substantive differences between political philosophies amount to so much window-dressing.
And it struck me – this is the essence of sado-porn. Anything is acceptable, given the right context. We’re supposed to be cheering for the young heroine, as she drugs the adult man, ties him down, plays out what he believes is a castration surgery, and then pretends to dispose of his testicles in the garbage disposal. Watching this movie, it’s apparent that any act, no matter how grotesque, sadistic, or violent can be not only acceptable, but laudable. The audience, horrified at the depravity of the victim, is supposed to cheer.
More overtly horrifying examples of contextual manipulation come to mind. The Sharon Tate murder, for example, or the social milieu that must have made Auschwitz possible, or perhaps the gassing of the Kurds, or Pol Pot’s antics in Cambodia; horrifying acts deemed laudable within a carefully created context.
Any given act can be considered socially desirable, given the right context: the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oklahoma City or the World Trade Center.
The destruction of Iraq, the corrosive impact of the Homeland Security Act, or the election of a petty, brutal little man to the highest office of the most powerful country in the world.
What separates the heroes and the villains? When does is an act of sadistic aggression, or wholesale destruction, become unacceptable, regardless of provocation? Apparently, the answer is never. When pushed sufficiently to the edge, any act becomes acceptable.
If this premise is accepted by a sufficiently large group of people, then they are fodder for manipulation. So long as there is a sufficiently persuasive despot who can instill a sufficient degree of fear and paranoia, any act of aggression can be recast as an act of self-defense.
The protagonist in Hard Candy is afforded the license of the righteous victim, and we identify with her.
A movie is such a little thing, isn’t it? A contrived scenario, whose purpose is to titillate, or entertain. This is just one little piece of sado-porn: extreme dehumanization of a dehumanizing villain. But this is the same phenomenon that promotes genocide – we only find the impulse laudable, because of the context from which we are viewing it.
This is the point on which there is no separation between the political right and the political left – no-one questions the process, only the context in which the impulse to objectify and destroy the villain is employed. Both parties condone vigilante justice, so long as they can identify with their respective victims, and the context in which victimization is viewed can be manipulated to justify a like response.
And until we recognize this, the substantive differences between political philosophies amount to so much window-dressing.
posted by TenaciousK at 8:48 PM
4 Comments:
Hi TK,
I couldn't resist this fine piece. You've totally nailed it here: Context is everything.
I would only add Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, which deals with the same theme from a rape POV. Then, there's Burgess's and Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, particularly the closing scenes about state inflicted violence.
Given the right kind of outrage, any atrocity is permissiable. Horrible!
Thanks for stopping by, ZB:
I've been trying to put my finger on what exactly is going wrong with this country (I know, I know - where to start?) and why I'm so angry at the Democratic party. I think I'm finally onto something, though - there's a much-needed corrective mechanism that's MIA. I also wonder (in kind've a dialectic sense) if this is part of what is fueling the re-emergence of religious conservatism in this country.
And I think this is a part of it - that our standards and ethics can be so influenced by context, and the vulnerability to internal and external manipulation this creates. I think media has made this more of an issue because it's heightened the dynamic plasticity of opinion, while simultaneously interfering with depth analysis because of a drowning-out effect.
There are hopeful compensations - places like BOTF, for example, where media makes a kind of discussion and collaboration zone possible. But, the more pervasive impact seems to be a population becoming increasingly vulnerable to information manipulation.
I miss the days when we talked about standards of behavior that were, if not absolute, were far less plastique. It's not a simplistic moralism I pine for, it's an elaborately reasoned moralism - those are the frameworks that are resistant to environmental changes.
It doesn't matter whether or not, in the post-modernist sense, we allow context to determine everything. What matters is the extent to which we think these issues through, or the extent to which we (in the one extreme) allow environment to dictate our response or (in the other extreme) we abdicate to a rigid moral construct (such as, a rule-based religious framework).
Oh, I'm rambling again. Thanks for your comment - for some reason, you seem to consistently provoke some idea from me.
TK,
I would urge you to read Zizek, especially Enjoy your Symptom. There's a lot to choose from with him, but I like the way he integrates his understanding of disparate figures like Lacan, Hitchcock, Hegel and Marx into a tapestry that seems crucial to our condition.
In many ways what you pine for is a vocabulary to give utterance to your vision. If you are beginning to lose your belief in partisan politics, US style, I would commend you because it is utterly bankrupt. It cannot even revive the dead language of its own excesses any longer, so what you find is the purest form of fragmentation, Babel once more. There's no point in grafting an otiose language to this condition because ultimately it will fail you.
Anyway, TK, your sense and your fine instincts have already overtaken your capacity to express your sense of having arrived elsewhere than where you initially, or perhaps unwittingly intended.
I'd also urge upon you Baudrillard, Virilio, Badiou, Lacoue-Labarthe, Lyotard and even some of the writers of the Verso Wo Es War series. It is a stupendous opening in the very discourse you reach for but do not attain.
I see you struggle to superimpose a defunct (forgive me) dialectic on an awareness that has already moved along. So, it's time to go fishing again, as it were. You are too clever and too special to be a prisoner of your correlatives' limitations.
Hope you don't mind the forthrightness.
John
John:
What I really should do is start a reading list. A long, well thought-out reading list. And one of the first persons I should consult about it is you.
What I probably will do is continue to muddle along, ripping ideas off from the people who actually kept reading [that should read, well, you for one], talking when I should be listening, and otherwise making an ass of myself.
I’m hopeful that, after critical events in my life have mellowed and resolved, I’ll have time and energy to engage in more soul-expanding activities. Not all is traumatic wailing and gnashing teeth, and in fact, there are some frankly remarkable things going on in my life as well. But, it all gets distracting, though I find I can’t shut my brain off long enough to even enjoy a banal little movie without getting all indignant, spinning off into peculiar directions, and eventually relating everything back to the broken American political system.
Ah well, ‘tis the season, and all that.
A vocabulary to give utterance to my vision – interesting thought, but not quite. A framework on which to organize my vision, perhaps; I want to speak in the vernacular. Specialized language is too limiting.
I must say, John, you have the writer’s gift. Never before have I been deemed boring in such a complimentary and kind manner. Not only do I not mind the forthrightness, I appreciate it.
I have much to say on the topic of a defunct dialectic, actually, but not (I think) tonight. What I would like to find is a manner of expression that is as accessible and persuasive to as many people as possible – not writing to the 2% of the population that will get, for example, you, but the other 98% - many of whom vote, most of whom are suffering, and a few of whom are reachable.
[sigh…] I’d like to reply with my name, but I’m afraid it’s unusual enough to make me identifiable, and there are some considerations regarding that which I won’t bother going into. It is nice, however, to know yours. Thanks.
TK/FB
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