Pain porn
Carole Cadwalladr has a scathing review of The Revenant (as did all three of the guests on Saturday Review yesterday). It sounds absolutely rebarbative.
It’s a tale of “revenge, retribution and primal violence”, according to theGuardian’s Peter Bradshaw, “as thrilling and painful as a sheet of ice held to the skin”. This is praise, by the way. It’s “unthinkingly, aggressively masculine,” saysGQ. That’s praise too.
The film is based on a true story of the American frontier from 1823 and I’ll summarise the plot for you: man seeks revenge, man gets revenge. That’s it, basically, for two and a half hours, though there is a brief reprieve when you get to see Leonardo DiCaprio being mauled by a grizzly bear. Early reports suggested that he was raped. But no, that’s a fate reserved for one of the two women who appear fleetingly on screen. (The other one is slaughtered. But don’t worry, you have no idea who she is so you won’t actually care.)
Mind you, everyone says the photography is gorgeous. But the movie as such sounds like an assault.
I wasn’t entertained. Can you tell? I saw it at a press screening two weeks before Christmas when the streets were filled with twinkly fairy lights and I tripped past a Salvation Army band playing Silent Night to spend what felt like several weeks in a dark room waiting – oh dear God, do you wait – for Leo to just get on and hack the other man to death so I could finally go home. A well-oiled publicity machine of the type that fuels an Academy Awards clean sweep has carefully leaked how gruelling the shoot was, how authentically the actors “suffered” in the making. (They got a bit cold, apparently.)
And then they went home to Southern California, where it’s very warm.
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s idea was for it to look as real as possible. Which would have been magnificent if there was something in the way of a story or any meditation on the nature of retribution or anyone – anyone – that you could give one toss about, but there’s not. So the landscape is chilling and the violence is pointless and the whole thing is meaningless. A vacuous revenge tale that is simply pain as spectacle. The Revenant is pain porn.
I don’t mind a little pain porn if it’s about something like the race to the South Pole or Shackleton’s adventure with the Endurance. But hours of pointless violence? No thanks.
And in all probability, it will win every Oscar going. Critics have lavishly praised its “visceral” imagery, its “authentic” feel; it is, they say, “immersive” film-making at its finest. Though, arguably, not as immersive as putting a camera in a cage and then setting a man on fire. Have you seen that one? Where the man is burned alive? It’s not by González Iñárritu, but Isis. It wasn’t nominated for anything but the pain is even more real, more visceral, more – what was the word, thrilling? – than DiCaprio’s.
But then, all of Isis’s video output is inspired by our own entertainments – in its subject matter, its soundtrack, its editing. Islamic State hasn’t invented new narrative tropes, it’s simply lifted them straight from Hollywood. All it’s done is to go one step further, trumped Hollywood at its own game. It has seen what we want, what we thrill to, and given it to us. If there were grizzly bears in the Syrian desert, there’s no doubt that they’d put one in a cage and let us see what it really looks like when one rips a man apart.
That, I think, is an excellent point. I’ve always thought that. I’ve always thought September 11 was basically a disaster movie – imagined and planned as a disaster movie, and enjoyed by the perps and many of the spectators as a disaster movie. I mean “enjoyed” in the most literal and everyday sense – it was fun and exciting and a thrill. We’ve been trained to like that kind of thing, so we like it.
Cadwalladr recommends we don’t waste our money to see it now.
Your choice, though perhaps we could all try and act a little less surprised by the Islamic State’s next video spectacular. Or ask ourselves why pain and suffering and brutalising women and pointless, fetishistic violence – when it’s done by Hollywood – wins awards. Or why we’re so keen for it to look “real”. What neurotransmitters are we releasing? What thirst are we slaking? Isis’s films are simply the next logical step of our films. Their culture is actually our culture too. Isis hasn’t invented any of this. It is just a bit more honest about it. More “authentic”. More “visceral”. More “real”.
Yep.
With Shackleton you don’t just get suffering vicariously enjoyed. You get people looking out for one another, daring last-ditch efforts, people (somehow) keeping their wits about them, resisting despair, relying on a code of discipline, calling on skills honed over a lifetime, and unbelievably good luck after unbelievably bad luck.
Quite. There’s a lot to the story.
Shackleton is a completely different thing – the competence and skill of everyone on the expedition, the self sacrifice of Shackleton the leader, the scale of the navigation and mountaineering accomplishments, the fact that leadership skills are developed through knowing how to be on a team and support the leadership of others in a deliberate and thoughtful manner…
When our kids were little, whenever there was a question of teamwork or sibling squabbling, the question got asked: “What would Shackleton do?” Worked marvelously. I still remind myself of it at work quite often.
No intention whatsoever of seeing Revenant. There’s way too much pain porn in the world, and Shackleton would most likely not approve.
Sorry, nope. We don’t have to be “trained” to get an adrenaline rush in response to danger, real or imagined. And people don’t hurt other people because Hollywood (video games, rock lyrics, EC comics, dime novels) made them do it.
If ya’ll will excuse me, I think it’s time for me to reread Titus Andronicus.
Way too facile (as Lady Mondegreen points out in #4… and in case some aren’t familiar with Titus Andronicus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_Andronicus). In fact I’d call Catwalladr’s piece “review porn”, little more than a gratuitous reference to ISIS to add – dare I say it? – titillation to the otherwise very banal and very limited declaration that she didn’t like the film. Heroism and revenge, wars and disasters have been the stuff of literature since Homer. Or even breathless articles in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/20/michele-battelli-climber-nepal-earthquake-survivor-everest-felt-like-whole-mountain-was-coming-down
@5
… Oh I’ve just peeked at the some of the comments to Catwalldr’s “review”… Deservedly scathing.
Or even this:
And speaking of hypocrisy, let’s not forget that this is The Guardian, who are firmly in the “we are NOT Charlie” camp.
Comparing a Hollywood film to ISIS is a bit of a stretch.
The Revenant aside, it’s Tarantino that upsets me the most. Django Unchained was a good case of violence porn. The dialogue and in particular the plot devices were the flimsiest I’ve ever encountered. The whole film was just a series of violence orgies strung together by lame plot lines that had no other purpose than to introduce the next round of bloodletting.
It’s movies like “The Martian”, which I just saw yesterday, that impress me.
I guess the moral is that if you’re going to leave DiCaprio for dead out in the bush, and believe me I’ve daydreamed about it, you’d better “mak siccer”.
Oh yes, Titus Andronicus, killer point – since it’s obviously Shakespeare’s best and most popular play, as opposed to being one of his earliest and least popular.
There’s a reason Hamlet and Lear are performed and read more often than Titus: they’re more than violence porn.
I didn’t say we’ve been trained to get an adrenaline rush in response to danger, I said we’ve been trained to enjoy watching performances of violence. I know there’s a kind of orthodoxy that says it’s insulting to The People to say that, because it denies The People have enough agency and sense to understand that a movie is a movie, but I think that’s horseshit. I know a movie is a movie but that doesn’t mean movies can’t possibly cultivate in me a taste for watching violence. I don’t think I’m particularly Special that way.
Now you’ve got me depressed about Mrs. Chippy.
So, basically, it’s a modern revenge tragedy – which were basically pain porn plays. They place it in the Old West because that has mythic resonance for Americans and recipients of US culture. If they set it today we’d recognise the ridiculousness of the genre – even Shakespeare set Titus Andronicus in classical times (also because the original was a classical story).
What has its current popularity* got to do with anything? And if we’re all so cultivated to like violence, shouldn’t it be his most popular?
* It was popular in its day. The Victorians hated it, but it’s starting to recover.
God, I hope it doesn’t recover – it’s terrible. He hadn’t hit his stride yet, to put it mildly.
@John
I haven’t seen Django yet, but with Tarantino, it’s mostly the cinematic storytelling that matters, not plot or dialogue. Use of color, imagery, cinematic technique, references to genre conventions and to other films–that sort of thing. And pacing–his late editor, Sally Menke, had a lot to do with the feel of his pre-2010 films.
Well–(she said guiltily)–I like it.
But yeah, def not his best.
I was going to go to Revenant a week ago, but then watched the trailer, felt a bit put off, did some research on the original story and read a bit about the movie. The cinematography and acting might be good, maybe even great, but I couldn’t see what else I was supposed to get from watching this. There’s a lot of shit and pain in this world. Some of it mine or peoples close to me. To be exposed to additional pain and suffering I like to have a reason. Revenant just doesn’t seem to provide that.
As far as Titus Andronicus goes, Shakespear went through a phase here at least where he didn’t have much public mind-share. That turned around somewhat with modern adaptations of his works. That’s when I first heard anyone other than an English Lit major mention the Andronicus – “Oh yeah, well if you enjoyed [insert shakespear play here] it’s all good, it’s nice an accessible. I prefer Titus Andronicus, it’s so gritty, but a bit challenging.”
Not saying you’re a one-upping hipster Lady M! Tastes and entertainment needs vary.
Rob, I don’t know much about contemporary music, and I’m 57, so I’m probably not a hipster. But I was uncool before it was cool to be uncool–that must count for something…
http://cdn2.funscrape.com/Images/9/9297430035617435.jpg
I’m in total agreement about and disgusted with horror “pain porn” but extend it to the overwhelming presence of guns and gunplay in US media – the news LOVES any story with shooting and an adult TV show where guns don’t feature prominently, much less don’t appear, is perishingly rare.
However – it’s easy to complain. I’ve been trying (and failing) to imagine a “grownup” movie or television show without guns, torture, or destruction that would get produced. Part of this is that film and TV producers are almost all men (not stepping into the “gender” war here, I mean men with real man parts), part is the herd mentality that only approves projects that ape previously successful ones – real innovation is rare.
So what are your ideas for entertainment that will succeed without the adrenaline rush of horror or shooting/exploding/chasing?
The film industry needs “blockbuster” films to exist: I work in exhibition and know the economics – a season of smaller movies cuts cinema profits deeply, something like Star Wars can mean lasting another year. There are more than a few movie palaces still open because their leases include severe penalties for early termination: losing a few thousand dollars a month is better than paying tens of millions to close, and there’s always hope that next week’s movie will become a “must see”.
Yeah, yeah, down with the kids who’re down with the kids.
My rule for movies for some years now has been ‘no rapes, no murders, no tortures’. I’ll accept people getting killed in movies, or even getting killed in war, but ‘no murders’ is pretty specific. I’ve had to break that rule a few times for friendship’s sake, but by and large I try to keep to it. Needless to say I don’t see many movies. I’m getting ready for work so haven’t sat down to think about it, but I can recall enjoying Made in Dagenham a while back, and The Martian recently. (I also saw Frozen on the advice of an animator friend, and loved it, but that obviously doesn’t count as ‘grown up’.) Will post later if I can think of some more movies I’ve seen recently. I remember being disappointed that such a feel-good movie as Slumdog Millionaire had a torture scene in it.
I didn’t say we’ve been trained to get an adrenaline rush in response to danger, I said we’ve been trained to enjoy watching performances of violence.
But why? Why did the conspirators decide to train us to like this sort of thing rather than another sort of thing? Romantic comedy is much cheaper to make, why didn’t they train us to prefer that?
Maybe, maybe not. I spend a lot of my time hanging around with the theatre community (Yes, I know, it’s weird to be both a biologist and a playwright, but I’m weird, so sue me). I haven’t met a single person who “likes” Titus. Some theatres do perform it, because there are some people who assume if it’s Shakespeare, it’s high class and it’s a see or be seen sort of thing, but I’m not sure I’d say I’ve seen anything resembling a recovery. There was the movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Michelle Pfeiffer about the turn of the century, but I haven’t seen a rush of theatres doing Titus.
Not weird at all! Renaissance human! Range of interests!
That’s one thing I still admire about Jerry Coyne: his passion for literature etc.
And yeah. Titus is just so obviously apprentice work – the language is so crude and basic compared to the later plays. Thomas Kyd could have been proud of it, but our Will went past Thomas Kyd by quite a margin.