It is well documented that I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to being scared. I don’t like horror generally, and sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out on some great stuff. Well, let me rephrase. I know I’m missing out on some great stuff, but sometimes I wonder if I should care more about it.
There are some things I give not one shit about – the Saw franchise, for example. It can be as ingenious in its gory traps as it wants, but I’m someone it just isn’t going to be appealing to anytime soon. However, there are some things that perhaps I should make more of an effort to try, despite my fears.
I can get behind horror in a sci-fi setting a little more easily – I love Alien for example, and I might be one of only a few people that looks back on Event Horizon with fondness. I was scared watching those films, but still enjoyed them – in fact watching Alien for the first time all alone on ITV one Saturday night while my parents were out, eyes wide and heart hammering almost out of my chest as Ripley, Jones in hand, raced for the dubious safety of the Nostromo’s escape pod while lights flashed and smoke poured will always be one of my fondest film-related memories. But more standard horror is something I have tended to avoid, and continue to do so. Watching the Japanese language Ring trilogy left me feeling really quite traumatised (I swear I could see Sadako in every fucking shadow for months afterward) and while I can say they are decent films (the first one is genuinely excellent), I have no desire to watch them again anytime soon.
So I guess what it boils down to is that I need to find the good stuff and avoid the crap. Easier said than done when I’ve generally avoided the genre for so long. I think I’ve found two places I might be able to start, though. Being married to a librarian is a truly brilliant thing – I’ve found China Miéville and Anne Leckie, kept up with Brandon Sanderson’s latest releases and picked up classics from H. G. Wells, J. G. Ballard and Kurt Vonnegut. Thanks to Rach, I recently read Weaveworld, a fairly old novel written by Clive Barker – he of Hellraiser fame. Hellraiser and its sequels is probably a prime example of the kind of thing I tend to avoid. Weaveworld is one of those books that just boggles the mind – not only the imagination and the story, but the prose. Barely a page went by in that book that I didn’t find a passage, or a line, or a few words that made me take a breath and just admire the craft of an absolute master of words. The only other two authors I’ve found to be comparable in terms of that gobsmacking use of language are the aforementioned China Miéville and Stephen King. What is striking is that there are many moments of horror in Weaveworld and in Miéville’s work, and I’ve heard tell that King might dabble in horror from time to time as well. I couldn’t tell you for sure because the only books of his I’ve read so far is the Dark Tower series.
There’s got to be something in that, right? The three most gifted authors I’ve read have strong horror threads in much of their writing, with Barker and King famous for specialising in it? I’m clearly more comfortable when my horror is mixed with other genres – the sci-fi of Alien, Weaveworld is fantasy, The Dark Tower is also fantasy, with a large dose of western and Miéville is, frankly, beyond categorisation. Maybe I can use Barker and King to cross over into more straight horror?
Games are the same. I have tried to get through Bioshock a number of times – the premise is wonderful and the game is clearly quality – generally thought of as pretty much the best of the last generation. But when I play it before long I find myself a little too creeped out and I move on to something else. I want to play it. I want to finish it. I want to move on to Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite, but I want to get through Bioshock first.
So maybe that’s where I’ll start. Pick up another Clive Barker or Stephen King book. Finish Bioshock. Maybe then I’ll find the guts to keep going and see what I’ve been missing out on. Maybe.
Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts
Monday, December 19, 2016
Sunday, June 19, 2011
The BBFC: Stuck up suits trying to restrict our freedom to watch what we want or taking a stand against the morally wrong?
The British Board of Film Classification made a bad name for itself back in the 80s. It banned a whole host of low budget graphic horror movies in its self-appointed role as protector of the vulnerable public. It took this role way too seriously and banned so many they ended up as a their own mini-genre - the 'video nasties'. Times changed, so did the BBFC and most of them are no longer banned.
Recently, the BBFC was accused of being up to its old tricks when it declined to give a rating to The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence. Even now, the BBFC do occasionally decline to rate films, but due to the notoriety of The Human Centipede: First Sequence this one is a little more high profile. A full statement has been issued by the BBFC setting out its reasons for the decision. If you're unfamiliar with Tom Six's movie, brace yourself.
The Human Centipede is a horror film in which a mad scientist kidnaps three people and surgically attaches them mouth-to-anus to see if they can survive as a single organism. Not having seen it, I can't really comment of the quality of the film-making, but there is allegedly a scene in which there is some shit-in-mouth action. It made it through the censors uncut with an 18 certificate because stupid, horrid and pointless as it sounds, it's harmless. It's clear the 'scientist' is batshit mental and as the bad guy, gets the appropriate bullet in the head by the time the film is over.
The Human Centipede II goes a little meta, in that there is a guy who gets sexually aroused by the first film and gets his jollies off by watching the 'money shot' repeatedly. The guy gets so obsessed with it that he goes as far as snatching innocent people off the street and building a 'centipede' of his very own. The BBFC statement refers specifically to a scene in which the guy rapes the girl at the tail end with barbed-wire wrapped around his little man. Obviously, this is not a film you'd want to see on a full stomach, but is it really necessary to not rate it? There have been other films comparable in extremity that the BBFC have given a rating to - A Serbian Film is full of incest, rape and murder, sometimes all at once, and includes scenes in which a man is killed by being raped in the head and the rape of a newborn baby.
So what's the difference? Why ban one and not the other? It would appear as though it's to do with the manner in which the material is presented. A Serbian Film, while containing truly horrific imagery presents events in a light that clearly shows that these things are not right and tries to make a point (which I fear was lost somewhat in the controversy surrounding it) about some of the most repulsive things hidden in the dark corners of the nature of humanity. For that reason, with a few minor cuts, the BBFC was able to pass it with an 18 certificate. The Human Centipede, as mentioned above, clearly shows that there is a very mad, very twisted person at the centre of it all who must be, and is, stopped. The Human Centipede II, so I understand it (and I may well be understanding it incorrectly, as I am going only on what the BBFC statement and a few pieces written on Empire online and similar places say), presents the dreadful events through the eyes of the perpetrator with a little more than a touch of sympathy. That is, to suggest that not only is it OK for him to be getting off on it, but that perhaps, if you want to, you can too. Basically, encouraging you to have a wank over the sight of a guy with a barbed-wire-wrapped dick raping a girl while she's being forced to eat someone else's shit. And, while I'm not sure it's exactly harmful as the BBFC infer, there is no doubt that it just ain't quite right.
I do agree that censorship is a very slippery slope indeed, but I don't think this issue is about censorship. I'm sure the BBFC realise it's no longer the 1980s and that declining to certify a film does not equate to a ban. Cinemas can still legally show films that have not been rated, and if someone really wants to see it, they could find a copy online without too much trouble. So instead of it being about censorship, I think the BBFC is coming from a moral standpoint. It's not the events that take place within the film, it's that those events are shown through a certain prism, and it's the prism that the BBFC has a problem with. It's not something that could be solved with a few strategic BBFC-recommended cuts, it's the theme of the film itself. When it comes down to it, the BBFC had little choice in the matter in the end. Films are rated using a finely-crafted predetermined set of guidelines, and the 'this gives us a hard-on, what about you' view the film takes to the events depicted meant it was never going to get by. Those guidelines are partly determined as a result of direct input from the general public - the same people critics accuse the BBFC of unfairly restricting the viewing rights of. Those preset guidelines can sometimes be responsible for some ratings that are not immediately clear - for example, why did American Beauty get an 18 rating? It's relatively mild - even the climactic death scene isn't particularly grisly. It turns out that it's because two characters manage to escape the drudgery of day to day life using the money one of them got from selling drugs, and the BBFC could not be seen to be condoning positive outcomes that result from illegal activity. It seems a little silly, however the BBFC have no choice but to abide by these predetermined guidelines.
In all honesty, you're never gonna get me to see either of The Human Centipede films or A Serbian Film, so issues of censorship and freedom to view aside, I couldn't really care less if they all got banned.
Recently, the BBFC was accused of being up to its old tricks when it declined to give a rating to The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence. Even now, the BBFC do occasionally decline to rate films, but due to the notoriety of The Human Centipede: First Sequence this one is a little more high profile. A full statement has been issued by the BBFC setting out its reasons for the decision. If you're unfamiliar with Tom Six's movie, brace yourself.
The Human Centipede is a horror film in which a mad scientist kidnaps three people and surgically attaches them mouth-to-anus to see if they can survive as a single organism. Not having seen it, I can't really comment of the quality of the film-making, but there is allegedly a scene in which there is some shit-in-mouth action. It made it through the censors uncut with an 18 certificate because stupid, horrid and pointless as it sounds, it's harmless. It's clear the 'scientist' is batshit mental and as the bad guy, gets the appropriate bullet in the head by the time the film is over.
The Human Centipede II goes a little meta, in that there is a guy who gets sexually aroused by the first film and gets his jollies off by watching the 'money shot' repeatedly. The guy gets so obsessed with it that he goes as far as snatching innocent people off the street and building a 'centipede' of his very own. The BBFC statement refers specifically to a scene in which the guy rapes the girl at the tail end with barbed-wire wrapped around his little man. Obviously, this is not a film you'd want to see on a full stomach, but is it really necessary to not rate it? There have been other films comparable in extremity that the BBFC have given a rating to - A Serbian Film is full of incest, rape and murder, sometimes all at once, and includes scenes in which a man is killed by being raped in the head and the rape of a newborn baby.
So what's the difference? Why ban one and not the other? It would appear as though it's to do with the manner in which the material is presented. A Serbian Film, while containing truly horrific imagery presents events in a light that clearly shows that these things are not right and tries to make a point (which I fear was lost somewhat in the controversy surrounding it) about some of the most repulsive things hidden in the dark corners of the nature of humanity. For that reason, with a few minor cuts, the BBFC was able to pass it with an 18 certificate. The Human Centipede, as mentioned above, clearly shows that there is a very mad, very twisted person at the centre of it all who must be, and is, stopped. The Human Centipede II, so I understand it (and I may well be understanding it incorrectly, as I am going only on what the BBFC statement and a few pieces written on Empire online and similar places say), presents the dreadful events through the eyes of the perpetrator with a little more than a touch of sympathy. That is, to suggest that not only is it OK for him to be getting off on it, but that perhaps, if you want to, you can too. Basically, encouraging you to have a wank over the sight of a guy with a barbed-wire-wrapped dick raping a girl while she's being forced to eat someone else's shit. And, while I'm not sure it's exactly harmful as the BBFC infer, there is no doubt that it just ain't quite right.
I do agree that censorship is a very slippery slope indeed, but I don't think this issue is about censorship. I'm sure the BBFC realise it's no longer the 1980s and that declining to certify a film does not equate to a ban. Cinemas can still legally show films that have not been rated, and if someone really wants to see it, they could find a copy online without too much trouble. So instead of it being about censorship, I think the BBFC is coming from a moral standpoint. It's not the events that take place within the film, it's that those events are shown through a certain prism, and it's the prism that the BBFC has a problem with. It's not something that could be solved with a few strategic BBFC-recommended cuts, it's the theme of the film itself. When it comes down to it, the BBFC had little choice in the matter in the end. Films are rated using a finely-crafted predetermined set of guidelines, and the 'this gives us a hard-on, what about you' view the film takes to the events depicted meant it was never going to get by. Those guidelines are partly determined as a result of direct input from the general public - the same people critics accuse the BBFC of unfairly restricting the viewing rights of. Those preset guidelines can sometimes be responsible for some ratings that are not immediately clear - for example, why did American Beauty get an 18 rating? It's relatively mild - even the climactic death scene isn't particularly grisly. It turns out that it's because two characters manage to escape the drudgery of day to day life using the money one of them got from selling drugs, and the BBFC could not be seen to be condoning positive outcomes that result from illegal activity. It seems a little silly, however the BBFC have no choice but to abide by these predetermined guidelines.
In all honesty, you're never gonna get me to see either of The Human Centipede films or A Serbian Film, so issues of censorship and freedom to view aside, I couldn't really care less if they all got banned.
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