Tortured arguments

It wouldn't take much for my flatmate and me to get hold of some seriously gruesome DVDs. I'm talking Calvaire (The Ordeal), Hostel, Wolf Creek and The Devil's Rejects. (As if to show this, you can order them all using the links at the bottom of this blog entry.) From time to time we argue about the social significance of this subgenre - he thinks it's culturally degenerate, I half agree but recognise the cathartic role these movies can play.

At least we can have this debate. New legislation passed this week makes it an offence to possess violent pornography. Fair enough, you might say. Yet the legislation makes no distinction between fictional and real violence. So we might not be able to have the debate for long.