Video Nasties: Rewinding to 2005

Is there a statute of limitations, after which one should forgo replying to criticism? Probably, but this weekend I noticed a dig at me in print and worthy of comment. I know the standard procedure is to start these rebuttals by saying ‘it has been brought to my attention that…’, implying that I am too important to read Film Ireland but one of my many underlings summoned up the courage to break the news on this potentially indelicate matter. (In truth, I was trying to find this article on Questia* and stumbled across ‘Fresh Hells’ by Niall Kitson, normally behind a paywall or in print-only format. The vacancy for an underling remains unfilled.) Maybe it's a genuine mix-up, but the author makes me say the opposite of what I normally say on these matters.

Here’s my original article; here’s how it is summarized in Film Ireland:
The meeting of minds seem to come from top down as well as bottom up in the cultural hierarchy, but whether these films are appreciated in the same way is another matter entirely. As critic Graham Barnfield noted 'horror films preach to the converted and providing excess for hardcore fans is the name of the game, hence the reappearance of many video nasties, ironically touted as "classics"'. This argument implies that a reasonably-minded audience will be appalled by the rape scene in Irréversible (2002), by the killing of a child in Funny Games but for the unwashed horror audience these scenes amount to little more than stalk and slash set pieces. Similarly the ne plus ultra of rapid-cut New Brutalism - Requiem for a Dream (2000) - is to be read in certain quarters solely as an adrenaline ride straight into hell, and not as a harrowing cautionary tale about the evils of drug abuse. Such reasoning smacks of self-justification, but it does raise important issues for the future of the horror genre: In an era where the most frightening movies are no longer horror movies how do you keep your audience?
A key word here is ‘implies’, which can cover a multitude of sins. In 2005 I was probably too tentative about saying that Extreme Cinema was becoming a genre in its own right, where the fictional depraved acts set the pace, and the dialogue, typically reflecting on the futility of modern life, acted as the padding in between. In that respect, the comparison with There’s Something About Mary (1998) remains apt. (Bear in mind this was before the outbreak of full-on torture porn.) I don’t really say anything much about fans in my article, unwashed or otherwise, apart from my reflections on being a fan. But it is worth saying that the genre fan generally knows ‘the rules’, meaning s/he appreciates certain scenes that can seem gross and unpleasant to the uninitiated. Fans can also differentiate between the fun and depressing or upsetting forms of splatter, as a trip to FrightFest will confirm. (Niall Kitson is right that horror film audiences get appalled by certain scenes of nastiness, but he also seems to confuse horror fans with mainstream audiences who see the odd horror film from time to time.)

My point about art-house gore is how often it becomes a form of genre filmmaking in its own right; for instance, Baise Moi (2000) would be (now) seen as a lazy and clichéd if positioned as crime movie, while A Day of Violence (2010) – ‘you just killed seven people, you twat!’ – was marketed as Euro-giallo yet it had more in common with the last 15 years of crime Britflicks. My argument had nothing to do with whether or not audiences react against scenes of fictional rape and murder: it was about the lazy use of these scenes as a shortcut to a reputation for artfulness. If audiences fall for it, more fool them. Generally the horror fan – who is not the same as the casual moviegoer dropping into the latest Saw installment every Halloween – has more sense.** For the record, reading my argument as being about 'unwashed' horror fans doesn't add up. I am on record as opposing the double standard where gruesome foreign language movies can get past the BBFC uncut whereas equivalents films in English are to be quarantined from a mass audience. (Whether either type of movie deserves an audience is a story for another day.)



* Publication Information: Article Title: Fresh Hells. Contributors: Niall Kitson - author. Magazine Title: Film Ireland. Issue: 103. Publication Date: March/April 2005. Page Number: 36+. © 2005 Filmbase. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

** One exception to this is A Serbian Film, buts that’s another story.

Misread by Redhead

In younger, slimmer days I was frequently mistaken for an undercover cop. Too ‘smart casual’ to be a 1980s leftie, I guess – and yet still badly dressed. Almost two decades later, I was mistaken for a moral entrepreneur. (Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.) Oddly, something similar happens to me in a new book by Prof. Steve Redhead (admittedly, the chapter in question first appeared as a journal article in 2007, which I missed at the time).




In case you missed it, Redhead argues:

The Football Factory film was released to a highly contrived media moral panic in May 2004, shortly before the Euro 2004 football championship in Portugal. One newspaper critic (9) noted that the film had been ‘slammed in some circles as a fetid miasma of immorality. An academic commentator (10) saw the original novel as ‘centring on low life and lowlifes…social realism without the socialism’. The film was widely criticised, though enthusiastically received at the DVD stores, precisely because commentators claimed it used ‘real’ football hooligans as actors and advisers and evoked a ‘realistic’ atmosphere alongside an attitude that glorified the stylised football casual violence. The question of the ‘real’ in The Football Factory, however, is a much more complicated issue and relates directly to previous attempts at promoting social realism in British cinema and literature in the late 1950s and early 1960s and the reworking of such representations in the era of postmodernism in the 1980s and 1990s.

As for me, I am that academic commentator, dear reader, a footnote in his story (footnote 10 to be precise). I was also a bit surprised to see that, within a sentence of Redhead identifying ‘a highly contrived media moral panic’ in 2004, he cites me as part of the scare story. It takes a wilfully perverse reading of my second article on The Football Factory (excluding pseudonymous stuff) to see me as an early adopter of that panic (read it for yourself).

My review of the film was framed by my attack on both the panic – articulated by Richard Williams at the Guardian – and on the incorporation of media effects theory into the sports pages. In one paragraph I revisit my short, admittedly grumpy review of the novel in 1996. How this leads to my implied advocacy of a minor moral panic in 2004 is a mystery to me. But as Prof. Redhead says:

The media moral panic surrounding The Football Factory has been shown to be incorporated into the advertising and marketing of the film in a postmodern loop, especially on DVD, making the notion of the ‘real’ much more blurred. (p.27)

So blurred, it seems, that my lukewarm review of a movie has made me into Mary Whitehouse.




Note: There is, for now at least, a online version of this essay in PDF here. Page numbering in this blog posting is taken from this version.

Happy halloween

So here I am in an internet cafe, blogging next to Amy Rigby who is doing a gig down the road with Wreckless Eric later tonight. Outside, the Local Council has issued a detailed warning about the dangers this Halloween:

We are working with the police to reduce the anxiety that is caused to members of our community at this time of year.
‘Sorry No Trick or Treat’ posters will be available in wfm 20 October issue, from the community safety van or you can download your ‘Sorry No Trick or Treat’ poster here (946KB PDF file)
The poster can be displayed in your window or door to discourage trick or treaters from calling. Remember that you do not have to open your door to them:
Do not let anyone in your house unless you are happy with their identity
Do not deal with doorstep sales people unless you are sure they are genuine
Always ask for identification from official callers
Halloween safety tips for parents and children
For safety reasons children should never trick or treat alone. Parents may want to consider having a fancy-dress themed Halloween party at home as an alternative to trick or treating.
Parents and children:
Do not go into strangers home
Restrict trick or treat visits to homes with outside lights on
Use costumes with light or bright coloured material and trim
Check to see that costumes do not interfere with walking
Set a time limit for your children to trick or treat and designate a specific route to take
Encourage children to use face paint and/or make-up rather than hoods, wigs or masks that can block vision
Check all treats before the children eat the sweets and other Halloween goodies
Stay in areas that are well lit with street lights but also take a torch just in case
Be visible and take care when crossing the road
Report any suspicious or criminal activity
Don't knock on doors where there is a sign saying 'sorry no trick or treat'
Police are urging trick or treaters to show consideration for vulnerable and elderly members of the community this Halloween and even though Halloween is supposed to be spooky, be careful not to frighten the elderly.
To report anti-social behaviour call Waltham Forest Direct 020 8496 3000

Probably safer indoors, but for the back-to-back gorno movies showing on Freeview. I noticed from the TV listings that Saw, Saw 2, Hostel, 2001 Maniacs and Reeker were all doing their bit to add to the festivities recently.

Enjoy your evening.

Bear with me, I'm the new moral guardian

In my February blog entry, I reminisce briefly about being comparatively slim in 1983. Over on Facebook, my profile has attracted some fanmail about my current build: "nothing wrong with being chunky mate, I've always liked men who are chunky. Bald is very attractive too, but the biggest turn-on in that pic is to see just how hairy you are - lovely!" and "your [sic] just such a handsome man with a stunning furry body :)" Using a bare minimum of gym time, it seems I have made the transition to being a UK bear.

Which in a roundabout way brings me to comment on a current role for academics, that of protecting students from themselves. Picture the scene: on arrival at a new teaching post, I was given a new responsibility. Mine to keep under lock and key, to be let out to third year students in connection with dissertation research only, are ... four academic tomes on the history of sexuality. Is this the Closed University, with a "do not feed the bears" policy?

The (Cannibal) Holocaust: Not Again

27 January 2008 and I suddenly slipped back in time 25 years. 1983: a chance to put things right and, ignoring any Prime Directive, to make a difference. Looking slim, GB!

Except I was reading the Sunday Express, the self-styled world's greatest newspaper: Outrage at Sick Nazi DVDs for Sale. In the frame are SS Experiment Camp, Cannibal Holocaust, I Spit on Your Grave and Faces of Death. Missing from the line-up are The Evil Dead and Driller Killer, but otherwise this could be a library story on the front page. Recycling rules at the Express.

Only the availability of these films on DVD now instead of VHS differentiates this panic from its carbon copy in 1983-85. Even Keith Vaz, a prospective parliamentary candidate for Leicester East seeking to unseat rentaquote MP Peter Bruinvels at the time of the video nasties panic, is in on the act.

The facts are simple - only the first of these vids has a "Nazi" title to highlight the lurid content, spoofed recently by Rob Zombie: the rest have no (formally) fascistic leanings, unless pretend sadism counts as fascism these days, yet academic writers have repositioned Holocaust as a critique of media manipulation and Spit as a feminist rape-revenge flick. Faeces of Death remains a risible compilation of mondo, fake and news footage of its subjects' final moments.

We've been here before. Only a dimwit could have failed to notice the staged torture scenes that pepper the multiplexes, if the pirate DVD guys don't get there first. Even the posters on the Express web forum seem more upset about Islam than the availability of these movies.

The Sunday Express - weak at the weekend. An old prediction of mine went "don't expect an SS Experiment Camp revival any time soon", although maybe Express Investigations Editor James Murray can instigate one through his pointless outrage.

Should all CGI be banned?

... asks the Guardian.

No.




If you don't believe me, see the two books by Matt Hanson and published by RotoVision:
Sci-Fi Moviescapes: The Science Behind the Fiction (RotoVision, 2005: 176 pages, ISBN: 288046787X, £27.50) and The End of Celluloid: Film Futures in the Digital Age (RotoVision 2004: 176 pages, ISBN: 2880467837, £24.99)

Panoramic views

Here we go again. Does anyone recall the happy slapping scare of 2005? Then as now, these "fight clubs" are at worst a handful of local assaults, situations that most conscientious adults could break up if they weren't scared of the kids. Yet again we see a nation-wide scare being constructed out of children behaving badly with new technology. Could the discovery of this new social problem be linked to a forthcoming Panorama broadcast? I couldn't possibly comment...

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On a not totally unrelated note, I am commenting on Paul Gormley's book in 7 Days this week.