This is Torture

December 10th, 2007Blog0 comments

I watched Hostel. Eli Roth said that “The point of a horror movie is that you’re supposed to feel terrible.” I can see that. Beyond the movie’s silly rubber prosthetics and sometimes dumb plot (“I COULDN’T FIND U CAUSE I WAS DRUNKENLY LOCKED IN A CLOSET ALL NITE”), one thing the movie illustrates well is the possibility of evil. It theorizes that there are people that are evil enough in the world to travel to Slovakia and pay to torture and kill another human being. It shocks us, turns our stomach with this fact. The disturbing thing is that we all bear the cognitive dissonance of being disturbed and at the same time knowing that these things happen in real life — and real psychopaths don’t need to pay to do it.

The thing that gets me about the modern horror movie is that they get right to the torture instead of skipping around it. Jason and Freddie tortured people, but they did it cloaked in suspense and eventually cartoonish humor. Saw, Hostel, these movies show you the tools, show you (with close ups!) how the tools work, and that’s that. Death is the show. The supernatural, the suspense, the FAT, etc., those things get thrown away.

It’s just raw. And I’m not sure whether that’s a bad thing or a good thing, but it can’t last forever.

Cognitive dissonance is one of my favorite phrases these days. We watch simulated torture or real torture and are horrified by it; meanwhile we continue to debate over what torture actually is so that we can continue to engage in it. We are a rich nation in massive debt. We ask school children for excellence while we celebrate the stupid.

Cognitive dissonance is weird but useful. It is the root of hope, and hope is a very good thing. But I think in the grand scheme of things, cognitive dissonance shares something with procrastination: It allows us to put off the inevitable, difficult choices that we have to make. It lets us put off being adults.

But what the hell do I know. Last night I ate a third of a pecan pie while watching Tin Man on the Sci-Fi channel — even though I hate it so very, very much.

They say that a 10% rule is a good way to stay fit: Exercise and eat well 90% of the time, and the other 10% eat whatever you want and just sit there. That seems to have worked well for me in the fitness department, so maybe I’ll work the same thing in the cognitive dissonance department: Be an adult that faces the truth for 90% of the time and be a slack-jawed, Brawndo-drinking gawker for the other ten percent.