"Torture porn" is a phrased used to describe such movies as the Saw and Hostel series. Movies where human beings suffer horrible, agonizing deaths at the hands of people who do it for pleasure or some screwed up moral framework. Pornography is… well, you know what that is.
The question I want to bring up is this: Why does our society consider such violent displays of murder as acceptable in the mainstream culture, but also considers pornography as unacceptable in the mainstream culture. By mainstream, I of course mean what is advertised, openly discussed, and found in normal television channels or movie theatres.
Is sex worse than violence? Is nudity worse than gore? Is it really fair for society to censor one but not the other?
I feel that one of the most important things to look at with regard to this is the psychological responses of watching the material. One objection to torture movies is that watching such gross material can lead to desensitizing towards violence against real human beings. A team at Iowa State University did a research project titled, "The Effects of Video Game Violence on Physiological Desensitization to Real-Life Violence," and concluded that violent video games do lead to desensitization against real-life violence. However, whether or not this translates over to movies, or whether this can translate to overt behavior is contentious.
The concern here is that if you sit around watching people get mutilated for entertainment, perhaps you may not see much pity in real people suffering in real scenarios.
Alternatively, a study done by Dolf Zillman of the University of Indiana and Jennings Bryant of the University of Houston researched whether viewing pornography had any effect on one's actual relationships. The study claims, "Repeated exposure to pornography results in a decreased satisfaction with one's sexual partner, with the partner's sexuality, and with the partner's sexual curiosity. There was a decrease in the valuation of faithfulness and a major increase in the importance of sex without attachment." Despite this claim, such conclusions do not necessarily agree with popular psychology magazines like Psychology Today, heralding porn as a way to, "foster emotional and sexual intimacy." Needless to say, like violence, porn struggles with agreement on its psychological effect. However, the original concern here is that if you are getting sexually stimulated by nameless persons with surgically enhanced bodies, do you lose your desire for your real life partner?
It seems in both cases we're dealing with a potential problem of desensitization. Furthermore, desensitization, if it actually happens, seems to matter in both dosage and context. The torture movies bombard the viewer with violence and gore with a negligible plot, while porn does the same with sex. In both cases, there's no characters the audience really empathizes with, thus robbing the violence of its tragedy and the sex of its intimacy. Perhaps the entire question could be avoided if we cared for movies with real meaning and purpose instead of worrying about what visual content was in it.
Nevertheless, finding strong data is surprisingly difficult with either case. Both cases seem either ignored, or exaggerated for moral reasons. Furthermore, it's no surprise that popular media gives very little help on the issue when both the movie and pornography industries are multi-billion dollar industries.
So what do you think? Is this stuff harmful? Is one better than the other? Should society censor them? Should we just personally avoid them? Or are they actually helpful for us?
Sources:
"You, Me and Porn Make Three," Psychology Today magazine, publication date: Sep/Oct 2005
~~Eric Basham
~~Eric Basham
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