Torture Porn: Good or Bad?

To begin I personally don’t understand the unquenchable fascination with such graphic displays of grotesqueness. I recently went to the movies to see Saw 5 and was extremely displeased. For some reason or another, low budget movies continue to ransack the box office year after year and continually are a success. Why they continue to be successful I am unsure, but what I can say is that for whatever reason I am drawn to them. It is a fascination that even I don’t understand, because it’s as if I don’t really want to see them yet I do. I have seen all of the Saw movies and yet I don’t find them to be very good. Perhaps what draws me to them are all of my contemporaries asking me if I’ve seen the latest one. This last one in particular I found to be way too predictable. There was almost no suspense during this one, which sadly made me laugh instead of cringe during the scenes that were gruesome. How movies such as Hostel can be made in a basement and cost less than five million to produce, yet make over 50 million is astounding. It’s no wonder that production companies keep making so many of these movies, because for whatever reason they are so profitable. We as a society feed off of others unfortunate events. We are that society that stops whenever there is a horrific accident on the street almost hoping to see the bloody body being carted away. Why that is I really cannot say yet it is true enough. Perhaps we are just all that sick inside, which ultimately makes me question the society I am a part of. How can we possibly get pleasure from watching these sorts of movies? I don’t understand what people see in them, and yet time and time again we go to them, me included. I think our brains are almost hardwired to want to see something that will make us cringe. I read that perhaps this is due to the attacks that have taken place on 9/11 yet I believe that is ridiculous. In my opinion we don’t subconsciously walk around during our daily routines thinking that at any moment we are going to get blown up by a terrorist or worse. I am sure however that there are some who truly believe this and that’s why our society has mental institutions throughout our country. For someone to walk around with such an extreme perpetual fear of their demise they must be a bit insane. I do believe that this is not just related to our current sociological fears, but something else, a fluke perhaps. I certainly think however that these types of movies are here to stay and that they are not going anywhere. If they ever did I would really be surprised, because it would almost be the end of an era, a genre of movies that has caused us so much pleasure and sick mental anguish all at the same time. This is my mind culminates into something beautiful in its own right.