Hostility

I suspect several of you will be interested in this L.A. Times piece riffing on the meat-n-guts splattered poster for Hostel II (not for the squeamish) and the (supposedly) increasingly gory nature of movies and television. I'll admit that when I was a teenager I'd wax ecstatic over any film with the "bravery" to pound us with really shocking gore. This can probably be attributed to pretty basic teen angst and rebelliousness. But I've since come (somewhat) to my senses. I don't mind hard violence too much if it adds some value to the film, and I certainly still have a taste for excess and over-the-top in film, but I'm increasingly wary of the base, exploitative nature of films like Hostel and Saw. In the article, the marketing director responsible for the photo beams with pride as he claims that the poster is "extremely disturbing. You know those poor girls are in for it." It's that sort of frank admittance that the film is solely devoted to gory titillation that bothers me. I find it repulsive in the way of Laguna Beach, daytime talk shows, or cheesy praise music: It's unrepentantly shallow and pandering, lacking even the dumb-fun enthusiasm of a good guilty pleasure.