The American Spectator

Special Report

(Page 2 of 2)

does challenge coercive outside regulation as the ideal route to an individual's happiness at its core, especially in a culture where "idealism" is so frequently linked to supporting some compulsive order or another, to restricting choice and freedom of conscience for individual and greater good. It is an implicitly anti-statist argument if followed to its natural conclusion. And as for the constant middle-brow suggestion by a sizable gaggle of critics that this is all a reflection of U.S. government torture post-9/11, there is nothing in any of the so-called "torture porn" films -- good, bad or mediocre -- that makes torture anything less than skin-crawlingly hideous.

NONE OF THIS IS TO suggest that Rothbard, were he still with us, would have nothing better to do on a Friday night in November than go see Saw IV. Nor is it likely the makers of the Saw series hunkered down with Rothbard or John Stuart Mill essays before drafting the screenplay. In fact, during a making-of documentary on the Saw DVD, one of the series producers muses the film "has a moral message despite the smears of blood" and director James Wan insists Jigsaw just "wants to help people out," adding, "If you make it out of one of his games alive then he believes you'll be a better person."

Wan might be able to make a better case for this if, you know, anyone actually ever survived Jigsaw's tests. As a fairly solid rule over the last four films, they don't. The sole survivor from the gamut of hideous trials in the first movie becomes -- spoiler alert -- Jigsaw's apprentice in Saw II and a villain worse than Jigsaw in Saw III, designing trials without even the pretense of survivability. Jigsaw does not hide his disappointment in his disciple when she fails to follow the rules he set forth for educating the masses, even as his own murder vice has clearly deepened. The traps he builds for his "subjects" only become more ghastly, his self-righteous moralizing streak broadening at a rate commensurate with his cruelty.

In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche argued that "even the seeker after knowledge forces his spirit to recognize things against the inclination of the spirit, and often enough also against the wishes of the heart -- by way of saying No where he would like to say Yes, love and adore, and thus acts as an artist and transfigurer of cruelty." There is a process of rationalization going on in Saw, whereby the central character suggests he is creating a situation...well, beyond good and evil; beyond cruelty. "If you make it through this, you'll thank me one day," Jigsaw confidently tells a doctor he's kidnapped and locked into a collar rigged to explode if he flat-lines. As a deliverer of "something greater," he allows himself to dismiss the "inclination of the spirit" towards compassion, kindness and all the rest.

THE OBVIOUS RETORT TO THIS line of reasoning, of course, is: Well, sure, but does the actual audience make any distinction or are they just there to get their rocks off on some over-the-top gory spectacle? It's a fair question. When I saw Chuck Klosterman read recently, he talked about meeting the flavor-of-several-months-ago band The Strokes and being surprised to learn he had thought more deeply about their music than they had, and I am aware that the millions of people who flocked to Saw IV when it opened two weeks ago are probably not avid Murray Rothbard readers.

Nevertheless, when David Edelstein ruminates over why America "seems so nuts these days about torture," there is a simple answer to his quandary: They're not. If they were the local cineplex would be teeming with mobs for any simulated snuff film. This simply is not the case. The total global box office tally for the insipid, ultra-violent film The Devil's Rejects was $19 million. The first three Saw films made $103 million, $147 million and $164 million, respectively. The crude torture knock off Captivity, despite immense controversy, publicity and advertising made only $9 million. Likewise, Turistas -- a film with far more out and out torture scenes than Saw -- grossed only $14 million. Hostel, a movie unfairly maligned as a 90 minute torturelogue, took in more than $80 million.

In other words, it takes more than pure torture to pile bodies in a theater. Films like Saw and Hostel are not for everyone, a point that should be made excessively clear. At the same time, the success of these films cannot be dismissed as mere bloodlust among a populace eager, as Edelstein surmised, to "suspend moral judgments altogether." Presenting himself with the question "So where is morality now?" in his nonfiction study of the broader horror genre Danse Macabre, Stephen King wrote, "I think it lies where it has always lain: in the hearts and minds of men and women of good will. In the case of the writer, this may mean beginning with a nihilistic premise and gradually relearning old lessons of human values and human conduct."

So it is with any film worth its salt in this genre, as well.

topics:
Movies, Oil