Genuine curiosity from someone who doesn’t mind the occasional horror flick.

@Polly

“Somebody made a very good point to me recently which is that about 20-30 years ago the special effects in horror films were shit. So you could see a leg being sawn off, and it was obviously a false leg, so the effect was comic, rather than horrifying.”

Thank you! I love/hate the super realistic SFX these days, I mean, it’s cool that they can make things that realistic, but what does that really say about Western society? 80′s goo movies where the violence is so ridiculous, it’s more a comedy, think like Bad Taste or Brain Dead (early Peter Jackson, you were a genius.)

I just don’t honestly think that these people would walk in the same as they will walk out. Even if they are just acting, surely some part of the harm will be real

That’s what you are mirroring and disseminating.

Well, let me help you out. You are creating sick, perverse, gratuitous violence. You are making an already extremely fucked up world a worse place. You are promoting hatred and violence.

Does that help clear up your confusion?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1297462/Trio-guilty-torturing-woman-days.html

And prude that I am, I can’t really see what’s enjoyable about watching anyone, of either sex being pretend tortured. You know why, because this shit happens – IN REAL LIFE!

Somebody made a very good point to me recently which is that about 20-30 years ago the special effects in horror films were shit. So you could see a leg being sawn off, and it was obviously a false leg, so the effect was comic, rather than horrifying. But nowadays special effects are really good (thank you CGI). So again WTF does anybody want to watch scenes of torture (on people of either sex) even if you know they’re fictional?

I just don’t get it.

You know what I find interesting to explore as a feminist? How anyone can come up with such a pile of bullshit and expect anyone to believe it.

But next time Lindsay, if you want to comment on capitalism, maybe you could just have someone read selected bits of Marx and Engels?

@Nine Deuce:
There are some hints in the “social commentary” direction within the introductory dialogue – I’m not going to try to argue that such was our primary message, but it is there. It’s nuanced, and we definitely overestimate the intelligence of everyone.

@berryblade
I guess I just see it as glorifying violence in general rather than specifically violence toward women, which is certainly problematic in its own right. I understand where you’re coming from, though I disagree.

@Nine Deuce, secondary
1) It’s actually just about 50/50 on the victim ratio (in fact, we even have a scene in which a woman mutilates a half-stripped young man’s penis), though that is an average rather than a constant (some nights it skewed more female, others male – we ran at least one night where every victim was male). This was less by choice and more by the proportions of people who showed up to act that night. 2) Once again, we only unintentionally had depictions of rape last year and this year there will be no depictions of rape of any kind permitted by our actors. Most actors worked on a semi-volunteer basis and so felt that because they weren’t proper employees they could do what they wanted, despite our requests. This is changing. 3) Customers were also about 50/50 male and female – large groups of young women came through a number of times, as well as women in mixed-gender groups. 4) Our target audience is 18-35, male and female, all races, all subcultures/interest groups/etc., and that is pretty much exactly who comes through.

@Valerie
Yeah, I do, actually. And since you didn’t seem to understand where I was going my aside on women screaming “better,” I’ll unpack it explicitly: I suspect that because we live in a rape culture in which women are more likely to be victims of violence, especially sexual violence, the fear that many of us carry with us allows us to express that fear through screaming in a manner that is more believable as an expression of genuine terror than men. I don’t “get off” on porny female torture scenes; I find them disturbing but I also find male torture scenes disturbing, which is kind of the point. I’m not trying to argue what we’re doing as one valiant step in dismantling the patriarchy (or even that it’s not at least a little retrogressive and very problematic in a lot of ways), but I and the rest of my team do honestly take these things into account and try and keep the ratios as egalitarian as possible.

I know it all sounds like bullshit but this is actually a bunch of kids screwing around trying to figure out what the hell we’re doing…often arguing to a standstill and often trying to fix huge issues with a shoestring budget and a skeleton crew. And, in fact, we wanted to host a charity night where all proceeds went to a local domestic violence shelter, but we realized it would probably be interpreted as hipster irony rather than a genuine sentiment with the intention of broadcasting, “just in case there’s any question, we are extremely opposed to violence against women.”

I’m fairly certain I won’t convince y’all of anything, other than maybe we’re not *as* horrible as the initial blog post implies. But I appreciate you letting me speak my piece and I do honestly appreciate the reasoned criticism.

What a pile of shit. Do you even believe yourself? You’re a ‘fire-breathing feminist’ but can’t wrap your head around the simple analysis of thinking women scream ‘better’ is just you getting off on the porniness female torture/terror/pain = sex in a rape culture?

Or the fact that ‘haunted’ has come more and more to mean rape, as porn has become more and more mainstream? Must be one of those coincidences! Yes one of those thousands and thousands of coincidences that happen every day, where a scenario lines up precisely with the greater cultural context of patriarchy but of course has noting to do with patriarchy.