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Okay, so apparently there's been a whole thing happening in LA with the ad campaign for a horror movie called Captivity, where ads that the MPAA rejected for being, how do you say, horrible and kinky and violent and wrong, suddenly -- oops! -- turned into like fifteen giant billboards on the freeway, I mean, who knew? Awkward! The theoretical penalty for pissing in the MPAA's cornflakes is that you have your rating revoked, and basically no theater in the nation will show an unrated movie, turning your flick into a de facto straight-to-video and costing you millions of dollars. So there's been a letter-writing campaign with the intent of making the MPAA do its damn job.
[Fannish note: Elisha, sweetie -- wtf? You could've just married Trace and been beautiful and made me happy forever, but no. I don't even feel bad for you anymore that the Fuck You song Trace's boyfriend wrote about you is on my car radio literally every time I leave my house for any reason. There's no shame in a horror career, but could anyone else on the planet find a way to sink lower than House of Wax? Couldn't you just have made a bunch of classy but slightly dull Japanese horror flicks like certain other smoking hot blondes who aren't on tv anymore? Did you have to be all -- like this? No love, Hth.] [Fannish subnote: If none of that made any sense to you, don't worry: I'm not talking about your fandom.]
Anyway, that's all just the setup for this.
From: Joss Whedon
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 10:17 PM
To: Advertising
Subject: CAPTIVITY BILLBOARDS/REMOVE THE RATING
To the MPAA,
There's a message I'm supposed to cut and paste but I imagine you've read it. So just let me say that the ad campaign for "Captivity" is not only a literal sign of the collapse of humanity, it's an assault. I've watched plenty of horror - in fact I've made my share. But the advent of torture-porn and the total dehumanizing not just of women (though they always come first) but of all human beings has made horror a largely unpalatable genre. This ad campaign is part of something dangerous and repulsive, and that act of aggression has to be answered.
As a believer not only in the First Amendment but of the necessity of horror stories, I've always been against acts of censorship. I distrust anyone who wants to ban something 'for the good of the public'. But this ad is part of a cycle of violence and misogyny that takes something away from the people who have to see it. It's like being mugged (and I have been). These people flouted the basic rules of human decency. God knows the culture led them there, but we have to find our way back and we have to make them know that people will not stand for this. And the only language they speak is money. (A devastating piece in the New Yorker - not gonna do it.) So talk money. Remove the rating, and let them see how far over the edge they really are.
Thanks for reading this, if anyone did.
Sincerely, Joss Whedon.
Creator, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
I thought his comment on being mugged was particularly interesting, because you know, the first horror movie I ever saw that made me feel (at the risk of sounding melodramatic) assaulted by the sadism of it was Seven (Se7en? Whatever.), years back. And the thing is that, you know, yes. I've been held up at both gunpoint and knifepoint, and I would a million times rather do that again every day of my life than have to watch that movie again. I never had flashbacks to either robbery, or nightmares related to it.
It's such a weird argument to make, from the perspective of someone who actually likes horror movies -- at what point does my subjective differentiation between good!scary and bad!scary cease to be a question of taste and become an ethical issue, an issue of, as Joss puts it, art/entertainment that *robs* people of something, some piece of our capacity for empathy or compassion and god knows what else. And it's particularly difficult for me, because I'm possessed of this sort of psychotic-grade fair streak, where it sometimes actually seems reasonable to me to say, "Well, I really like zombie movies, and eating people's brains is also gross, in a way, and possibly wrong, so maybe The Hills Have Eyes is just pretty much the same thing, only different?" or "I remember when I was a kid and people said Nightmare on Elm Street would warp my brain and ruin my life, and it kind of didn't seem to have any effect on me one way or another, so maybe it's not that big a deal to rent Saw II for your 11 year old, either, and I just think it is, but I'm wrong like those other people were wrong?" Like, where do I get off judging what other people like to see in horror movies, since there are people who disapprove of my tastes, as well? I mean, I really do hate those snotty old people who are always like, "Well, in my day it was all *classier,* and we didn't *need* all the sex and violence" and blah, blah. Like, of course you didn't need it, and we don't need it now, but we don't need Ben & Jerry's to come out with Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler ice cream either, but it still totally rocks, so shut up, old person.
I don't know, maybe I am that old person. Maybe Joss is, too. But it's still nice to have someone smart and good and someone who honestly does love the genre come out and say, No, you know what? This time it is different. This time it's *actually* different, and it's okay to say so. Just because some people in the past have been wrong about all horror being evil and warped doesn't need to mean that some of it isn't actually evil and warped, right? On the same principle as, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
Of course, this is all in reference to the movie. The billboards are *objectively* awful, because they're on (were on) the fucking freeway. A lot of things that are only questionable when you provide it to people who ask for it are heinous when you subject random strangers to it without their consent.
[Fannish note: Elisha, sweetie -- wtf? You could've just married Trace and been beautiful and made me happy forever, but no. I don't even feel bad for you anymore that the Fuck You song Trace's boyfriend wrote about you is on my car radio literally every time I leave my house for any reason. There's no shame in a horror career, but could anyone else on the planet find a way to sink lower than House of Wax? Couldn't you just have made a bunch of classy but slightly dull Japanese horror flicks like certain other smoking hot blondes who aren't on tv anymore? Did you have to be all -- like this? No love, Hth.] [Fannish subnote: If none of that made any sense to you, don't worry: I'm not talking about your fandom.]
Anyway, that's all just the setup for this.
From: Joss Whedon
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 10:17 PM
To: Advertising
Subject: CAPTIVITY BILLBOARDS/REMOVE THE RATING
To the MPAA,
There's a message I'm supposed to cut and paste but I imagine you've read it. So just let me say that the ad campaign for "Captivity" is not only a literal sign of the collapse of humanity, it's an assault. I've watched plenty of horror - in fact I've made my share. But the advent of torture-porn and the total dehumanizing not just of women (though they always come first) but of all human beings has made horror a largely unpalatable genre. This ad campaign is part of something dangerous and repulsive, and that act of aggression has to be answered.
As a believer not only in the First Amendment but of the necessity of horror stories, I've always been against acts of censorship. I distrust anyone who wants to ban something 'for the good of the public'. But this ad is part of a cycle of violence and misogyny that takes something away from the people who have to see it. It's like being mugged (and I have been). These people flouted the basic rules of human decency. God knows the culture led them there, but we have to find our way back and we have to make them know that people will not stand for this. And the only language they speak is money. (A devastating piece in the New Yorker - not gonna do it.) So talk money. Remove the rating, and let them see how far over the edge they really are.
Thanks for reading this, if anyone did.
Sincerely, Joss Whedon.
Creator, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
I thought his comment on being mugged was particularly interesting, because you know, the first horror movie I ever saw that made me feel (at the risk of sounding melodramatic) assaulted by the sadism of it was Seven (Se7en? Whatever.), years back. And the thing is that, you know, yes. I've been held up at both gunpoint and knifepoint, and I would a million times rather do that again every day of my life than have to watch that movie again. I never had flashbacks to either robbery, or nightmares related to it.
It's such a weird argument to make, from the perspective of someone who actually likes horror movies -- at what point does my subjective differentiation between good!scary and bad!scary cease to be a question of taste and become an ethical issue, an issue of, as Joss puts it, art/entertainment that *robs* people of something, some piece of our capacity for empathy or compassion and god knows what else. And it's particularly difficult for me, because I'm possessed of this sort of psychotic-grade fair streak, where it sometimes actually seems reasonable to me to say, "Well, I really like zombie movies, and eating people's brains is also gross, in a way, and possibly wrong, so maybe The Hills Have Eyes is just pretty much the same thing, only different?" or "I remember when I was a kid and people said Nightmare on Elm Street would warp my brain and ruin my life, and it kind of didn't seem to have any effect on me one way or another, so maybe it's not that big a deal to rent Saw II for your 11 year old, either, and I just think it is, but I'm wrong like those other people were wrong?" Like, where do I get off judging what other people like to see in horror movies, since there are people who disapprove of my tastes, as well? I mean, I really do hate those snotty old people who are always like, "Well, in my day it was all *classier,* and we didn't *need* all the sex and violence" and blah, blah. Like, of course you didn't need it, and we don't need it now, but we don't need Ben & Jerry's to come out with Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler ice cream either, but it still totally rocks, so shut up, old person.
I don't know, maybe I am that old person. Maybe Joss is, too. But it's still nice to have someone smart and good and someone who honestly does love the genre come out and say, No, you know what? This time it is different. This time it's *actually* different, and it's okay to say so. Just because some people in the past have been wrong about all horror being evil and warped doesn't need to mean that some of it isn't actually evil and warped, right? On the same principle as, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
Of course, this is all in reference to the movie. The billboards are *objectively* awful, because they're on (were on) the fucking freeway. A lot of things that are only questionable when you provide it to people who ask for it are heinous when you subject random strangers to it without their consent.
