The ads were in four panels, labeled Capture, Confinement, Torture, and Termination. The first three are hard close-ups on Elisha's fact -- first with a black-gloved hand over her mouth, second crying inside a cage with her bloody finger poking through the wire, third wrapped in some kind of white straps with tubes or hooks in her nose (people seem rather unclear on what the hell the gear was in the Torture panel) with blood draining out. The Termination panel showed her lying on her back, in a shot that several people have mentioned frames her breasts at the focal point.
What I think makes them worse than anything I've seen as publically posted ads for a mainstream horror movie is their snuff-filminess. It's basically a little mini-drama of a woman being abducted, tortured, and murdered, so in a way, people were kind of required to see the damn movie, even those among us who generally choose not to see movies whose main plot is the abduction, torture, and murder of a woman -- not even to mention however many hundreds or thousands of women who actually *have* been seized or confined against their will; it's not hard to see why a whole lot of women are pissed off about having their PTSD set off on the way to work.
More esoterically, I just really object to shit that tries to make us feel like it's not only fine, but kind of arty and edgy and cool, to revel aesthetically in imagery of pretty girls being abused and degraded. I loathe this campaign, and many of these movies, because they are ultimately self-serving excuses to indulge some people's desires to linger over the awful things that can be done to a woman's body. Horror movies frequently kill men and less-beautiful women, but those images aren't set apart and highlighted for us, expressly because there is an *aesthetic* component. We're taught to think that there's something attractive about women during or after their victimization -- hell, look at Black Snake Moan. It may be a good movie, but their ad campaign isn't Tobacco Road Redemption Fable or Southern Gothic Story With Sam Jackson Singing the Blues. It's Mostly Naked Famous Girl Chained Up. If you just rely on the commercials and the posters (that lovely one with her kneeling chained up at Jackson's feet with the tag Everything's Hotter Down South), that's all you know about the movie. Because they're betting that's all you need to know to want to see it. Because that's what we use women's bodies for in this culture -- to sell whatever shit, you don't even have to know what -- and yet as much as I hate that, I hate it so much worse that we use women's *victimized* bodies to do it with not a moment's pause to wonder if there's a difference between women when they're sexy/happy and when they're sexy/terrified or even sexy/dead. It's all just so much meat as far as we're concerned.
no subject
What I think makes them worse than anything I've seen as publically posted ads for a mainstream horror movie is their snuff-filminess. It's basically a little mini-drama of a woman being abducted, tortured, and murdered, so in a way, people were kind of required to see the damn movie, even those among us who generally choose not to see movies whose main plot is the abduction, torture, and murder of a woman -- not even to mention however many hundreds or thousands of women who actually *have* been seized or confined against their will; it's not hard to see why a whole lot of women are pissed off about having their PTSD set off on the way to work.
More esoterically, I just really object to shit that tries to make us feel like it's not only fine, but kind of arty and edgy and cool, to revel aesthetically in imagery of pretty girls being abused and degraded. I loathe this campaign, and many of these movies, because they are ultimately self-serving excuses to indulge some people's desires to linger over the awful things that can be done to a woman's body. Horror movies frequently kill men and less-beautiful women, but those images aren't set apart and highlighted for us, expressly because there is an *aesthetic* component. We're taught to think that there's something attractive about women during or after their victimization -- hell, look at Black Snake Moan. It may be a good movie, but their ad campaign isn't Tobacco Road Redemption Fable or Southern Gothic Story With Sam Jackson Singing the Blues. It's Mostly Naked Famous Girl Chained Up. If you just rely on the commercials and the posters (that lovely one with her kneeling chained up at Jackson's feet with the tag Everything's Hotter Down South), that's all you know about the movie. Because they're betting that's all you need to know to want to see it. Because that's what we use women's bodies for in this culture -- to sell whatever shit, you don't even have to know what -- and yet as much as I hate that, I hate it so much worse that we use women's *victimized* bodies to do it with not a moment's pause to wonder if there's a difference between women when they're sexy/happy and when they're sexy/terrified or even sexy/dead. It's all just so much meat as far as we're concerned.