All Stripped Down: The Spectacle of “Torture Porn”

Torture Porn

“…Any contribution torture porn makes to wider conceptual debates is thereby negated. All of these problems validate Gabriele Murray's (2008) and Lockwood's (2008) proposals that making sharp connections between horror films and current events is a strategy best avoided.…”

Beyond psychoanalysis: Post-millennial horror film and affect theory

“…Affect thus becomes 'the simultaneous participation of the virtual in the actual and the actual in 11. For a more extended discussion of the masochistic relation between torture-horror and its spectators, see Lockwood (2009). I ascribe to his view that torture-horror, rather than offering a purely moralistic message, 'amplif [ies] horror's potential to shake us out of our subjective security' (Lockwood 2009: 46).…”

Extreme Concern: Regulating ‘Dangerous Pictures’ in the United Kingdom

“…80 These are apparent, not only in porn, horror or reality TV, but in scenes of`opening up' the body in television drama and documentary, and the portrayal of torture and terror in both fictional and factual media. 81 What links these images is precisely their interest in extreme states ± sexual or otherwise ± and the strong reactions they evoke.…”

“…The drama of extreme porn has, to some extent, worked to collapse together anxieties about the growing sexualization and mediatization of society, about a broader`turn to the extreme' across a range of cultural forms, and about an appetite for graphic spectacles of the body. 80 These are apparent, not only in porn, horror or reality TV, but in scenes of`opening up' the body in television drama and documentary, and the portrayal of torture and terror in both fictional and factual media. 81 What links these images is precisely their interest in extreme states ± sexual or otherwise ± and the strong reactions they evoke.…”