Light entertainment
I've been watching Driver's Ed movies for the past hour. You remember them, right? The low-budget gorefests put out by the CHP? The ones they made you watch when you were just fifteen, right before you got into the completely ridiculous driving simulator?
And why, you might ask, would I want to watch something like that. Well, it all started when I saw a set of the torture photos that Prez Obama doesn't want to be released. (They're not hard to find. If you want to see them, google "torture photos sweden.") I looked at these pictures, and they started making my physically ill. I came within inches of tossing my cookies. This ain't waterboarding. These are pictures of bloody, beaten people, people wtih deep puncture wounds, people getting their skin peeled back. It''s disgusting and horrible and shameful. I'm horrified that the USA did such things. Fuck, we're supposed to be the good guys. I don't know who the victims in the photos are, or what they did, but I couldn't help but instantly feel sorry for them. They looked so dehumanized and beaten.
Nauseated, I closed the photos, and thought about it for awhile. You hear all the time that fake violence in movies desensitizes people for the real thing. That may be the case for mouth-breathers who can't understand the difference, but evidently it hasn't happened to me. Yeah, I gleefully seek out the goriest, most gruesome movies I can find. But I sure as HELL don't want to see it for real.
That made me think about the first time I was truly, deeply horrified by a real-life image on film. It was in a Driver's Ed movie, when I was15. I couldn't remember a lot about the film, not even the name, but one image was burned into my brain for all eternity. Suddenly, I wanted to find that film, and find out if it would still hit me as hard.
It wasn't difficult, thanks to YouTube. I couldn't remember which flick it was, so I watched a couple of Red Asphalt films. Then I watched Signal-30, the very first gore-ed movie, made in 1959. The scene I remembered wasn't in either of those movies. There were a whole lot of dead people, though.
Now here's an unpleasant confession. Looking at dead people doesn't bother me. Even really splattery dead people. Because they're dead. They're not suffering. (Okay, that's sort of a lie, because I freak over images of dead children. But dead grownups don't tend to bother me, even when they are in pieces, or they're crispy critters.)
Then I moved on to "Wheels of Tragedy," made in 1963. That started looking familiar to me. And in the third segment of the film, there it was. The scene that freaked my gothy teenage self out for weeks, and gave me nightmares for months. Very, very disturbing. For those of you who don't want an eyefull of this shit, it's some poor guy who's been thrown out of his car. He's in shock, lying on his belly in the grass. His whole body is tense with agony. His clenched fists are filled wtih grass. When the highway patrolmen lilft him onto a gurney, he lets out a series of short, monotone, inhuman-sounding screams. I remember exactly how I felt when I first saw it. The hair prickled on the back of my neck. Suddenly I felt hot, then cold. I realized I was close to passing out. I managed not to do that (so I wouldn't spoil my teenage tough-girl rep for all time). But it hit me really, really hard. Watching it again, more than 20 years later, it affected me just the same way.
I realized that I may have been desensitized in some ways. The fact that real, gruesome corpses don't bother me may have something to do with the fact that I've seen so many really fine fake ones created by Stan Winston and Tom Savini. It also might have to do wtih the fact that my father was a doctor, and I used to sneak and read his medical texts, which were chock full of dead guys, tumors, and other awful shit you probably shouldn't see at eight or nine. Whatever the reason, I don't feel bad about my lack of horror at the sight of dead folks. When somebody's dead, the part of them that made them human is gone. They're just empty shells, even if they're particularly gory empty shells.
What I can't abide is watching people in pain. Can. Not. Do. It. Yeah sure, I'm fine wtih it in Hostel movies, because it's FAKE. But real people, screaming in actual agony, freak my shit complely out.
I was weirdly pleased that the Driver's Ed movie still freaked me out so much. Some part of me remains human, anyway.
Fuck. I think I need to cheer myself up with a Takashi Miike film.
P.S. Shocking and embarrassing confession of the night: I kind of ignored the dead people in Signal-30 because I was getting off on the car porn so much. "WOW! that car that flipped over and decapitated that dude is a '59 Impala converable! I always wanted one of those. And OOH! OOH! Look at that gorgeous hearse/ambulance combo with the side-loading suicide doors!"
Yep. I know. I'm a deeply horrid person. But y'know, I'm OK with that.
And why, you might ask, would I want to watch something like that. Well, it all started when I saw a set of the torture photos that Prez Obama doesn't want to be released. (They're not hard to find. If you want to see them, google "torture photos sweden.") I looked at these pictures, and they started making my physically ill. I came within inches of tossing my cookies. This ain't waterboarding. These are pictures of bloody, beaten people, people wtih deep puncture wounds, people getting their skin peeled back. It''s disgusting and horrible and shameful. I'm horrified that the USA did such things. Fuck, we're supposed to be the good guys. I don't know who the victims in the photos are, or what they did, but I couldn't help but instantly feel sorry for them. They looked so dehumanized and beaten.
Nauseated, I closed the photos, and thought about it for awhile. You hear all the time that fake violence in movies desensitizes people for the real thing. That may be the case for mouth-breathers who can't understand the difference, but evidently it hasn't happened to me. Yeah, I gleefully seek out the goriest, most gruesome movies I can find. But I sure as HELL don't want to see it for real.
That made me think about the first time I was truly, deeply horrified by a real-life image on film. It was in a Driver's Ed movie, when I was15. I couldn't remember a lot about the film, not even the name, but one image was burned into my brain for all eternity. Suddenly, I wanted to find that film, and find out if it would still hit me as hard.
It wasn't difficult, thanks to YouTube. I couldn't remember which flick it was, so I watched a couple of Red Asphalt films. Then I watched Signal-30, the very first gore-ed movie, made in 1959. The scene I remembered wasn't in either of those movies. There were a whole lot of dead people, though.
Now here's an unpleasant confession. Looking at dead people doesn't bother me. Even really splattery dead people. Because they're dead. They're not suffering. (Okay, that's sort of a lie, because I freak over images of dead children. But dead grownups don't tend to bother me, even when they are in pieces, or they're crispy critters.)
Then I moved on to "Wheels of Tragedy," made in 1963. That started looking familiar to me. And in the third segment of the film, there it was. The scene that freaked my gothy teenage self out for weeks, and gave me nightmares for months. Very, very disturbing. For those of you who don't want an eyefull of this shit, it's some poor guy who's been thrown out of his car. He's in shock, lying on his belly in the grass. His whole body is tense with agony. His clenched fists are filled wtih grass. When the highway patrolmen lilft him onto a gurney, he lets out a series of short, monotone, inhuman-sounding screams. I remember exactly how I felt when I first saw it. The hair prickled on the back of my neck. Suddenly I felt hot, then cold. I realized I was close to passing out. I managed not to do that (so I wouldn't spoil my teenage tough-girl rep for all time). But it hit me really, really hard. Watching it again, more than 20 years later, it affected me just the same way.
I realized that I may have been desensitized in some ways. The fact that real, gruesome corpses don't bother me may have something to do with the fact that I've seen so many really fine fake ones created by Stan Winston and Tom Savini. It also might have to do wtih the fact that my father was a doctor, and I used to sneak and read his medical texts, which were chock full of dead guys, tumors, and other awful shit you probably shouldn't see at eight or nine. Whatever the reason, I don't feel bad about my lack of horror at the sight of dead folks. When somebody's dead, the part of them that made them human is gone. They're just empty shells, even if they're particularly gory empty shells.
What I can't abide is watching people in pain. Can. Not. Do. It. Yeah sure, I'm fine wtih it in Hostel movies, because it's FAKE. But real people, screaming in actual agony, freak my shit complely out.
I was weirdly pleased that the Driver's Ed movie still freaked me out so much. Some part of me remains human, anyway.
Fuck. I think I need to cheer myself up with a Takashi Miike film.
P.S. Shocking and embarrassing confession of the night: I kind of ignored the dead people in Signal-30 because I was getting off on the car porn so much. "WOW! that car that flipped over and decapitated that dude is a '59 Impala converable! I always wanted one of those. And OOH! OOH! Look at that gorgeous hearse/ambulance combo with the side-loading suicide doors!"
Yep. I know. I'm a deeply horrid person. But y'know, I'm OK with that.