Spectatorship, Embodiment and Physicality in the Contemporary Mutilation Film

Laura Wilson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349573103, 9781137444370
• eBook ISBN: 9781137444387
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Spectatorship, Embodiment and Physicality in the Contemporary Mutilation Film explores 'physical spectatorship': the representation of mutilation on the screen and the physical responses this evokes. The book is organised around the study of a series of dynamic engagements that reconfigure the film-viewer relationship.

1

Embodied Voyeurism

There are numerous ways in which the mutilation film represents bodily mutilation. This chapter is concerned with those films that delight in the optical detail of bursting blood vessels, oozing sores and splintering bones (to name just a small number of ways the human body may be desecrated). Certain films that will be examined in this book, although they undoubtedly share a preoccupation with the destruction of human flesh, either avoid showing the process (or aftermath) of mutilation to any significant degree, and/or undermine the visual dominance of cinema through certain sound and editing techniques.¹ The films examined in this chapter ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ the destruction of the body. I use the terms ‘show’ and ‘tell’ following Philip Brophy’s classic study of the texture of 1980s horror films, ‘Horrality’ (1986),² where he compares the first two versions of The Thing: Howard Hawks’ (1951) and John Carpenter’s (1982). Brophy argues that ‘[b]oth films deal with the notion of an alien purely as a biological life force, whose blind motivation for survival is its only existence’ (10). However, through ‘showing’ bodily mutilation via explicit images, rather than alluding to – or ‘telling’ – this violence through editing, framing and sound (for example) Carpenter’s film ‘generates a different mode of suspense’ (10). My turn to contemporary horror films in this chapter also explores a ‘different mode of suspense’ by questioning how the showing of bodily mutilation in contemporary horror constructs physicality.³

In 2004, James Wan and Leigh Whannell co-wrote a film which kick-started one of the most profitable horror film franchises to date, and arguably changed the landscape of horror cinema by influencing the sub-genre that became known as ‘torture porn’. This film was Saw, and its distributors’ marketing strategy was to send severed hand prosthetics to journalists.⁴ These gruesome props pointed to one scene towards the film’s end for which the entire feature became known, where one of the lead protagonists cuts off his own foot (see Figure 1.1). The rest of the film is a concentrated mix of mystery and suspense akin to that of the Hitchcockian suspense thriller and David Fincher’s Se7en (1995). However, the one shot (out of 2,152 in total)⁵ of a hacksaw cutting through a man’s ankle – which has the duration of only two seconds – refreshed a cinematic fascination with blood and viscera, and became the foundation on which the subsequent films were based.⁶

Figure 1.1 Saw: One shot helped launch an entire sub-genre of contemporary horror critically known as ‘torture porn’ (James Wan/Twisted Pictures)

Prior to the contemporary mutilation film, a concentrated proliferation of films that show the process/aftermath of bodily mutilation was apparent through the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Generally B-movie and cult status, the films of George A. Romero, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Jörg Buttgereit, Sam Raimi, and Italian zombie and cannibal movies, among others, all relished in showing various forms of evisceration.⁷ The recent trend of showing such fleshy destruction differs from these previous films. As well as now entering mainstream cinema, the spectatorship constructed is much more strongly tied to the victim of torture.⁸ In his article ‘All Stripped Down’, film scholar Dean Lockwood argues against the notion that ‘what is new and distinctive about torture porn is the graphic and explicit nature of its violence’ to suggest that ‘the subgenre is actually more about the effectiveness with which the spectator is put into the victim’s shoes’ (2009: 44). Although the main arguments posited here stem from this central idea, Lockwood’s study differs from mine as he focuses on the narrative theme of capture and torture; as such, his article concentrates on what he terms ‘the body suspended in the expectation of assault’ (44). Not all films with this now familiar narrative explicitly show the process/aftermath of mutilation, further strengthening Lockwood’s focus on suspension and anticipation. However, this does not address the fact that the most successful franchises in recent years – namely the Saw and Hostel series – for the most part do exhibit a fascination with the visual detail of maiming and dismemberment. Thus, the mutilated body becomes the object of the gaze; yet this chapter argues that, predominantly, Saw and Hostel’s spectator does not have power or omnipotence over this bloody image – the imperative of these films lies in perceiving one’s own body. With a focus on both the ‘expectation of assault’ and the display of assault, this chapter explores a spectatorship constituted through a ‘body suspended’ in the expectation of suffering, which climaxes with graphic and violent images. I end the chapter by considering how sound provides effective support to the image in generating physical responses, while also creating a sense of an ending, even as the plot of the film is already setting up the sequel.

The films I am concerned with in this chapter (Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005), Saw II (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2005), Saw III (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2006), Saw IV (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2007), Saw V (David Hackl, 2008), Saw VI (Kevin Greutert, 2009) and Saw 3D (Kevin Greutert, 2010))⁹ all have a very clear narrative structure I call the assault. The assault has three stages: anticipation, when what is about to transpire is realised by both victim and spectator and consequently anticipated; the mutilation, where the body is attacked in a variety of ways; and the aftermath, namely blood, pus, bones, brains and viscera. The mutilation and aftermath of the assault are shown through what I call the mutilating and mutilated wound image. These two images need to be distinguished from each other, because one connotes the body that is deteriorating, and the other the body that is deteriorated. Whereas the mutilated wound image is far more prolific, I argue that it is the mutilating wound image that is iconic in the films considered here. The mutilating wound image is the dominant reason the Saw and Hostel franchises have been chosen for study and I argue that this image creates a notable shift in the spectatorship these films construct. It is this shift, I argue, that makes these examples of the mutilation film so unique.

The mutilating wound image has many varied forms. It may present itself for a mere fraction of a second, or impose itself for much longer. It may consist solely of the flesh being mutilated, or it may include other visuals such as props and setting. They all, however, have one factor in common: they display the process of mutilation. Bones are not merely splintered; they are splintering. Limbs are not already dismembered; they are being dismembered. Thus, the mutilating wound image disrupts the expectation of assault by satisfying its anticipation. At the same time, this image is elusive and deceptive. It is often confused with sound and editing; one may think it is there when, in actuality, it is nowhere to be seen. Controversy surrounds the mutilating wound image; it is frequently deemed a lazy way to shock, with the common consensus being that better films are able to play tricks on the senses with techniques mentioned above. However, this chapter argues that the mutilating wound image allows for a very particular relationship between viewer and film that both speaks to, and begs a rethink of, existing theories of horror spectatorship.¹⁰

Before going on to an analysis of Hostel and Saw II–3D, I would like to consider some of the theoretical problems these films present, particularly in relation to notions of voyeurism and (dis)embodiment. In their book Film Theory, Elsaesser and Hagener state:

The disembodied eye was celebrated as a strong illusion of power and omnipotence. One tends to forget that the voyeurism which was to become such an abiding preoccupation for film theory depends on forms of disembodiment, especially the idea of not having to take responsibility for one’s bodily presence in a given space or at a given time.

(2010: 85)

The spectacle of the body is undeniably evident in these films; therefore, a quick and easy assumption would be that these images construct a voyeuristic spectatorship defined by distance, and an unacknowledged gaze that holds mastery over the object of the film. However, the physical responses that these films generate are in direct conflict with the premise that voyeurism is disembodied and, thereby, one does not acknowledge their own bodily presence. In her pioneering study of cinema and the film experience, The Address of the Eye, Vivian Sobchack identifies three presuppositions that inform the majority of film theory, the third being that ‘film is a viewed object’. As a result, the idea that ‘film, as it is experienced, might be engaged as something more than just an object of consciousness is a possibility that has not been entertained’ (1992: 20). This chapter endeavours to argue that these films are certainly ‘something more’ than a viewed object; principally I aim to explore the way they confront the strict hierarchy of viewer as subject, and film as object and, in doing so, further complicate theories of film spectatorship.

As with any film that generates a physical response, Hostel and Saw II–3D complicate the notion of spectator and viewer by grounding the latter in a concrete and hyper-awareness of their own physicality, presumably detached and defined from the text. In his re-reading of Christian Metz’s theories of spectatorship, ‘Cinema’s Double’, Richard Rushton explains that, to be a spectator, he is ‘encouraged to forget the existence of [his] own self in its bodily form’ (2002: 112). A viewer is no longer a viewer, then, but a spectator once awareness of being embodied fades away. Rushton complicates Metz’s theories when he argues that the spectator, rather than being ‘filled up’ by cinema, is instead ‘emptied of all contents’ as they are ‘unencumbered by the clumsiness … of [their] own bodies’ (2002: 113). The disembodied notion of the spectator is, therefore, seemingly incompatible with the physicality of Hostel and Saw II–3D’s spectatorships (how we can we even call them spectatorships if we concede to this disembodied idea of a spectator?). However, Rushton goes on to suggest these moments – where a sense of bodiliness is lost – are rare:

And such moments are, quite literally, gaps in the viewing experience, they are moments of imaginary phantasmagoria, of unconscious perception, of a degree of hyper-perceptive hallucination where one unshakeably believes in the reality of the screen world in which one is engrossed. (114)

The viewer is only in the status of the unencumbered spectator for rare and brief periods; to be a spectator, in Rushton’s words, we are encouraged towards such moments. While the following analyses demonstrate that certain mutilation films certainly aspire to these elusive ‘gaps’ (115), to end any definition of spectator here would be to ignore how embodiment constitutes the film experience and, in reverse, how the film constructs a spectatorship defined by physicality.

A young man walks down a passageway lined with doors. Each door is made of clouded glass, through which clearly defined silhouettes of writhing bodies, in various sexual positions, are discernible. Bathed in soft blue/purple light, his facial expression betrays a wish to be anywhere but where he is. Rhythmic beats and soft moans on the soundtrack blend seamlessly with the satisfied murmurs emanating from behind the transparent doorways. He continues his journey to the end of the corridor where, tentatively, he pushes open the glass that separates him from what lies beyond. This time, there is no obscure shadow of a person; instead a live flesh-and-blood woman stands before him, inviting him in.

The above passage is a description of an early scene in Hostel. The film follows three young men (Josh, Paxton and Oli), as they travel across Europe in search of good times and, of course, women. One of these men, Josh, has been persuaded that the best way to get over his past relationship is to sleep with someone else. Standing at the threshold of an array of sexual opportunities, Josh nervously observes the woman his friends have picked out for him – and leaves.

Hostel’s brothel scene stands out from the rest of the film, and indeed all films looked at in this chapter, because it is so heavily stylised. A slow tracking shot follows Josh revealing the perfect silhouettes of naked bodies moving in a graceful and carefully choreographed sexual dance. The blue/purple lighting, the spotless décor and the room at the end of the corridor promising unknown delights all point to the fact that this is a meticulously designed set rather than a pre-existing brothel Josh has stumbled into.¹¹ By contrast, for the majority of the film (as it is for most of the Saw films) the technology of cinema is invisible, and thus gives the illusion that what unfolds in front of the camera is a segment of a much larger reality. In their study of various modes of spectatorship, Elsaesser and Hagener argue that this latter spectatorship is the first of seven modes. This ‘ocular-specular’ mode (2010: 14), conceptualised as window and frame, is generally known as ‘classical’:

Classical cinema keeps its disembodied spectators at arm’s length while also drawing them in. It achieves its effects of transparency by the deployment of filmic means (montage, light, camera placement, scale, special effects) which justify their profuse presence by aiming at being noticed as little as possible. (18)

Hostel’s spectator, for the most part, is closely tied into a fictional world, while remaining blind to the mechanics of securement. The early scene described above is both illustrative of, and contrasts with, this spectatorship. Unlike the brothel’s stylised look and corridors of clouded glass, classical cinema is transparent, allowing a visual proximity without revealing what is being looked through (in this instance, window becomes metaphor for cinema technology). Yet, just as Josh does not enter into a sexual encounter, this visuality fails to constitute physical engagement; he and the spectator of the first mode are kept at an arm’s length. Thus, Elsaesser and Hagener describe it as disembodied and voyeuristic. However, as Josh removes the opaque barrier between himself and what lies beyond, his presence is acknowledged. No longer a voyeur who has the luxury of observing a myriad of obscure sexual trysts in secret, Josh is looked upon by the woman on the other side of the screen. Similarly, a physical acknowledgement arises between the spectator and the mutilating wound image throughout Hostel and Saw II–3D. Just as the woman who has been bought for Josh turns and looks at him, this chapter will explore how the mutilating wound image returns the gaze and, in doing so, subverts the dichotomy subject/object, complicates the notions of spectator and viewer, and constructs a visceral engagement.

The expectation stage of assault is the most prolonged in terms of film running time as it must shift the spectatorship from identification with the look of the camera to the position of the victim. It is the point where, as Lockwood states, the spectator is effectively ‘put into the victim’s shoes’ (2009: 44). The spectatorship is constituted through a sense of panic and rising anxiety in the character’s situation. Although screams and pleads are an intrinsic factor in creating physicality during the expectation stage – and they are certainly indicative of the impending mutilation – other techniques are continually and repeatedly utilised to firmly bind the spectator to a position of anticipation. The use of point-of-view shots, revelation of the impending torture and speed and strength of cuts are explored in this section to question how this period constructs a spectatorship that will, ultimately, constitute the body of the viewer. The films (particularly those of the Saw franchise) also draw strongly on influences from Alfred Hitchcock’s suspense thrillers, such as creating anticipation through objects of suspense, prolonging this anticipation through the suspension of time and mise-en-abîme.¹² Indeed, as confessed by director James Wan, Saw (2004) was envisioned not as a ‘gorey horror’, but as a thriller à la Hitchcock.¹³ This aspect of the first film was taken on by its sequels at the same time as the torture sequences were substantially multiplied. The combination of Hitchcockian suspense and B-movie gore¹⁴ creates a uniquely disturbing contemporary horror of which ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Introduction
• 1. Embodied Voyeurism
• 2. Mutilation as Spectacle
• 3. Representing the Unrepresentable: Self-Harm as Affect
• 4. Extreme Frequencies
• 5. The Gut
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Filmography
• Index