The Horror! The Horror!

I recently watched Audition and Hostel, films famous for their viscerally graphic depictions of torture. I don’t think I flinched once during either of them; I didn’t look away, I wasn’t freaked out, I was unfazed and untrammeled. Needles through the eyes, feet hacked off, genitals severed — go ahead. Doesn’t bother me.

But I did watch one film recently that traumatized me so thoroughly that I almost couldn’t finish it. I covered my eyes; I stopped the playback; I walked away, ejected the disk, and promised myself I wasn’t going to finish it (though I eventually did.)

What was this terrifying, gruesome film you ask?
 

 
Would you believe Rob Reinter’s 1985 romantic comedy, The Sure Thing?

At least since I got through adolescence, I’ve always found sit-com style social embarrassment porn a lot more difficult to watch than anything having to do blood or horror. Watching Walter Gibson (John Cusack) squirm while his writing teacher reads out loud his roommate’s Penthouse Forum letter which he has mistakenly submitted for his composition assignment, or watching Alison (Daphne Zuniga) let herself be goaded into leaning out of a moving car topless — Eli Roth and Miike dream about attaining that level of sadistic ruthlessness.

Romantic comedies aren’t usually seen as sadistic of course. But The Sure Thing makes a good case that they are — or at least that this one is. Part of what’s so painful about watching it is the manifest contempt Reiner has for his characters. In “Say Anything”, Cameron Crowe presents his mismatched pair as lovable and natural — the female overachiever is cool and smart and funny and to be honored for her work ethic; the doofy kickboxing oddball is respected for his sweetness and his humor and his gallantry.

Reiner uses a similar smart girl/comic guy dynamic, but for him it’s an excuse for sneering rather than sympathy. Allison’s intelligence and focus are a constant cause for scorn; even her writing teacher tells her she needs to “live life to the fullest” — i.e., drink more beer and fuck more often. Walt, meanwhile, is given a completely standar-issue fascination with the stars to show that beneath the shallow, callous, frat boy alcoholic there lurk depths. Despite heroic efforts by Cusack and Zuniga, neither of their characters is remotely likable nor, for that matter, even provisionally believable. They fill the space labeled, “romantic lead here”, spouting more or less funny one-liners and/or engaging in cringe-worthy set-pieces, as the script moves them.

With the rise of reality television, I guess everybody now is more or less aware that people love to watch each other suffer extremes of humiliation. I don’t think folks usually connect those paroxysms of delightful social contempt with the pleasures of horror (or for that matter action) movie violence and revenge. But to me they don’t seem all that different — except, of course, that, compared to the gore and gouts of blood, the sit-com embarrassment is a lot more visceral.

6 thoughts on “The Horror! The Horror!

  1. I dont go to horror to wince or recoil in this way, so gore and embarrassment dont really do it for me, although I can appreciate them in their own way sometimes. I get a bit tired of this “you think Dracula is scary? No, that’s not scary, read 1984, look at north korea, go interview depressed prostitutes and terminally ill people, real serial killers and pedophiles; go to an old folks home and see how they cope with aging and humiliation of their bodies; look at how people piss their lives away watching tv; look at all the chewing gum spat on the streets and while youre at it eat shit out a dogs anus”.
    It’s just not the same thing and it holds a different appeal. You can find any number of horrifying or depressing things in daily life, but splatter horror is something really different and different from that too is ghosts, monsters and gothic (which I know were not a part of this article).
    It’s not that I’m at all bothered by you pointing out the horrors of these romantic comedy films, but I dont think Roth and Miike were intending that kind of thing (but I’m sure Miike could and probably has done something similar).
    I think Miike’s Imprint was way nastier than Audition, for me anyway, but it wasnt as good a piece of work.

    British comedy has for about 15 years pumped out television comedy out all about social embarrassment, some called it “cringe comedy” and a lot of it did get very formulaic and unconvincing, tv presenters for some silly reason even embedded it into their jobs as if their being intentionally inept and unfunny would be entertaining. Ricky Gervais being the famous example and Alan Partridge and Peepshow being the best examples to my mind.

    When you say sit-com, do you mean these movies or does Friends really horrify you? I’m horrified at my foolishness for watching so many sitcoms I never even enjoyed.

  2. I literally couldn’t watch more than like 30 seconds of Friends at a time.

    I think Roth and Miike are absolutely trying to gross people out, or make people flinch. That’s not the only thing they’re doing by any means, and they’re both infinitely better filmmakers than Rob Reiner. That’s partly why they’re not as successful in upsetting me, I think. Reiner’s hackishness is definitely part of his blandly uncaring sadism, which Roth and Miike — with their love of filmmaking and their basic level of interest in their characters — can’t quite duplicate no matter how hard they try.

  3. You dont like any Reiner films? I thought Misery, Princess Bride and Spinal Tap were good.
    I dont think Roth and Miike would do whatever it takes to be gross and disturbing to get a rise out of people, they (like most artists) want to stick to certain styles and subjects they love.

    I think the idea of hackishness and lack of talent adding to the repulsiveness of something is interesting, the most sadistic porn is always the least stylish and most banal. Suehiro Maruo is great but his beauty isnt as disturbing (in a way, hard to measure properly) as really bad artists who put lots of hate and bile into their rape and violence fantasies, but I wouldnt say that in their favor at all. I saw some truly sick stuff the other night, I always hope I’m going to find something beautiful and fresh but I always find banal cruelty instead. They really love the details of humiliation, I remember seeing somebody looking for pictures of people crying to get off on. But some of them actually are very talented and I think they are squandering what they have.

    I think painters like Dix, Grosz and music by bands like Swans are probably more powerful overall for their mix of filth, beauty and artistic greatness. The hackish artists dont have the same fullness of experience for me, however I have read some stuff on literotica that made me feel like I was stained for life, partly because I enjoyed it in a way, so it may have mostly been the horror at myself.
    By any chance is there is unpleasant reflections of yourself in these films?

  4. I liked Spinal Tap and Princess Bride.

    “By any chance is there is unpleasant reflections of yourself in these films?”

    Don’t think so. It’s not much like my own college experience in any way. One of the things I disliked about it was the unbelievability, actually. They didn’t seem like college kids…or much lie human beings, for that matter.

  5. There’s something to be said for awkwardness comedy, and you make a great point that when it’s done badly, it’s far worse than when done well. I love the cringe-tastic stuff from Ricky Gervais’s work, like the Office and Extras (in the latter, I remember watching an episode in which his character was supposed to play a gay man in a play, and he had a gay panic moment onstage in which he broke character to explain to the audience that he wasn’t gay; it was so excruciating that my wife jumped up off the couch, paced around the room, and banged on furniture in agony), but as agonizing as that can be, it’s nothing like some of the stuff I’ve seen on Friends (which I don’t actually mind that much, but in the latter seasons, as the comedy got increasingly broad, it could get pretty tiresome), which often delighted in stranding some of the characters in situations that made them and everyone around them look like idiots, and not in a funny way, but in a way that made one wonder about the characters’ sanity. I think it’s actually tough to do this, either well or poorly. It might be due to the fact that to make it really painful, the awkwardness must be drawn out as long as possible, and most shows/movies don’t have the patience to do so; once a joke lands (or fails to do so), they’re off to the next one as fast as possible. It takes a bit more determination to make the awkwardness effective, which might be why it’s so much worse when it’s done badly.

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