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« Bush gets with a Democratic program | Main | On phony ex-leftists » Thursday, December 21, 2006"Casino Royale" = "Saw III"?I don't know, Josh (and Ty), but I think I'd need to hear a much richer argument than that L.A. Times piece provides before I conclude that one can "connect the dots" between "Casino Royale" and Abu Ghraib. Or even between "Casino Royale" and "Saw III." Think about how far this argument carries. "Casino Royale" features a scene in which a cartoon villain tortures a cartoon hero, who everyone knows will triumph (such are the conventions of the genre). Are all such scenes in pop art now aesthetically and politically suspect, enablers of John Yoo's preferred methods of interrogation? (The laser beam heading toward the hero's genitals in "Goldfinger"? Baddies tormenting Indiana Jones or Han Solo?) What would genre fiction and film look like, shorn of all such scenes? Isn't it usually lefty cultural critics who defend (some of) this stuff against the charge it is degrading and morally corrosive? How does Hamrah distinguish his argument from those arguments? I am appalled by modern "torture porn," but I don't think the entire Grand Guignol genre -- "The Pit and the Pendulum"? "Halloween?"-- can be quite so easily written off as political retrograde. But I'd love to read a longer, deeper piece by Hamrah on these issues. (I much prefer the way James Wolcott handles the issue of violence, sexual abuse, and degradation in TV cop and forensics procedurals, here and here: He tries to identify the line at which a genre he himself enjoys crosses over into something darker. Partly because they are so mainstream, these shows often make my jaw drop more than "Turista" does.) Posted by Christopher Shea at 12:11 PM
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