Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"By focusing on the concept of sadism and drawing on holocaust atrocities, Kerner offers original insights into the relationship between torture porn and American culture in the post-9/11 period." -- Steve Jones * author of Torture Porn: Popular Horror after Saw *
"This remarkable contribution to the scholarship on today’s most reviled film cycle expertly demonstrates the continued relevance of trenchant cultural criticism, from
Saw to Bush and beyond." -- Mattias Frey * University of Kent *
"
Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11 is an important work in film studies." * Cinema Journal *
"Aaron Michael Kerner's
Torture Porn in the wake of 9/11 offers a rich and provocative account of the possible cultural and political merits of films representative of the genre." * Women's Studies *
"Kerner views [torture porn] with a clear, cold eye, continually drawing readers back to his central point, which is that viewers are complicit in the creation and reception of torture porn films. This offers a bleak signpost to what one can expect in the shared stakes of cinematic representationalism." * Choice *
Table of ContentsContentsPreface1 Torture Porn: From 9/11 to the Multiplex2 The Torture Porn Genre3 Some Antecedents: Sadism, Exploitation, and (Neo-)Slashers4 The Saw Franchise: Videogames, and the Sadistic Pro(an)tagonist Jigsaw5 The Hostel Films: Consuming Bodies6 “I think we took a wrong turn . . .”7 Soft-core, and Beyond Torture PornFilmographyNotesBibliographyIndex
