Eric J. Lawrence
The first full page of Stephen King’s 1987 novel Misery introduces the initial, muddled thoughts of his severely injured protagonist, author Paul Sheldon:
The pain was somewhere below the sounds. The pain was east of the sun and south of his ears. That was all he did know.
For some length of time that seemed very long (and so was, since the pain and the stormy haze were the only two things which existed) those sounds were the only outer reality. He had no idea who he was or where he was and cared to know neither. He wished he was dead, but through the pain-soaked haze that filled his mind like a summer storm cloud, he did not know he wished it.[i]
Fans more familiar with Rob Reiner’s 1990 film adaptation of King’s novel might recognize this moment when James Caan as Paul flits in and out of consciousness after his accident; it occurs after a brief preamble that more formally introduces the character and his profession and depicts the accident itself. Regular viewers of cinematic horror, however, might find similarities between King’s description and those moments of terrifying clarity experienced by particular victims in horror. Such a situation involves a successful, urbane, attractive individual having undergone some sort of agonizing experience, only to find themselves uncomfortably confined and menaced by some (often rural) antagonist. It’s a scenario that plays out throughout horror cinema history, from The Old Dark House (1963) to The Hills Have Eyes (1977). This popular trope has been reimagined and amplified in the twenty-first century, thanks to the subgenre known as “torture porn.”
Paul’s first return to consciousness, where he is bloodied as if tortured
As its name suggests, “torture porn” revolves around characters being tormented, both psychologically and physically, in grimly inventive ways; they are designed to captivate the viewers’ gaze, even if partially obscured by the fingers of the squeamish. While slasher films, with their sudden, violent, but usually quick kills, dominated horror cinema for much of the end of the last century, examples with more drawn-out, psychologically tormenting scenes of inflicted pain began to reemerge on movie screens in the early 2000s. Of course, torture has appeared as a cinematic plot device throughout the history of the medium, from The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) to the elaborate death traps of the James Bond films. Misery, however, plays an unexpected role in the evolution of torture porn, bringing the combination of fear and pain to an appreciative mainstream audience, in addition to approval from critics and the Academy alike—with Kathy Bates winning the Best Actress Academy Award for her role as Annie Wilkes. Examining how it compares with some of the key examples of the torture porn genre, specifically writer and director Eli Roth’s Hostel films (2005 and 2007), suggests a closer kinship than its critical acceptance (in contrast to torture porn’s revilement) might suggest.
The term “torture porn” was coined by critic David Edelstein in an influential essay published in New York magazine in early 2006, fresh on the heels of the release of the films that have come to represent the core of the genre: Saw (2004), Saw II, and Hostel (both 2005). Edelstein’s negative response to these and other examples revolves around the question of where complicity falls – whether on the filmmakers or the viewers – when it comes to the act of consuming such extreme and violent imagery as entertainment. Edelstein closes his essay by admitting, “I am complicit in one sense, though. I’ve described all this freak-show sensationalism with relish, enjoying – like these filmmakers – the prospect of titillating and shocking. Was it good for you, too?” His argument, unfortunately, fails to expand upon the long-standing accusation of the corrupting power of popular culture; while one could make the case, as Edelstein does, that some of these films can only manage to portray a “viciously nihilistic” world, their potential perniciousness in affecting the behavior of viewers is mitigated by the failure of similar complaints leveled at comic books in the 1950s, heavy metal music in the 1970s, violent video games in the 1990s, etc. to demonstrate any widespread negative effects.
In fact, as L. Andrew Cooper argues, it is precisely political more than artistic forces that brought about the burst of similarly-themed films that make up the torture porn genre.[ii] The 9/11 attacks and the subsequent scandal regarding human rights abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 put a spotlight on the US government’s “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Some critics perceive this connection to films like Hostel as giving Americans the opportunity to be represented as victims (not just perpetrators), as American travelers are tormented in their journeys abroad by shadowy, amoral, commercial organizations. In the case of Hostel, it is a company that caters to wealthy individuals seeking to inflict torture and, ultimately, death on a random victim with no consequences (echoing The Most Dangerous Game [1932], from a century earlier). The fee for acquiring this service is based on the nationality of said victim, with Americans being the most expensive.
Some find these storylines disingenuous. Catherine Zimmer writes of torture porn films that they “present teenagers or young adults as victims of kidnap and torture during those first youthful escapades abroad that are now a tradition of upper-middle-class Americans. The emergence of these narratives of American youth, frequently men, going abroad and finding themselves immersed in what often amounts to an economy of torture must be read as a tremendously projective fantasy – a fantasy in which American youth are figured as the victims rather than as perpetrators of this kind of organized violence.”[iii] Yet, the opposite conclusion about the message of these films can equally apply: Aaron Michael Kerner argues that the myth of American exceptionalism emboldens these tourists to seek cheap, often exploitative thrills in economically disadvantaged locations, expecting to be treated as welcome visitors, only to find themselves righteously (albeit disproportionately) punished for their arrogance.[iv] It should also be noted that the 2005 Australian thriller, Wolf Creek, which Edelstein cites in his piece as a particularly nasty example of torture porn, features British tourists confronted by a murderous resident of the former colony’s rural outback, so Americans are hardly the only victims portrayed in such films. More than a question of nationality, the key element of these films is egotism.
The allegory of misguided American exceptionalism has certainly been made more literal in this batch of post 9/11 cinematic horror stories, but its roots are evident in purely domestic antecedents as well, as Hilary Neroni notes: “All torture porn films take torture out of the realm of immediate national need and place it in a more individual and personal level. These films ask, if torture can produce military secrets, why can’t it produce personal secrets, or why can’t it demand personal change?”[v] The cautionary tale of the city-dwelling “tourist” wandering into the more rural parts of the country serves as the lesson in earlier scarefests such as Psycho (1960) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).
In related fashion, I argue, Misery sets up exactly such an opposition between Paul as a coastal elite and Annie as a small-town farmer from middle America. Paul retreats to the Silver Creek Lodge in Colorado to finish his novels, after which he celebrates in his traditional fashion with a glass of champagne and a single cigarette. Annie, on the other hand, doesn’t even know the correct pronunciation of Dom Pérignon. Annie’s idea of cuisine consists of “scrambled eggs à la Wilkes” and a personal brand of meatloaf the secret ingredients of which are a contradictory mix of fresh tomatoes, Spam, and ground beef, to which Paul remarks with not-so subtle sarcasm, “Can’t get this in a restaurant in New York.” In the end, Annie herself realizes that she and Paul could never truly be compatible; her attempts to be a productive member of society – working as a nurse in the big city – had already been undone by her murderous psychosis. And as she grasps that he cannot respect her as a noble person, especially after admitting that she lied to him about calling for outside help, she also understands that neither can she be viewed as an object of desire, as she confesses to Paul, “I know you don’t love me. Don’t say you do. You’re beautiful, brilliant, a famous man of the world. And I’m not a movie star type.” Her only solution is to confine him, like a book on the shelf of her shrine of Paul’s Misery novels, even if she must resort to violence, and, ultimately, death to insure the permanence of that arrangement.
While King and, thus, Reiner, subvert the usual depiction of the place of confinement with a dollhouse-like spare bedroom, there is still a subtle, yet striking resemblance between Misery and Roth’s films in terms of visual imagery. The tools made available to clients of the torture chambers in Hostel seem foreshadowed in Misery. Our first glimpse of Annie comes when she is prying Paul from the wreckage of
Our first image of Annie features a crowbar, resembling one of Hostel’s tools of torture
his car, crowbar in hand. We later see her with needles, razors, lighter fluid, metal pails, dirty eating utensils, and, as she approaches the final assertion of her power over her captive, a revolver, a shotgun, and the iconic hobbling sledgehammer, which, despite the bloodless nature of its violence, manages to evoke just as visceral a reaction in the viewer as any of the more gory moments in the Hostel films. While the room where Paul is confined is by no means as grimy as the former Slovakian torture factory in Hostel, it is nonetheless presented as dingy and colorless, decorated in earthen tones, with Paul often framed by the bed’s metal headboard or the grey hospital-grade wheelchair. And the brief glimpse of Paul’s bruised, shattered legs resembles the disembodied limbs that litter Hostel’s lurid dungeons.
Paul’s shattered legs, which resemble the gruesome body parts of Hostel
The origins of Misery come, in part, from Stephen King’s own position as a writer who felt trapped by his success, whose hardcore fans revolted at any of his attempts to be something other than an author of horror fiction. Consequently, like King himself, Paul Sheldon’s torture is, at least initially, psychological, being confined by his “number one fan,” who insists that he return to the genre that, in the words of his agent Marcia (played by Lauren Bacall), “put braces on your daughter’s teeth.” But Misery also presents Annie as a privileged American consumer. Being an uber-fan, she claims certain rights to the content of Paul’s work, having bought and voraciously read all of his previous books. Her critiques of his writing are initially given only sheepishly, as she doubts her opinions could be worthy of the brilliance of her idol’s imagination. But as she becomes more comfortable in her new position of authority, she begins to demand more of her captive, eventually leading to his torture, maiming, and planned disposal, leaving only the legacy of a final work. Her motivations are neither profit-driven (as some torturers are, seeking the location of buried treasure, etc.), nor purely sadistic. She seeks to justify her existence, to defend her exceptional role, by performing what she views as a legitimate service to the world: bringing Misery back to life.
While Paul is trapped in what appears to be a comfortable spare bedroom, its dingy, muted color scheme gives the impression of a dungeon – at least for someone of Paul’s imagination
Roth’s villains have similar reputational goals in the Hostel films. The shadowy organization that sets up the kidnappings is run as a commercial enterprise, but the individuals who conduct the actual torture do not do so for financial gain; instead, quite literally, they have to pay for it. Through their acts of torture, like Annie, they seek to be recognized as somehow contributing to society. In the first film, the Dutch businessman who tortures to death one of the young American tourists (Josh) does so as a way of playing surgeon, which the legitimate medical authorities have banned him from actually practicing, mirroring Annie’s own forced estrangement from her desired profession. And in the 2007 sequel, Todd and Stuart, the American businessmen who have won the auction to participate in the consequence-free killing of random young women, discuss the benefits to their confidence to come from this murderous activity. As Todd says, “What we do today is going to pay off every day for the rest of our fucking lives!” For them, engaging in such a savage enterprise is a resume builder, as if it were merely a bloodier version of a Tony Robbins self-help seminar. Annie, too, seeks to achieve top dog status among all other claimants to the title of Misery’s “Number One Fan,” so if she can return her beloved character to literary life, by any means necessary, it justifies the cost. Of course, all of these characters’ motivations are completely saturated with an utterly perverse madness, elevating their stories to true horror status. But while Roth offers fascinatingly brutal slices of motivations in his films, Reiner, with the essential assistance of King’s text and Bates’s award-winning performance, presents a richly complex villain who stands tall among the ranks of cinema’s most frightening monsters.
Director John Schlesinger’s 1976 film Marathon Man features one of the most memorable examples of torture in non-horror Hollywood cinema prior to Misery. Laurence Olivier’s Oscar-nominated role of a former Nazi war criminal who tortures Dustin Hoffman’s innocent victim of circumstance connects with the later antagonists of Misery and Hostel in that he too comes from a medical tradition. He is a former dentist, and he uses his knowledge of dental pain to achieve his nefarious, but in comparison, more prosaic goals: financial security. While Marathon Man’s ‘70s thriller plot eventually evolves into the more explicit twenty-first-century horrors of Hostel, Misery works as an intermediary step in this evolution. Reiner’s film surely aims to follow in the thriller tradition of its predecessor, even using the same screenwriter, William Goldman. But Schlesinger himself recognized how thrillers like his were close to more horrific brands of cinema. As he explains: “It’s a film that’s largely about fear, and it’s about pain and the infliction of pain because of fear.”[vi] While the torture porn genre fully embraces the relationship between pain and fear, Misery offers a more subtle exploration of that relationship, but one that nonetheless offers intense examples of the infliction of pain to make its point, in a way that younger directors like Roth undoubtedly took note of and to which they brought their own unique spin.
Notes:
[i] King, 3.
[ii] Cooper, 200-201.
[iii] Zimmer, 34.
[iv] Kerner, 107-110.
[v] Neroni, 91.
[vi] “Making of Marathon Man.”
Works Cited:
Cooper, L. Andrew. Gothic Realities: The Impact of Horror Fiction on Modern Culture. McFarland, 2010.
Edelstein, David. “Now Playing at Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn.” New York, 26 Jan. 2006, https://nymag.com/movies/features/15622/. Accessed 7 July 2020.
Hostel. Directed by Eli Roth, Lionsgate, 2005.
Hostel: Part II. Directed by Eli Roth, Lionsgate, 2007.
Kerner, Aaron Michael. Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11: Horror, Exploitation, and the Cinema of Sensation. Rutgers University Press, 2015.
King, Stephen. Misery. Viking, 1987.
“Making of Marathon Man.” Marathon Man DVD. Directed by John Schlesinger, Paramount Pictures, 1976.
Misery. Directed by Rob Reiner, Columbia Pictures, 1990.
Neroni, Hilary. The Subject of Torture: Psychoanalysis & Biopolitics in Television & Film. Columbia UP, 2015.
Zimmer, Catherine. Surveillance Cinema. New York UP, 2015.
