The horror on my television

If you are of a sensitive disposition don’t read on.

Last night I had a very late TV dinner. Flicking through the channels I came across the following scene:

A gagged naked woman is hanging from chains around her ankles. She is absolutely terrified, spluttering her screams through the ball tied in her mouth. She is hanging over a tiled bath. The two men who have obviously tied her there are about to leave the darkened chamber in which this is taking place. As they do so, one of them plants a kiss on her mouth.

A few moments after they exit, another woman enters the chamber. She is wearing only a robe, which she removes. She lies naked in the bath, takes a scythe and begins to run it over the bound woman body. By now the latter is drenched in sweat and spluttering in terror. The second woman uses the scythe to cut away the gag, and the first woman’s screams now fill the room.

I slightly missed the next bit, but when I clicked back, the bound woman had clearly been repeatedly stabbed and was unconscious. The woman in the bath was washing herself in her blood. Then she reached up with the scythe and slashed the victims throat which sprayed blood in all directions.

Later, there was a similar scene of terror as a man threatened another bound and gagged woman with an angle grinder. I didn’t watch how that turned out.

But why, you may ask, did I watch at all? And why am I telling you this?

The answer is because, thank God, I was horrified. But I would be lying if I didn’t add that I was also strangely drawn to watch — and horrified that I could feel that impulse. That is my first reason — the horror.

The second is that this was on mainstream television. It wasn’t even particularly late (about 11pm as I recall). And the third reason is that his film was called Hostel II. That’s right, there was a Hostel I. (Look them up, if you want, I am not prepared to give a link here.)

In other words, there is a market for this stuff out there.

Of course, horror films are as old as the cinema itself. In the 1970s I used to enjoy watching the late-night Hammer films. And yes, they had screaming ladies as well. But Hostel II is in a totally different league. The acting, it has to be said, was superb. Here was total, snot running, eye staring terror, right before your very eyes. It was entirely believable.

And there is the problem. Watching a bosomy maiden succumb to Dracula’s kiss is one thing. Watching a human being in apparent paroxysms of fear and agony is another. This is the entertainment of the Roman arena, not Bram Stoker.

At this point, two questions are going round my head, which is why I am writing this. The first is, whatever happened to our society, that could move from Mary Whitehouse and the Festival of Light in the 1960s and ‘70s to this. For the problem with the likes of Hostel II is not that it is trash, but that it is actually convincing and compelling.

And that brings me to my second question which is what impact such material has on those who watch it for entertainment. The ‘Saw’ series, which has I believe a similar motif, has run to seven versions.

But get this: Thorpe Park has a Saw theme ride. So whilst children may not be allowed to watch the film, but they are familiarized with the concept of ‘torture as entertainment’.

As many of us know, the problem with some experiences in life is that once in our heads, we can’t get them out. I well remember a Malaysian female student of my acquaintance who had become a Christian saying it was very easy to learn English swear words, but very hard to stop saying them.

What, then, if you filled your head last night with images of beautiful tortured women (and they are invariably beautiful women — as one producer of such films said, given the choice people would rather watch a beautiful woman being killed than an ugly one)? And what if you did this for entertainment? What if you are still entertaining yourself with the same thoughts throughout the day today?

Back in the 1960s, I was one of those who thought Mary Whitehouse and her supporters a bit naive and limited. Why should we not be allowed to watch what we wanted as grown-ups? What was wrong with a bit of artistic nudity, for example? But of course the changing of our standards did not release a flood of ‘art’.

I am still minded to write to whichever TV channel it was last night that carried that film. But I suspect it will be a lonely little letter. Surely no one cares anymore? Maybe they’ll frame it.

Tom Davies, the wonderfully eccentric author of the equally eccentric Merlin the Magician and the Pacific Coast Highway (one of the few Christian books that have made me laugh out loud) wrote a sombre follow-up called The Man of Lawlessness, which he identified as the media, pouring a stream of violence and filth into the minds and lives of ordinary people, and especially the young.

Judging by what I glimpsed on television last night, he may have been right. For there is only one place such thoughts could have come from, and one place where they belong, and that is in the lowest pit of Hell.

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Swine 'flu: the latest

Latest figures from the World Health Organization on the global Swine 'flu pandemic can be seen here. Since it first appeared back in (was it?) April, the total as at the 6th July had reached a staggering 94,512, with 429 deaths (out of a global population of almost 7 billion). In Mexico (where you will remember it all began), there have been no less than 10,262 confirmed cases in that time, with 119 attributed fatalities. That's a worrying 40 deaths a month.

Meanwhile, if you follow this link you will find the transcript of a Radio 4 'File on Four' programme about the origins of the disease and why it is (somewhat controversially) called Swine 'flu, blaming it all on intensive American pig farming. (You see, it had to be the Yanks!) You'll also find things like this:

[BBC reporter Julian] O’HALLORAN: One leading American expert says the US pig population are an increasingly important reservoir of viruses with human pandemic potential. Do you agree with that?

[Dr Ian] BROWN [of the Government’s Veterinary Laboratory Agency]: I would agree that they’re an important reservoir for influenza viruses. Whether they present increased threat pandemic potential is, I think, as yet unproven. [In other words, a cautious 'not entirely'.]

O’HALLORAN: This all raises the question of whether virologists and doctors working in human health paid enough attention to the novel swine flu virus in pigs after it broke out in 1998 [in the USA].

Er, not really. But here is how O'Halloran's thesis develops later:

... back in America the National Pork Council maintains there is a lack of evidence that industrial pig farming was in any way the cause of the ‘98 flu outbreak in pigs. So far in the USA, more than two dozen people have died of the current swine flu outbreak, and the number of confirmed cases has gone over 13,000. However, public health officials have warned that the true number of cases could be up to ten times greater. Troubling references have been made to the 1918 Spanish flu, thought to have killed up to 50 million people worldwide, because it also started with a limited wave of illness in the spring and summer. So all over the country, hospitals have been gearing up to face a possible deluge of cases in a few months time. And nowhere more so than in North Carolina, where a new swine flu virus first broke out in pigs in 1998.

So, it seems one group (admittedly a vested interest) claims there is a lack of evidence to connect intensive farming to an earlier 'flu outbreak amongst pigs, which the programme seeks to blame for its spread to human beings. But it is 'flu, and a lot of people died of 'flu in 1918. So even though the illness has so far been limited in its spread and mild in its effects, there may be a 'deluge' of comparable cases soon.

Here, then, is the conclusion to the programme (with key phrases highlighted):

O’HALLORAN: The sudden mutation of viruses, and large areas of ignorance about past pandemics, combine to mean it’s almost anyone’s guess whether the coming flu season will be little worse than normal or a great deal more severe. And the exact role of intensive farming operations in the chain of causation of a possible pandemic clearly needs much more investigation. What public health chiefs, virologists and doctors are all agreed on with flu is to expect the unexpected. But despite that dictum, it seems that, to many human health experts, swine flu came like a bolt from the blue, even though there’d been some clear warnings of danger in the last few years from some virologists who had focussed - rightly as it turns out - on the risks posed by disease in pigs.

Finally, if you want to read a first-hand account of the early reactions amongst medical staff in Mexico (which may have something to do with the media coverage now) there is this doctor's diary on the BBC website.

John Richardson
14 July 2009

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