Hostel?
» BDSM in Popular Culture
I wouldn’t think of connecting Hostel with my kink life if it weren’t for this thread on Collar Chat:
First is the S&M level. The first complete torture scene that we are treated to involves a power drill. When the torturer first picks up the hardware, amongst all the other hand operated elements, almost everyone in the audience laughed. I’m pretty sure this was a visceral response to try and process the horror of actually picking up a drill to menace someone. Myself, DCS and NV however, had absolutely no reaction of laughter. I think perhaps because for us it was a bit more real, it was a part of our sphere of existence in some fashion. After the first few torture scenes, no one in the audience laughed, because it had BECOME real for them at that point and they had to deal with it.
S&M is not always fluffy. It’s not always about the good endorphin highs, the spiritual travels and the endurance points. Sometimes it’s blood and pain. I know for a fact that there are some sadists in the world who will watch Hostel and get extremely aroused by the movie, the killing, the torture. I know the difference between the ones in the movie and the ones who don’t do it is a mere breath of conscience and self-awareness. A mere conviction that it would be wrong to do that. Even a lot of kinksters don’t like to consider that, that in some ways we really are NOT different than evil wrong people. Our desires really ARE that deep, that dark, that cruel, that taboo.
I’ve been a horror movie fan since I was a little boy. Long ago I lost track of how many images of psychopaths and torturers I’ve seen. I’ve never felt aroused by a one of them. (The shower scenes and other instance of gratuitous nudity don’t count.)
There’s no tingle when I read about Nazi concentration camps. Never has an Ed Gein fantasy passed through my mind.
My own value scale for cheap physical horror movies tends to be: how clever are the murders. I’ve never wanted to be killed or dismembered.
When I read about the evil man who imprisoned women in oil drums I never once wished someone would do that to me.
There are evil people in this world. Though most of them don’t murder people with hardware: they run large corporations.
My erotic life is filled with images of great pain and harsh degradation: pretty normal for a masochist, wouldn’t you say?
But I never relate that to the persons who actually deserve to be called perverts.
Sure, I have my nonconsensual daydreams: again, typical for my sexual orientation. But none of them mesh with anything in Hostel.
Yes, I do know sadists who have imagined killing someone. But …
Oh, I could go on forever: why don’t you share with me your reaction to Hostel.