Bad Taste: How Low Can You Go?
BySometimes horror can leave a bad taste in your mouth. Not the usual kind, not the kind you pay to experience. I’m not talking about the disgust of a horrific murder scene, or bearing witness to the main character finding his girlfriend’s head in a box, or even the more literal bad taste of a character being force fed his own left arm. I mean the kind of bad taste that makes you ashamed to be part of the horror community. It’s not necessarily a matter of taking things “too far”…I mean how far is too far in a world of rape, murder, and hellish experiences? But more the blatant shock tactics used to cash in on the controversy of a taboo subject.
Like the makers of this film did.
Or this film.
Or maybe worst of all…this poorly made monstrosity.
When this type of tripe starts to turn up in mainstream media, you start to wonder if some of the stuff you’ve written is just as bad. Someone out there is bound to have lived through an experience that you’ve used in a novel (the exception being the supernatural…maybe) and some of them may think you ‘cashing in’ on the premise is too much.
So why do we accept stories of death, decay, and debauchery but frown upon movies about the twin towers, or hijacked planes? Hell, nobody complained about Passenger 57 or Die Hard II when they came out. OK, I’m sure someone did but not as many as the amount of people that will complain about the above examples. So is it just a case of ‘too soon’?
If it were that simple then people wouldn’t complain about books and films about Jesus…and we know they do.
So when is bad taste really considered bad taste and not fair game? And are some subjects better left alone? At the moment Nazis seem quite a popular horror trope. Nobody seems to mind that. With films like Dead Snow and Iron Sky it almost seems like they’ve become a new comedy team, slotting in somewhere between Abbot and Costello and Adam Sandler. Oh look a Nazi! And he’s a zombie…ha ha, he wants brains…blonde, blue eyed ones. Silly Nazi.
But when its zombie Osama we shudder and mock disgust is replaced with genuine disdain.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it is just a matter of time. Maybe in fifty years audiences will be munching popcorn and laughing at hordes of zombies with bombs strapped to their chests. They want to eat your brains…then blow you away!
The difference with books is it seems harder to find the “offensive” material. I know for a fact that two of the above films are widely available in most DVD stores. And I’m sure the third will be, when it’s released (I’m praying they don’t try for a 9/11 release date to drum up publicity). But finding books written in the same vein is a lot harder. Yes, they exist. Hell, there’s even a children’s picture book that depicts 9/11 in a humorous light, but they seem to be well hidden. You have to search them out rather than stumble across them on a weekend shopping trip.
Does this make them any more acceptable? Maybe. At least this way you only find them if you want to. People who are likely to be offended may never hear of their existence and they can go on pretending they don’t exist. But it also means they go uncontested, released into the wild without complaint or protest.
It’s a tough subject to argue, on one hand it seems disrespectful that media cashing in on these tragedy can exist, but on the other hand if you censor one subject you have to start censoring them all. Well made films such as A Siberian Film and books like The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks prove that disturbing subjects can be made into satisfying “entertainment”.
So maybe it’s just the way these films are made? Or the hurried and money focused methods in which the books are rushed to the publishing house? A horror story with the backdrop of the twin towers attack doesn’t necessarily have to be instantly dismissed. With a decent, believable storyline (less of the LOLZ OMG ZOMBEEEESS) it could be an extremely dark and disturbing tale.
I suppose it all boils down to respect.
Respect your subject matter and your audience will respect you.
7 Comments
It’s interesting—most of the subjects publishers list as taboo appear in my favorite horror novels—take Carrie by Stephen King (severe child abuse), The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (also child abuse, and arguably more graphic and offensive in nature). Think about the things Regan says in the movie. I think we know which kinds of lines I’m referring to.
And yet the strength of the style and artistry in these works, in my opinion, carries them and makes them poignant.
I remember going to an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in the let 1990’s called Sensations: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Gallery. Mayor Giuliani tried to ban it at the time because (if I remember correctly) a Virgin Mary made out of cow dung. I thought there were many more shocking works in the exhibit, and yet I wasn’t techinically ‘offended’ by any of them.
Overall, I guess I see horror not in the context of genre fiction, but in the same context as I see Damien Hurst or any other artist. What makes something worthwhile or not to me, therefore, is never its topic but its skill in rendering. I’ve never ever been comfortable with the term taboo in any realm of art, and have often felt it is thrown around too casually in the world of horror writing. Perhaps it is a fear that our culture sees horror writers as freakish and there is a need felt in the horror community to prove it has ethics.
If so, I feel it’s misplaced. Quality ought to be the only judge, and if anything is gratuitous, pointless or offensive, it means it simply wasn’t professionally or insightfully rendered.
“Skill in rendering” – this is the perfect way of phrasing it. I don’t really think any subject is too taboo if done well enough. The thing that irritates me with these types of books/films is the pointlessness of it all. Adding Osama to a zombie film doesn’t make it any better, or any scarier. If he’s a zombie then he’s been stripped down of anything that made him who he was and he’s just another faceless (maybe literally eventually) flesh eater in a crowd of the shuffling undead. They added him (and I’m only speculating here) because it was controversial.
It’s like putting a breast on the main characters forehead, not because it has anything to do with the plot but because it will cause a stir – get people talking about a film or a book and they want to see it. Take 50 Shades for example. I’m ashamed to admit how many friends I have that said “I know its utter tripe, but I’m going to buy it just to see how bad it is.” The creator doesn’t really give a shit if you like it or not, just that you’ve paid them.
It’s not the subject matter that should be avoided just poor methods of projecting it.
Skill in rendering.
Adding Osama to make it a little more risque is deffently what I think is going on, it’s deffently not on any sort of “to watch” list of mine but I know of a stack of people who will watch it. Lot’s of folk will watch it just for the fact that they can say they have seen ALL the zombie film types.
Fair play I have a close friend who is like that I personally think it’s a bit pointless.
I suppose the saving grace of this film is that isn’t a remake, it be recycling old ideas an tacking on a stupid concept but it’s better than taking an already created film and doing it again. Plus it could be said that putting Osama in a film like this does actually degrade Osama as this figure of almighty fear. Something film has done with Hitler, it helps us cope and not get to carried away with news media trying to make us all paranoid.
Be aware however that like yourself when I heard of this film I did groan inside (like I am sure you did) and thought about it as another trash horror picture. However I have a feeling the director probably isn’t taking his own film too seriously.
Glad you saw where I was coming from. Because the irony is most of the extreme stuff I see I totally agree is just shock and not very good. There are the exceptions though, so I like to leave room.
Nice post.
–Carl
The most offensive thing about a Zombie Osama is that it’s another zombie film. When will these films stop or when will budding directors take a chance of thinking about making something else.
Another another note I have had a story published that really split the audience. I even had someone think my name was some false name. Not sure why?
I also found people making very strange assumptions about me on the strength of a single story. I don’t know if it has done my writing reputation harm or good I guess time will tell.
I think people have the right to be offended but not to think their own personal “sacred cow” should be reserved for innocence because that’s just hypocrisy.
It does feel like they’re just going through the motions now, doesn’t it? What haven’t we paired zombies with? Nazis? Done that. Strippers? Done that. Rednecks? Aliens? Cowboys? Done, done, done.
With regards to splitting the audience, that’s what really gets my goat. Sometimes a story can be full of murder, mayhem, and malice and people don’t bat an eyelid. Then your next plot is torn apart by every man and his dog. What I want to know is whereabouts the imaginary line of “decency” is. I keep looking for it but it never seems to stay still long enough to spot it.
I suppose if everyone’s talking about your book – whether they hate it or not- then you’re getting some advertising out of it. Like I said in the comment below, people love to read things for themselves even if everyone else is telling them how bad it is…more so even!
I guess what I have learned is that when writing about something that is a sensitive issue you will get certain reactions, as for the line of deceny I really don’t know I suppose it’s were you place it yourself.
In James Herberts autobiography he said that he regreted the scene where the baby was eaten by rats in The Rats, I personally thought he was being gutsy and the scene was needed to show the rats ate anything in their path and nothing was sacred. The upshot of this was that he kept children special in his books. His writing hasn’t suffered as a result, hell he has done VERY well I think maybe you need to shock yourself sometimes to understand your limits.
As for the advertising bit, I think I have grown a little ashamed of the story as I tend not to mention it to people. Stupid? Probably I get told not to feel guilty about it but maybe it’s just something time will sort out