Don't call these films 'art'

I'm not an unreasonable guy, and I'm not looking for a fight here with the defenders of gore. I'm fairly well-educated. Professionally, I work in and teach performing arts; stage theatre, specifically. I'm also not a censorious person. Let human beings express themselves, in all their creative glory.

But if art serves a purpose -- not a social function, because I don't buy that premise; art is truly engaged only by the individual -- it's to illuminate the sublime, to bring to the surface the inner visions of the artist, to reveal what other humans cannot see in their own limited imaginations (limited not by ability, but by lack of experience and lack of openness to what lies within themselves). Art is the well-spring of all that's possible, within and because of this great natural gift of human creativity.

What art is not and should never be considered is a free-for-all for anyone who can't tell the difference between illumination and exhibitionism... gratuitous, selfish, even childish exhibitionism. These gore films -- all of them -- fall into that last category. They illustrate no part of the human condition or the human capacity for cruelty that cannot be gleaned from a trip around the evening news. I know humans are cruel, and there is nothing artful about cruelty. Cruelty is not open to art. Dress it up with sexy legitimizing words like "cinema" or "sculpture" all you like, but you're not fooling anyone.

What message is to be gotten from this garbage? The awareness that the world is harsh and contains some humans who will destroy others for their own entertainment? Doesn't history show us that already? You want to witness the lasting effects of cruelty, and its "artful" expression? Then go marvel at the precision of the Jewish holocaust and how efficiently it was carried out. Go get some oven bricks from a Jewish death camp and display them as sculpture in your china cabinet.

This is not to say that all art must be Disney and Jane Austen. Despair and loss and heartbreak and death are natural sufferings -- not cruelties -- and they provide all the tragic subject matter art has ever needed. Death happens. Love fades. Those things do not require conscious acts of human cruelty in order to be carried out, which is why their rendering in art does not wound us, does not repulse us. In fact, it's the opposite; the exposure of these painful elements of natural human life help illuminate the ways humans overcome natural losses. These things infuse art with hope and optimism, because always there is a tomorrow, and Shakespeare and Bergman and even the pessimistic Beckett can show us, through natural tragedy, that we might learn to overcome, if we just open ourselves to the possibility of overcoming.

But these gore films provide a stage for acts that do not deserve it. No one who sees these films is any better for having seen them; in fact, many comments here reflect the real psychological wounding that occurs after viewing. Art does not wound. Art opens the mind to reflection, and inquiry, not psychological damage.

Those of you depraved to the point of tolerance for this trash, have at it. I hope we never reach a point where we ban any form of creative expression. But your application of the term "art" is misplaced. This is not art. Anyone can take a flashlight and shine it on human depravity. Camera angles and lighting decisions do not add any polish to the turd. We might have people among us -- then, now, and forever -- who can't rise above their own lack of human decency and empathy, but as creative thinkers and artists, we ought to be better than this.

Shame on those who can't resist the sick impulse to direct whatever artistic talent they have to something other than gory pornography. For shame.