Torture and Modern American Gore

One single scene from a recent Quentin Taranino movie required over 100 gallons of fake blood. People love to see blood and gore both in movies and on tv and are now requiring from more and more astract situations. Torture is really in right now, with movies like "Hostel" and "Saw" being blockbusters and tv shows like "24", which all prominently feature torture-heavy gore and threats of terrorism. In the 50's and 60's there were a lot of horror movies made about fears of nuclear war and the unknown aspects of science, like "The Blob" and "The Incredible Shrinkning Man". Movies, especially horror films, have always relied on the public's fear for subject matter, since this will obviously draw in audiences. Post 9/11, Americans have been taught to fear outsiders and foreigners, we are even trying to build a fence around one of our borders, and also to constantly be wary of terroist attacks. We are bombarded with graphic images from the war in Iraq, of televised beheadings and torture. Our own military has comitted horrible acts of torture and seem to be getting away with more and more everyday.

The American public craves these movies, these brutal images of their own fears as a way to address and understand them. Most peopla will never be tortured by someone or will torture someone, but can experience the butality of that by watching a movie like "Hostel". They can live out the experience through someone else's pain and suffering and then put off thinking about the real torture happening in our world everyday.
The problem and difference with these films is how they portay the players in the torture "game". In "Saw" the killer is venerated for teaching all of these "bad" people a lesson, and in both "Saw" and "Hostel", the victims are all vilified because of some vice, like the American travellers in "Hostel" being party animals. The actual gore in these movies is unrelenting, and disgusting, it is hyper-realistic, probeably even worse than real-life. There is an abundance of special effects, props, and fake blood used for torture scenes, and a main reason for the heafty budgets of these modern horror movies. Compare a movie like "Hostel" to "Halloween", which cost about $300,000 to make and barely had any special effects. They are completely different and have different effects on the viewer, one being more about visceral fears and the other closer to body-horror.