fleshing it out

The flesh-insecurity theorem:

A hotstove topic over the years has been the depiction of violence in visual media, especially cinema. The graphic exploitation of flesh in American cinema becoming more apparent and explicit in recent years. Overblown whistle-blowers were concerned about the societal ripple effect. I don't completely disagree with them, but I don't agree either. It's the romantic idealist in me that sees it as necessary revelation. Take Tarantino and Eli Roth for example, two primary auteurs of this conversation. Their exaggerated, hyperreal approach to graphic violence actually more honest, and closer to reality than previously before. In Hostel, that's how an Achilles looks when it gets slit. Violence IS graphic. Lurid. This is the key: depicting it in such a kitsch, pornographic way abstracts it, makes it unreal. It makes the viewer only a voyeur, not actionable. This extends to video games. It becomes existentialized, becoming more a vicarious release (though, I do see video games in a more problematic sense - the deprivation of active imagination).

This visual oppression of gore, the mutilated flesh, and the flesh in general, carries a simpler intonation in us: fear of mortality, imperfection. As with any thing that reminds us of this, we insecurely subjugate it. But, I compare works like Grindhouse and Hostel to the transition being expressed in pugilistic entertainment. The transition from contrived, insincere violence (WWE) to fighting that carries real consequence, the mixed martial arts of UFC.

As exploitative and grotesque as may seem, this honest visualization of the flesh has allowed for the most profound human act to finally be sincerely celebrated: the female giving birth to child. Before it was always close-up on woman -hair perfectly styled, make-up newly applied- whimsically pushing, then cut to: Whoosh! pleasant, little bundle of joy gift-wrapped directly from the heavens. No sweat, no struggle, no signs of an umbilical chord, no beauty. In recent years, however, we have finally seen the true beauty of childbirth. Messy, harrowing, and heroic. To name a few works that celebrate this beautiful struggle: Children of Men, Knocked Up, and Eastern Promises.