I am someone who has a pretty strong stomach, I enjoy watching films and Tv shows with bloody action, one of my favorite forms of horror is body horror. But this week's film Human Roast Pork Buns: The Untold Story managed to do something no other movie has been able to do. It made me feel sick. I spent a solid hour after watching it trying to calm my stomach so I could eat something. There is only one other piece of media I can think of that has done this and that's a TV show called Tokyo Ghoul an animated show with very little onscreen gore, and it was only for a brief time that I felt discomfort at the subject of the show.The only real connection I can even find between both media is that one of the main concepts behind them involves eating people, which maybe that's what triggers my nausea cannibalism. Except Texas Chainsaw Massacre didn't even manage to make me feel anything and a man wears human skin as a mask.
While I was contemplating this I remembered something, one of the most popular tv-shows of the mid-2010s (aside from freaking Game of Thrones) is a show that revels in body horror. Supernatural got its start as a semi-horror tv show and it was full of body horror. A tv show that showed on primetime networks whose most vocal complaints were about the satanic elements in the show.
So why did The Untold Story manage to get such a visceral reaction out of me?I think a part of it does have to do with the fact that much of the violence was towards women. While I don't identify as a woman myself I do still have a feminine body and a part of watching violence is mentally supplanting yourself with the victims. The infamous chopstick scene caused a very visceral reaction to both me and my mother (whom I made the mistake of watching this film with). When you find yourself able to identify with what is happening on screen at such a level it is no surprise films can cause such a reaction. Prince said that violence is connected to the visceral and I really only happen when you are able to identify, on some level, with the victims. All of the victims in The Untold Story were more human to me than Sally was in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They had a more human reaction to what was around them and the sexual violence that Pearl faced somehow managed to draw more of a reaction from me than a demon dog ripping a man to shreds in Supernatural even though at that point at I had known Dean Winchester for longer than I knew Pearl the cashier.
Along with that, the realism is much more noticeable. I probably won't be eaten in Tokyo by a man who can control his blood to form weapons, but I could be chopped up by a restaurant owner.While The Untold Story is an over the top gorefest it is one with people and plausibility. It is about one of the most hushed conversations in our society. And it almost seems to celebrate what it can make us feel.
Hi Hannah,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 100% that observing the violence in The Untold Story was a much different experience than in Texas Chain Saw Massacre or most TV shows. You are right to point out that it feels more real in this film than other pieces, and I think that is largely because this is a more direct account of murders that actually happened than Texas Chain Saw was with Ed Gein. The violence in Untold Story was also constant and its sequences were really extended. Because of this, we as an audience did not have the opportunity to process how we felt about the violence we saw, since it was pretty much non-stop until the end.