Internet Snuff Films
So the internet has brought snuff films into our living rooms. This is far more extraordinary than the internet’s spreading of porn. Watching sex is a life-affirming experience- especially the amateur sex films that populate the internet.
Watching people getting butchered though is a whole different experience. It is not artful or beautiful- these are not the gore-spectacles of horror movies. The bodies are clumsy- the murderers and the murdered. There is no drama- the bodies lie there, flopping a little. The feeling I am left with after the three I’ve viewed is a coldness. In these movies, we are just sacks of flesh.
I know that this is extraordinary: snuff films were an urban myth, and now they are everywhere. It’s a testament to the web and what an extraordinarily free place it is that these movies are available. Anyone can know what death looks like.
For whatever reason, all of the murder-movies that I’ve seen (three of them) have been from the former Soviet Union. The least disturbing was the one by Chechan rebels who kidnapped and murdered Russian conscripts. They shot them in the back of the head. It was fast, and the context is in it’s way comforting: it’s war, and war is awful. It’s sad but is within the realm of ordinary life. Men go to war, and they die in war, often in awful ways.
The other two are equally sick; ranking them against each other is a waste of time. One is a neo-nazi beheading in a park in Moscow- they are beheading a central Asian they kidnapped. The problem they run into is that beheading someone is not easy to do; they end up sawing off his head.
The final was a film taken in Ukraine by three friend who went on a murder spree- they killed 20 people before being arrested. They also cell-phone-video’d there murders (i know, what?). One that ended up on the web involves them beating a guy with a hammer in a yellow plastic bag, then sticking him with a screwdriver. It’s a grinding video to watch.
So what do you all think? Do you think that it’s good that this stuff is available? do you think it should be censored? Have any of you seen these videos? what does it make you feel?
December 25th, 2008 at 4:50 am
MARRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!
December 25th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
it makes me feel pissed off that you didn’t actually post them on this site. snuff tease!
But the question being, “should they be allowed on the web at all?” it’s a really great question. we’re sick people… what can i say? we want to SEE everything! what does it mean to want to see it, or in context to your question, what does it mean to stop it from being seen? protection from ourselves?
some i suppose would say that full disclosure is the best policy, but it still feels pretty awful to know that people not only desire these images, but actually get off on them. then again, holocaust deniers are pretty hard-pressed when faced with reel after reel of celluloid showing decomposing Jewish bodies being bull dosed into mass graves. and what about the famous film of Benito Mussolini and his mistress being hanged and beaten to death? Sadaam Hussein in the back of the ambulance? it does become inundation and pardon the pun, over kill, but necessary? maybe? when faced with these undeniable images, i suppose we are faced with our own humanity, or lack of. it’s horribly sad and emotionally stupefying that this shit exists at all, but i say, yes, it should be put out there and no censoring. in the end, we will have only ourselves to face. those, in the videos, those, who consume, for whatever reason, these videos. disgusting, horrid and to some extent…necessary. gross!