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2013 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
‘You Will Not Believe Your Eyes … or Stomach’: Hardcore Horror
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Torture porn’s detractors have commonly sought to illegitimate the subgenre by claiming that its presence in the multiplex is inappropriate. Edelstein’s (2006) complaint that ‘scenes of torture and mutilation were once confined to the old 42nd Street … whereas now they … [hold] a place of [honour] in your local multiplex’ is indicative of that context-based unease (see also Cochrane, 2007; Skenazy, 2007). Such derogation intimates that horror should return to its ‘rightful’ place on film-culture’s peripheries. Yet, marginalising these ostensibly ‘extreme’ and consequently contentious depictions means dismissing rather than scrutinising and understanding them. These complaints imply that once banished to the fringes of culture, such artefacts do not require appraisal.