Well... I have been bad. But I haven't had sex lately so I should get to live as long as I don't say, "I'll be right back." uh oh.

Hee!

I have to agree with Robin and Bon Bon. The idea that a writer should have no say or opinion, expressed in the work itself, on any character they've created, is ridiculous. That's what all of writing is about.

Also?

I want to hear the characters' stories, not the author's inbred thoughts on the characters' stories.

I'll make a note to stop sleeping with my sister before I write again. Maybe that will help.

Question: Even though Hostel may not be torture porn, they are definitely marketing it as such. Okay? Not okay?

I personally am not interested in a work where the author is permitted to create a character and then have randomly selected things happen to them, pointlessly. That's not really art-- that's just life.

Doesn't that also describe horror movies? At least the first 20 minutes? Somebody's got to be Doomed Red Shirt Guy, you know!

Question: Even though Hostel may not be torture porn, they are definitely marketing it as such. Okay? Not okay?

Don't know. Personally? Not so okay. I know I really had a problem with the infamous Captivity billboard.

The ads for Hostel didn't bother me so much, possibly because the victims were men, but I can't say for sure. It still intrigued me at the same time as it put me off.

The ads for Hostel 2 bother me more, again possibly because this time the victims are women, but there's parts of the story hinted at in the ads that also intrigue me (possibly even more than Hostel 1), at the same time it's churning my stomach.

But a lot of horror movies over the years have had similar effects on me. Evil Dead is a perfect example. And at the time it came out, it was very sensational for the graphic, horrific violence in it, and it bothered a lot of people, and many of the victims were women (remember the "raped by a tree" scene?). It put me off at the time, but intrigued me as well. Eventually I saw it, and now it's one of my favorite movies. (Yes, I know this last paragraph is sort of tangential to your question about advertizing, but it's where I rambled to, and now I'm rambling further, so I'll shut up)

Just got back from Waitress. I'd heard it was a pretty good flick, and mainly went out of loyalty to Nathan Fillion and Adrienne Shelley, but oh my Lord. Now I want it to sweep the Oscars. I haven't loved a movie this much in years.

It did two pretty incredible things with my emotional response: (1) It made me root for an affair where one of the cuckolded spouses didn't deserve it (though I thought Earl should be grateful Jenna wasn't feeding him My Husband Doesn't Know Tylenol Causes Liver Failure with Frequent Large Doses Pie); and (2) it made me cheer when the affair came to an abrupt end instead of the characters I liked riding off into the sunset together. Beatifully funny and sad and uplifting movie.

It sounds like you are advocating some kind of form of naturalism where what happens to characters should be completely divorced from their character. Which is fine, if that's your preference. But I find it weird to hear you explicitly saying it's *wrong* for an author to follow the rules for tragedy developed by Aristotle and hewed to by great literature ever since. I personally am not interested in a work where the author is permitted to create a character and then have randomly selected things happen to them, pointlessly.

I'm not advocating that at all; crafting a character's story is an essential part of good writing. What I'm against is the writer telling me through narrative dirty tricks that, say, that the Nationalists in Spain are pampered and immoral. If the text argues that the Nationalist in Spain are pampered and immoral then that should be because the Nationalists in Spain were pampered and immoral and not because they were gross caricatures with no real interior lives.

I think saying there are works where an author doesn't put their own opinions into the plot and characters is disingenous.

I didn't say that. I said 'personal and dishonest inflections' and 'authorial intrusion' and the like. One would hope that an artist's opinion (like every one's opinion) is derived from observing the world. When an artist fills his or her work with those opinions, that they are his or opinions are entirely incidental; what the artist is essentially doing is depicting life. If I want to write a book about how all Buddhists are idiots, I'm going to have to fill it entirely with Buddhists that are caricatured idiots. That depiction doesn't align with reality and I'd be open to have that aspect criticized as a flaw.

The idea that a writer should have no say or opinion, expressed in the work itself, on any character they've created, is ridiculous.

I didn't say, imply or infer that a writer shouldn't have an opinion in the work on the characters in that sense. The whole piece is, always, inevitably, opinion. What I'm saying is that there should be no disconnect between the author's opinion as found in the work and the work's relationship to reality.

Maybe you meant that creating characters ONLY to make a moral judgement is bad writing, and that can be true. Not always, though--most of Shaw's plays were written to illustrate theories, but he was a wonderful writer nonetheless.

I like Shaw well enough but his tendency to bully characters is a shortcoming of his. I mean, I'm not arguing that all writers of worth must transcend subjective human experience because that wouldn't leave enough to fill a coffin. What I'm saying is that I wish that writers should strive beyond their current subjectivity.

I love Evil Dead. It tickles me the 2nd one is basically a remake of the first one, too.

I'm pretty sure the reviewer who coined the phrase "torture porn" first used it in a review of Hostel.