The Toxic Avenger Michael Herz, Lloyd Kaufman (USA; 1984) Andree Maranda, Mitchell Cohen, Mark Torgi
viewed Star and Shadow Cinema 18 Sept 2025; ticket: £7
toxic society
On the dark side of the internet there are channels devoted to monkey torture: graphic monkey torture. The victims are mainly Capuchin monkies highly intelligent small primates whose facial features bare a marked humanoid resemblance. Immobile tied down arms and legs akimbo, the little creatures are subjected to unspeakable torture. Their screams of pain provoke enjoyment and howls of laughter, shared by that online community. It’s all good fun.
Viewing ‘The Toxic Avenger’ (TA) made me think of the little monkeys.
Made 10 year after Hooper’s ‘Chainsaw Massacre’ TA lowers the bar of legitimation in relation to the graphic effects of the damage that can be inflicted on the body by force. ‘Chainsaw’ as a feature film, abandons plot. The form of the film comprises a series of episodic events depicting the ‘Bonemen’s’ perpetration of escalating acts horror upon the unwary intruders. Savagely slaughtered the victims are reduced to the status of mere things for the entertainment of the audience. We are invited to enjoy and openly revel in human torture and death. At one level of course it’s all in good fun. With a wink and nod Hooper might claim that his over the top representation of horror is simply intended to be seen as a sophisticated parody of the genre. It’s all a bit of laugh along sing along movie. But Chainsaw’s indulgence of sadism stopped short of overt graphication of what was done to the flesh. When the first victim is lifted up like a piece of meat and impaled on a butcher’s ‘S’ hook, there is no close-up of the penetration of the steel into her body.
Herz and Kaufman’s ‘TA’ rectifies this. As in ‘Chainsaw’ there is no real plot, again it is a series of episodes with a tagged on ending. The script is basically one thing after another, a series of events invoking extreme violence as ‘The Monster’ takes on disparate hard core of evil men and women. But ‘TA’ shows all. When the road killers find a child victim and run him down, when they see he’s not dead, they reverse over his head. Cut! The audience are then shown the boy’s crushed head. We are fed image after image of the effects of the Monster’s exercise of extreme violence. The Monster after all is a force for good, a cross between Frankenstein and Superman with the traditional mission ‘to clean up the City’. So we see hands that have been deep fried, face with gouged out eyes etc. all apparently sanctified in the name of parody.
Still thinking about those little Capuchin monkeys.
When thinking about them thoughts move in many directions. As with the videos of the monkeys, the viewers will be very aware of the shadow caste by the ‘creators’ of these extreme images. The film makers are not absent: they feel present, winking at us as they show their wares. When viewing a film directors are not usually in the forefront of the audience’s mind. But when graphic material is produced, the compact between maker and viewer changes. The makers are in effect asking for collusion. They are asking the viewer to actively accept the legitimacy of what they are being shown. Perhaps similar to the initiation rituals into places like interrogation centres and concentration camps. Newcomers are quickly exposed to the extremities of the violence, so that it is legitimised and they are immediately colluding with the system of applied pain and humiliation. In watching TA to view is to collude, even though we know the imagery is faked. In ‘TA’ we have a particular relationship with the film makers: we absorb their shadow.
American culture has increasingly emphasised the cult of the individual. It is the dreams of the individual that shape society, it is individuated desire that drives the circuitry of the economy. The rights and protections of community are hindrances to gung-ho liberal capitalism. But the price of this particular bias is that deprived of membership of collectivities individuals drift into becoming ever more isolated. And one of the effects of isolation is increasing feelings of powerlessness. An impotence that may then express itself in developing fantasies of violent revenge upon those perceived as enemies. Film producers and studios have of course picked up this gravitational psychic shift and catered for the need, vicariously, by an ever increasing number of revenge movies characterised by acts of extreme violence. The message projected is simple: the world is divided into the forces of good and evil; the only way to deal with evil people is to kill them – preferably after inflicting pain and humiliation.
As mass killings and humiliation stream into our monitors it’s as if huge tracts of people have become not just desensitised to human suffering and humiliation but actually enjoy it. They see these kinds of movies as being shown not only to amuse and distract but also for people to align with their fantasial projections of good versus evil mythologies. Obviously the systematic perpetration of violence can by definition only be meted out on the evil. As the audience in the Cinema giggled and laughed it felt that we were on a long dark road to where sadism becomes an inherent part of the mix of our future entertainment.
adrin neatrour
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk
