#thats some bullshit @ erin hunter

[theygender]

Hi my name is Eli and my favorite hobby is overanalyzing meaningless fiction

#posted an essay a while back on colonialist themes in skyrim lol #and now that ive started playing again ive also been thinking about nord nationalism / racial supremacy #is it meant as a metaphor for nationalism and racial supremacy in america? a subtle critique of it? #or is it just a clueless port of those very ideals with no self awareness on the part of the people who included it #OR maybe it was added with neutral intentions. just to enhance the realism of the game by including an unsavory aspect from real life? #pretty sure its either the second or the third option #because the text in the game doesnt inherently lead the player to think that the nords attitude is wrong #so either they didnt realize it was a bad thing when they included it. or theyre trying to let you make your own opinions on it like irl #also think about warrior cats sometimes #specifically when the clans visit with the tribe of rushing water #and jayfeather has to teach them how to clean their own wounds bc #apparently this tribe of cats who has been surviving for longer than the clans even existed #never learned how to clean their own wounds?? even though thats a natural instinct for cats?? #like one of them gets hurt and they just start putting the poultice on top of the dried blood #and jayfeather is like you dumbasses you have to clean the wound first let me show you how #and theyre all shocked that they can do that?? #thats some bullshit @ erin hunter #was that supposed to be some gross metaphor about white people teaching aboriginal people to be 'civilized'? #bc 1) it doesnt even make sense and 2) fuck you #you CANNOT tell me that in the long long time that the tribe has been surviving on their own none of them ever cleaned their wounds #when that is a natural instinct that all cats have #ugh #rambling

[johnnymundano]

Girlhouse (2014)

Directed by Trevor Matthews

Written by Nick Gordon

Music by Tomandandy

Country: Canada

Language: English

Running Time: 100 minutes

CAST

Ali Cobrin as Kylie Atkins

Adam DiMarco as Ben Stanley

Slaine as LoverBoy

James Thomas as Gary Preston

Chasty Ballesteros as Janet

Alice Hunter as Kat

Alyson Bath as Devon

Elysia Rotaru as Heather

Nicole Fox as Mia

Zuleyka Silver as Anna

Erin Agostino as Liz

Wesley MacInnes as Alex

Camren Bicondova as Girl #1

Isaac Faulkner as Young LoverBoy

Girlhouse’s misleading ad image on my streaming content provider (NB: not the poster above) shows some shabby backwoods cathouse about to be laid waste by a maniac who probably smells of unwashed socks, but Girlhouse the movie is in fact a far more polished and modern product. I was hoping for some kind of Tobe Hooper-esque grim lunacy instead I was treated to the most entertaining sociology essay I’ve ever encountered, mostly because sociology essays generally don’t take the form of a movie in which a boiler suited maniac kills his way through a house full of women.

Unlike most slasher flicks what Girlhouse wants to explore is not just the malleability of the human body when exposed to repeated blunt force trauma or the rapid and persistent insertion of sharp objects (although it gleefully explores all that too) but also the possible links between pornography and violence; which was a sticky subject before the Internet sashayed nonchalantly into existence and is now an intellectual tar baby only the hardiest of souls can extricate themselves from with any dignity. So it’s a bold, bold move indeed to make a slasher movie not just about slasher movies (that’s old hat; Scream, Hatchet etc.) but about what slasher movies are about: sex and violence; or more precisely in this particular case the punishing (violence) of moral transgression (pornography).

Does the punishment fit the crime or is the punishment actually the crime, or, wait, is the crime punishment enough, no, maybe the crime creates the punishment? Difficult questions all and if Girlhouse doesn’t answer any of them (unless Girlhouse is itself the answer; maaaybe so) it does at least raise them, which is more than Stab Mask XIII ever will. Crucially for an audience far more likely to be interested in wet work than the soft sciences, Girlhouse is an entertainingly nasty slasher movie in and of itself. Fret not, gorehounds, Girlhouse successfully secretes its brain throbbing questions organically within the slasher movie framework; the framework of a very good, very grisly slasher movie actually. Essentially Girlhouse somehow finds a way to be intelligent while also including an eye watering death by dildo and Clingfilm.

Like all good sociology essays Girlhouse starts with a quote it will address in the main body of what follows. Unlike most sociology essays it’s a quote from Ted Bundy; Ted thinks there’s a link between pornography and violence and Ted, the inference is, should know. Of course, Ted wasn’t the full shilling, so it’s up to the rest of the movie to back up its case. Ali Cobrin plays Kylie Atkins, a wholesomely attractive, intelligent student whose father has recently died leaving the university tuition fees out of her mother’s reach. She hesitantly accepts the lucrative offer from super suave porntropeneur Gary Preston (a well-groomed James Thomas) to become a resident of “Girlhouse”, an on-line real-time upmarket porn site. It’s a high-tech, classy cathouse with web cams in every room, on-line chat rooms and private shows, all basically utilising more technology than took us to the moon so that someone can whack one off. The subscribers to “Girlhouse” run the basic onanistic male range from white collar office man to Chinese laundry owner to furtive teen. Thus far the set-up conforms to the “no one is getting hurt” argument, even Kylie accepts of her own free will, and it’s all in a good cause; paying to educate the head on her commodified bod. Kylie and the girls are being exploited of course, but it’s such a civilised sort of exploitation, why, it seems almost churlish to object.

It is of course still exploitation, the grotty reality overlaid with a load of glibly seductive shuck and jive. Seductive enough to attract a paying audience which, alas, includes “Loverboy” (musician Slaine; very good); this being his login name rather than evidence of a cruelly ironic parental exercise in naming. While Loverboy remains content to watch his worst impulses are kept in check, but unfortunately Loverboy has some pretty bad worst impulses. The worst in fact, as we see at the start of the movie and also in a powerful interlude at Loverboy’s work which addresses the “asking for it” bullshit head on. Even if a woman is flashing her knick-knacks, your reaction is your responsibility; sorry, guys, but no one said being civilised was easy. Tough titty. The only time a woman is “asking for it” is when she is asking for it. Like the ladies in “Girlhouse”? No. Because “Girlhouse” (the site) is a fantasy. The women are being paid to “ask for it”. Which is fine, fantasy has its place; well, it’s fine as long as no one mistakes fantasy for reality. Unfortunately Loverboy makes this mistake. Ironically it’s Kylie’s sincerity which tips him over the edge. Unused to actual, genuine interaction Loverboy stops watching and starts interacting. With wholly regrettable results for many of the women.

Of course, once Loverboy enters the fantasy of “Girlhouse” the subscribers are no longer watching “Girlhouse” but they are now watching Girlhouse, along with the viewer. Because, obviously, Girlhouse is another fantasy but a very different one to “Girlhouse”, because killing the girls is Loverboy’s real fantasy. The movie has a lot of dark fun in this latter part as Loverboy stalks the girls using the interactive “Girlhouse” app on his phone, and the users (how apt) watch first in puzzled disbelief and then horrified alarm. Some of them even stop fapping. Reality isn’t what they paid for, after all. Girlhouse the movie adroitly and innovatively uses the surveillance devices of “Girlhouse” to fine effect, ramping up the suspense and punching home the horror as it tears away the veil and reveals harmless voyeurism as just another form of stalking.

Girlhouse, both the site and the movie, is slicker than snot on a doorhandle but not slick enough to hide the horror beneath. The movie starts off with a child murder, not a quick off-screen one either and then works hard to wipe it from your mind with a smooth, extended middle part field with clean, beautiful people expressing only the mildest of concerns about the apparently harmless men’s magazine lifestyle section they inhabit. It’s all good, clean, sexy fun. But all the time, at the back of your mind, scratching away like a inbred relative at an attic door should be that early child murder where someone learned a lot of wrong lessons about sex and violence. And in Girlhouse those lessons get put into practice. How was your schoolin’, bubba?

#Girlhouse #Slaine #Slasher #Horror #Movies #Trevor Matthews #Nick Gordon #Ali Cobrin #Canada #2010s #2014