How did the Censorship and Digital Piracy of A Serbian Film Affect Interpretations of Serbian National Identity in the U.K.? (original) (raw)

Jones, S. (2021) “Hardcore Horror: Challenging the Discourses of ‘Extremity’”, in Hickinbottom, J., Falvey, E. and Wroot, J. (eds.) New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 35-51.

This chapter explores the relationship between ‘hardcore’ horror films, and the discursive context in which mainstream horror releases are being dubbed ‘extreme’. This chapter compares ‘mainstream’ and ‘hardcore’ horror with the aim of investigating what ‘extremity’ means. I will begin by outlining what ‘hardcore’ horror is, and how it differs from mainstream horror (both in terms of content and distribution). I will then dissect what ‘extremity’ means in this context, delineating problems with established critical discourses about ‘extreme’ horror. Print press reviewers focus on theatrically released horror films, ignoring microbudget direct-to-video horror. As such, their adjudications about ‘extremity’ in horror begin from a limited base that misrepresents the genre. Moreover, ‘extremity’ is not a universally shared value, yet it is predominantly presented as if referring to an objective, universally agreed-upon standard. Such judgements change over time. Moreover, in contrast to marketers’ uses of ‘extreme’, press critics predominantly use the term as a pejorative. Although academics have sought to defend and contextualise particular maligned films and directors, scholars have focused on a handful of infamous examples. As I will explain, academic publishers implicitly support that narrow focus. As such, the cumulative body of scholarly work on ‘extreme’ horror inadvertently replicates print press critics’ mischaracterisation of the genre. These discursive factors limit our collective understandings of ‘horror’, its ostensible ‘extremity’. and of ‘extremity’ qua concept. Given that the discourse of ‘extremity’ is so commonly employed when censuring representations that challenge established genre conventions, it is imperative that horror studies academics attend to peripheral hardcore horror texts, and seek to develop more robust conceptual understandings of extremity.

No Escape from the Body: Bleak Landscapes of Serbian horror film

This paper aims to investigate the body of Serbian horror film, which is slim in number of titles, but rich and diverse in their accomplishments. Looking at them from the standpoint of the body's role and presentation, new perspectives are opened for understanding the impressions of bleakness and doom which hang over most of these films. If body gothic may provide for temporary and imaginary escape or release from the constraints of embodiment via fantastic re-shapings, transformations or hybridisations, in Serbian horror films there is no transgression nor transformation – corporality seems inescapable while characters are constrained and doomed in vicious circles of repetition. More specifically: sexuality leads to damnation or is damnation itself in Djordje Kadijević's The She-Butterfly (Leptirica, 1973) and A Holy Place (Sveto mesto, 1990); there is no escape from the body and the autopsy, with which the film ends, reduces its protagonist to dead meat in GASP! aka The Backbone (Kičma, Vlatko Gilić, 1975); Variola Vera (Goran Marković, 1982) uses the smallpox disease as a metaphor for the unhealthy system of the socialist Yugoslavia and sees the virus as eternal, inescapable, constantly mutating; in The Life and Death of a Porno Gang (Život i smrt porno bande, Mladen Djordjević, 2009) there is no possibility for real, lasting emancipation: transgressive individualists' bodies are sold for fun and profit; finally, A Serbian Film (Srpski film, Srdjan Spasojević, 2010) presents its characters as literally and metaphorically raped from birth; it 1 Kontakt sa autorom: dejan@rue-morgue.com HUMANISTIKA · broj 1 · April 2017. godine

The re-rape and revenge of Jennifer Hills: Gender and genre in I Spit On Your Grave (2010)

Horror Studies 4:1, 2013

This article aims to address the largely negative critical response to Steven R. Monroe’s remake of I Spit On Your Grave (2010), by both analysing its themes in comparison to Meir Zarchi’s 1978 original film, and by positioning the new version within its own generic context. Using examples from feminist film theory which analyses Zarchi’s film (Clover 1992, Creed 1993, Read 2000), I suggest that Monroe’s version not only interprets, but actively enhances the perceived feminist message of the original, and consider how role reversal during the revenge section of the film contributes to this. I also outline the way in which Monroe’s film can be understood as representative of recent trends in the horror genre – most notably, its inclusion of explicit, gory violence and themes of retribution. Ultimately, the portrayal of the remake’s female protagonist as less sexualized and arguably more monstrous than the original character works in conjunction with other changes and a torture porn aesthetic in order to position the film clearly within the context of contemporary horror cinema.

“Ovo Je Srbija”: The Horror of the National Thing

In this article, the authors discuss the recent horror film A Serbian Film (2010) as a representation of the catastrophic nature of Serbian society in the Milosevic era. The authors start their analysis by talking about the construction of the Serbian ethno-nation under Milosevic, arguing that it emerged as a kind of reaction-formation to the collapse of Soviet-led communism in the Eastern bloc in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Their argument is that Milosevic constructed a new idea of Serbia based on a utopian theory of the ethnically homogenous nation to try to oppose the social, political and economic chaos produced by the end of communism and the related collapse of the ethnically mixed Yugoslav state. Following this work, the authors analyse the detail of Milosevic’s state and, in particular, the criminalization of Serbian society in the 1990s, and attempt to show how A Serbian Film dramatizes these conditions in a horror story about sexual violence and state-sponsored sadism. Throughout the article, the authors employ Freudian–Lacanian heory to argue that what A Serbian Film illustrates is the horror of the Serbian real and the terrible consequences of the state-sponsored collapse of normal civilization into an ultraviolent, hypersexualized, criminalized state of nature. In this respect, the authors suggest that the message of A Serbian Film has relevance beyond the case of Serbia, because even though the social and political context of Milosevic’s Serbia is essential to understanding its historical significance, the authors’ view is that it also speaks about the universal human condition of the death drive explored by Freud in his Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), and the potential contained in every society to descend into barbarity and sadistic violence.

Censorship beyond classification: the Brazilian reception of 'A Serbian Film'

Media e Jornalismo, 2013

This article is related to an extensive research on censorship, sponsored by FAPESP (Foundation for Research Support of São Paulo), that has its base on censorship processes, irradiating to the investigation of censored words, their category and text implications, the tracking of public opinion about censors’ interventions, as well as the journalistic manifestations about these issues. In this article we present partial results of our current research on discursive formations that have inspired the Manual for Media Rating, a set of rules that guides the classification applied to cultural and artistic products, such as movies, television programs etc. This paper explores the classification of A Serbian Film, a recent polemic process in the Brazilian scenario after the federal Ministry of Justice refused to forbid the movie.

Jones, S. (2016) “’Extreme’ Porn?: The Implications of a Label”, Porn Studies, 3:3.

Despite its prevalence, the term " extreme " has received little critical attention. " Extremity " is routinely employed in ways that imply its meanings are self-evident. However, the adjective itself offers no such clarity. This article focuses on one particular use of the term – " extreme porn " – in order to illustrate a broader set of concerns about the pitfalls of labelling. The label " extreme " is typically employed as a substitute for engaging with the term's supposed referents (here, pornographic content). In its contemporary usage, " extreme " primarily refers to a set of context-dependent judgements rather than absolute standards or any specific properties the " extreme " item is alleged to have. Concurrently then, the label " extreme " carries a host of implicit values, and the presumption that the term's meanings are " obvious " obfuscates those values. In the case of " extreme porn, " that obfuscation is significant because it has facilitated the cultural and legal suppression of pornography.

Violent subjectivity: new extremist cinema and the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy (MA, 2013)

Non-simulated penetrative sex, graphic sexual violence, gore, cannibalism, murder, incest, and necrophilia: excessive violence and explicit sexuality characterize European new extremism, a contemporary arthouse film movement that challenges audiences through its visceral interrogations of the body. Affect and embodiment are at the heart of the discourse concerning new extremism. Although approaching the movement from different frameworks, scholars agree that these films are transgressive in terms of style as well as content: they foreground the ways that cinema is able to impact the body, rather than the mind, of the spectator, and in doing so challenge traditional notions of spectatorship. This thesis examines new extremism in light of the work of contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, whose ontology of the subject provides a fresh perspective on the confrontational and occasionally traumatic cinematic experiences offered by these films.