Torture Porn

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Fresh-scrubbed New York Sun columnist Lenore Skenazy objects in a recent Advertising Age piece to what she dubs ''torture porn,'' where the protagonist gets raped, brutalized and killed (It's Torture! It's Porn! What's Not to Like?)

She accuses the producers of these films of ''abusing women and making a profit off of it.''

Well, unless these are actual, bona fide snuff films, then this is only a show, albeit, a gory show. The actresses are profiting as well as the moviemakers. Skenazy's is little more than the age-old moral question over the propriety of the objectification of a human being.

Such transactions are probably just a quid pro quo--the actress trades a service in exchange for a price. It could be argued that to disallow this traffic is an undue barrier to a woman's free trade of her own goods and services.

But it is Skenazy's confusion of the movies with real life which is most troubling:

''If we start accepting this kind of movie as just 'extreme' horror, the baseline will change. What once seemed out of line will become mainstream.''

''Do we want torture to become mainstream, too? Are we eager for sexual predator reality shows?''

Ummm. . .it's called 'Abu Ghraib,' and probably many other unnamed yet equally unsavory gulags. And it has already come to a prison near you. There is no more hideous dominatrix than the troll Lynndie England.

Her beau, Mr. Graner, certainly qualifies as more gag-inducing than the producer of any Hollywood piece of celluloid trash. And these winners performed on the payroll of the U.S. Army.

''If that's the world you want to live in, all you have to do is sit tight. It's coming. But if you'd like a different future, you've got to act.''

I would agree in her challenge to act, but first you've got to decide what to act upon.

Do such naive Puritanical views still color the American outlook? That if we can only muzzle Larry Flynt, all will be well again? Yes, Lenore, I want a different future. But what passes for entertainment in the cinema is the least of my concerns.

Torture porn has played out daily for five years now under the rubric of this administration, and that is the torturous pornography that hurts me, as well as the real-life protagonists who must sustain it.

--by Lisa and Jim