More on Horror Movies...

So I had no idea that this would break this week, so it is interesting that my post hit this week. A movie coming out soon falls into all the negatives that I mentioned about horror movies and set off quite the firestorm with its advertisement. Jill Soloway has an excellent post about it here.

And like Clave posted in the comments on my post, Joss Whedon weighed in as well. Now, I am a Joss Whedon fanboy. Pretty much everything of his I have ever seen has been pure gold, from Buffy to Angel to Firefly and even Toy Story. So it was awesome to see this in Soloway's post:

From: Joss Whedon
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 10:17 PM
To: Advertising
Subject: CAPTIVITY BILLBOARDS/REMOVE THE RATING

To the MPAA,
There's a message I'm supposed to cut and paste but I imagine you've read it. So just let me say that the ad campaign for "Captivity" is not only a literal sign of the collapse of humanity, it's an assault. I've watched plenty of horror - in fact I've made my share. But the advent of torture-porn and the total dehumanizing not just of women (though they always come first) but of all human beings has made horror a largely unpalatable genre. This ad campaign is part of something dangerous and repulsive, and that act of aggression has to be answered.

As a believer not only in the First Amendment but of the necessity of horror stories, I've always been against acts of censorship. I distrust anyone who wants to ban something 'for the good of the public'. But this ad is part of a cycle of violence and misogyny that takes something away from the people who have to see it. It's like being mugged (and I have been). These people flouted the basic rules of human decency. God knows the culture led them there, but we have to find our way back and we have to make them know that people will not stand for this. And the only language they speak is money. (A devastating piece in the New Yorker - not gonna do it.) So talk money. Remove the rating, and let them see how far over the edge they really are.

Thanks for reading this, if anyone did.
Sincerely, Joss Whedon.
Creator, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

Lastly, there is a campaign at work against this particular movie and how they violated MPAA standards. (The MPAA gives movies their ratings and has to approve advertisement for films.) You can find out more at the Remove the Rating blog.