A couple of weeks ago I saw a preview clip of a film starring Jessica Alba and Casey Affleck. As much as I dislike Jessica Alba, I watched the clip to see Casey Affleck. The clip was disturbing to say the least as Affleck started to sexually assault Alba while beating her with a belt and Alba started to act as if she enjoyed it. The mix of the sexual and the violent was shocking in its blunt portrayal. The film, The Killer Inside Me, recently premiered at the Sundance Film Fest and it appears that the film was so violent, that that Alba herself walked out during the screening. She was also absent from the Q&A period following the film.

Alba was not the only audience member to walk out of the film, many others left halfway through as well because of the graphic violence. Canoe.ca reports

Director Michael Winterbottom was left to defend the extreme content after an outraged woman in the audience berated Sundance for even showing it. “When you read the book, it’s incredibly shocking,” Winterbottom said. “But the violence is supposed to be horrible.”

The portrayal of violence in North American films is often excused with the claim that it is intended to shock. Cronenberg's A History of Violence showed how a violent past can come back to haunt a peaceful family and Tarantino is known for his graphically violent films that are meant as commentary on cinematic violence.

It is strange to me that in North America, the use of violence hardly ever merits an R or NC-17 rating and it is usually sexual imagery that causes a film to garner such a rating. The summer smash hit The Hangover features a slideshow of wild photos during the closing credits, one of which shows an actor thoroughly exposed in an elevator. A fake penis was apparently used to create the photo as to show an erect penis on film will instantly earn a film an NC-17 rating.

This is so ridiculous in my mind because the female body has been so ultimately exposed on screen yet a male cannot be shown in this manner because it is in some way inappropriate? We have seen Jim Caviezel bloodied, beaten, whipped and crucified in Passion of the Christ but an erect penis is the ultimate offensive image?

I think this all links back to Richard Dyer's theory of the phallus. He proposes that the phallus is so mysterious and powerful, that even the penis itself cannot live up to the hype. More or less, we cannot view the erect penis because it will be disappointing. This obsession with the phallus has dictated that something that is completely natural to the human body is more offensive than watching people being decapitated, microwaved, and eaten.

A strange world we live in.

Photo via Imdb