What does it mean when “trashy” cinema assumes the burden of representing bodies in pain, coerced by technology, in a politically fraught time?

American horror cinema, in the years following 9/11, was perceived as hitting an historic lull, focusing as on lurid tableaux of torture and surveillance. While there has been a critical rehabilitation of the genre, not much has been written concerning the way it mirrored the political debates of the time regarding the nature of power and technology, and their newfound, dangerous interplays. My research would aim at exploring this territory, bringing in conversation Saw and Judith Butler, torture porn and Jasbir Puar, with a particular eye to issues and problematiques of intersectionality within those film cycles.

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