Politics and culture of torture

I'm always interested in the reflection of our political world in our entertainment choices. Since George W. has been president, for example, I've noticed that Westerns have enjoyed a resurgence. Easily a dozen films have come out in the past five years that reexamine the Western mythology. Another genre that has made a killing, so to speak, is the torture horror film. "Saw V" recently opened and, I'm happy to say, received little notice and will, with luck, be the final chapter in the whole torture-as-entertainment genre that has plagued us for the past several years. Was it a coincidence that the first "Saw" movie opened the same year (2004) that the photos of prisoners at Abu Ghraib were released? The release of "Saw" in 2004 came too soon after the revelation of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib to have used it as an inspiration, but it raises the question of how we could be shocked by photos showing prisoners being subjected to inhumane and cruel treatment and still flock to the movies to watch the "Saw" movies, the "Hostel" movies and others like "Turistas" and "Captivity," both of which received a place in the Women Film Critics Circle Hall of Shame. Have we perhaps lost some of our humanity, or is it just part of who we are as a species?