Happy Hallomonth! For our first installment of the the Halloween podcast series, I will be bringing on a guest to discuss the first Saw movie through a lens you may not have considered before. Saw is often credited with jumpstarting the “torture porn” genre, but what drove horror to abandon its supernatural, monster-centered roots?

Our guest argues that Saw was born out of the geopolitical atmosphere of the early 2000s — that it reflects the anxieties and moral ambiguities of a post-9/11 world. Together, we’ll explore how the film’s themes, imagery, and characters may serve as allegory for that era’s fears, power dynamics, and obsession with justice and punishment.

Sources:

Statistics about American feelings following 9/11:

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/09/02/two-decades-later-the-enduring-legacy-of-9-11/

Literature on Saw franchise + torture porn genre and the post-9/11 world:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272208157_The_Saw_franchise_and_the_representation_of_terror_in_post-911_American_film

https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/see-saw-movies-essays/

Abu Ghraib:

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/shock-insecurity-and-endless-war-how-911-changed-america-and-world