I am not a huge social media user, I mainly reside in the corners of the internet which are dedicated to my interests. One of these interests is transgressive art and media. Within these circles, people view these disturbing pieces of art and media the same way they view any other pieces of art and media. There is no aversion or bias.
Courtesy of Euphoria and the discourse surrounding its latest season I came across a lot of opinions and takes regarding disturbing media which were frankly immature to say the least. It seems like a lot of the criticism was just about the show showcasing sex, violence and fetishes. Not about how it was depicted, just that it was even depicted in the first place.
Some of the most acclaimed films and literary works ever created contain deeply disturbing material. Violence, sexual abuse, cruelty, exploitation, addiction, moral depravity, and psychological horror are recurring subjects in many of the works we consider artistic landmarks.
Literature offers countless examples. Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita centers on a pedophile narrator. Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is saturated with brutality and human savagery. Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye explores human fascination with the transgressive and obscene through taboo acts. Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and its frank and casual depiction of sex. Octave Mirbeau's Torture Garden with the sadism.
The same is true of cinema. A Clockwork Orange, Taxi Driver, Piano Teacher, Requiem for a Dream, Come and See, Oldboy, and Tetsuo all contain material that many viewers would find profoundly upsetting. Their artistic value is not derived from avoiding disturbing subjects but from how they engage with them.
This does not mean Euphoria belongs in the same artistic conversation as those works. That's a separate question entirely. Any art or media can be mediocre, excellent, exploitative, profound, or somewhere in between regardless of the content it depicts.
What I find strange is the tendency to treat the mere presence of disturbing content as inherently bad. Think about whether the work has something worthwhile to say, whether it handles its subject matter intelligently, and whether its depiction serves an artistic purpose.
And even that standard doesn't always need to apply. A work does not have to make a profound social commentary, deliver a moral lesson, or justify every disturbing image through some deeper message in order to have a right to exist. Entire genres are built around provoking discomfort, fear, shock, disgust, or fascination.
Terrifier is one of the most celebrated horror movie from recent times, it has spawned a successful series and dedicated fanbase. It shows a woman being cut in half, vagina first. Films like these are enjoyed by people not because they contain an insightful commentary on society; they are designed as extreme horror experiences for audiences who specifically seek that kind of entertainment.
Likewise, splatterpunk and extreme horror novels often push violence and transgression to outrageous levels not to educate or enlighten but simply to explore the boundaries of horror as a genre.
People are free to dislike those works, criticize them, or argue that they are artistically shallow. I do it as myself; I have read through a splatterpunk novel with a scrunched expression throughout.
But again those are different claims from arguing that such works will always be bad and without artistic value because their content is disturbing. If disturbing content alone were grounds for condemnation, then not only would much of the literary and cinematic canon be in trouble, but entire genres of horror, exploitation cinema, and transgressive fiction would effectively be ruled out from the start.
Disturbing content, by itself, is not an argument against a piece of art or media.
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