Back before the turn of the 20th Century there was a theater style
called "Grande Guinol": a real buckets of blood theatre which,
being live performance, often explained to the audience what
body part was being ripped off. Grande Guinol always fascinated me
but I never saw one.

My concern with modern day film portraying torture is that
it makes the sight of images from Abu Ghraib less forceful and
so, preventing any adequate outcry. The hardening of the psyche in this way can do us no good as a people.

As the ground breaking goes on from one plateau of violence to the
next, the artist has to take some responsibility for those images.
And so does the viewer.