Word: sadism
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...people willingly torture their fellow human beings? Oxford University Clinical Lecturer in Psychiatry Anthony Storr argues that often the torturer is motivated not by malice or by sadism but by an overpowering will to obey. "Torturers," says Storr, "are hierarchical people in that they accept and seek authority structures. They are people who obey orders without question." Whether leftist or rightist, many torturers link a fervent patriotism with a fanatical self-righteousness. Their victims often describe these torturers as intelligent but unbalanced, full of moral certitude but viciously vindictive toward people who hold beliefs contrary to their...
...Gore and Sadism. These massive doses of gore and sadism can, of course, be modishly defended. The artist must be granted his subject; only his execution of it is up for review. Lieberman is simply following the novelistic tradition (begun by Daniel Defoe) of piling up the minutiae in order to tell society about its own workings. Horribly mangled bodies and autopsy rooms exist, as do the dispassionate technicians who must clean up the messes that others create...
Unrelieved by engaging dialogue or insight, the book meanders from perversion to perversion, progressing through huge quantities of drugs and alcohol, through impotence and sadism, to a final act of dwarfish fistfucking. Amis is able to extricate himself from this morass only with difficulty, and the ending he chooses has an abrupt, they-all-get-run-over-by-a-truck quality...
...asylum doctors were insufferable authority-figures intent on sadistically enforcing their will on a group of harmless human beings too weak to resist them. The facts are changed in the movie, though you're still expected to side with McMurphy. The clinic seems relatively well-run, with no sadism apparent. Dr. Spivey, played by a real asylum shrink, is rather like a Harvard administrator in his comfortable chumminess, generous desire to do good and general inability to see how to do it. Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) is, in my view, the real hero; in the book she was called simply...
There is no sadism in Kubrick's insistence on huge numbers of retakes. He did not press Berenson or the children in his cast, only the established professionals he knew could stand up under his search for the best they had to offer. "Actors who have worked a lot in movies," Kubrick says mildly, "don't really get a sense of intense excitement into their performances until there is film running through the camera." Moreover, the "beady eye" that several insist was cast on them as they worked is merely a sign of the mesmerizing concentration he brings...