Exploitation as a Book Genre. Dark Romance? Extreme Horror? Erotic Thriller?
Rethinking the literary genres of “dark romance” and “extreme horror” through a cinema framework.
BEFORE READING
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Exploitation is a notorious film genre.
The Human Centipede sequence, Kill Bill, Revenge, Salò, The Last House on the Left, Trauma, A Serbian Film, and, of course (as well as unfortunately), Cannibal Holocaust. You know the ones.
I am a certified cinephile (they not like us), and my genre of choice is horror, the niche and disturbing kind first and foremost. Though I am still much more of an obscure art film enjoyer—Antichrist, Colour of Pomegranates, Begotten: my beloveds. I watch the unprecedentedly fvcked up horror flicks for my fwiends who a’e too scawed. that being said, Human Centipede 3 is unironically a movie I rewatch just for the defibrillator scene. It’s so fvcking funny, dude; we got a noise complaint for how hard I guffawed on the first watch (worth it; I hadn’t felt genuine joy in at least 4 years up until then).
Follow me on Letterboxd, btw. I’m really funny there.
This essay isn’t about movies though, at least not directly.
This essay is about books.
What?
Let me explain.
There is a problem in the literary world.
And that problem…
Is taboo fiction.
Now!
I’m not talking about all taboo fiction; I’m not even really talking about taboo fiction in and of itself.
No.
What I actually want to discuss is the marketing of said taboo fiction, dark romance and extreme horror most prominently, given those are two major and most popular subsets of taboo fiction.
Importantly, I am going to present my thesis, that being that, just like film, exploitation should be a book genre, because I believe the existence of such a category for literature would work towards erasing, or at least improving, a lot of the issues associated with taboo fiction the likes of dark romance and extreme horror, and work to streamline a lot of the discourse surrounding it.
Disclaimers
You’ll find in this essay that I might have more to say about dark romance than extreme horror. That’s because I’ve simply had more experience with dark romance than extreme horror. I’m not going to discuss something I’m not sufficiently educated in. Hint-hint. If you want to know my opinion on dark romance on its own in the current state that the genre exists, since I’ll not really be talking about that here—it’s not the point, you can watch the video Booktok’s Obsession With M*rder and “Dark Romance” by Avalon - Ill Acquainted on YouTube. Every opinion in that video is basically my opinion, but also, I have way bigger fish to fry which is why I can’t be bothered to make a video/essay of my own on the subject.
Keep the caveat in mind that I have not physically sat down and read all of the books that will be discussed. I have supplemented that gap in knowledge with in-depth reviews from some of my friends who have read a few of these titles, lengthy reviews I’ve found on review sites and blogs from multiple sources, as well as 1–5-hour plot recap+review videos including lengthy passages of text if not out outright verbatim readalongs on streams. As for the movies: I have watched every single one I’ll be bringing up. The only one I haven’t watched, funnily enough, is Kill Bill.
For those who will inevitably want to get defensive: if you enjoy taboo fiction, dark romance, extreme horror/splatterpunk, whatever… I don’t know what you want me to do about that…? You like it? Okay. Now what? Antrum is one of my most favourite movies and it’s got a 2.6 on Letterboxd. Am I supposed to throw a fit? Grimdark is not only my favourite fantasy genre, it’s the genre of fantasy I write, and I’ve made a whole written and video essay about how terrible it is. If you cannot listen to constructive criticism and research-based critiques of the things you like, dare I say there are bigger issues to be addressed here. I promise you’ll get over my tone.
And as a sign-off for the disclaimers: stop throwing around and watering down the word “misogyny”—a right to equally exploit, oppress, and hurt is not “women’s rights”; liberals and radfems fvck off.
Trigger warnings
Alphabetical order except for the first TW which deserves foremost mention: Very recurring mentions of the word “rape” and content featuring it (no descriptions), discussions of Antisemitism, asylums and the medical abuse therein, dangerous conspiracy theories (including SRA), death, drugs, dubcon (“dubious consent”), eating disorders, general violence, gore, incels, incest, kinks, misrepresentation of mental illness, Nazism, necrophilia, paedophilia, pornography, queerphobia, racism, sex (consensual), s/h, suicidality, taboos, true crime, unsimulated animal murder and general animal cruelty, violent misogyny.
None of these subjects are described, or shown visually.
This essay features an element of levity; jokes will be made apropos of certain dark subjects (suicide, s/h, anorexia, death). These are matters the author has personal experiences with and does not intend to trivialise or cause upset regarding, but is aware that intent may not always correlate to impact.
Please consider how mentally prepared you might be for the content ahead and skip out on this essay if you don’t feel up for it. It is lengthy (~8000 words) and content-heavy. You are never obligated to read or watch anything that might or could harm you.
Take care of yourself.
So what’s all this, then?
Dylan Schmidt [et.al.] in “An Exploration of Exploitation: A Brief Look at the Exploitation Genre”1 discusses that:
“The exploitation genre has its roots in the ‘B-movie’, a lower budget (and often lower quality) film designed to run as the second film of a double feature. Originally an idea of the 1920’s, exploitation films didn’t really explode until well into the 60’s and 70’s, with the relaxation of film censorship.
Typically, the ‘exploitation’ aspect […] relies on the use of lurid content, graphic violence, or current societal trends to exploit viewers[’] desire to see such things in a time where most major studio releases were not pushing these boundaries. This left the door open for these lower-budgeted films to make a profit and, in certain cases, achieve cult followings.”
An excellent article—that I will be citing recurrently—from The Grindhouse Cinema Database2 titled “Exploitation Films: An Introduction” further explains that exploitation films…
“…feature uncut[,] unrated material. They specialize in numerous sex and nudity scenes, bloody gore, violence, and taboos.
Exploitation film is […] promoted by ‘exploiting’ often lurid subject matter. The term ‘exploitation’ is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising. Thus, films need something to ‘exploit’, such as a big star, special effects, sex, violence, romance, etc. An ‘exploitation film’, however, relies heavily on sensationalist advertising and broad and lurid overstatement of the issues depicted, regardless of the intrinsic quality of the film. Very often, exploitation films were of low quality in every sense. This, however, was not always the case. Exploitation films sometimes attract critical attention and cult followings.”
This, in my opinion, is a perfect way of summarising what the exploitation genre is. A genre which exploits shocking subject matter and material, both in its marketing, and its content. Often times, a genre which hinges on said material; a genre the primary draw of which is the exploitation, whether it’s admitted out loud or read between the lines.
And don’t those descriptions sound… familiar, almost…?
Here’s the reality: most things which make something like dark romance “dark”, or extreme horror “extreme”, is exploitative.
But let’s back up and discuss what it means to “exploit”. And trust me, with what’s happening to the Anglophonic literacy rate, this is unfortunately necessitated (God help us [you. God help you—this has nothing to do with me]).
The most common understanding of the verb “to exploit” is actually its secondary definition:
However, it firstly means simply to:
This verb, while being more commonly understood as negative, can be quite neutral.
That isn’t really the case for “exploitation” as a noun, wherein definitions 1 and 2 are switched, the numerical order generally indicating a commonality of use.
We’ll circle back to this.
Some of y’all ‘bout to be real mad at me, but it must be said
First, we need to embark on a side quest and establish the truth of the matter:
Fiction has a direct impact on reality.
All the way back in 1978, Kendall L. Walton wrote in How Remote Are Fictional Worlds from the Real World?:3
“We are likely to feel that fictional worlds are insulated or isolated, in some peculiar way, from the real world, that there is a logical or metaphysical barrier between them.”
However, this is wishful thinking at best, and delusion in many scenarios.
Jennifer L. Barnes in her 2018 article Imaginary Engagement, Real-World Effects: Fiction, Emotion, and Social Cognition4 explored the extent to which the consumption of fiction affects an individual’s social awareness and even ability to read—by which is meant not simply the ability to accept stimulatory input, but also the degree to which that individual is able to critically engage with and process the content they consume.
Moral and modal judgement in relation to fiction consumption, particularly the fantasy, sci-fi, contemporary, and romance genres, was tackled even earlier by Barnes, alongside Jessica E. Black and Stephanie C. Capps, in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 2017 issue Fiction, genre exposure, and moral reality5 wherein strong evidence was found correlating a reader’s familiarity with said genres (i.e., their level of consumption of it), and the two types of human judgement: discriminating and evaluative.
Jeffrey J. Strange’s chapter in the 2002 book Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations, with Melanie C. Green and Timothy C. Brock, is quite literally titled How Fictional Tales Wag Real-World Beliefs.6
Allow me my infamous moment to [at length] quote Professor Elena Esposito of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna, who wrote in her paper The Reality of the World and the Realism of Fiction:7
“The events related in novels are not true, but neither are they false. They constitute a ‘second reality’ that accompanies our real world of reference and enable us to assume the viewpoint of other characters, to live the lives of others to some degree and gain experience that we then apply also in running our own [lives]. The function of fiction in modern society lies essentially in this interweaving of different realities, where worlds that do not exist also have real consequences through their capacity to affect our perception and interpretation of ‘actual reality’ […]”
“…worlds that do not exist also have real consequences through their capacity to affect our perception and interpretation of ‘actual reality’…”
“It’s just fiction” is an objectively fallacious argument.
That’s not a matter of opinion—if your so-called “opinion” is that fiction is just fiction, then you are incorrect because, again, that’s not an opinion. “Humans don’t need water to live” isn’t an opinion. It’s a denial of fact; a denial of stacks upon stacks of scientific research and subsequent literature which has proven that fiction impacts reality (and also that humans need water to live).
Okay, so what now?
The reason for that detour is largely defensive. I know what “arguments” are immediately weaponised against any nuanced discussion of today’s topic, so I’m essentially flooding the plain before the fire reaches the treeline (I’m writing this from the treeline).
Nevertheless, with that side quest complete, let’s return to our Exploitation Odyssey.
In theses the likes of these, argument-driven comparative analysis is essential.
With references to The Grindhouse Cinema article quoted at the beginning, I will be essentially running some stats between exploitation films, and certain selections of taboo written literature. Yes, I’m aware my sample pool is numerically biased, but I did disclaim that I’m merely a btch on the internet.
Relevantly, there are sub-genres of exploitation, including sexploitation, shocksploitation, teensploitation, revengeamatic, Sadiconazista, Giallo, racial exploitation (e.g., Blaxploitation, Mexploitation: genres which come about from members of those non-white communities, not from white people), Mondo, and slashers to name only very few. There is even an exploitation movie sub-genre which directly mirrors a literary genre. Eco-terror; eco-horror being its book counterpart. There’s also frequent sub-genre overlap within individual movies.
Of most interest for this discussion are shocksploitation and sexploitation films though, which parallel much of taboo literature.
“Shocksploitation[,] […]‘shock films’[,] contain various shocking elements such as extremely realistic graphic violence, graphic rape depictions, simulated bestiality and depictions of incest.”
For instance, the legendary (“”) Cannibal Holocaust by local Monsieur Cannibal and generally unwell man, Ruggero Deodato, riposi in pace (I think), has… everything. Bloody gore, torture, murder, rape, decapitation, racist undertones (against the Yąnomamö), unsimulated killing of animals—
Woah! Hold on…
Yeah.
According to Wikipedia, the most trusted news source on the internet, the body count of Cannibal Holocaust is (direct quotation), and //trigger warning:
a South American coati (mistaken for a muskrat in the film), killed with a knife.
an Arrau turtle, decapitated and its limbs, shell, and entrails removed.
a tarantula, killed with a machete.
a boa constrictor, also killed with a machete.
a squirrel monkey, decapitated with a machete.
a pig, shot in the head with a shotgun at point blank range.
Insane choices.
Anyway.
Salò, Or The 120 Days of Sodom, directed by Paolo Pasolini, is both a shock and a sex exploitation Sadiconazista movie, given its explicit depictions of rape and other forms of sexual violence along with the theme of the film quite literally surrounding Nazi officers’ exploitation, if I may, of a bunch of young captives with very little, if any, real substance besides “look how horrific and violent and depraved this is!”. One of the worst movie-watching experiences I’ve ever had.
The Last House on the Left has a revengeamatic element, but it is also highly sexually exploitative, with graphic and needlessly drawn-out scenes of rape. Same goes for works like Revenge or I Spit on Your Grave. The violent, often overly-lurid sexual assault in these movies unfortunately almost always exists for no genuine purpose but to show the assault of a young woman as, let’s be honest, a means to be edgy and supposedly gritty and dark because that makes art “elevated”, I guess.
Lucio Rojas’ Trauma is its own creature entirely. One particular sexploitation scene in that movie really did give me trauma [as if I was missing some]. I won’t recount what happened, but let’s just say that singular scene involved forced (as in, physically staged through people handling other people) rape, paedophilia, and incest. Ya know? For fun! /s.
While trudging through uncharted ground zero (Reddit), I stumbled on a quote regarding the subject of the exploitation genre that really encapsulated its essence for me:
“I actually really like exploitation films, but the only way I could enjoy them is if I just accept them for what they are. Female prison movies aren’t about female empowerment. Cannibal films aren’t about showing how cannibals are ‘not the real cannibals’. Rape revenge films aren’t about showing how bad rape is. Exploitation can be a lot of fun, but it doesn’t take away from the deeper meaning [be]cause the deeper meaning is rarely there.”
Some of these movies, in many ways, are designed to be reminiscent of snuff, which is a theoretical type of pornographic film depicting unsimulated homicide. Works the likes of A Serbian Film and arguably Guinea Pig Part 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood are such examples. There’s a reason why local antivaxxer Charlie Sheen thought the latter of the two actually was snuff despite… the way it looks… And to refer back to the quote I dug out of the Reddit rubble, literally what is the deeper philosophic and artistic purpose of watching a scene of a random unnamed woman being drugged into delirium and dismembered, or a newborn being raped? To be clear, because I can hear that one “☝️um, akchooly” person: there is a very specific artistic vision to A Serbian Film. The reality though is that the audience very rarely, if ever, takes that away from the viewing experience unless they know about it going into the movie, not because they “just don’t get it”, but because it’s not skilfully presented for consumption.
The Extreme Horror of Extreme Horror
With the brutal, uncensored gore, killing, shock value subject matter, and violence of every variety, extreme horror, splatterpunk, the like, is rendered a lot more of a one-to-one analogue of exploitation film than dark romance is.
Chandler Morrison’s Dead Inside features on-page necrophilia and rape, on-page suicide, cannibalism, and largely throw-away references to incest and child sexual abuse. And I say that as someone who enjoyed Morrison’s #thighgap—it did trigger me into a brief anorexia relapse that I’m still trying to manage though, so read at your own discretion; it’s very graphic but also quite accurate. You could argue #thighgap is also a sort of exploitation piece. Sort of like those cautionary films of the 30s and 40s. I’d compare it also to Neon Demon but in reality much more to Starry Eyes, both of which I liked. Chandler Morrison is known to be a massive weirdo though.
Playground by Aron Beauregard literally surrounded child murder, with the villain being an infertile woman out to kill children. From that sentence alone, you could probably deduce that there’s also plenty of misogyny in the undertow of this book which is unfortunately very common in extreme horror (and quite frankly just horror) as well as exploitation. Misogyny also rears its heads in fantasy, particularly grimdark, something I, again, discussed previously, given I am a grimdark author, but this is not limited to just the darker variety of fantasy—it’s been part of the formula for decades. Even Ms White Feminism SJM with her iconic “feminist king” love interest character who’s arguably the most abusive man on the block is guilty of it. Plus, Beauregard just kinda tossed a Nazi in there at some point so Playground qualifies for Sadiconazista too because what other purpose did that serve? Beauregard is known for books like that though, for example The Slob which is allegedly littered with piles (see what I did there?) of casual bigotry. It’s kinda just A Thing he does.
100% Match by Patrick C. Harrison III (truly a nomen to have) is basically just disgusting to be disgusting with random acts of violence for the sake of violence, specifically against animals. Just silly goofy shocksploitation—it serves Pink Flamingos: the most quotable movie ever put to screen.
Duncan Ralston’s Woom is another shock and sexploitation book which doesn’t necessarily have huge issues with its writing, but is needlessly racist to Black people for some reason and includes not only incorrect AAVE, but also the n-word on-page. And just to be clear, this is not Blaxploitation because Blaxploitation was coined and created by Black people for Black audiences, not by white seppos to be racist and then say “it’s just fiction” which is what this author’s excuses are for bigotry and the validity of which I debunked ad nauseam. At least the paperback version of Woom also features an introduction by Matt Shaw. Ya know, that one extreme horror author who got ~🌧saur sad😢~ by a woman’s unfavorable opinion of one of his books that he literally wrote another trash book dedicated to her which isn’t creepy behaviour at all and the FBI is not on the line with me right now. Watch Reads with Rachel’s video regarding that circus. Ralston has also allegedly posted Facebook photos of himself with nooses around his neck in mockery of Black people, so… Just a couple swell chaps (/s) jerking each other off in the name of art you guys simply don’t understand get over it beta soy boy!
MAGICK by Judith Sonnet skews towards being extremely gory, very much in the vein of a gore or “splatter” film—another exploitation subgenre from whence the book genre “splatterpunk” arguably emerges. And, wow, a decent extreme horror is NOT written by Some Guy?? Hook me up to a drip because I’m in shock(!)
And Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana gets the shocksploitation and sexploitation stamps for its incest plot.
You might notice that the main Point™ with the aforementioned books and movies is that the lurid subject matter is the draw, and some of the biggest criticisms of these works is the lack of substance aside from the shocking material, though this isn’t universally observed. To quote The Grindhouse Cinema:
“Very often, exploitation films were of low quality in every sense. This, however, was not always the case.”
MAGICK is largely just gore, but it is well-written—Judith Sonnet is said to be known for that. #thighgap is exploitation in, again, the way of cautionary films, and I think it’s quite excellent, even if the very beige and simple writing style is not at all for me. It actually suits a narrative written from the POV of an extremely low-weight anorexic, as starvation greatly diminishes your capacity for complex cognition, including speech. Definitely happened to me back in the day.
However, because, again, the Point™ of exploitation films and what I believe to be exploitation books IS the exploitation, titles the likes of Alissa Nutting’s Tampa or The End of Alice by A.M. Homes wouldn’t necessarily fall into the exploitation category, but instead into transgressive fiction which has the analogue transgressive films.
Transgression is, in some sense, a more “matured” simulacrum of exploitation wherein the Point™ isn’t so much the lurid material—which is still there and depraved as ever—as it is the context surrounding and underlying it. I’m not saying that depth cannot exist in exploitation—it can and does—but it’s the focus that still separates them. The Skin I Live In and Human Centipede very obliviously have a different purpose for their surgical horror and respective sexploitation and shocksploitation. Dogtooth and Gregory Wilson’s The Girl Next Door are very dissimilar fvcked-up-family movies which present said fvck-up-family-ness for, I would say, contrasting reasons, even though Wilson tackled a true crime story whilst Yorgos Lanthimos just depicted the standard ethnically Greek family /j.
New French Extremity, for example, a specialised movie genre, often embodies this perceived “elevation” from exploitation to transgression, but oft-times equally leans into senseless exploitation just as much with blatant misogyny, needless sexual abuse, gore and violence to the point that it can become comical, and arguably politically reactionary or even regressive themes.
However, just because extreme horror, splatter punk, et cetera, books can be so easily paralleled to exploitation film, the deviations between dark romance and exploitation really cannot be understated—they are so minuscule it’s practically a case-by-case scenario.
Scrutinising Dark Romance: what it is and shouldn’t be
Natalie of Weirdo Book Club on YouTube interestingly brought up something very similar to what I’m discussing, instead arguing for the better suitability of terms like “erotic thriller” or “erotic horror” for books arbitrarily labelled “dark romance” for the marketability and trendiness of it, because that’s what’s objectively happening. It’s very similar to the romantasy craze—a genre gaining immense and unprecedented popularity leads to capitalisation and opportunism. This isn’t always bad, in fact it’s generally pretty neutral as a thing-in-itself, but its neutrality is overturned when said genre is one as volatile and frankly dangerous as those of the darker nature. These books and movies can trigger people.
And seeing as I’ve not really had the opportunity to bring this up: if you are one of those authors who thinks trigger warnings are useless and refuses to honour your readers with them, you’re a piece of sht and I don’t respect you not only as a creative but as a human being.
Oh and fvck Elon Musk.
Simply labelling a book as “dark romance”, even if that may not in actuality be what it is on the page, is itself an act of exploitation, because “dark romance” has become a sort of dogwhistle.
“The term ‘exploitation’ is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising.
Exploitation film is […] promoted by ‘exploiting’ often lurid subject matter […] [and] relies heavily on sensationalist advertising and broad and lurid overstatement of the issues depicted […]”
If I may have you watch and listen to a collation of the first and second parts of that 2-minute YouTube short of Natalie’s on the aforediscussed subject please and thank you:
Under the first half of this short, a comment caught my attention:
This is also the assumption I’d had about the genre, and it would have admittedly been something I could enjoy despite not liking romance all that much because I like “gloom and doom” settings and tragic, doomed love stories.
However, what we more often than desirable get instead is, unfortunately, rape mislabelled as “dubcon” or, worst of all, “CNC”, and a Trojan horse for incel ideology.
For those unaware, “dubcon” stands for “dubious consent” which is exactly that, whilst “CNC” is “consensual non-consent”, a kink wherein the operative term is actually not “non-consent”, but “consensual”. Because that’s what a kink is.
And let me make it very clear that I do not have a problem with smut. Just because I find it gross to read (unless it’s sapphic I guess but I don’t really read a lot of that), doesn’t mean I think it needs to be neutered or censored. This isn’t about smut; it’s not even really about the content of these books. It’s about how they’re marketed.
Let’s, then, take a look at books like the infamous Haunting Adeline.
Anyone who reads my articles at least sometimes, or browses my Instagram stories on occasion, knows I fvcking hate H.D. Carlton. For example, the one time I looked at her IG profile (before I blocked her), not only did I find her aesthetic vibe fittingly atrocious, but when I saw the flag in her bio, for a second my brain panicked, thinking I was looking at the flag of Cuba, and I literally nearly cried. It’s fine though, it’s not Cuba—mi pan de Dios wouldn’t do me like that~🇨🇺❤
Besides the point.
Haunting Adeline follows a woman who is continuously stalked, violated, brutalised, sexually battered, and outright raped by a man who busts child sex trafficking rings because apparently that’s supposed to neutralise him being a rapist or something? It’s fine though, he’s 6’5’’ and suuups’ hot and this storyline would for suresies be identical if he was a fat little ugly cvnt with a chode that totes wouldn’t be used as a punchline every chance presented nyah!!
Not only does the author consistently fail to provide acceptable trigger warnings, instead mislabelling the legitimate felony rape in her books with that token “CNC” wherein the first C is actually silent, but the villains of her books, especially this series, are, without fail, people with small, dark eyes and big “hooked” noses, as well as often “ugly” features and fat bodies, who are part of high-ranking political cabals that sacrifice children in blood rituals or sex-traffic young women including the dainty, pretty little blue-eyed infantilised female main character (FMC).
H.D. Carlton has been called out for this quite frankly violent Antisemitism before, hence why the author’s note in Haunting Adeline brings up that supposedly none of the material featured stems from a belief in Antisemitism or QAnon, and is instead informed by “common conspiracies in the media” and her own “dark and twisted mind”…
Ms Carltonnnn…
Saur, this might sound totally cray, but quote-unquote “common conspiracies in the media”… are fvcking QAnon!
Btch thinks I’m stupid.
See what I mean? Genuinely do not put us in a room.
Or! Or, how about the foreword of Hunting Adeline, the sequel, where Carlton says the book will have “just as much spice” as the previous one, meanwhile basically over half of Hunting Adeline takes place with the main character being sex trafficked and brutally raped in extreme detail multiple times… Is… is that the spice…? No, I’m just wondering because are you—can you not differentiate between rape and sex? Or is rape… sexy to you? Which one🎤? Quickly.
I find it interesting that Carlton’s books play into what some of yous may recall to be that privileged white woman hysteria of being trafficked from some public place like Walmart which is literally rooted in racism, particularly against racialised men. And isn’t it funny how the main love interest of her Cat and Mouse duet (a rap*st) is described to have a “straight, aristocratic nose”? Cute, because the only other consistently-described nose shape is the “hooked” of the traffickers and child molesters!
It’s not just that, either. It’s the graphic descriptions of all the child sexual abuse; fvckin’ babies chained to cots around blokes with guns and mounds of drug memorabilia. Just like there was no reason to depict Miloš rape his drugged son in A Serbian Film, there is no reason for H.D. Carlton to describe what essentially amounts to Satanic ritual abuse of children—an American conspiracy theory and moral panic rooted in blood libel (Antisemitism mentioned in relation to H.D. Carlton again!?)—in a duology+prequel novella where it holds zero narrative weight and explores absolutely nothing bigger than itself. Like what deeper message are you trying to transmit to your audience? “Child sex trafficking bad actually fun fact”?? Is your audience Ted Bundy???
And no, this isn’t about authors writing gross disturbing sht and how they just shouldn’t because it’s ḥarām or something. Please don’t be one of those people seething “So people can’t write other RACES??? What is this Airstrip 1?????” Glad you asked; it’s not, because you can write whatever race you want, you just can’t do so with racist caricatures like desert-dwelling SWANA-coded barbarians, or ya know culty blood-drinking child traffickers of a conveniently heavy Jewish flavour, H.D. Carlton!
To restate what I’d said about A Serbian Film to that one “☝️um, akchooly” person who will always be defending it as if Spasojević funds their cocaine habit:
“[…] There is a very specific artistic vision to A Serbian Film. The reality though is that the audience very rarely, if ever, takes that away from the viewing experience unless they know about it going in[…], not because they ‘just don’t get it’, but because it’s not skilfully presented for consumption.”
And side note, if you’re still using the word “hooked” to describe noses in the 2020s and beyond, and publishing it… ***~💖
If H.D. Carlton was the only problem child of this fvcked up little family unit we have here, however, my work would be much easier. Unfortunately, it appears safe sex practices aren’t being taught in this household—
Literally what the fvck is this analogy??
I’m keeping it in, but what I’m getting at is that H.D. Carlton is not the only author Trojan horsing her exploitation fiction into the “dark romance” borderline dogwhistle.
I’ve been wanting to talk about Brandi Szeker for a while. I brought her up in a YouTube community post (and Substack note, I’m pretty sure) basically saying that if you as an author depict something bigoted in your book and don’t genuinely apologise for it/gods forbid double down, you deserve to get quote-unquote “harassed” (which probably just involves people calling you out for your bigotry and you being uncomfy with it), but that can’t really be the focus here. Instead, it will be the extent to which her series, The Pawn and The Puppet, is literal exploitation fiction.
From the very start of the very first book’s blurb, we get hit with “asylum”, “waterboarding”, “beatings”, “split personality”, and a list of trigger warnings that isn’t intended to so much inform, but more so flaunt. And that’s a big thing for some reason—it’s in the same vein as writing shocking material for shock value, a staple of extreme horror.
“[…] films need something to ‘exploit’, such as a big star, special effects, sex, violence, romance, etc.”
And listen, that’s fine—there’s room for it and I’m not saying it needs to be abolished by any stretch of the imagination. It stops being fine, though, and should be criticised, when the subject matter you’re exploiting and, in the process, dangerously misrepresenting, is a very real, serious, and heavily-stigmatised mental illness like dissociative identity disorder: DID. Sorry, did I say DID? I actually meant “multiple/split personality disorder” which is what Brandi continues to advertise her books with despite literally stating in her author’s note that that’s incorrect nomenclature. Almost in an err… exploitative way.
Or how about Lauren Biel’s Driving My Obsession which is 300 pages of a man psychologically torturing and raping a woman whilst thinking about how much he hates sex workers and wishes he could kill them all and the woman he’s psychologically torturing and raping because she’s a sex worker… only for the two of them to end up together in a “HEA” for some reason.
You know, you can say “this doesn’t reflect my views as the author” all you want, but at some point you’re just doing it. You’re just writing incel talking points spoken by a man the audience is supposed to swoon over, thus romanticising alt-right ideology, Lauren. You’re just throwing in a terrifyingly-described trans woman who purchases her sex-trafficked son, or a worldbuilding factoid that women considered “too fat” by society are drugged and sent off to war trenches to be soldiers’ “fvcking dolls” without any commentary or allegory to real plights, dear Brandi. You’re just writing a fed stalking a woman and justifying his rape of her with essentially “she asked for this”, Ms Melissa McSherry and Dana LeeAnn of Carving for Cara. You’re just writing CSAM depicting a paedophilic father groom and impregnate his teenage daughter who was also born of incest and then violently rape her tiny, heavily-pregnant body in labour, followed by literally requesting your readers NOT to tell people that your book contains incestuous rape because fvck any survivor who may accidentally pick up your book, right, Madam K Webster of The Wild? You’re just saying that a girl who may be questioning her sexuality can be kidnapped and raped into heterosexuality by a criminal serial killer man regardless of what you may have actually intended the message to be with your “to all the girls who’ve even questioned their sexuality gay rights nyah~🌈✨” book dedication, Ayden Perry of Wings of a Butterfly—intent does not always impact correlate with, recall? You’re just writing a bunch of Jewish-coded political elites commit paedophilia and SRA, H.D. Carlton.
“Female prison movies aren’t about female empowerment. Cannibal films aren’t about showing how cannibals are ‘not the real cannibals’. Rape revenge films aren’t about showing how bad rape is. Exploitation can be a lot of fun, but it doesn’t take away from the deeper meaning [be]cause the deeper meaning is rarely there.”
Do you understand now why I’d said, “most things which make a dark romance ‘dark’ […] is exploitative”?
Here’s the thing though, right, and I’m about to say something crazy, but all of those weirdo “dark romance” authors who write “sibling romances”… are cowards. I’m periodically glancing at you, Little Stranger by Leigh Rivers, because why are they all adoptive, step, or foster siblings? Make them bio siblings. What, is that too dark for you? Aren’t you the ones priding yourselves on being edgy and taboo? On “pushing the limits”? Aren’t you the ones with the “dark and twisted minds”? Make your sibling romance with bio siblings, then. Make them twins. The extreme horror crowd would. Commit to it, pussy!
And look, this doesn’t make actual dark romance bad, or even qualify for the exploitation genre. Books like No Place to Hide by Harper Ashley and Wren Hawthorne, or Harley Laroux’s The Dare reportedly depict excellent communication and consent despite their super messed-up sexual content. Similar also are books within the still-weird criminal offensive side-eye genre of aged-up Peter Pan smut fanfiction, for example Hooked by Emily McIntire—which is not how that surname should legally be spelled (it’s an Americanised spelling, isn’t it?)—or admittedly even Nikki St. Crowe’s Vicious Lost Boys series. They’re not The Greatest of All Time, perhaps, but from what I’ve heard they’re not romanticising or mislabelling felony rape or sexual battery… Whatever is below Hell, the bar is lower than even that. Not Peter Pan related (unless that memo missed me), but Butcher & Blackbird, maybe, as well—it’s like what that one commenter was talking about under Natalie’s short, from what I’ve heard. I would even say books such as Sarah Pinborough’s Tales from the Kingdoms fit here too as dark romance books that aren’t bad or exploitative (and also books I’ve actually physically sat down and read). Charm is a Cinderella retelling and it’s the only smutty book I’ll ever recommend—it’s actually really fun and the character development was great. I might reread it, now that my mind’s on it. I was 18 when I last read it, which wasn’t long ago whatsoever, but all the nail polish I was addicted to drinking as a young teen really gave me that chronic solvent-induced encephalopathy so I could be misremembering things. (UPDATE 5/11/2024: I reread it in a day and it was better than I remembered! It also was nowhere near as smutty as I thought??—I think me at 18 was just so scandalised that there simply was sex in a book that my brain inflated my recollections of it. Another book of that series I read is way smuttier though—maybe that’s what I was thinking of… Charm is also not very relevant at all to this discussion lmao but at least said discussion made me remember it for some reason. You can read my reviews on StoryGraph (superior) and Goodreads (dogsht) if you care lol k thnx bye).
At the same time…
None of anything preceding that is negated.
We haven’t checked in with The Grindhouse Cinema Database in a while.
“Exploitation films often exploited events that occurred [on] the news and were in the short term public consciousness that a major film studio may avoid due to the length of time of producing a film.”
Gregory Wilson’s aforementioned The Girl Next Door comes to mind.
It’s based on a very real case: the horrific torture and murder of 16-year-old Sylvia Marie Likens by her quote-unquote “caregiver”, Gertrude Baniszewski, Baniszewski’s children, and her children’s neighbourhood friends, in Indianapolis. It’s genuinely one of the most horrific cases and so I won’t recount it, all you need to know is that the homicide chief of the Indianapolis Police Department, who had served as an officer for 35 years, went on record stating that the murder of Sylvia Marie Likens was “the most sadistic act [he] ever came across”.8
The Girl Next Door is not exactly an exploitation film, as it was produced a long time after the case and not, from what I understand, during a resurgence in public consciousness of it, and even the book it’s based on wasn’t produced until much later, but when the draw of your production is the criminal case it’s based on and the subsequent violence it’s bound to depict, that qualifies your work for the exploitation label.
You know what else comes to mind?
Cassie Reffel’s Shocking Revelations.
Here is the blurb as written on Goodreads:
Now, this isn’t really about the content of the book, so much as it is about how the author, Cassie Reffel, decided to market it, which is a big aspect of exploitation film and also a major point made throughout this essay.
See, this woman decided to post on her TikTok “If you like him (a serial killer), you will love this (her book)” with the caption “if you like the idea of spicy criminals…”.
That in and of itself is pretty bad since the romanticisation, glamourisation, and what essentially turns into glorification of serial killers is truly an epidemic as old as time, but the ultra-egregious part of it all was who the serial killer in question was.
Wade Steven Wilson.
Nicknamed the “Deadpool Killer” on account of his name which, whoever gave him that epithet needs to get put down tomorrow—are you fvcking stupid?
On October 7th, 2019, Wilson, whom I will be calling “çufi” going forward, a Lazuri noun meaning “mold” (like the fungus), committed two murders within hours. The first was Kristine Melton, and the second would be Diane Ruiz, and it’s those names we should be repeating and immortalising.
Çufi’s case and his subsequent death-sentencing for the murders of Diane Ruiz and Kristine Melton, as well as the battery and sexual assault of his former girlfriend Kelly Matthews, had been a hot-button topic on the internet around the time Reffel decided to market her book with his image, and the backlash was swift. While Shocking Revelations had already been published by then and was not based on Çufi, Cassie Reffel engaged in the rawest from of exploitation by invoking his simulacrum in her marketing, which retroactively makes of her book an exploitation novel. Then again, I mean even the title itself is exploitative and the FMC is a pig so…
In the Goodreads reviews of Shocking Revelations—which has been review-bombed but heavily neutered by Goodreads meanwhile that dogsht platform sleeps when non-white and queer authors get review-bombed by bigots—one comment stood out to me:
And you know what? They’re not fully wrong. Refer to eeeeverything discussed thus far.
Sadly, and frighteningly, I had sort of seen something like this coming given just how many thirst traps I had seen and heard about of Çufi. A “man” who has a Hakenkreuz tattooed on his face! It’s telling that when these specific sorts of people are “fascinated” by serial killers, it’s always Dahmer and Ramirez and other Nazi rapists like Çufi. Not saying it’s good and fully fine but you’ll never see them be “fascinated” by like... the Unabomber… or Simone Pianetti… fvcking Giulia Tofana!
Instead, these girlypops start petitions to free a serial killer who admitted to his crimes—and is allegedly connected to white supremacist gang activity—just because he’s “hot” (I think he’s ugly) and they unironically believe they can “fix” him. Çufi literally told detectives that he would be willing to “do it again”! As in the murders!
Um, yes, I have a question.
So, where’s this energy for Black and brown men convicted of petty drug crimes and, like, wearing a kūfiyya “in the wrong place at the wrong time”? Purely curious—not begging the question at all.
Another concerning part is that Cassie was kind of honest about her supposedly wanting to reach some kind of “right” audience with her repugnant marketing because, clearly, there is a reading pool somewhere out there and that’s... well, I would take a voluntary lobotomy, personally.
Anyway, see someone.
Let’s revisit New French Extremity for a brief moment (it’s my essay though, so “brief” is featured here solely for aesthetic effect just like character backstory in dark romance /lh).
High Tension is a graphic, violent slasher which exploits the subject of mental illness in admittedly a concerning way, also could be considered lesbophobic by some, and ultimately follows the tried-and-true formula of, in the words of Big Will, “mentally unstable man* with logging equipment”. Irreversible depicts a lengthy, horrific scene, without any cuts, of a woman being raped and beaten into near-death. Inside is a home invasion flick literally about a woman attempting to cut a baby out of a different pregnant woman—it’s Aron Beauregard’s Playground if it wasn’t sh—Raw is a body horror and arguable teensploitation. Martyrs (the original and superior 2008 one) is just MKUltra.
And guess what? New French Extremity is one of my most favourite movie genres! I love Raw. Martyrs (2008) is among my top five films. Irreversible is gut-wrenching. Inside is great. Even High Tension is pretty decent. I’m not above liking things that are fvcked up. Once again: Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil, and Edward Elias Merhige’s Begotten—among this Substack’s most frequently recurring characters and a quote from which is quite literally the first epigraph in my debut novel—are my favourite movies! I’m literally writing a transgressive fiction novella that includes a scene of a woman cutting chunks out of her own body and eating them because she thinks there are bugs inside her!!
The difference is that these pieces of media don’t lie about what they are. They don’t claim to contain CNC only to depict felony rape. Antichrist doesn’t call itself a “dark romance”. High Tension isn’t advertised as a “sapphic horror”. Raw doesn’t claim to be merely a “coming of age” film without clarification of what sort.
But it wouldn’t feel cute and fun to hold up your quote-unquote “dark romance” book on TikTok and say, “Hey guys, this is my current favourite sexploitation book!”
Unfortunately for you, some of you really should.
To end this off, let’s repeat that fun little segment where I assigned an exploitation subgenre to extreme horror/splatterpunk books, but instead do the same with the aforediscussed dark romance (not the actual dark romance but the “dark romance”), and also give each of them a little movie buddy like a matchmaker. We can live out our shadchaním aspirations ב״ה!
Once again, all of the movies I will bring up here, I’ve watched—gods only know how much brain damage I’m working with.
So, Haunting Adeline simply must get paired with A Serbian Film. Pure shock and sexploitation but, in HA’s context, also a weird element of Giallo because of the really brutal crimes described coupled with the main male character’s (MMC’s) justice boner despite committing the exact crimes he busts very Jewish-coded politicians for lest you forget. Hunting Adeline, the sequel, however, is unquestionably Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, because of just how much of a sexploitation book it is, but it also has a revengeamatic and a rape-revenge by proxy element given its ending.
Wings of a Butterfly is sexploitation. Yes, it’s shocking, but not shocksploitation shocking. I match this book with Brett Leonard’s Feed. The energy is just reciprocated there, I think. I guess I also give this book the only queersploitation tag in the building too since the FMC had her lesbianism sexually abused out of her by a man who had kidnapped and planned to murder her. Happy Pride.
Driving My Obsession is sexploitation too. Also not shocksploitation level. It’s just a rape book. Given that the male “love interest” has unadulterated incel thought processes, I’m also labelling this book Sadiconazista because inceldom is a Nazi pipeline. I’m gonna match this book with Deadgirl, a rape-revenge film with probably the craziest blurb to film content ratio, except Driving My Obsession doesn’t have the revenge part meaning it’s somehow worse than the 0.5 I gave to Deadgirl.
The Pawn and The Puppet is shocksploitation. I don’t really think I could give it the sexploitation tag just because it’s comparatively meh on that front. I will say that there’s a bit of a slasher and maybe even splatter energy here too with just how explicit the murder and maiming the MMC commits is. I’m going to pair The Pawn and The Puppet with Scott Schirmer’s Found for reasons only I (and maybe you if you very specifically know both of those pieces of media) understand.
Carving for Cara is also shock and sexploitation. It’s also, like, just a rape book with no romance and no happy or even semi-“happy” ending. Its match is Kòróshíyá Ichi (殺し屋１), or Ichi the Killer, which I admittedly liked enough to give 3 stars to, but it also has no romance or a happy ending, but does include rape. Also, “Ichi the Killer” isn’t really the direct translation. Like, it technically isn’t wrong, like the killer in question is named Ichi and that is its official translation, but its more literal translation would be more like “Hitman One”, or “Hitman Ichi”. Semantics, I guess.
The Wild is, once again, shock and sexploitation, but also teensploitation because remember this is a paedophilic incest book. And I guess the incestuous forest hillbillies could nominate The Wild for Hixploitation. I’m really tempted to pair it with A Serbian Film too, but for the sake of variety I’m going to keep A Serbian Film as its spiritual match, but Alex Chandon’s Inbred, for obvious reasons, as its legal one.
And, finally, Shocking Revelations. This one’s a little unique in the bunch. While sexploitation and shocksploitation could very well apply (I hope shocksploitation applies; it would be so funny), its primary exploitation subgenre would be more like Poliziotteschi, though I can’t imagine it’s anything like The Godfather (which I quote in my real life like every day, by which I mean I quote “on the day of my daughter’s wedding??”). It also wouldn’t really qualify as a women in prison film given the FMC is a screw,9 not an inmate, but we’re also going off of straight vibes for this. I would couple this book with The Girl Next Door just because it’s exploiting a real, horrific criminal case.
Hope this was fun!
~Sfar~Ⓐ🧿֎⨳
Schmidt, D., & Rector, R. (2024). An Exploration of Exploitation: A Brief Look at the Exploitation Genre. Cape Gazette. https://www.capegazette.com/blog-entry/exploration-exploitation-brief-look-exploitation-genre/115837
The Grindhouse Cinema Database. (2014, May 19). Exploitation Films: An Introduction. https://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/INTRODUCTION
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Black, J. E., Capps, S. C., & Barnes, J. L. (2017). Fiction, genre exposure, and moral reality. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 12(3), 328–340. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000116
Esposito, E. (2007). The Reality of the World and the Realism of Fiction. Istituto Svizzero.
Green, M. C., Strange, J. J., & Brock, T. C. (2002). Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations. Psychology Press.
Higgins, W. (2015, October 23). Retro Indy: The Murder of Sylvia Likens, as told over 50 years ago. The Indianapolis Star. https://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2015/10/23/indianapolis-most-sadistic-act/74209878/
