‘Torture porn”, like all pornography, is hard to define, but as the US supreme court judge Potter Stewart once said, “I know it when I see it.” It is content designed to repulse, disturb and shock without narrative or artistic merit. The term “torture porn” became popularised around 20 years ago in the mid-2000s, when – after the success of Saw – cinemas were rife with films such as Hostel 1 and 2, which saw young tourists tortured by death cults. The Human Centipede featured other tourists stitched together anus to mouth, while A Serbian Film depicted a man being drugged and made to commit unspeakable acts by yet another death cult.
Eventually, the fashion for extreme brutality died down, only for horror to become “elevated” – and emphasise dramatic elements and metaphors over gore. Until The Idol, that is. The drama stars Lily-Rose Depp as a pop singer attempting a comeback, who is taken in by a slippery Svengali (the Weeknd, a Grammy-winning musician). It may not contain death cults or severed limbs (yet), but it is so commited to artlessly making its protagonist suffer that it has single-handedly resurrected torture porn.
Sam “creator of Euphoria” Levinson’s latest HBO show was controversial before it premiered. Rolling Stone reported that anonymous sources who worked on it described it “like sexual torture porn.” But Levinson has managed to dig below the already low expectations by creating a show so vacuous and cruel that it’s hard to believe it’s on HBO, the network that just wrapped up Succession.
One of the problems with “torture porn” was not so much the violence, but the misanthropy – how much contempt it shows for its characters. Like Hostel before it, the Idol is content to degrade and humiliate characters, then ask viewers to revel in their misery. The show’s landscape is unrelentingly bleak, depicting a music industry filled with cruel charlatans who are “gauging if you still got it” rather than looking at their fragile singer as a human being. But it saves most malice for Depp’s pop star protagonist, Jocelyn. It’s unclear whether Depp and the Weeknd are playing characters medicated to the point of dissociation, but both only convince when playing up their characters’ utter lack of natural talent and charisma.
Every moment of shame and pain is savoured. Just as The Human Centipede revelled in the crude surgery and scatological consequences, The Idol wants you to fixate on every failure, injury and moment of despair Joss faces. Even with Depp’s limited acting abilities, those moments are nauseating. Each bump and divot on her face is lit to make her appear unwell and sallow, and her humiliation, both sexual and otherwise, is luxuriated in. Her mental health problems are labelled “sexy” by an unfeeling executive, a young upstart choreographer undermines her musical and performance skills, and she is humbled by a random naked hanger-on called Chloe who, after skinny-dipping in her pool, outshines her on the piano.
Even as she tries to mount a triumphant comeback, there is no hope to cling to. Her new single is dated and terrible, and she struggles with the rudimentary choreography. Joss tries desperately to make her music video good but admits that, at best, it is “going to be ironic in a way the fans aren’t going to understand,” – a line that practically breaks the fourth wall and apologises for the show itself. A dancer accidentally punches her in the groin when a lift goes wrong, and she eventually crumbles into a heap, shoes filled with blood and thighs that look like she has taken a cheese grater to them. This is just the latest in a cavalcade of misery; as a journalist played by Hari Nef reminds us, “Context is important here because her mother died of cancer, she had a very public breakdown and she was cheated on.”
As she suffers and bleeds, the show has no insight into the struggles of pop stardom beyond gruelling punishment. At every turn, side characters get in digs about Jocelyn, rolling their eyes at her creative input and pointing out that “Dyanne is outdancing” her or the background dancers “are kind of out-femming her”. And in the arms of Tedros (the Weeknd), the sex is as unpleasant to watch as it would be to experience.
The deeply unsexy scenes amount to little more than the Weeknd spouting the sort of dirty talk that would be carved into the bathroom stall of a sixth form college – with Depp gagging in between performative moans. Perhaps the worst part of The Idol is that, as well as being “torture porn”, it fails to be genuinely shocking.
It’s a gruelling slog that seems to hate its characters and audience. Only two episodes into its five-episode run, it has outstayed its welcome. Previews for episode three show Jocelyn declared “brainwashed” as her career is in free fall, but who cares? At this point, we have all suffered enough.
