A SAW You Can Believe In - or - Jigsaw Has Pre-Existing Condition

Full disclosure: this essay will contain spoilers.

I didn’t like Saw 5 - perhaps because I was tired, had to wait till 10:30PM to see it (all the previous times were sold out), and it required thinking when I wasn’t expecting it and didn’t think thinking was worth it.

That being said I saw Saw 6 because I was expecting to see something that’s pretty rare: an audience at the Market Arcade Theater downtown (still I counted about 50 people, better than the prior show I attended Walt and El Grupo at the North Park, which saw an audience of about 12). Long and uninteresting story short: I am a “season pass” holder for the chain that operates both, which is the perfect gift for someone like me who would probably go anyway at full price if I had to.

Now to the film: the Saw franchise has been cranking out a new film every October for the past 6 years which like South Park allows the team a great deal of power: they can actually be relevant to the zeitgeist. The films of the past dealt with drug users (perhaps an allegory to excess in good times - not only do you own that BMW you don’t need but you also have a coke habit and as Robin Williams said “cocaine is god’s way of telling you that you make too much.”)

The last film dealt with the police - and as I said I don’t remember Saw 5 except for the fact I didn’t really like it. Here Mark Hoffman is back and Jigsaw is more of a conceptual artist - (spoiler) - he’s still not dead. Jigsaw has been dying of cancer and can’t get his insurance company to cover an experimental treatment. He then proceeds to give a speech worthy of Alan Grayson - blasting the whole system. Although bipartisan and even seemingly apolitical this is the first time a Saw film addresses a current issue head-on. (Then again I could have told you the lobbyists, republicans and Obama would drag this on a year ago, it’s a sad fact of life).

Saw 6 takes perhaps can be somewhat cathartic for it’s core audience which seems to be frustrated apolitical people that may have been energized by the promises of Obama, I know I was - and still am for the most part - but please, deliver on that change that was promised.

For the start this is clear: this is a new Saw for a post TARP era - it’s pissed that wall street was bailed out and millions of Americans who were not financially literature were connected with 50-page credit card agreements and tricky predatory lending practices. While banks are never taken to task here (perhaps that’s Saw 7) - two mortgage brokers are pinned against each other in what is an awfully angry Saw film that proves to be more disturbing than others. While certain moments are tame, there is one image concerning the number 6 that is truly frightening and disturbing in the way that seems to throw it back at us: I didn’t get any pleasure out of watching it.

But do we get any pleasure out of watching the Saw films period? I don’t know - this time it seemed more frightening, whereas you might be let down by someone who is a drug addict who you’ve tried to help - the prospect of people with families killing in the name of revenge (not “curing”) seems to tint this entry into the genre a shade darker than the others.

Still, not a lot of films have taken the heath insurance industry to task and here is a film that is oversimplified for a midnight madness and urban crowd that has a certain amount of power. It hates the “hooray for me and fuck you” politics that flourished under George Bush and even earlier under that jerk-off Ronald Reagan (where as corporations got richer and richer because they found ways of screwing and squeezing the middle class).

Unfortunately the health care industry has not been taken to task by anybody who would get credit in a bipartisan fashion, that is it’s just Saw and Michael Moore’s Sicko. Sicko is pretty brilliant on its own terms, but Saw, for the folks that wouldn’t see a documentary has a certain amount of power to make points and I’m glad the series is finally getting political even if it doesn’t name names.

Here is the situation as I understand it: the US leads the development of new drugs, treatments, ect that are not shared for the greater good. I understand the motivation to innovate, invest and develop - maybe it’s not even the researcher’s fault. Profit is a strong motivation - perhaps I’m rare but I just want to live comfortably, I have no desire to be rich (think back to the Robin Williams quote earlier), but at the same time I understand the concept of being paid fairly for the work that you do - why should your CEO get rich on the backs of employees working, producing and delivering?

The fear is if governmental “public option” health care was introduced, of coarse it would cause the quality of health care to decline for everyone else that has it, even if it’s as mediocre as Jigsaw’s. There is too much misinformation on it, the debate, which I’ve been following has become cloudy thanks to the uninformed radical morons who still believe Obama was born in Kenya. What’s wrong with this country?

I’m excited to see what Saw does next, while it’s as oversimplified as the liars who spread roomers about “death panels” - surely Jigsaw is not an example to be followed (although here with Detective Hoffman carrying out Jigsaw’s orders - it appears the film is more brutal, perhaps another point).

I remember reading an interview with Eli Roth who made Hostel, an over the top, almost pornographic film involving torture. As the studio was releasing Hostel II (which I didn’t see) he was discussing his inspirations including videos of beheadings in Iraq. The torture-porn movement was born out of something political itself. Perhaps national embarrassment Lynndie England is partly responsible for these films, although when it comes to torture, she argues in Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure “I didn’t do it, I just took a picture of it”. These films reflect a disturbing American truth, I think - born out of the last few years. I hope the Saw films will become more interesting (and better - Saw 6 is not a terribly good film although I admire what it achieves in its narrative).