However, my own intervention within this debate seeks to engage with an under-researched area: the commercial context of the snuff film. To this end, Mark Betz states that A Serbian Film has been adopted as a yardstick for measuring the extremity of other films within fan discourses, contrasted with titles such as Salò (1975) or Antichrist (2009) and celebrated precisely because of its cinematic excess (2013: 497). Nearly a decade since the film’s release, existing scholarship has focused on its transgressive content-including themes of paedophilia, incest, and necrophilia-and polarised reception, with press commentators condemning the film as “sensationalist depravity” (Cox), “a controversial shocker” (Hayles), and “cruel and gruesome sexual violence” (Scott). Srđan Spasojević’s debut feature A Serbian Film (Srpski film, 2010) follows the character of Milos (Srdjan Todorovic), a retired porn star who makes a Faustian pact with director Vukmir (Sergej Trifunovic) to star in an ‘art-pornography’ film later revealed to be a snuff film.
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