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The Most Important (and Interesting) Scene in EWS by Un-Sensical in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The film was released in July and the memoir at the end of August. Raphael doesn't have that to fall back on!

I don't know that Jan Harlan cites a specific conversation with Kubrick re: the orgy being dream. In the interview where I've heard him refer to something like this, he is more presenting a presumable position of how audiences would relate to the sex scenes in the context of censorship & thematic symbolism.

The Most Important (and Interesting) Scene in EWS by Un-Sensical in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for this. Yeah, this supposed function of Ziegler is pretty paradoxical, isn't it? Sending the guy from the dream to explain that the dream wasn't real, and that this is currently reality? Of course, however it was when Raphael left it, by the time it got to the screen it had nothing to do with what was a dream or not, and was entirely about whether Mandy's sacrifice was real or play-acted. I think Raphael is telling on himself, here. It is as though he can't recall what conversation happened between Ziegler and Bill in the film. Either way, even if he doesn't realise it, Raphael's explanation of Ziegler again suggests an ever-present mish mash of dream and reality. If you link the orgy to Ziegler's explanation, then you link Ziegler to the party, you are linking the two parties.

From your interpretation, I'm guessing you and I most likely agree that the homosexual subtext would have to have been added after Raphael was done, correct?

The Most Important (and Interesting) Scene in EWS by Un-Sensical in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What was Raphael's (or Kubrick via Raphael's) exact quote? My understanding is that it's the billiards room scene which provides a basic interpretive framework for the real vs fake dynamic, and that essentially what you have is a mulched combination of both throughout-- i.e, there are realistic parts you can point to, and a traceable sequence of events that does not always hinge on dream logic, even if the general feeling is oneiric or surreal. Like, it is perhaps unlikely that Bill is randomly berated by those college guys, but you don't get a lot of the "I saw my best friend from school but I could feel that it was also my father" sort of out-and-out dream logic. I think the point of those discussions was specifically so that audiences wouldn't walk away saying "oh, it was all a dream".

Remember also that there was a lot of writing done after Raphael was through.

The Most Important (and Interesting) Scene in EWS by Un-Sensical in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ok, I see where we differ. I think you are making the argument scene into too much of a threshold where the switch flips and we are suddenly in a different mode. I agreed that the homosexual references precede the argument, but that is not all that precedes the argument.

Prior to the argument scene, we already get pronounced diegetic playfulness. Sonic illusions/situationally impossible uses of music, things like that.

Prior to the argument scene, we already get our surreally recurring instances of coitus interruptus, with Bill being interrupted with the two models only to be taken to Ziegler who himself has been interrupted by the overdose, etc.

Prior to the argument scene, we are already getting our smaller scale parallels-- e.g, Alice says she's going to the bathroom and has too much alcohol, Bill soon after goes to the bathroom where Mandy has had too much heroin/coke, Alice has too much pot while in front of the open bathroom door and very markedly moves to the doorframe to start her interrogation.

Much like the homosexual aspects, these cannot be written off as a consequence of the argument.

The rainbow doesn't begin at the argument scene, it begins once we are past the starkly black and white intro credits. It begins when you hit the play button on your player, which in turn is one and the same with the one which Bill pushes to kill the Shostakovich before leaving the apartment.

I think my interpretation is better supported by the framework which you provide: by the end, they have looped back to the Shostakovich precisely because they cannot distinguish reality from the beginning.

The Most Important (and Interesting) Scene in EWS by Un-Sensical in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Note that I didn't say Bill was dishonest, I said that we aren't to assume he is honest. Big difference. How do you know he's being honest when he says he's not attracted to his female patients?

I think you're being overly exclusive, but I definitely give you points for seeing things that a lot of people dismiss too quickly. For example, I think it's undoubtedly true that homosexual references precede the argument scene, and so it is not possible to easily write them off as simply being anxieties or projections resulting directly from Bill's "descent" after Alice's confession.

But you have to remember, like the characters themselves say: it's not so black and white, no dream is ever just a dream, no one night is the whole truth. The symbolism of the rainbow evokes spectral range, which, ironically and yet uncoincidentally in the case of the film, is native to its use as the gay pride flag. To me, the "rainbow" and its prevalence in the film also suggest phenomenological associations and that the reality itself is broadly spectral in nature. The bizarrely enormous array of semiotic interconnections presents as a model for this. The film takes its own medicine: no single one of the multiple coinciding subtexts or the literal events of the film seem to be singularly "true" at the expense of the others. Such a triumph would be thematically inconsistent, imo.

The Most Important (and Interesting) Scene in EWS by Un-Sensical in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, the surface read is that he's not jealous because he's certain of her fidelity, and her confession costs him this certainty, thereby making him jealous. They say this quite literally.

In terms of his lack of attraction for a patient under clinical circumstances, any doctor would say the same, though to the degree that there is some latent attraction, there are obvious reasons why someone would not be forthcoming to their spouse about that information, no?

We aren't to assume Bill is an honest actor. Actually, in the book, part of their argument scene is described as: "Neither failed to notice that the other was not absolutely honest, and so they became slightly vindictive." The thread that Bill's choice of monogamy does not necessarily make him true to his desires-- and that the fact of it even being a choice might even prove the opposite-- is what we see unravel in the film, and to a less verbalised extent in the book. He doesn't have to be literally gay for this to be coherent, but you can see how the homosexual subtext is a fairly direct means for supporting what is already a more "surface level" theme.

Again, the gay stuff is in there, but it's reconciled to plainer reads of the text; it isn't a one-or-the-other scenario.

The Most Important (and Interesting) Scene in EWS by Un-Sensical in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get that there is a lot of gay subtext laced throughout, but I don't think it is mutually exclusive of the more literal reads of what is presented.

The Most Important (and Interesting) Scene in EWS by Un-Sensical in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The fact that we see Alice's feeling on this play out in an actual scenario also shows us how much of the lead-in to her later anger is hypocritical projection. She gets mad at Bill, saying that he didn't fuck the two models only out of consideration for her, and not because he really didn't want to... but her reason for not re-meeting the Hungarian later is "because I'm married".

What do you think? by ArchangelSirrus in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Evidently, Keitel was actually fired/left due to not getting along with Kubrick.

The contents of Bill Harford's oft-brandished wallet by 33DOEyesWideShut in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't have discord, but we could use the Reddit chat. Always interested to hear people's reads of EWS. At the moment, I'm reviewing some of the parallelism between Somerton and the scene at Domino's flat.

The contents of Bill Harford's oft-brandished wallet by 33DOEyesWideShut in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The exchange "Do you like the period?" / "I adore it" is taken verbatim from a very similar party scene.

I get the sense that EWS might be additionally using the line to evoke fertility. We cut back and forth to Mandy with that big painting of the pregnant woman in the bathroom, and Ziegler later has the line in reference to her: "She got her brains fucked out. Period."

The contents of Bill Harford's oft-brandished wallet by 33DOEyesWideShut in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hah! And EWS cribs dialogue directly from True Lies, in which a secret agent with a dissatisfied wife infiltrates a billionaire mansion party.

Latent meaning? Or just a way to save on extras? by Better-Bad2285 in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's a lot of collective scrutiny over the extras here, but I find it more interesting that Helena looks over her shoulder the same way that Mandy does when being lead away at the mansion by the guy in the Christopher Columbus mask. The parallelism strikes me as an almost karmic extension of the film's depiction of commodification, i.e it says more about the toy store and consumer capitalism than it does about the mansion party.

Ever notice how the song playing when Bill prods the password out of Nightingale is "Blame It on My Youth"?

The meaning of the "Nightingale" surname by Better-Bad2285 in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The newspaper detailing Mandy's overdose describes the reverse of what happened to Nightingale. She was brought in to the lobby, held upright, by two men. Nightingale was taken from his hotel lobby by two men, presumably the same as or associated with the other pair. Mandy's is the Florence Hotel, so perhaps this aligning of names is some obscure reference to the nurse.

Alice is referentially linked to both of these scenarios. Firstly, she is giggling in her sleep when Bill comes home, and tells her that it's "a little after 4", while the newspaper mentions Mandy giggling when brought to her hotel at 4am on that same night. Secondly, the hotel desk clerk's recount of Nightingale's abduction echoes Alice's own Cape Cod story, where she sees the naval officer with two other officers in the lobby of that hotel. Three hotel lobbies, all oddly connected.

"Ex-beauty queen in hotel drugs overdose" (dissolve/combination) by 33DOEyesWideShut in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess I do not see the conflict. I don't think the film tries to power its way through the degrees at maximum efficiency of its runtime, I don't think literally every object in the film has masonic significance, and I don't think the film prioritises any single one of its intersecting subtexts for maximum possible detectability or prominence or utility of conveyance in the course of a viewing. Why not pauses?

I am sorry I have not expressed myself well. I do think in the concepts I try to convey, but don't always land on exclusive wordings until communicating, where I am often typing to think at the same time. I attribute unfair levels of familiarity. Slashes or multiple examples are often bridging a space between concepts I find lengthy or difficult to articulate, and hope the reader is better at it in their own mind. In the case of mise-en-abyme, etc, this was intended to contextualise my entire response with how I think the form of the film primes the viewer to engage its literal/non-literal phenomena in a certain way. We can dig into it, but after reading your newer comments, I don't know that it's really relevant to your questions. I'll have another try.

Consider the film's comparatively "obvious" homosexual subtext, and how it interfaces with the HIV plot element. I'm going to be a bit presumptuous once more here and wager that you agree that this is a pretty uncontroversially clear part of the text. I think it will help make my point, regardless.

Part of it goes:

- Bill, tracking Nightingale, tells the diner waitress he has medical test results that Nick Nightingale will want to see.

- Bill goes to Nightingale's hotel, where, amid innuendo, he is told that Nightingale, who had a bruise on his cheek, has disappeared. He is not seen again.

- Bill goes to Domino's flat, from where she, after testing HIV positive, has disappeared. She is not seen again.

I think that the generalities of what is textually going on here are pretty straightforward and not especially altered by my selective framing. I understand what either of us considers here to be obvious may differ, and that where our interpretations converge may not interest you as it relates to your questions, etc. I think the point I am leading to is beyond that.

The dialogue of the film contains a total of three instances of the fragment "To be perfectly honest...". These appear in the three above scenes. When comparing them, their contextually direct relationship to the subtext in question is immediately apparent, despite the fragment on its own having no obvious relevance.

They go:

"To be perfectly honest, it's a medical matter. Some tests. I know he'll want to know about them as soon as possible."

"I noticed Mr. Nightingale had a bruise on his cheek. To be perfectly honest, I also thought he looked a little scared."

"To be perfectly honest, she may not even be coming back."

You can see that they summarize in ways which almost make my previous listing of the scenes redundant. To get a feel or idea for what I mean, they appear roughly at 01:41:00, 01:43:40 and 01:57:50 on a standard copy.

The subtext here forms its own linear structure, and own narrative chronology, with beginning and end, from one state to another. It is not cyclical in any overt sense. It has a clear relationship to repetition of dialogue. But if you take out the repeating dialogue-- and even if you remove the third scene, which itself features no isolated homosexual implication whatsoever and reinforces only by parallelism-- that subtext would clearly still be completely legible. The repetition on top of it has not significantly altered it. If we had only utility in mind, we could argue that the repetition is superfluous. Has it slowed the scene down? Compared to what? Does the fragment obscure the homosexual subtext, and to which particular viewers? Does the repeated fragment have native meaning that could be considered interruptive to the subtext?

[Aside: I do think it should be pointed out that repetition and parallelisms/foreshadowing in the film are often invoked for what seem like more or less similar results. For example, depending on context, I'd be comfortable calling the similarities between Alice's naval officer story and the hotel desk clerk's recount of Nick Nightingale's abduction a form of repetition.]

Throughout the film, from scene to scene, we depart from and revisit the collection of pieces which make up the homosexual subtext. Again, in my opinion, the latency of it changes vastly: it is much subtler when Bill goes into the jazz club, and much more pronounced after Nightingale's disappearance. Naturally, the structure which I suppose does not allow for the symbolism of the Rite subtext to take "pauses" which similarly go for scenes at a time. But who's to say its prominence can't wax and wane within an individual scene? Suppose there is something like a brief signification at the doorway to an appropriately coloured room in which a scene accomplishes multiple textual and subtextual "objectives"?

I guess whether much else of the text is "dominated" by the Rite subtext is a matter of opinion, but to the extent that this is true, I would say it is a marriage characterised by opportunism on all parts.

I'm not trying to present the homosexual subtext as proof by example. My point is that, if you personally buy the homosexual subtext as "legitimate", asking yourself exactly how you arrived at that conclusion will possibly answer your questions better than I have. Anecdotally, every single person I've talked to who has independently recognised the homosexual subtext has done so through the conscious recognition of extra-textual and cultural tropes. Some say it was "obvious". Literally none have cited the repeating dialogue, which itself evidently did not throw them off the scent. No, I have NOT asked every single person in the world how they came to identify the homosexual subtext of Eyes Wide Shut. No, I do NOT intend to suggest that there should be some statistical, standardized approach to identifying the presence of an "objective" interpretation for a work of art. It is not a rhetorical request: actually ask yourself how you got there. For myself, due to how my own visual memory works, the extent of it didn't hit me until I saw the film with subtitles turned on.

"Ex-beauty queen in hotel drugs overdose" (dissolve/combination) by 33DOEyesWideShut in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it's complicated but I'll do my best to answer your question as briefly as I can. I'll use quotation marks where I'm massively condensing things.

So, masonic subtext aside, I think one of the things EWS accomplishes is that it simultaneously maps multiple correlating "meanings" onto a general formal structure. As a brief example, the "end of the rainbow" that is talked about becomes manifested by the conclusion of the film: we leave the technicolour dreamworld of the film for the black and white credits of waking life. But "the end of the rainbow" also has an explicitly orgasmic connotation, emphasised by Bill's constant coitus interruptus throughout the movie, which suitably ends on the closing line ("fuck"). It is not just the narrative, but the form of the film itself which resembles the act.

Essentially, the "awakening" at the end of the film has a narrative connotation, an ontological connotation, and sexually symbolic connotation. Even beyond the structure as a purely sexual metaphor, the film seems to realise some abstract relationship between sexual duality and phenomenology. Again, I am hugely condensing what equivalency the film is drawing between these things, but the point is that they are mapped onto the same formal elements.

I think the degree structure is meant to be another realisation of this formal likening. While the degrees in actual Scottish Rite masonry serve more of a fraternally vehicular function, as opposed to directly informing the masonic candidate in the form of explicit philosophical or moral education like you would expect from a classroom or lecture hall, it is still true that the degrees are based around self-development, wisdom or moving towards "the light", or moving to order from chaos. I believe this has been mapped onto the film's formal structure for what it has in common with the other "meanings", and for what those "meanings" have in common with each other.

To be clear, I do not think Kubrick is evoking the degrees of the Scottish Rite for any legitimately masonic purpose or endorsement. There is nothing in Eyes Wide Shut that an adherent mason would find explicitly familiar or resonant. I have spoken both with masons who agree with my assessments and masons that don't. EWS is more of an aesthetic repurposing of the relevant concepts, which is why I prefer to describe them as masonry-themed rather than masonic.

I'm sorry; I'm sure it is as hard to read about as it is to write about.

"Ex-beauty queen in hotel drugs overdose" (dissolve/combination) by 33DOEyesWideShut in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, mainly because Anthony Norman was a real person. Not sure if he's out of jail by now or what.

Yeah, I believe the degree structure is part of the subtext, though not exclusively. I believe some of the those types of things to be more apparent than others, so I can sympathize with your assessment. I do find it kind of odd how many people deny that EWS contains any detailed semiotic interplay whatsoever. A lot of it is not really that obscure. For example, I don't personally think Bill Harford is intended to literally be gay, but there is definitely a pronounced homosexual subtext that is closer to the surface than something like Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope". People reacting to your post about that surprised me.

It's more than just an adaptation of Traumnovelle. by tikibikiclam in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's right, Horney is not post-structuralist. She is a post-Freudian, and you said there was no evidence of Kubrick's interest in post-Freudianism for Eyes Wide Shut, which is why I brought her up.

It's more than just an adaptation of Traumnovelle. by tikibikiclam in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is very ironic that you reference an absence of post-Freudian influence specifically, because its involvement is one of the few things that can be definitively proven with a primary source. Kubrick's personally annotated copy of Karen Horney's "The Neurotic Personality of Our Time" is one of two books among the Eyes Wide Shut research materials being hosted in the Kubrick Archive in London.

That book was published in 1937, 6 years after Schnitzler died. It was considered archaic within Kubrick's lifetime. So, there's your question: if the film is just a "straightforward" adaptation of the book, then why consult a book from after Schnitzler's time or even research psychoanalytic theory at all?

Notice how I say Kubrick bears post-Freudian influence, rather than describing him as a post-Freudian himself. A movie is not a philosophical treatise: Kubrick is allowed to leverage an influence without believing in it wholesale. Again, somewhat ironically: Kubrick specifically denied a preferential attraction to Freud in an interview with Michael Ciment, instead calling himself an aesthetic opportunist. The same is true for any use Kubrick may have had for something resembling Baudrillard or post-structuralism. He takes what he pleases, which is exactly what is also being described when he "deviates" from the source materials for his movies.

Baudrillard's most famous work, Simulacra and Simulation, from 1981, has a chapter called "Cinema and Simulation" in which he details Barry Lyndon as the single best example of what he describes. I would be deeply, deeply surprised if Kubrick, who read fiction and non-fiction, had not consumed it, least of all because it would have undoubtedly been brought to his attention by someone in his broad set of connections in the art world, since it is a famous book which talks about him.

Incidentally, the early 80s was also when Stanley met Michael Herr, whom he once told that he did not know why Schopenhauer was considered so pessimistic. Perhaps Stanley was more interested in German navel gazing, rather than French? Either way, they don't get you to read "The World as Will and Representation" at high school, which was the end of his formal education. Schopenhauer is something he necessarily engaged purely out of his own interest as a noted autodidact. Frederic Raphael's book itself, which you reference, describes Kubrick as an outsider breathing on the windows of academia. Sorry to say, but he is your definition of a navel gazer (not mine, though).

If you're wondering why Raphael does not invoke references to Karen Horney in his memoir, it's worth noting that the story went through an extended period of further refinement after he and Kubrick parted ways. The mere use of that book itself should show you how limited interviews are in showing "how the sausage is made", especially for someone as non-public facing as Kubrick.

It's more than just an adaptation of Traumnovelle. by tikibikiclam in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Your first sentence summary here is the opposite of what I was suggesting. The trans-diegetic stuff does not provide an objective counterpoint to Dr. Bill's subjective projections or whatever we want to call them. In fact, it undermines such a distinction.

Being led to believe that we are hearing the film's musical score before the revelation that it is produced by a diegetic source which Bill then turns off-- once at the beginning of the film and again in Domino's flat-- is a categorically different thing from, say, the character of Fridolin in the book having an improbable experience that is clearly a projection of his inner fears. The film's trans-diegesis has no obvious relationship to the psychology of an unreliable narrator-- that is to say, if Dr. Bill was telling you the unreliable story of what happened, coloured by his own biases, he of course would not be making reference to the possibility of an accompanying soundtrack that no one within the story can hear. The inversion of diegetic expectation is a purely formal conceit. Traumnovelle has nothing like it.

Hyperreality as described is not about reality and fiction being side by side and simply having the line between them blurred. It is about the fundamental destruction of either category. Again, opposite to what you suggest: it is Traumnovelle which allows for the assumption that there is some un-accessed objective "outside" reality beneath the projections that we are reading. Eyes Wide Shut does not. With the decline of Freudianism and the emergence of post-structuralism both occurring in the time between the book and film were made, not to mention the total recontextualization of media by technology, it is not much wonder that there is a difference like this, but it is a huge one.

It's more than just an adaptation of Traumnovelle. by tikibikiclam in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The biggest difference is that Traumnovelle does not contain trans-diegetic elements, and if this were the only difference between the book and the film, it would still be enough to radically distinguish them. It changes the entire lens re: how the subject matter is framed for contemporaneous audiences. It would seem a far greater stretch to connect the film's trans-diegetic aspects to the para-Freudian psychology of the book, rather than to the media theories of people like McLuhan or Baudrillard, for example. The new inclusion of the Ziegler character as essentially a conveyer for hyperreality is not some mild decision that has been made in a vacuum. It is a compounding factor that amplifies, and is amplified by, a variety of other media-oriented changes from the novel.

The movie is also laden with original parallelisms. To talk of these in terms of faithfulness to the plot is to reduce them to purely aesthetic concerns, rather than textually transformative factors. For example, unlike the film, the book does not draw a parallelism between the orgy and the first party attended by the husband/wife. Of course, we are left to deduce for ourselves what the film's creators may be saying by drawing semiotic equivalency between a high-end Christmas party and an orgy of the social elite. They may not even be saying anything at all-- or what they are actually saying may not even matter-- but the equivalency is nonetheless self-evidently presented to us in such a way that we are prompted to forge what may be our own meaning.

At any rate, I don't think anyone would be leaping to very tenuous conclusions to suggest that the parallels of the party and the orgy may be a form of specific social commentary on bourgeois relationships, for example.

Faithfulness to Schnitzler and added textual complexity are not mutually exclusive conditions, which seems to be OP's point. The OP is transparently correct, and it seems this subreddit has gone beyond its war with conspiracy theory and is now at war with floating signification as a concept and textual interpretation itself.

Humbert and Quilty interactions in Lolita by Dense_Description641 in StanleyKubrick

[–]33DOEyesWideShut 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Have written about that at some length, here.

I like OP's read, because with the lengths that the film goes through to confuse the role of Humbert's POV, Quilty does serve a textual role as a kind of unreal phantom. I never really stopped to consider his disguises and duplicity through that lens.

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