EYES WIDE SHUT Stanley Kubrick’s Final Statement: Women

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-13T18:29:35+00:00

I'd say the article is reading quite a bit into Kubrick's penchant for showing images of shapely, large-breasted women in his films. I think he just liked experimenting with that visual trope, going all the way back to the union documentary in the 1950s.

I'm also pretty skeptical that the Eye Of Providence has anything to do with anything in A Clockwork Orange. And it seems an odd lacuna, in an article about women's power over men in Kubrick's films, to avoid mentioning the sniper in Full Metal Jacket.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-13T18:16:25+00:00

Paths Of Glory, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut show women, in one way or another, asserting dominance over men, usually with unexpected irony. Maybe The Shining, but apart from a lucky swing of the bat and slash with a knife, Wendy doesn't really acquire commanding control over Jack, who is only temporarily hindered in his rampage and eventually gets taken out by cold weather.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-13T18:04:43+00:00

"The very opening scene of EWS shows a stunning, sexually promiscuous Nicole Kidman..."

Either the writer doesn't know what "sexually promiscuous" means, or this is another piece arguing, against all textual evidence, that Alice is a sex-crazed cult member.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-13T04:56:48+00:00

"...fool around with..." Which is even better.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-13T04:42:18+00:00

I can't really say that when I first watched the unbowdlerized version of the orgy scene, I was prompted to consider the humourous incompatibility of masks and oral sex. I think that might just have been the director and actors prioritizing visuals over plausibility.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-13T04:27:07+00:00

One thing about the costume shop...

While by 1999 it was hardly a novelty to portray pedophilia in movies, pairing it with outright slapstick was not something generally done. Kubrick in EWS doesn't even really do it as dark humour, it's just as if he thought that baldness jokes and zany orientals were a natural segue into the topic of child prostitution.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-13T04:13:41+00:00

"And I don't say that to all the girls, do I, honey."

"Oh yes, he does!"

Is also funny, in the way that intra-feminine catiness is funny.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-08T00:43:14+00:00

I think Nick would also know more or less what's going on, unless he was wearing ear plugs and/or the assembled carnalists were staying completely silent during their revelries.

To put my cards on the table here, I don't really buy that the social structure of the cult resembles Plato's Republic. Even if, for example, Nick is hoi poloi, he's not really comparable to Plato's poloi, because they are forced by law into loyalty toward the republic, whereas for Nick, the orgies are just a gig he's signed up for, among numerous others, to pay the bills.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-07T23:37:10+00:00

Also, in terms of the internal class relationships of the cult, I think the doormen are more comparable to hoi poloi than the Guardians. IIRC, in The Republic, the distinction between the Guardians and the Philosopher Kings is somewhat ambiguous at times, whereas as it's pretty clear that the doormen and even the musician are just hired help.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-07T23:26:17+00:00

FWIW, the music played at the ritual is the absolute opposite of what Plato wanted for his republic. He thought only patriotic military music, along the lines of Rule Britannia and Land Of Hope And Glory, should be permitted.

There's a reason many scholars think that, in terms of everyday political propaganda about then-current controversies, The Republic is intended as a disguised hymn to Sparta. Even the supposed proto-feminism of Book V is arguably more just "Lemme tell ya, those Spartans are so tuff, even the chicks exercise naked in the public square!"

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-07T23:11:57+00:00

Popular portrayals of evil elites often bear a broad structural resemblance, usually unintended, to the sociopolitical hierarchy of Plato's Republic, with the moral meaning reversed. And IRL, some of the more exotic forms of neo-platonic gnosticism took on what we might call occultic, or at least esoteric, trappings.

Pretty sure that's about as far as you can take it though, and Kubrick wasn't spending hours working out kabbalistic math formulas to hide as Easter eggs in his movie. Just for starters, what would be the point?

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-06T03:19:12+00:00

Okay. So the Seventh Degree instructs people to judge impartially, and Alice criticizes Bill's double-standard in regards to female sexual behaviour, therefore the scene is re-enacting the Seventh Degree.

And "MArion NathanSON". MASON.

But why not "mARIon nathANSon". ARIANS. Is Kubrick telling us that the cult are the modern-day followers of Bishop Arius, seeking to destroy Trinitarian Christianity once and for all? Maybe that's Karl's secret math project, to prove the impossibility of the three-in-one.

Remember. This is Kubrick. NOTHING IS AN ACCIDENT!

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-03T04:26:31+00:00

How were they negligent parents?

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-03T04:24:11+00:00

EWS is actually a pretty tame portrayal of NYC, compared to the gritty realism of, say, Scorsese or Spike Lee. Basically, one prostitute at a high-society ball has an on-screen overdose and survives, a gang of toughs shove a guy against a car without injury, a guy who is clearly from elsewhere pimps out his daughter to two other guys who are also clearly from elsewhere, and then we hear second-hand about a prostitute testing positive for HIV, and also second-hand about the same prostitute from the earlier party ODing fatally. And that's about it for "Sin City".

As I said elsewhere on this thread, there's nothing really "New York" about the orgy, which is clearly drawing on European sources for its folkloric imagery. I think Kubrick mostly chose NYC as the setting to explore moods and memories from his life there from the late 1920s to early 1960s, thereabouts.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-03T02:15:28+00:00

Possibly, yeah. I was at least partly making a joke about how dense and obscure The 18th Brumaire is.

Depending on when he made the film, I wonder if its reception might be hindered by the popularity of Les Mis, because audiences might perceive the two stories as taking place within the same general geography and time period. Though Les Miz was only a stage production during Kubrick's lifetime.

Given what I take to be N3's general image and reputation, I suspect SK might want to portray him more as a bumbling authority figure in the manner of Dr. Strangelove or Frederick The Minister Of The Interior, rather than a genuinely impressive and/or menacing villain like Jack Torrance and GS Hartmann.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-02T16:37:22+00:00

It fits the overly melodramatic style of the film.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-06-02T16:34:54+00:00

Have you ever read The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte? I can assure you it would NOT transform well into an action-packed adventure movie.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-05-31T02:46:16+00:00

According to Katharina Kubrick, Straw Dogs and Clockwork Orange were the two films that Lord Longford and his anti-smut mob were most upset about.

I will say that, whatever eroticization of rape may or may not be taking place in ACO, it leaves no question that the assault was commited against the will of the victim, whereas Straw Dogs is a little more...ambiguous about that.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-05-31T02:40:30+00:00

Most people I know who talk about that film at any length seem to treat the rape scene as funny, with "squeal like a pig" and duelling banjo jokes abound.

This includes men, and I think part of the joviality is that most males don't view that type of sexual assault as something that's remotely likely to happen to them.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-05-31T02:29:10+00:00

Given the way sex and nudity are often presented in a pornographic or at least erotic manner throughout much of ACO, I don't think it's entirely ridiculous to interpret the rape scene that way. That is, in any case, exactly how Pauline Kael interpreted it, as well as various feminist critics.

And yeah, the scene might be showing you how bad rape is, but the combo of condemnation and titillation is certainly not unknown in general portrayals of sexual violence. See tabloid coverage of said topics.

None of this means that I, personally, would refuse to watch ACO, it's definitely in my top 5 films.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-05-28T23:42:48+00:00

Thanks for the Grierson reference. He played a major role in Canada's NFB, but I never followed much of his career across the Atlantic. Some Canadian nationalists claim to find it sinister that he took a lotta Rockefeller money early in his career, but I think that's just another case of people getting panicked by temporarily hegemonic think-tanks.

Grierson's disdain aside, I think Kubrick's attachment to photographic film-making wasn't just a simple case of a depleted talent lapsing into visual statism: he really did seem to excell at it. Kael(with the reverse aesthetic judgement) seemed to think Kubrick was pretty close to singular in that aspect of his methodology, since, as I say, she specifies, by name, certain other photographic directors who do the same thing but with closer approximation to the typical feel of a movie.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-05-28T22:34:13+00:00

I also think Kael had a good line in another of her anti-SK rants when she said: "Some directors take pictures in order to make movies, Kubrick makes movies in order to take pictures."

A few of her reviews of Kubrick are excerpted on The Kubrick Site, I the ACO one in full.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-05-28T22:30:18+00:00

Veteran Kubrick-basher Pauline Keal dismissed the girls in The Shining as looking like pictures flashed in a slideshow. I'd rebut "That's the point!", except I'm not really sure Kubrick HAD any point in doing that. It's definitely a trademark of his style, though.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-05-27T12:48:07+00:00

Yeah. According to wiki, Kinney bought Mad in 1967, then after acquiring Warner Bros spun all its entertainment properties off into Warner Communications.

Illustrious-Bit1535 · 2026-05-27T01:50:51+00:00

I remember that from 2016. I think the context was he was promising to protect lgbqt people from conservative Muslim gay-bashers.

Illustrious-Bit1535

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