Depth of Field

Depthof Field Depthof Field S tanley K ubrick, Film, and the Uses of History edited by Geoffrey Cocks, James Diedrick, and Glenn Perusek the university of wisconsin press The University of Wisconsin Press 1930 Monroe Street Madison, Wisconsin 53711 www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/ 3 Henrietta Street London wc2e 8lu, England Copyright © 2006 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved 54321 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Depth of Weld : Stanley Kubrick, Wlm, and the uses of history / edited by GeoVrey Cocks, James Diedrick, and Glenn Perusek. p. cm.—(Wisconsin Wlm studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-299-21610-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-299-21610-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn-13: 978-0-299-21614-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-299-21614-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Kubrick, Stanley—Criticism and interpretation. I. Cocks, GeoVrey. II. Diedrick, James. III. Perusek, Glenn. IV. Series. pn1998.3.k83d47 2006 791.4302´33´092—dc22 2005022821 On s’engage et puis on voit. —napoleon The strong do what they can and the weak suVer what they must. —thucydides In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant. —theodor adorno and max horkheimer Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Deep Focus 3 geoffrey cocks, james diedrick, and glenn perusek First Take: Words and Pictures The Written Word and the Very Visual Stanley Kubrick 31 vincent lobrutto Writing The Shining 55 diane johnson The PumpkiniWcation of Stanley K. 62 frederic raphael Mazes and Meanings Kubrick’s Armies: Strategy, Hierarchy, and Motive in the War Films of Stanley Kubrick 77 glenn perusek Subjected Wills: The Antihumanism of Kubrick’s Later Films 101 pat j. gehrke and g. l. ercolini 2001: A Cold Descent 122 mark crispin miller viii Contents Deviant Subjects in Foucault and A Clockwork Orange: Criminological Constructions of Subjectivity 146 pat j. gehrke Pictures, Plurality, and Puns: A Visual Approach to Barry Lyndon 165 bille wickre Death by Typewriter: Stanley Kubrick, the Holocaust, and The Shining 185 geoffrey cocks Full-Metal-Jacketing, or Masculinity in the Making 218 paula willoquet-maricondi Final Take: Eyes Wide Shut In Dreams Begin Responsibilities 245 jonathan rosenbaum Freud, Schnitzler, and Eyes Wide Shut 255 peter loewenberg Introducing Sociology 280 tim kreider Filmography 301 Bibliography 305 Contributors 309 Index 313 Acknowledgments Depth of Field: Stanley Kubrick, Film, and the Uses of History grew directly out of a symposium held in spring 2000 at Albion College in Michigan: “The Eyes Have It: Stanley Kubrick, Film, and the Uses of History.” The symposium was sponsored by the college’s Center for Interdisciplinary Study in History and Culture. Our Wrst debt, then, is to Albion College for its generous support of the symposium and for interdisciplinary in- quiry more generally. The symposium itself attracted some of the most important Kubrick critics and scholars from around the country, several of whom have contributed essays to this volume—Vincent LoBrutto, Pat J. Gehrke, Mark Crispin Miller, Jonathan Rosenbaum. In addition to their prepared remarks, they visited classes and met with students, giving gra- ciously of their time and expertise. The preparation of the manuscript itself was expedited by Marilyn Kniburys, secretary in the Philosophy and Reli- gious Studies Department at Albion College; Kay Pierce, secretary in the English Department at Albion College; and Alice Moore of the Albion College Library. The editors also wish to thank Sarah Cocks and LeeAnne Richardson for their patience during the gestation of this challenging, demanding, and rewarding project. ix Depthof Field Introduction Deep Focus geoffrey cocks, james diedrick, and glenn perusek “Film giant Stanley Kubrick dies at 70” reads the headline in a March 1999 issue of the British Journal of Photography. The obituary notes proudly that Kubrick was a faithful reader of the BJP and that while he was of course best known as one of the great Wlm directors, “[h]is interest in still pictures never diminished.”1 Indeed, Kubrick’s passion for photography remained an essential part of his Wlmmaking not just in terms of camera work or lighting but in his conviction of the sheer power of the visual image to capture truths about the world. Like many Wlm directors, from Jean Ren- oir to William Wyler, Kubrick displayed a predilection in his camera shots for deep focus, “an eVect of lens and lighting that makes everything in the composition, from the closest object in the frame to the farthest, appear to be equally clear.”2 In photography this technique is called “depth of Weld” and is a way of expanding the visual choices open to both photog- rapher and viewer. In Wlm, it is most closely associated with the mise-en- scène school of Wlm theorist André Bazin, who stressed the importance of the camera’s shot—as oppposed to the editor’s cut—in portraying the world of human feeling and action realistically. For Kubrick, depth of Weld was a vital means of opening up the space created by the visual image for the inclusion of the many details of setting, lighting, color, property, and action that would allow him to communicate a—his—world of ideas. Depth of Weld is an appropriate description both of Kubrick’s work and the contents of this volume of essays. Kubrick focused deeply on a broad array of subjects and Wlm genres. Likewise, Depth of Field: Stanley Kubrick, Film, and the Uses of History probes deeply and broadly into Kubrick’s oeuvre. Kubrick’s thirteen feature Wlms from 1953 to 1999 cover a range of genres 3 4 geoffrey cocks, james diedrick, and glenn perusek from Wlm noir, crime thriller, war Wlm, historical epic, and black comedy to love story, science Wction, social satire, horror movie, and murder mystery. But each of the carefully, even painstakingly, crafted Wlms Kubrick directed betrays the consistent themes and concerns of an acute and pessimistic ob- server of the modern world and the twentieth century in particular. The essays in this volume come from a variety of disciplines appropriate—indeed, necessary—for understanding the wide range of issues and events Kubrick addressed from the depth and breadth of his own reading, research, and observation. Kubrick’s Worldview Kubrick’s worldview is captured, we think, in the epigraphs to this volume. Napoleon fascinated Kubrick and was to be the subject of a Wlm he exhaustively planned but never made. Napoleon’s words, “One begins a battle and then one sees,” capture the contingent whirl of events in battle and in the world to which Kubrick in his own time was a witness. The words also characterize Kubrick’s method of Wlmmaking. While he was famous for exercising rigorous control over all aspects of his Wlms, he also encouraged his collaborators to experiment and create as they went along. Kubrick believed in being surprised by how things developed. This habit of “waitful watching” was a response to the volatile world of human experience rich in possibilities. It was also in line with Kubrick’s experience as a chess player, where strategy is a matter not only of preparation but of adapting diVerent approaches and tactics as the game develops. His identi- Wcation with Napoleon was also a result of the “will to power” within him- self, all those antisocial and aggressive drives he, like Sigmund Freud, saw acted out in everyday life and in history, and which in his case were subli- mated into imperial control over his Wlms. His realistic, resigned and— because he was a skeptic and a moralist rather than a cynic—outraged view of a world dominated by systems of power and oppression reXects Thucyd- ides’ famous observation from The Peloponnesian War: “The strong do what they can and the weak suVer what they must.” These words apply to the world into which Kubrick was born, in which modern states had at their disposal unprecedented technical and bureaucratic powers and re- sources. Like the photojournalist he was before turning to Wlm, Kubrick used the camera to capture truths about this world, believing that Wlm could transcend the ability of words and traditional narrative to do so. His only aYrmation in the face of twentieth-century disasters was a limited Introduction: Deep Focus 5 pragmatic faith in democracy and the limited potential for art to eVect change.3 Kubrick’s work can be seen as bringing the terrible news of twentieth- century history—and the humbling message of twentieth-century social and psychological theory—to a mass audience in the form of the charac- teristically twentieth-century medium of Wlm. In this sense he is part of a tradition of cultural criticism that includes writers like Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Theodor Adorno, and Michel Foucault. For Weber, modern capitalist societies are in the grips of a rational calculus of self- interest and gain generalized into a force that disciplines all members of these societies. The Protestant ethic’s ascetic self-denial and devotion to calling dovetailed with the imperatives of a rising capitalist system, Weber observed. In the modern world, the desire for gain, which Weber sees as irrational, was harnessed to rational calculation. Weber identiWes capitalism with the “taming of this irrational motivation, or at least with its rational tempering.”4 With the ascetic work ethic dominating “inner-worldly moral- ity,” we witness the rise of a powerful ideology that “determines, with over- whelming coercion, the style of life not only of those directly involved in business but of every individual who is born into this mechanism.” While seventeenth-century puritanism characterized concern for outward possessions as a thin coat, it had, for Weber, been transformed into a stahl- hartes Gehäuse, a steel-hardened housing, or, as some would translate it, an iron cage.5 This rationalist macrocosm could be confronted by “new prophets” or possibly “powerful old ideas and ideals will be reborn at the end of this monstrous development.”But Weber was not optimistic.

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