Liminal Space in Religious Experience in the Work of Stanley Kubrick
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SHUGENDŌ AND THE SHINING: LIMINAL SPACE IN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN THE WORK OF STANLEY KUBRICK CATERINA FUGAZZOLA CHRISTOPHER M. MOREMAN UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, EAST BAY [email protected] [email protected] _________________________________________________________________________________ The screen is a magic medium. point of view.4 For one, it is the first film in It has such power that it can retain interest which spirituality, however nondescript, is as it conveys emotions and moods that purposefully underlined, as Kubrick himself no other art form can hope to tackle. declared that “if the film stirs the emotions and Stanley Kubrick1 penetrates the subconscious of the viewer, if it stimulates, however inchoately, his mytholog- tanley Kubrick inspires a deep-seated ical and religious yearnings and impulses, then feeling of being in front of a puzzle that S it has succeeded.”5 James Ford further includes needs to be assembled using the innumerable 2001 among those films which might provide clues and visual hints that he, as a director “the ideological content for a sacred form of famous for being a perfectionist with an behavior.”6 Secondly, Parrill points out that obsession for details, disseminates in every Kubrick’s films before 2001: A Space Odyssey scene and image. In puzzling viewers, and “circle gingerly and ironically”7 around ideas pushing them toward deep, inner reflection, it is such as rebirth while those following it focus no exaggeration to say that much of Kubrick’s squarely on the spiritual evolution of production can rightly be described as spiritual. humankind. In these latter, the “main thrust is This paper will develop on three fronts, the first toward transcendence, that is, toward the desire two providing the framework for the third. We to move away from the three dimensions in will begin by arguing that the spiritual evolution which we are trapped across space and time of characters in Kubrick’s films is conveyed through the use of liminal spaces—“inter- structural phase[s] in social dynamics,”2 areas of transformation, or transition, which lie between social realities while at once outside of 4 William Parrill, “Stanley Kubrick,” pp. 189-195 in them.3 Following William Parrill, we consider John R. May & Michael Bird, eds., Religion in Film (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1982). 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as the milestone 5 of Kubrick’s career as a director from a spiritual Stanley Kubrick, interviewed in Joseph Gelmis, The Film Director as Superstar (London: Secker & Warburg, 1971), 304. 6 James L. Ford, “Buddhism, Christianity, and the Matrix: The Dialectic of Myth-Making in 1 Stanley Kubrick, quoted in Jerome Agel, The Making Contemporary Cinema,” Journal of Religion and Film of Kubrick’s 2001 (NY: Signet, 1970), 6. 4.2 (2000): Online: 2 Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of <http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/thematrix.htm>. Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, Accessed Sept. 10, 2014. Ford quotes Lauri Honko’s 1967), 98. definition of “myth” from “The Problem of Defining 3 For discussion of the multiple areas in which the Myth,” Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of concept of the liminal has been employed, see Bjørn Myth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984): Thomassen, “The Uses and Meanings of Liminality,” 49-51. International Political Anthropology 2.1 (2009): 5-27. 7 Parrill, “Stanley Kubrick,” 189. Symposia 6 (2014): 75-93 © The Author 2014. Published by University of Toronto. All rights reserved. 76 SYMPOSIA toward a higher form of existence.”8 The use of Kubrick encourages spiritual reflection through liminal space is evident in a number of his evocation of Rudolf Otto’s numinous—a Kubrick’s other films as well, with special “blank wonder, an astonishment that strikes us emphasis on how significant change in the dumb”12—through his use of unsettling characters always happens in such spaces. The episodes, scenes, dialogues, or characters second part of the paper will discuss the themselves. Indeed, Kubrick often seems to importance of liminal space in the Japanese want his viewers to experience some aspect of practice of Shugendō, a religious tradition that what Otto called the Wholly Other. takes the journey through the liminal world of The concept that plays a key role in the mountain as the pivotal aspect on the path achieving such an effect in Kubrick’s films is toward an enlightened rebirth. Finally, the that of liminality, what Victor Turner describes ultimate goal of this paper will be to as “the midpoint of transition in a status- demonstrate how liminality as a conduit through sequence between two positions.”13 Kubrick’s which one can achieve spiritual transformation characters are invariably portrayed as going can be seen in Kubrick’s work as exemplified through a complex process of evolution and by The Shining, the movie in which liminal personal growth, and the most significant space presents the strongest connection with the changes in their lives and attitudes tend to other-than-human. happen in a liminal space. In addition, the feeling of being in a liminal, unstable, in- Liminal Spaces and the Numinous in between space is often conveyed to the audience Kubrick by Kubrick’s use of photography and imagery Stanley Kubrick never fails to spark debate as well as by the liminality of the characters about the spiritual messages hidden in his themselves. films;9 this despite, or perhaps because of, his declared detachment from any religious Liminality as Transformation and Change affiliation.10 Not wanting to represent the values The connection between liminality and trans- of any particular religion, many of his films formation is presented explicitly in movies such nonetheless aim to stimulate in the audience as 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork deep reflection on the human condition,11 both Orange. In both cases, the male protagonist as psychologically complicated beings and as experiences a dramatic evolution presented as a infinitely small particles in the wide universe of transition between two states, from a familiar human—and other-than-human—experiences. dimension into something “other.” In 2001: A Space Odyssey, what one critic referred to as a “poem on the evolution of 14 8 Ibid., 189. mankind,” a physical object—the mysterious 9 See: Robert Castle, “The Dharma Blues,” Journal of monolith—serves to mediate the liminal, Religion and Film 6.1 (2002): Online: appearing as a constant in each of the four <http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/dharma.htm>. Accessed temporally distinct parts of the film. Clarke’s Sept. 10, 2014; Richard Comstock, “Myth and Contemporary Cinema,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 43.3 (1975): 598-600; Richmond B. Adams, “Mission (Not) Accomplished: Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Light and Darkness,” Journal of Religion and Film 11.1 (2007): Online: 12 Otto, The Idea of the Holy, 2nd ed., translated by John <http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol11no1/AdamsRevisio W. Harvey (1923; Oxford: Oxford University Press, nPath.htm>. Accessed Sept. 10, 2014. 1973), 26. 10 Stanley Kubrick, interviewed in Michael Ciment, 13 Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Kubrick: The Definitive Edition (NY: Faber and Faber Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, NY: Inc., 2001), 196. Cornell University Press, 1974), 237. 11 Kubrick in Gelmis, The Film Director as Superstar, 14 Paul Duncan, Stanley Kubrick: The Complete Films 300 and elsewhere. (NY: Taschen, 2003), 105. FUGAZZOLA AND MOREMAN / SHUGENDŌ AND THE SHINING 77 novelization of the film15 describes the monolith beings on board are apathetic, intellectually flat, as a “testing and teaching device used by higher and disconnected from any social contact. Frank intelligences,”16 but Kubrick felt that for his receives a video from his parents for his vision, the monolith ought not to be seen so birthday, which he watches emotionlessly and explicitly, leading to what he hoped would be a to which he cannot reply, while the most “more powerful and magical effect.”17 The “human” member of the crew appears to be monolith is an object from a world that is HAL, the central computer, “the latest result in “other,” but that for inexplicable reasons has machine intelligence.” established contact with the human world. Its mediating power pushes men beyond the Traversing the Liminal in Going Beyond the normal realm of perception, so that contact with Human the monolith coincides with evolutionary leaps Kubrick also seems to move beyond a mere for humanity. underlining of the transformative powers of the While no object comparable to the monolith liminal. Traversing the liminal is often paired exists in A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick makes juxtaposing child and adult and with human and the transformational nature of Alex explicit by non-human. Further, contact with liminal spaces portraying him as a character in constant or objects is, for Kubrick, not simply connected struggle between two opposites. His two with transformation, but it is sometimes also irreconcilable loves are ultra-violence and paired to the abandon of everything human. classical music, and he is depicted as a character In 2001, for instance, humans become like living in an evident black/white contrast: in the machines and machines like humans. The effect first scene of the film, Alex is dressed in white is such that the only death that successfully with a black hat and black boots, he is sitting in shakes the audience is that of HAL: his slow a white bar with black walls with white writing disconnection, accompanied by his increasingly on them, and is drinking milk (that apart from weakened pleas for mercy, terminates with the being white, is also symbolic of infancy and computer’s return to a stage of innocence as he innocence) effectively darkened by drugs.