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FeminismsFeminisms inin
Stanley Stanley Kubrick'sKubrick's
Eyes Wide ShutEyes Wide Shut
Emily G. BrownOld Dominion University,
2009
Why EWS?“If you go back and look at the contemporary reactions to any Kubrick picture…you’ll see that all his films were initially misunderstood.”
~ Martin Scorsese As quoted in Michel Ciment, Kubrick: The Definitive Edition, trans. Gilbert Adair
(New York: Faber and Faber, 2000), vii
• Most of Kubrick’s films are misinterpreted from the onset
• Yet be analyzed with a feminist lens
Feminist Analysis Examines
• Why men are more powerful and men’s production, ideas and activities are seen as having greater value and higher status than women’s
• Public/private divide central to the division of man-made reality
• Women’s limited identity and self-esteem by investing in the only channels open to them:
the pursuit of sexual fulfillment, motherhood, and the possession of material things
Whose Eyes Do We Follow?
“Such scenes comment on the conventional way of seeing--rooted in the notions of perspective, determined by social and economic practices of the production and consumption of prestige, essentially masculine -- at work in art, film, and advertising.”
~ Stephen Mattessick“Grotesque Caricature: Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut
as the Allegory of Its Own Reception”
The Male Order
Start - Treatment of the Sexes
Men Womenmore powerful in creating shared reality - Bill/All Men
highly sexual & aggressive - All Women
production, ideas, & activities are seen as more valuable and of higher status- Bill/All Men
identities limited to wife, mother, or whore - All Women
operate within a Freudian matrix - Bill/All Men
highly psychological - ALICE
possess multiple identities - Bill/All Men
meet structural opposition during search for self - ALICE/All Women
hold the gaze -Bill/All Men
spectacle: to be looked at - ALICE/All Women
search for self streamlined to core - Bill
all defined through men’s minds -ALICE/All Women
End - Treatment of the Sexes
Men Womenmore powerful in creating shared reality - ALICE
highly sexual & aggressive -BILL
production, ideas, & activities are seen as more valuable and of higher status - ALICE
limited identities -BILL
operate within a Freudian matrix - ALICE
highly psychological
possess multiple identities -ALICE
meet structural opposition during search for self - BILL
hold the gaze - ALICE Spectacle: to be looked at - BILL
search for self streamlined to core
All defined through men’s minds -BILL
“Unmasking” of Traditional Roles
Emotional Honesty v. Denial
What does this role reversal represent?
• Calls attention to other alternatives than binary thinking
• Emphasizes questions of reality production (internal/external or both)
• Highlights women’s disadvantaged status
Points to Insecurity of Both Sexes
• Extensions of women’s identity point to a foundation of instability for a woman
• Also points to one for the dominators as well:
“a core ambivalence or unconscious anxiety on the part of the dominators, which threatens their power from the inside and admits the potential of resistance from the marginalized”
~Norma BroudeReclaiming Female Agency – Feminist Art After Postmodernism.
California: University of California Press, 2005
Women’s Limited Identity
• “insert{ing} ourselves, through the psychic flux of imagination, at one and the same moment as both creator and created, self and other, identity and difference
• draw{ing} on exiting social institutions and cultural conventions to produce new images of self and society, which in turn feeds back into the cycle of representations”
~Anthony ElliottConcepts of the Self, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001, 149
Men’s Constant Reassertion
• “But until the masculine identity does not depend on men’s proving themselves, their doing will be a reaction to insecurity rather than a creative exercise of their humanity”
~Nancy Chodorow Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory.
Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989.
Eyes Wide Shut
• But for Kubrick, EWS presents a visual starting place to examine our beliefs, even if it takes transposing a woman’s subjugation on to a man in order to validate her views.
• If it takes this transference of the female condition to a man, no longer preserving masculine power by allowing the cultural repression of females to be felt, we must rebalance the larger picture to include women’s self-chosen identity.
Works Cited
Broude, Norma and Mary D. Garrrard, eds. Reclaiming Female Agency – Feminist Art After Postmodernism. California: University of California Press, 2005.
Ciment Michel. Kubrick: The Definitive Edition, trans. Gilbert Adair. New York: Faber and Faber, 2000.
Chodorow, Nancy J. Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory. Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989.
Elliot, Anthony. Concepts of the Self, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001.
Mattessick, Stephen. “Grotesque Caricature: Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut as the Allegory of Its Own Reception.” Postmodern Culture, Volume 10,
Number 2, January 2000, 9.