tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3240737.post111073740751076766..comments2023-10-02T23:19:20.226+10:00Comments on The long slow {typecast} blog: rino breebaarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08732964644950027323noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3240737.post-1111328200460902762005-03-21T00:16:00.000+10:002005-03-21T00:16:00.000+10:00Science in science fiction provides an alternative...Science in science fiction provides an alternative mythological space, allowing it to escape the monotheistic certainties of the last two thousand years. Paradoxically science helps revive the pre-rational, pagan imagination by rendering an omnipotent godhead obsolete. The return to myth explains all the plots with heroes and their guns, as well as the SF obsession with the unconscious and sex. <BR/><BR/>Kubrick knew this which is why his three sci-fi films (2001, Clockwork Orange, and Eyes Wide Shut - excluding for obvious reasons AI) have very little to do with technology or utopian visions. Kubrick didn't have an American sensibility, so the last thing he wanted was to make you feel better about yourself (cf. Spielberg). The medium of cinema allowed him to reinvent ancient myth visually - into what one might call, pretentiously, a mythology of space. In 2001, for example, the references to Odysseus are explicit, but Kubrick sabatoges the narrative arc or circle by setting Odysseus adrift - he wants to tell the story about an ever increasing distance; something I'm not sure is possible using words. Kubrick emphasizes the "nonverbal experience" of 2001 when he talked about the film. He also said:<BR/><BR/>"I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001 - but not in any traditional, anthropomorphic image of God. I don't believe in any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct an intriguing <I>scientific</I> definition of God..." (Playboy interview, 1968)<BR/><BR/>In Clockwork Orange the satirical context makes a political signification inevitable. And yet, here again the SF setting allows Kubrick a means of escape; to fashion a kind of apolitical iconography of violence - to the extent that's possible. In order to stage the drama Kubrick seems to draw freely from the conventions of commedia dell'arte. But in an extension of this, Kubrick throws into almost every scene all sorts of futuristic objects d'art, junk really, as if the grotesqueries themselves invited the characters to commit their surreal acts of violence. The surrounding space itself becomes a masked character prodding the others on. Here the films setting in the future seems to be a condition of possibility for the absurd juxtaposition of things.<BR/><BR/>The ambition of Eyes Wide Shut far exceeds that of his other films, and it's not clear that he succeeded. What seems to me remarkable though is that he should employ the elements of SF here to tell what is an explicitly inward journey - turning the whole inner / outer space distinction inside out. The scenes in the mansion could just as easily have been shot for an adult version of Star Wars. Kubrick uses the masks in particular to separate the voice from the body in a truly unnerving manner. I would go further and say it dehumanizes the voice in a way that HAL never could. Since sex is the one constant heading into the future, more so than death or taxes, Kubrick seems to be suggesting that the greatest threat to humanity's self-proximity lies in such acts of physical intimacy. Unfortunately the otherwise non-SF setting restricts the visual / spatial logic of the film to a mundane predictability for the most part. If only he had set it a hundred years in the future.... <BR/><BR/>Oh, and how will future generations solve the problem of solitude? They'll embrace it. Kubrick knew this too.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com