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.