Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut
-
Upload
tiramisu226 -
Category
Documents
-
view
1.396 -
download
9
description
Transcript of Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut
![Page 1: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
FeminismsFeminisms inin
Stanley Stanley Kubrick'sKubrick's
Eyes Wide ShutEyes Wide Shut
Emily G. BrownOld Dominion University,
2009
![Page 2: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
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
![Page 3: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
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
![Page 4: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
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”
![Page 5: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
The Male Order
![Page 6: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
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
![Page 7: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
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
![Page 8: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
“Unmasking” of Traditional Roles
![Page 9: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
Emotional Honesty v. Denial
![Page 10: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
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
![Page 11: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
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
![Page 12: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
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
![Page 13: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
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.
![Page 14: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
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.
![Page 15: Feminisms in Kubrick\'s Eyes Wide Shut](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022081414/54b3ca8a4a7959b10c8b45e7/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
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.