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When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss.
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A meme or milestone.
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Music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org, jack Daniels and Old no. 7 are registered trademarks.
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Tennessee Whiskey 40% alcohol by volume.
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Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee.
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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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So far this fall podcast season, we've discussed the international landscape with political writers, historians of ideas, and social theorists. But today we're going to look at the state of the world through the eyes of Stanley Kubrick, whose films explore, among other things, timeless themes related to conflict and violence, state power and social control, and the relationship between advanced technology and human progress. Kubrick the artist, thinker, storyteller, challenges us to look beyond the stories we tell to and about ourselves. With images and narratives bombarding our attention and battling for our allegiances, Kubrick can help us transform the screens that invite in these forces. His films can empower us to better understand those elements, seen and unseen, that shape our world. Welcome to International Horizons, a podcast of the Ralph Bunch Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues. My name is Eli Karetney. I teach political theory and international relations at Baruch College and have for years been the Deputy Director of the Ralph Bunch Institute at the Graduate center of the City University of New York. With our director, John Torpy, on leave this year, I have the privilege of serving as the Institute's interim director, which means I have the honor of hosting this podcast. Here with me today is Nathan Abrams, professor in Film at Bangor University, where he directs the center for Film, Television and Screen Studies. He's also the co founder of Jewish Film and New Media and International Journal. Professor Abrams is the author of numerous books, including Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick in the Making of His Final Film. Stanley Kubrick, New York Jewish intellectual and Kubrick in Odyssey. Welcome, Nathan, for joining us. Thank you for joining us on International Horizons.
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My pleasure. Happy to be here.
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Let's start by talking about Dr. Strangelove, a movie about the madness of nuclear weapons, the paradoxes, nuclear deterrence, the danger of aligning state power and a certain kind of scientific genius, strategic necessity from one angle, sheer lunacy from another. Kubrick was, of course, pointing beyond the Cold War. So I'd like to begin by asking you, what relevance do you see in this film for our current era?
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Well, the interesting thing about Dr. Strangelove is just how often the memes of. Of to, say, the ending of the film. Well, near the end of the film, when major King Kong is riding the bond towards total nuclear destruction, how often memes are recycled from that film putting on different presidents, whether it's, say, Ronald Reagan or, currently, President Trump. So something in that particular image and how that image acts as a metonym for the entire film speaks to people through the ages. So that idea of kind of systems failing and. And human. And humans going. Humans going wrong really, really speaks to people. And I'm always struck by how often themes from Kubrick's films reoccur through the ages straight. You know, the whole idea of Dr. Strangelove or the Strangelove effect. You know, one sees other examples in the how from 2001 is frequently referenced or here's Johnny from the Shining. How often those images appear cartoons and memes. So it's clearly something in the film speaks to people. Even though it's very much set in that period at that early 60s of the cold War and very much is of his period and it's rooted in that. Yet I think people see something in it. The coins, which have a decade, they're positioned in.
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B
Thank you. That's interesting. And what about the kind of characters as allegorical representations? I hold off a minute on getting to the character Dr. Strangelove as a kind of compilation, but maybe we can talk about a few of the other characters from that film. I'm thinking Jack D. Ripper. I see kind of pale reflections of Jack Ripper as an allegory on social media. All the time. Where sexual metaphors and conspiracy thinking and militant nationalism converge. Can you say a few words about that character or maybe others that stand out for you?
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Yeah, that is interesting. You've just put a thought in my head that I haven't previously had before and before I forget it, I'll say it now. Which is QAnon. Right. The idea of a. You know, at the heart of the QAnon conspiracy is the idea of child abuse. And therefore, there's a sexual. A sexual element at the heart of this sort of grand political conspiracy. And I hadn't really made that connection with. With Dr. Strangelove. But now that you've said it. I know you didn't say QAnon, but that's exactly what came to mind. I think what's really interesting is, I mean, sexuality and sex is often featured in Kubrick's films as this kind of signature theme from his very earliest documentaries, especially the Seafarers, through to, obviously, Eyes Wide Shuts where sex is a key theme in that film. And that really is a film about, in a way, sexual conspiracy. So we see that as a theme that just runs throughout Kubrick's work. Anyway, he had a very kind of childish or sophomoric teenage adolescent sense of humor. So I think that whole side of it appealed to him in Dr. Strangelove. But obviously, the movie's making a deeper connection between the conjunction of power or the fear of the loss of power and sexuality in that figure of Dr. Strangelove. So, you know, physical power or the projection of power, as in military power B52 bombers is very much equated with impotence as in sexual impotence. So, you know, that's the triggering event. And whilst I'm thinking of it, I don't know if you've seen the movie One Battle After Another, which I do recommend. It's PT Anderson's latest. Very much speaks for the current moment. Reflections on sort of immigration and sanctuary cities and ice.
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In.
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There is a character called Steve Lockjaw. Right. And the way he is played, particularly at the end in the movie. Don't worry, it's not a spoiler. He very much resembles Dr. Strangelove. And I think that's a deliberate homage by P.T. anderson, obviously that admirer of Kubrick, to put this strange, loving character in a film that is so much of its moment. So it speaks to that first question that you asked me that this strange love character, he even speaks the dialogue. This character speaks is almost the same, not quite word for word, as the lecture that Jack D. Ripper gives Captain Mandrake about how women sense his power. And he almost says the same thing word for word. And it also answers your first question about how strange love recurs. That in this movie about immigration and the clamping down of immigration very much speaks to the current moment in the U.S. there's a strange love reference.
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I haven't seen the movie yet. I'm planning to see it. From what I understand, it was very influenced by Thomas Pynchon's Bark Is Right.
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Yeah. It was an adaptation of the Pynchon novel. So I'm not so familiar with the novel. I just went in kind of blind, as it were, and just watched the film. But it struck me. So, I mean, I saw other Kubrickian references in the film, more visual ones in the way that you might. I mean, another director one could talk about is obviously Jordan Peeler, particularly Get out and Us, not with reference to Strangelove, but he uses a lot of Kubrickian references to reflect obviously on race in contemporary America. So what I find interesting in Kubrick's films is people from widely different backgrounds and generations see something in the films that appeal to them visually but also thematically for them to articulate their concerns decades later. You know, we don't think of Kubrick as being a particularly right on director. His depictions of race leave a lot to be desired. His actual casting of people of color and non white people is very limited. But yet a director, say, like Jordan Peele, can still see something in the work where he thinks, I'm going to reference this not in an attack Kubrick way to articulate my vision. And I think that's the same with P.T. anderson. I don't know the book well enough to know whether that book's Kubrickian in any way. But I'm pretty sure this is PT Anderson's projection rather than Thomas Pynchon's. And interesting. Kubrick wanted to adapt. I think it was Gravity's Rainbow. That's right. Years ago.
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B
I don't want to get ahead of myself. I'm thinking now about some literary references, literary influences on these kind of artistic directors and thinking about where Kafka plays a role in Kubrick's corp. I mean, we can hold off on that. I was planning to kind of think through some of those influences in a bit. But since we're bringing up other directors, I'm thinking Christopher Nolan here in various films. But I'm thinking even in Oppenheimer, there seems to be this kind of some Kubrickian and Interstellar, these kind of very Kubrickian themes. Say a word about maybe where Kubrick influenced Nolan's filmmaking.
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Yeah, I mean, one of my standard lines to my students is this. I go, whether you like Kubrick or not, or whether you think we should be studying Kubrick or not. Right. So obviously there's a debate about that kind of curriculum. I go, pretty much most filmmaking in the. Well, at least us Filmmaking in his wake has been touched by him in some way. And therefore, the stuff that you like, I say to the students, whether you like him or not, it's probably being influenced by it, whether it's the Simpsons or Nolan. And obviously, Nolan is a fan. I. I mean, Nolan's obsessed with 2001. Right. And he's obsessed with the. The actual. Obviously, call it photochemical process that was used to make the film. And he did that restoration of 2001 that was shown, I think, at Cannes a year or two ago. From, like, the original print, we see elements of 2001, say, and. Well, obviously Interstellar seen it to comment much more than that. But I think any science fiction of that nature is going to, in some way reference 2001. I'm thinking also more of Inception, where it's very much like 2001. Meet Citizen Kane by the end. So, yeah, Nolan is a director. I mean, I'm not such a fan of Nolan's work. I think two of them are brilliant. Memento. I don't know. I liked Oppenheimer. Everything in between looks great. Sounds great, but what's it saying?
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Interesting. Interesting.
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But that's maybe for someone else to make that argument.
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Thinking about Oppenheimer, I'm hoping to have Kai Bird, who works at the Graduate center, actually, just above us on the fifth floor, hoping to have him on the podcast to talk about, to kind of go back to some themes in Oppenheimer, but hold off on that for a time. Just one more question about. About Dr. Strangelove, the character Strangelove himself. You know, it's been said that he's a kind of compilation character. Teller, von Neumann, von Braun. Where are you on that question? What are the real influences? And beyond that, what's Kubrick doing with that character? What's the message there?
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Okay, so with Dr. Strah, I'm in a probably minority of one in my reading of that character, and that he's a composite of a. About seven different characters, some of whom you've mentioned. There are others. Herman Kahn is another one. Irving, John. Good people who, you know, mathematicians, people worked on The Enigma project and other. So he's got this combination of characters, right? So let's say seven. I don't remember the exact amount. Six of whom are Jewish. Right. And the seventh wasn't Jewish. And the seventh is Werner von Braun. And then when he's working on 2001 Kubrick's working with people who used to work for Wernher von Braun. And he says, and please tell Werner I wasn't having a go at him. All right, so let's take Kubrick at his word and take Werner von Braun out of the equation. Then everyone that Dr. Strangelove is based on is Jewish and interesting. When Midge Dector wrote her review of Dr. Strangelove in Commentary magazine in 64. And very interesting, given where Commentary was going. Quite get there in 64, but where it was going. And Kubrick, she loved the movie but she criticized Kubrick for not going far enough in her characterization of Dr. Strangelove. She said, why didn't you make him Jewish? That really would have made the point. So where was Kubrick going with that? Well, I think the quote I like is he described. I haven't got the exact words. Strangelove is a kind of vaudeville parody or caricature of a Nazi which I'm pretty certain influenced the producers because Mel Brooks was in the. Obviously would have seen the film but he was in one of the early audiences for it. And so he's a Nazi in the way that Mel Brooks did Nazis in the Producers. And not to be taken entirely seriously, I mean, my argument is that he's actually a Jewish character who's got this Nazi arm grafted on him as opposed to the other way around where he's a Nazi with this arm on him whereas the body's betrayed the arm and the arm remains Nazi. It's kind of like which. I might mix that up. He's got this Jewish body with this Nazi arm that obviously wants to strangle this Jewish body because he's based on all these. All these Jewish characters. The one character that I forgot to add in that he's largely based on is Stanley Kubrick himself. There's pictures on the set where Peter Sayles and Kubrick are wearing the same outfit. And part of the accent that Peter Sellars is affecting is in part based on Kubrick's. And to build that argument, their relationship developed, really, when they worked together on Lolita a couple of years earlier. And in that, my argument is that Quilty, the character that Peter Sennis plays is Kubrick's dark double so much of it is based on Kubrick. And, you know, bear in mind, one of the ways that we, at least I analyze film studies is to look at the casting. And Peter Sellers is a Jewish actor. So for me, you know, I think it's a bit more simple than just say, he's a Nazi. He's a clear caricature of one played by a Jew as a caricature, but also based on all these other Jews, maybe when he's trying to strangle himself, as he's trying to strangle that Jewishness out of him because part of his arm or part of him is also Nazi. But I think there's also something deeper. I think what's interesting that I put in the 2018 book and it's probably, I think, repeated a bit in the Kubrick Odyssey biography, is that when Kubrick was doing his research for Dr. Strangelove, he was conflating the idea of nuclear Holocaust with a small H with what was beginning to be known as the Holocaust, as in the final solution of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. And in his research, he's reading people like Hannah Arendt and Bruno Bettelheim and Raoul Hilberg and that type of literature. And he has these cards, these reference cards. And on the reference cards, he describes the idea of Jews cooperating in their own destruction, which is very much an idea that Raoul Hilberg came up with in Hannah Arendt popularized with her series of articles on Eichmann in Jerusalem, a Report on the Banality of Evil. And if we do read Strangelove as Jewish and not simply as a Nazi, you can see how then that fits in with that idea that Jews are cooperating their own destruction. It's also interesting that on the crew of the bomber. Of the bomber is a Jewish navigator. So in that crew, he. He has that multicultural crew, one of whom is Jewish.
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I'm going to spend a little bit of time soon in thinking through some of these. The Jewish influences and the idea of a dark double. And. But I want to first stay here for a moment on the Strange Love character as having a kind of maybe allegorical significance with a kind of political inflection. And was he saying something there also about the influences, the kind of post World War II influences on America? And kind of looking beyond the Cold War or kind of the initial stages of the Cold War, did some German influences find their way into the US that transformed the US Thinking here about Nazi scientists like von Braun and others who made their way from the Nazi regime to the US and had a profound Impact on technological developments, rocketry, NASA. Is he pointing in that direction?
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A
Yeah, I think it's difficult to escape that conclusion. You know, we have a Nazi signed nuclear scientist at the heart of this film. I think it's inescapable to think of Werner von Braun, and he probably was thinking of Werner von Braun. He just tried to backpedal when he wanted to work with. Work with people. And Arthur C. Clarke, I think, was friends with Wernher von Braun. So I think, yeah, there's probably allusions to Operation Paperclip and, you know, the hiring of Nazi scientists, but, you know, and. And that kind of race with the Soviet Union to. To get the best that they could from. From. From. From Nazi Germany. I suppose there's also just that influence of other Germany on American life. I mentioned having Arendt already, but Frederick Wertheim and among others, so that that cultural influence, you know, the Frankfurt School probably already also comes through. I think that in a sense, that relates more to Lolita, I suppose, with that character of Dr. Zemf. But I think it runs. I mean, Kubrick was fascinated with all things German, so, yeah, I would see no surprise in him having that in there as well. I think what the beauty of such a character is is that he can be read on many levels. And I think it's not so simple to simply peg him as. Oh, where he's clearly this. Right. Yeah. My argument is that underlying all this, like, Nazi Nazism of Dr. Strangelove, this is Jewishness. So it's not so simple to say he's a Nazi. He's a parody of a Nazi as seen by Jews. And he's not entirely Jewish either. So, no, I'm not going to swing the other way.
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B
So looking beyond just this film and thinking now about kind of all of his war movies, I want to spend a little time talking about what his war films and of all the movies he's made, I think almost half of them were somehow dealing with war paths. Of glory, Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove. Of course, Full Metal Jacket also projects he never got a chance to do, like his Napoleon Project and Aryan Papers. So I guess I'm asking first, why was he so interested in war and what. How was that the space through which he said something about human nature and history and kind of revealing, maybe a tragic kind of realism. And then maybe others have called him a kind of pessimistic thinker. And I think you pushed back on that characterization. Right. But maybe kind of first point to why people think that and then maybe explain why that's, you know, a mischaracterization.
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A
I'm not saying it's a mischaracterization. I think what there is a tendency to do, and it's. It's ever more pronounced these days, is to make up your mind first and then find the evidence for it later. And I think in the case of Kubrick, they've decided he's. He's pessimistic and misanthropic based on what they see in the films. And the films do sustain that reading. I argue, though you can look at it alternatively, that when one looks through the endings of his films from all of them onwards, that one can read a positive ending. You know, there's rebirths. There's rebirth in Killer's Kiss. All right, It's a bit more of a bleak ending. In the Killing pars of Glory, the soldiers are rehumanized at the end. Spartacus. Spartacus. Virinia gives birth to his son. There's a pregnancy at the end of Lolita, there's Dr. Strangelove. Ends with one giant nuclear orgasm. 2001. There's another birth at the end of 2000. See where I'm going with this, right? And that goes right through. What's the very final word of the Kubrick's Earth. I don't know what language we can use on this podcast, but it's the first commandment in the Bible to go forth and multiply, right? So the implication being that couple go home, have sex, and maybe produce another child. So another image of birth. So, you know, this is where I see positivity in Kubrick's films. And if one wants to see negativity, you'll find negativity. I think the film sustained both readings. I actually think that this idea of being a pessimist and a misanthrope is based on a misunderstanding of what his actual life was like. Many people think he was the hermetic director sealed off from the world that didn't like people very much. The actual evidence is the opposite.
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B
I'm going to tease this out a little. I'm going to. Don't yet explain where Kafka influences Kubrick, but I've read in several places that you've written a quote where Kubrick says something like, I'm not a Kafka sitting at home alone, right? Lonely, and his dog, fat kids, wife. He might have, after moving to London, might have spent most of his time at home. But this was not. He's not a misanthrope, right?
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A
No, I Mean, no. I mean, he was a sociable guy. He didn't go out because he didn't need to go out. And when he went out, it was a disaster. The world came to Kubrick and. And he had this big, large kitchen, and it was open. There's air in. And. And he'd eat together with. You know, he'd make his films at home and the crew would be, you know, with. That part of the film would be at home, and he. They would all be eating together and people be in and out the house. And, you know, for all the negative memoirs that the people he's collaborated with, particularly the screenwriters who usually disgruntled for other reasons, which is how they were treated as screenwriters. I mean, that's a different conversation. All talk about how they were invited into Kubrick's house and would eat with. With the family and people came in and out. And it's a very collaborative style of filmmaking that involved his daughters and his wife. And so you do get this sense of a really sociable Kuzberg. And I think it's very hard to square that with this pessimistic image in his films.
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B
That's certainly the impression I got from the Michael Harrod book. Right. But he also acknowledges, despite being a kind of affable guy when it came to kind of business decisions, paying his writers, that was a different story.
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A
Yeah. I mean, as a boss, I'm not going to defend his behavior as a boss. It did leave a lot to be desired. And that's where lots of the rumors come from. When he was devoted to a film project, he wanted his crew working 25, eight, you know, 25 hours, eight days a week for industry, minimum. Right. And he didn't then understand why they weren't as devoted to his vision as he was. So, yeah, he could be sorry.
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B
So back to the.
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A
The.
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B
His kind of supposed pessimism or I would say a kind of tragic realism. He.
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A
He.
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B
I say something about the way Clockwork Orange ended and how he chose to kind of. To end it differently than Burgess ended the novel. That final chapter of the novel, Kubrick moves in a different direction. So maybe say a few words about that and what that might reveal about his worldview.
- [26:43]
A
Well, that's another positive ending because Alex goes back to having socially sanctioned sex. Right. That. That, I think, is filmed in such a way as to show that that is a. Sorry. The words come where, you know, that's a consensual relationship, unlike what happens earlier in the film. And he's Applauded by those sort of grandees in Edwardian dress around him. And so. And it's a much nicer image than some of the ones we'd seen previously. So we have a more positive image of a sexual relationship. Want of a better word, at the end of the film. And again, it's another image of procreation, hopefully with a positive outcome. So I think there is a positive outcome at the end of there. Not least because in the way that Kubrick presents it, arguably the greatest violence done is that of the state to Alex and then the writer to. There goes one of my dogs, I will explain, also have animals here that's very Kubrickian. And when he was editing, his cats would sit on the Steenberg. So who knows? They might have had a paw in cutting. So the Shining. So I think there's. You know, one could argue that the violence also that Alex does to the various women in the film is the greatest violence. And that's true. And I think also. But the way that he really. And the way that sequence in the writer's house is shot certainly is quite visceral. But also the way that there's something even more so about the way he clamps Alex's eyelids open. You know, I think you can almost, like, sort of cringe thinking about having that done to you. And I think Kubrick was really worried about the state destroying free will in terms of. That's the source of your creative artistic inspiration. So he's probably thinking, what if they did that?
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B
To me, that's really interesting, that perspective because I think that flips on its head one way of understanding these different endings. Because there's a reading out there that in the Burgess novel there's a kind of hopeful idealism that the tools to social engineering state violence can have some kind of positive impact. It can change us. It can make us better. And Kubrick, as you say, seems horrified at that prospect. And I think, as a moral matter, if I could say it that way but also as a practical matter, that it just can't work that something about human nature is kind of. There's a permanence and a kind of imperfectability that. That will make state violence nothing but. But violence with. With no. No kind of transformative, positive prospect. What do you. What do you think about that?
- [29:47]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think what he's really taking on there in the 50s, in the 60s, is. Is B.F. skinner's idea of behavioralism and that you can kind of train the badness out of an individual. You know, this is very much in vogue. If you. What you think is happening through the 50s and other movies and stuff is that that fear of brainwashing, that think of the Manchurian Candidate and that the Soviets are attempting to do with the Pavlovian responses. And then you have brainwashing and then fizz. And then also cults doing that through the 60s, early 70s. And I think he can see that that's a very dangerous tool in the hands of the state because what they could do on a mass scale, because if you suddenly get rid of the spark, although that spark might lead to violence, in the case of Alex, it also is the same spark that leads to all the creative forces. I mean, just to give a story, during the make of 2001, he was sitting around with Dan Richter and Roman Polanski and they were discussing whether they'd taken drugs, right? And they were saying that the sugar cubes that Kubrick had like drugs. And Kubrick said, no, I never have and I never will. And they went, why not you square? And he said, because I don't know where the source of my creativity comes from. I'm afraid that if I take drugs, I'll lose it. And I think that gives an explanation as to what he saw as the horror of the Ludovico technique and that he didn't believe in behavioralism. And very much his image is, well, all we do is become an automata if we're all conditioned to behave the same way. And hence why he wants to rehabilitate Alex, which is different to the rehabilitation that Burgess did for him, which is he becomes a sort of fully reformed character in society, but not really him. Whereas Kubrick wants the older Alex back, however bad, because at least he's got free will and creativity. And the violence is that of the Ludovico treatment. Then when he's forced to jump out of the window. And that very clever technique he uses to show that. Because he really wants you to empathize with Alex at that point, that's the first person. A subjective shot when he throws the camera out the window, which I think is an expensive piece of kit. Yeah, he wrapped it up. But Kubrick, being a notoriously cheap producer would not have wanted to destroy a camera willy nilly. But you considered that shot important enough to want to try it.
- [32:10]
B
And what you mentioned, this last point about how Alex is depicted throughout the film, it's also different from the novel, right? In the novel, Alex is not at all a sympathetic character where Kubrick depicts him in a different way in A very complex way. And yet there are moments all throughout where we feel sympathy for Alex. Right. We're kind of cheering for this anti hero.
- [32:36]
A
Yeah. I think in his publicity that he did for the film he compared into Forgive Me. I'm trying to think which Shakespearean king I think is Richard II that you also hate? And, like, at the same time, he made him. This is charming character. I mean. I mean, I know this might be saying more about me than what anyone intended but, you know, the way that Malcolm McDowell plays him, it's his perspective, it's his narration. He's very charming. He's very erudite. He's an extremely good way with words. And I think Kubrick has created him as a sympathetic character. Whether you sympathize with him or not, that's a different issue. But I think that is, in part the authoran intention. And he comes across very well. But, I mean, the film is also very much from his perspective. So that, naturally, is going to sway us. That's how films work.
- [33:36]
B
Shift in another direction. Thinking about here another kind of worrisome social trend and a persistent problem, conspiracism, where this plays a role in Kubrick's work. Evidence of a kind of social lunacy. But you've written that this is a kind of insanity that can also be interesting and even revealing. I'm gonna read a line from your book, Eyes Wide Shot. Stanley Kubrick and the making of this final film. You write in a section on. On conspiracies that, quote, there are things below the surface in this and all of Kubrick's films. Even riddles, codes, secret messages. But they are rational things that enrich the films and our response to them. We could say a little bit about that. This kind of. The lunacy of the conspiracism. We see this in documentaries like 237, Room 237, where, you know, the absurdity of Kubrick conspiracy theories is like. Is beyond anything rational. And at the same time, he seems to invite this kind of conspiratorial thinking in a way that's not only crazy, it certainly has a lot of craziness, but there's a kind of depth and fascination and looking at things from different perspectives and a kind of, you know, attention to detail and even a kind of obsessiveness that he both demonstrated and seemed to invite on the part of his. Of his viewers. So can you say a little bit about that? What's going on with conspiracism as a kind of. As a phenomenon surrounding Kubrick.
- [35:25]
A
Yeah. Well, I would start off with. And I think one of the reasons why Kubrick's films attract this kind of obsessive level of read well, is two reasons. One, he did legendary pre production research. So we know he researched a lot. And therefore, these films are filled with ideas. You know, we know that the Shining isn't just an ordinary horror film. When he's read Freud and Bruno Bettelheim and the Gothic and et cetera, et cetera, and put it in that film, you know, the Yellow wallpaper. I could go on Poe, maybe some Lovecraft. So we know that there's depth to these films, intellectual depth. So knowing that he read all that stuff and it somehow influenced his adaptation will give us a thinking that there's something more in the film than just meets the eye. The second thing is that Kubrick didn't tell us what to think. It gave us the materials to think with. So, you know, Kubrick did do interviews. It's a myth that he didn't do interviews. And whilst he might have expounded on certain subjects at length, very rarely is he drawn on what his films mean or what he meant to say in the films. It's a rare instance where he explains the ending of 2001 in a phone call to a Japanese director. Or I think, was it the Shining, One of those where it probably didn't expect anyone to record that and then transcribe it and then stick it on the Internet like 40 years later. So what we're left with is, I like to call Kubrick an elliptical director. So we're left with these kind of monuments, like the monolith in 2001, in which we can read what we want to, but we know it's based on something that just 100% know what. So those are the first two things. The other thing is, I think, is the character of Kubrick himself. Because whilst he may or may not be one of the most written about directors ever, I don't know if he is number one. But he's certainly up there. I don't think the level of obsessive interest. Kubrick, Hitchcock, who's one of the most written about, doesn't attract that same level of obsessive interest in the same way. And I think it's in part to do with the kind of character that Kubrick was. You know, he was. He's been painted as incorrectly, I would say. But doesn't matter whether that, you know, doesn't matter whether it's true or not. And I'm not saying that because we're in a post truth era. I'm just saying that it's what people believe that matters, not what the truth is. And what they believe was he was a hermetic, Howard Hughes like character. Close off to the world. He was this bearded recluse. It also helped that he was Jewish because of most conspiracy theories. Liza Chu. That bears a comparison with Leo Strauss. Leo Strauss was, it was said, put secret codes in his works that only his followers could understand. Right. People say the same about Kubrick. So there's something about that type of Persona that attracts that kind of conspiracism.
- [38:19]
B
If I can reveal something about myself. I spent more time than I'd like to admit searching for those secret codes in Strauss's work and maybe some extra hours searching for things in Kubrick's movies as well.
- [38:32]
A
Did you find them?
- [38:34]
B
I produced as I searched so hard. I created them, and they've stuck with me.
- [38:40]
A
Well, that's like Foucault's Pendulum, the Umberto Echo novel that Kubrick expressed. It said some interest in adapting. It's precisely that. I love that you put it that way. Did I find them? No, I produced them. And I think that's exactly the kind of cultural production that Foucault wrote. Sorry, Umberto Acaro wrote about in Foucault's Pendulum that people tried to do with Strauss. You did it. And as a kind of latter Strauss figure, did we. Kubrick and this whole idea of him as this sort of bearded, Jewish, hermetic individual, I think just adds to that. You know, people don't look for conspiracies when it's just some ordinary white guy named Chip. Right. They do, though, when their name's Stanley and they've got a beard.
- [39:32]
B
A few things to say about that. One is, thinking back, some things are kind of popping up now. Some memories. But one thing Strauss said, I think, in a private letter, something to the effect of, why walk through an open door when you can enter through a keyhole? And it revealed something about the way he thinks and writes and what kind of people he's writing to and what kind of techniques of thinking and communicating he's drawn to and he's teaching, and I wonder if there's some element of that. It's interesting that you brought up Strauss while thinking about Kubrick. If there's some element of that in Kubrick as well, is he kind of revealing something about the way. The way. The way he thinks and the kinds of people he wants to be thinking with or am I projecting that.
- [40:23]
A
Well, all right, my answer would be this one. I'd love to get that full quote, because I like that idea. I'd like to apply that Strauss quote. Well, I think we've got to remember that they work in very different media. Right. Strauss's political philosophy. I think I read him as an undergraduate when I did early Modern political thought. Right. So when I think stuff on Hobbes, but he was so obscure, like to most of us, that even though I'd read him, I'd forgotten that I'd read him when it got to the point that he suddenly became famous again because of the second term under George W. Bush and he had started the Iraq War. Right. But he's writing for a different audience. Academic, scholarly, people who know that genre. I mean, what we always have to remember about Kubrick, as much as he might be an intellectual or trying to posture as an intellectual, he's making. He's trying to make commercial films. So I don't think there's any. I'd put two things. One, his movies can be read on multiple levels because he's trying to attract the widest possible commercial audience. He really admired Spielberg's ability to make a film that. That attracted a wide audience very quickly. Right. ET well, Star Wars, I know that's not Spielberg, but so, so he. So he wants to do that. The other part of him, though, has done so much research, he wants to put those ideas in there. And I think the way it works is there's a quote I always liked. It's a paraphrase of David Mamet quoting Maimonides. And it's something along the lines of when people. So are you worried if people understand the codes in your films? And he goes, those that do, do, and those that do do not. And I, I. I'm with Kubrick on that one. I think, you know, if he's put references to the Minotaur and you call it the Minotaur in. In American, you know, or. Or the labyrinth or there's Borges or Kafka. Right. If you get it, great. And if you don't, it's not. You're not gonna. It's not the key to unlocking. So I think that's the distinction. Like, you know, you need to get through that keyhole to understand. Strauss is where I'm taking that quote with Kubrick. That door's wide open. You can go in through the keyhole. You can just walk him through the door. He's giving you both options. Right. Obviously, if you go through One way you'll get more out of it than if you go the other way. The obvious way, the door. And I think that's because the level of research and thought he puts in there. And also there's an element of. I think a lot of this might be incidental, but incidental in the sense of if you absorb that much information in breaking a film, something is going to go in there beyond your conscious choice, which if you look back, you might go, yeah, that's probably why I did that. But I didn't think of that at the time. And I think that's what leads to the conspiracy.
- [43:09]
B
You bring up his admiration for, for Spielberg in this context. That was something. I remember hearing about that from a close friend who's, who's a filmmaker. And I kind of not believing it, like thinking I have kind of this exalted view of Kubrick, this kind of deep thinker. And as much as I love Spielberg's movies, it's on a different level. So the idea that Kubrick admired Spielberg is something that took me some time to accept and appreciate. And I'm in a place now where I can fully appreciate it, especially knowing where that admiration, I think, I love to hear your view on this, contained a kind of self awareness that Kubrick couldn't be a Spielberg even if he wanted to be. And maybe why that led him to kind of turn over his AI notebooks, you know, all of his years of notes on artificial intelligence and that, that Pinocchio story turned it over to Kubrick, to Spielberg, partly because he knew he couldn't make a movie like that. Is that right? Yeah.
- [44:10]
A
I mean, I think what he admired was, remember, he is, he is a filmmaker who wants to make a commercial return on his investment. Right. He's not going to make utter commercial trash because I think he's incapable of it. But at the same time, he doesn't want to make Derek Jarman's Blue or something no one's going to go see. And so, you know, he, you know, if you think Spielberg can make a film in six months and it's a box office success and that film's called Jurassic Park. And whilst he's editing Jurassic park, he's making another one, Schindler's List. And that's part of the reason why Kubrick never made Aryan papers, you know. Well, all right. No, the classic is one of the reasons we never made AI he joked, was that the little boy would have grown an Adam's apple and stubble by the time he had finished filming because it would take him so long. Whereas Spielberg could do it in six months. The reason he didn't make airing papers in part was he didn't want to compete with Spielberg over scarce resources in Poland. He thought that'd just be distasteful, them fighting over where you can I get the Nazi trucks today? So I think it was that side of his filmmaking and his films appealed across the board. Right. They weren't just kids movies, but kids watched them, as did their families. And I think Kubrick envied that ability. Whether he envied the final product as being that's what I would like to do, I think that's a different question.
- [45:31]
B
So this is a perfect segue to bringing up the topic of fairy tales. I never, never thought of Kubrick as, you know, his films being these fairy tales. But I very much see it that way now. I see his films as these kind of fairy tales where heroes are immersed in dreamlike, almost mythic worlds and yet at the same time, the stories are presented realistically, even hyper realistically. Visual symbology, complex allegories, what Jung called archetypal im. These appear as lifelike, relatable, ordinary. And I'm thinking here about things that you've written this in various places. Kafka's influence on Kubrick. I'm thinking about the Shining and elsewhere where you have kind of fantastic stories presented in a very. What I think he called, in terms of Kafka's writing style an almost kind of direct and journalistic style. And yet these kind of, like, you know, fantasy worlds. So that tension between the fantasy and the mundane, you know. Do you say a little more about where Kafka influenced him and kind of how this plays out in his fairy tales?
- [46:49]
A
Yeah. I think what influenced him the most was this idea. Say Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning as some giant, monstrous vermin. But everything else is just the same. Like he's just a vermin, you know, say a cockroach, but at home with his family around him. Right. Everything else is the same. Everything else is normal. It's mundane, quotidian even. And it was that juxtaposition by having this kind of fantastic, abnormal in the everyday. And you can see that's how Kubrick tried to shoot things, as you say. Realistically, his view on that was really as good, interesting as better. So he went for realism. But then when he thought something else was better, he would happily jettison it. There's lots of examples where you can see this in the movies where realism's a bit more Important like Full Metal Jacket or that row of bathrooms and Full Metal Dracket that were actually British toilets. Right. When you look at them. And there was no military unit that had a bathroom like that. But he didn't care because it was a great shot. And I think the name of that bathroom is quite telling for what you asked me. It's called the Head. Right. They're cleaning the head. And I think that, you know, and the image of Full Metal Jacket on the poster was of a helmet, as if this is all taking place inside Joker's head. To get that fairy tale element he's got. Yeah, there you go. Born to Kill. Likewise. My argument about the Shining is so to connect to the Shining. Where Kubrick made that quote is, I'm going to shoot the Shining. I'm going to light the Shining in a way that Kafka wrote his stories. This is going to be a hotel where the lights run all the time. You know, it's not the dark, scary, haunted house on the hill paradigm. Very much riffing on, say, Psycho in 1960 and then Rosemary's Baby in 1968 or the Exorcist in 73, which just take place in everyday places in. In. In New York and, you know, somewhere outside Phoenix, Arizona, and in. In. In. In Psycho. But New York in Rosemary's Baby and Georgetown in the Exorcist, these are just everyday places, ordinary homes that the. The. The. The evil then is. Well, at least in the exist, we know there's evil in. In. In Rosemary's baby. We're not 100% sure whether this isn't just a projection of Rosemary's, a psychosis, or it's actually happening. And I think that ambiguity is also true in Kubrick's films Eyes Wide Shut. Well, when does the dream actually start? Is the entire thing a dream? Is it Alice's dream? You know, those questions are never entirely resolved. And that's Full Metal Jacket. This is making Joker's Head, the Shinings, Jack. Jack's projection, et cetera, et cetera. Just to say, you know, Apocalypse now is, you know, not really about a journey down a river. Nor was Heart of Darkness by Conrad. That's when you said allegorical in. In. When you asked the question. That's another author he was very influenced by, and his first movie was very allegorical in a Conradian fashion before he learned to then sort of hide his hand. So he did. Like, that was that side, too. And that's. That's a. An author we probably don't speak about enough in Reference to what influenced Kubrick in his early days.
- [50:10]
B
An author. I'm thinking about a book which many have referenced in talking about influences on Kubrick, especially on 2001. Joseph Campbell and his book Hero with a Thousand Faces. It's been reported that he was reading this book in the making of 2001 and even that he gifted it to Arthur C. Clarke while they were working on the screenplay. I've been reading the book myself, kind of flipping through at times, and there's this great quote. Campbell writes about the hero. The hero is the man of self achieved submission. And then he asks, but submission to what? I wonder if, is there an element of that view of the hero that runs through some of Kubrick's work, especially.
- [50:56]
A
2001. Who's the hero in 2001? David Bowman.
- [51:01]
B
Let's say Dave Bowman. Yeah.
- [51:03]
A
Yeah, that's gonna be a tricky one for me. Submission of the hero. I mean, the way I was gonna answer that one is, yes, he's reading Joseph Campbell, but he's also equally reading the Golden Bough by Fraser. So pinning Kubrick down to one single thing as being the kind of source of what an idea is, I think is difficult to do. What we can see is in that kind of use of mythology. And I'm going to dodge a question and did a politician's answer is the mythology comes from all kinds of places and therefore can be read in lots of different ways. So if we did look at Dave Bowman in 2001 or 2001, this is read as a Christian movie, which to me makes no sense. So when David Bowman reincarnates as that baby is the second coming of Christ. Right. My contribution is to read this in a Jewish vein as very Kabbalistic. And that there's the Jewish idea, the Kabbalistic idea of reincarnation. And he comes back as a baby. My Sri Lankan friend just goes, nathan is Buddhist. Clearly, Arthur C. Clarke was living in what was then called Ceylon before it became Sri Lanka, a Buddhist country. So that actually makes a lot more sense. What I find interesting is three people. Well, actually say 300 people, one Buddhist reading, one Jewish reading, the other 298 Christian readings. So in his characterization of heroes and his use of myth because of the elliptical nature of the movies, was able to read those different approaches into the film. What I would argue is, though the Buddhist argument has merit because of the culture in which Arthur C. Clarke, who collaborates on the screenplay, was living. The Jewish argument has merit because that's what Kubrick knows. I believe the Christian readings are in positions because why would Kubrick make a Christian movie? Just makes no sense to me. But that's my opinion. But in his use of myth drawn from Campbell. And I think it's also a very biblical movie. Hence the readings, which allows people to read different things in there.
- [53:13]
B
That's fantastic. And I struggled with this myself. I was whether this idea of kind of submission plays a role in Kubrick's work. And I don't see it myself, so I didn't want to kind of corner you there. But in thinking maybe the monolith as a kind of mysterious supernatural force, there's some element at the end when he overcomes Hal and passes through the portal and ends up in this kind of interdimensional space, there seems to be some kind of element of submission. Maybe he's in bed, no longer moving, and just before the rebirth, there seems to be this kind of, you know, the monolith. There are standing at the foot of the bed, kind of dominating over him. So maybe there's some element of submission there. You know, maybe with Jack in the Overlook, by the end, he's submitted to the dark forces of the Overlook and somehow, you know, won as heroic figure one is the kind of the anti hero. But in both cases, there's a kind of maybe, you know, kind of giving in to higher forces or something like that, or mysterious forces. Anyway, I won't press that one. But actually, let's. Let's go ahead. Sorry.
- [54:27]
A
So there's my thoughts. I definitely agree in terms of the Shining that Jack is submissive to a higher power. Right. And he's willing to obey the dictates of a higher power. Because as I argued in the 2018 book, I think that it's really influenced by the work of Stan Milgram and Genesis 22, which understand Milgram's obedience to authority book opens with Genesis 22, the idea of Abraham submitting to a higher power, which would have been a voice in his head, Right. Telling him to kill his son, his only son, which he's about willing to do. And that presents the age old problem of obedience to authority. And I definitely think that that submission idea works for the Shining. Whether that's Campbell or not, I don't think I'm qualified to say. I think it comes from his understanding of the Nazi mindset and his reading Milgram and Rubber Jay Lifton and as I mentioned earlier, Arendt and Hillberg coupled with Genesis 22, Kierkegaard.
- [55:34]
B
Perfect way to kind of end things with the Kubrick and Kabbalah Kubrick as New York Jewish intellectual.
- [55:44]
A
You know.
- [55:47]
B
One way to get there. Let me say something about kind of. If. If there's any. You know, Campbell's influence would have been a kind of young, maybe filtered through Campbell and reaching. Reaching Kubrick. And I think. And you've. You've quoted in your book, Stanley Kubrick, New York Jewish intellectual, that the monolith. Thinking here about the monolith as a symbol of Kubrick's mystical Jewish side. The monolith has been described. He himself described it as quote, unquote, something of a Jungian archetype that you push a little bit further. For those who know, as you said earlier, for those who know, they know. For those who don't, that's fine. Jung himself saw in Kabbalah kind of universal archetypes of the human psyche. So I wonder, maybe here's where we can spend some time on the Kabbalistic and Jewish influences on Kubrick's work which are not immediately apparent. Born ethnically as a Jew, but no overt Jewish themes, most would say evident in his work. He left New York. Right. So first question, or kind of a final question, make the case then. New York Jewish intellectual and specifically in the kind of the. Where Kabbalistic themes emerge in his work.
- [57:07]
A
Okay, so Kubrick grows up in the Bronx and then he leaves the Bronx and moves to Greenwich Village. Right? So by the late 40s, he's living in Greenwich Village and he lives there through. Till about 55 before he moves to California to make killers. The killing. So for about six, seven years and over the informative period of his life, he's. He's in the heart of, you know, of. Of all these ideas that are floating about. This kind of cultural. Of returning GIs, the beats, existentialist psychoanalysis, Freudianism. Of course, Greenwich Village is in New York, which is also the. The. The place where the New York intellectuals, that group of writers and artists, intellectuals and thinkers are coalescing around group of magazines that they founded and edited. Like, to quote Woody Adam, like Dysentery, Commentary and Dissert and New York Review of Books. And he's reading those, right? We know he is. There's some New York Review of Books in the Shining. If you look in Wendy's apartment as. I mean, there's also a play girl. Make of that what you will, you know, in. In the original screenplay for Dr. Strangelove where the character's reading a Playboy and. And she's got Foreign affairs that the model's got Foreigner for the Magazine, Foreign Affairs. Well, that's also an intellectual journey. Covering her. Covering her backside. You know he was going to be reading Commentary, right? So we know Kubrick's reading this stuff. He's asked for articles in these mag like the New Republic or the New Leader. So we know he's reading this intellectual stuff. So my argument is Kubrick's based in the New York milieu. He's thinking like a New York intellectual who by birth or osmosis are Jewish. To quote Irving Howe or to quote Lenny Bruce, who. I think Kubrick's closer in spirit to, you know, the alternative book intellectuals. He's, you know, if you live in New York, you're Jewish, even if you're goish and live in Boot, Montana. You're Goish even if you do it right. And Kubrick wanted to work with Lenny Bruce and Jules Pfeiffer and Jack Joseph Heller, these other alternative New York intellectuals, Mad Magazine and the Sick Mix, Mort, Sal, Elaine, Elaine, et cetera. So I think all that's influencing his work. And we know because from his looking at this enormous archive that he's bequeathed, this is what he's reading. So what I was trying to do was to position his films in the decades of what was going on in those decades. So his early films very much deal with Freudianism and existentialism but also the war movie and that kind of thing, film noir, the boxing movie. And then as he moves further in, you know, what's happening in that decade for him to make a movie that corresponds, you know, what can we read in that movie which corresponds to the intellectual debates that are happening in that decade? So that, you know, the Feminine mystique comes out in 63. Lolita, 62. Right. I think. And I think one can see a lot of similarities between what Betty Friedan's saying in the Feminine Mystique and some of the ideas that Kubrick's putting in the Nita 1964. That's the clearest example. I think Dr. Strangelove very much picks up on those debates that tore apart the New York intellectual community over Hannah Arendt's Banality of Evil thesis. And we know Kubrick was reading that stuff. And some of the words he uses in his book, our words he's lifted from, say, Bruno Bettelheim or Lifton and Jewish intellectuals grappling with the implications of the Holocaust in the. In the, you know, Stanley Elkins book on slavery and American life. Free Dan uses a concentration camp metaphor. So does Lift, and so does Stanley Milgram, who I Mentioned earlier. So when we get to Dr. Strange, to 2001. 2001 is a really interesting film because it's a film that reflects on where is. What are the origins of humanity, of violence. How does. How does humanity evolve and where are we going? Right. Written in possibly the most. One of the most violent decades in American history. So we have a film that somehow does not refer to any of the things that are going on around it. When it was the TET offensive in 1968, the high point of the Vietnam War, which is when the movie came out. Martin Luther King is shot, is assassinated. And in fact, that closes down the cinemas for a period allowing Kubrick to edit it. Martin RFK is assassinated. JFK has been assassinated. You've got all the riots across Europe. You've got bloody decolonization in North Africa and other parts of the. That's the French umpire and the British Empire. All this violence is going on around us. Yet the film never directly refers to any of it but absolutely does in showing that humans evolve. Perhaps violence is not innate to humanity. It takes the intervention of the monolith. But we absolutely need that violence to evolve. Which is kind of a depressing thought. So in a film set in 1968. So this is in part how I'm trying to make the argument. He's relating to what's going on in 1968. But obliquely. Now the Kabbalah comes in. Right. I wanted to try and anchor it in what was happening in the 60s rather than people just saying, like, you're as ever been accused of poping that out of your fundament and making it up. Right. Imposing a reading on the text that is unsustainable. And what I wanted to say was, well, what is happening in the 60s in the States that I can suggest, and I can't prove that Kubrick is reading this stuff and it's influenced the movie. So here's some examples. The 60s, the point at which the counterculture and people of that generation are turning towards tips to the sort of Judeo Christianity of their parents. They're looking at religions in the East. You know, this is when Zen Buddhism and yoga and these ideas are popularized in the United States. I mean, they're so mainstream now. People have forgotten this. You know, Ginsburg's going off to India. Michael Hayer went off there. He was a Buddhist. So there's another influence. You know, this is when Alan Watts is popularizing Zen Buddhism in California. So I think that's all in the ether. And then amongst Jews, a lot of these Jews became Buddhists, you know, is Judaism's looking for its own mystical tradition. And that begins to be popularized in the 60s. And that's when the works of Gershon Sholem, like the primary writer of Kabbalah, are translated into English paperbacks, right? And made widely available. And it just seemed, you know. And that's when I like to make a distinction between Kabbalah and Kabbalah. Right? Kabbalah is the authentic Jewish tradition. Kabbalah is that kind of mass market thing that Madonna and Guy Ritchie did, you know, that began in the late 60s. So for me, what I was trying to say was I can see a Kabbalistic reading in this film. And rather than me just trying to say I've made this up, there's very good textual, historical evidence that this is exactly what's appealing to the very market that made that film a success. Those same people who made the film a success weren't the over 30s, they were the under 30s, the ones who were going to get high during the movie, you know, the Ultimate Trip. And he cleverly used that slogan once he realized, are the same people that are probably dabbling in all this spiritual stuff, including Kabbalah or Kabbalah. And that's the argument I'm trying to make. And I think the structure of the movie, as I've argued in this Four Divisions, resembles some of the Kabbalistic thought. Again, I can't prove this because what one doesn't find in the Kubrick archive is that magic bullet. That magic formula says, this is what I meant. But what you can find is a load of research material there. But I suppose it's a bit like the monolith you look into. It reflects back of you what you want to see. And when. You know the problem with archival work, unless you're Robert Caro going through turning every page because he's got the time and the money to do it, the rest of us are probably a bit more selective and maybe find what we're looking for rather than what there is. I'd love to be able to have the time and money that Robert Cara has. But hey. But for me, I tried to really anchor that analysis of 2001 in what was happening in the United States. And there's so many connections. He hires Marvin Minsky and Irving John Good to mathematicians who both claimed descendant from the Maharala Prague, the most famous inventor of a golem. Right? And what is how he's a golem? Right? Technology gone mad. And what did Gershom Scholem call the first computer when he was asked to name it in Israel, Gollum. So it just goes on and on. You know, for me, the connections are endless and interesting. You asked me right in the beginning, and I didn't quite answer the question about Kubrick's interest in military. You know, golems are men of clay. And During World War I, the Gustav Mayring's the Golem was very popular amongst men in the trenches because not only did they see war, Gollum technology run amok, but they themselves felt like golems because they were literally covered in mud. And. And I could go on. And there's all those German expressionist Gollum films that are not uncoincidentally come out at the end of the war. You know, there's about three of them, three or four of them. Only one survives, which would have influenced Kubrick. So, you know, all of this, I think, is all part of the mix that. That Kubrick's absorbing in that voluminous research that he's doing and ends up in the movie. And like I said earlier, you know, some of it might have not ended up there. Consciously did. The ideas are there. He just probably didn't know that he did it until he looks back later and someone points it out to him.
- [67:11]
B
I want to follow up on both of these kind of parallel streams of kind of Jewish influence, kind of the political side and the mystical side. You can say it that way. But I'm having a tough time for formulating the question. So let me just kind of think through some of this out loud and then turn it back to you. And these are things that you've written and today kind of made mention of. But just to push a little bit further, the New York intellectuals, one strand of them became neoconservatives. And neoconservatism was defined once by Irving Kristol as a kind of a liberal who's been mugged by reality. Another way I've heard it described is as when the New York intellectuals left New York and moved to Washington, they became the neoconservatives. And around the time a lot of them were leaving New York and moving to Washington. Correct me if I'm wrong here on the history, but that's around the time that Kubrick left New York for London. Is there an allegorical reading of his move to London, his leaving New York, or are you suggesting that in a way, he never left New York moving to London? I mean, his final movie was filmed in London but set in New York. And this seems to be an important kind of his relationship with New York, leaving and not leaving, kind of what that means, that what that might mean. And then on the mystical side, if I could kind of throw these questions together, you've written really in a thought provoking way about the idea the monolith. He changes Clark's monolith. Right. In Clark's book, the Sentinel, the monolith is very different than the way Kubrick depicted the monolith. And that there's a significance in his decision to change it from a kind of, you should probably describe it, but a kind of a pyramidal kind of technological artifact to something that's, as we know, very different. And it's been thought of as kind of a gateway, maybe. I've heard it described, I think you've described in a podcast as a kind of tombstone. Right. So there's a kind of question about the monolith and why and how he changed it and what that might. The significance of that, what that might mean in terms of kind of Jewish mystical readings. And then related to that, Dave Bowman, after overcoming the challenge that Hal represents. AI. Right. So way ahead of his time in seeing this as kind of maybe the human challenge. And Dave Bowman overcomes that challenge, passes through the portal, ends in this other dimensional space where one of the things that happens is a crystal glass breaks. What that might mean in terms of kind of an allegory of Jewish weddings. He's in bed, staring at the monolith. And then we cut to the star child. So it said a lot there, but maybe just kind of pick up there what that might mean both in terms of the kind of the political dimension of the New York Jewish intellectual and the mystical side of things.
- [70:43]
A
Yeah, I mean, to take. I'll try to deal with each point in terms. So we've got the kind of neoconservative term, we've got the monolith, and then we've got the sort of Jewishness of Dave Bowman at the end of the movie, or at least the symbolism at the end of the movie. So, I mean, Kubrick first moves to the UK in 1960. He moves over to make Lolita. And he does it for entirely practically practical reasons, which is to. Which is to take advantage of tax breaks. I mean, there's lots of reasons why most of the UK tax breaks. There's. There's a good industry there. There's production facilities. He likes British actors. It's not la, and it's as far away from holiday as he can get in an English speaking country. With all those things, right, Australia's further. But there is a bit where he did consider going to Australia. But when he learned he. After he had to share a bathroom on the boat, he. He rapidly changed his mind. He said, I'd rather take my chances with the war. So. So his kind of conversion to Britain predates, you know, because by the 60s, they're still all sort of. I mean, you know, anti communist, maybe of commentary is flirting with New Left, but not seriously. It's not until probably 67, 68 that we're going to get the shift right, with the Six Day War and then. And the sort of backlash to that. And then the real shift comes with Reagan, late 70s Carter, Reagan. And by that point, Kubrick's already firmly ensconced in the UK we don't know Kubrick's politics. I mean, he loved that definition of a neoconservative as a liberal who's been mugged by reality. And he did own guns. And he was a fiscal conservative, right, because he just didn't want to pay taxes. Having said that, though, despite threatening to leave the UK when under a lay for government that imposed high taxes, he never did. All right? So he might have complained about having to do it, but Norman Jewison, for example, did leave, whereas Kubrick stayed. So he didn't follow through on that fiscal conservatism. So, you know, was he a neocon? Possibly. But what his politics were, not really any idea. We just have to try and read it through the text. And I think that's where the major difference lies with him. And the New York Jewish intellectuals are very explicit about what their politics were. I think the second thing to hone in on 2001, I think the genius of the monolith. And we always got to remember, right. And we tend to forget this. I was trying to remind my students this film is a manipulation, right? You're manipulating the light and framing and what, you've got to pretend you've gone to the moon. Although, as the old joke goes, Kubrick was asked to fake the moon landings. And being the perfectionist, he shot on location, Right? But you've got such an interesting story around his faking of the moon. He separated off the person who was designing the moon set in her own area. So people didn't see it. And I think that's possibly what began this rumor that he was asked to make it because he was building this lunar landscape that most people on the set didn't see. Anyway, so the monolith is a practical problem, right? It presents a practical filmmaking problem. How do we represent this monolith? So I think one reason he rejected the pyramid, it's too much anchored in a particular tradition. Right. Most people look at pyramid, go ancient Egypt. So it then anchors the reading of that. He also had some practical problems with actually getting the shape and the look right. He tried some different materials, didn't work out. Finally found the right material, the right shape that worked out. And the beauty of this sort of blank oblong is it doesn't tell you anything in the amount of readings. I've said tombstone, I said the totality of the law in a Kafka sense. Or the Talmud. I've said it's like a standing stone in a high place that ancient Canaanites, including Jews, erected and to mark a holy place. I've suggested. Others have suggested. And I like the idea of a tablet of the Law, but with no writing on it. Others have suggested it's a movie screen. Right. And the other way, I like the idea there's a gateway as well. And gateways figure in Jewish tradition. And in the end, it actually is a gateway because Bowman goes through it. So I think the beauty of that shape is one. He achieved it as an actual artifacts. We gotta remember that that's the first primary thing. This isn't cgi, but the beauty is it allows you to read into it what you want to read. It's not anchored in anything in particular. So. So that's. That would be my answer on the monolith. And then the third thing you asked.
- [75:29]
B
Me about them looking glass.
- [75:32]
A
Yeah. All right, so I'll just go on a little thing. So my analysis in my book is that the structure of the movie and the repetition of the number of fours, you know, you think there's four words in the title. There's four letter, four digits. In 2001, there's four monoliths. There's four different composers. Ligeti's Luxa Turner is using the four different types of human voice. So the actual number of people in the choir is a multiple of four. Up to trying to think 128, I think it is. You know, and there's lots of fours. There's four sections of the film. It's 4 million years. I could go on, why four? But in the Jewish exegesis tradition of exegesis known as pardes, which stands for pshat, remus, you have prashat, which is the simple reading. Literally, what does the text say? Remes, which means clue, has the slightly deeper reading. And then we can go through the films that Shat is Dawn of Man. Remez is the next section. There's no intertitle, but it is a second section. When they lead 4 million years into the future, you just didn't need. You didn't need anything to say it. You could have done Section three. Drush, which means interpretation, that is, midrash is when they're in broad. The discovery, interestingly called discovery, which is a bit like drush. And then the final section, Jupiter beyond the infinite. What's infinite in Hebrew? Ein sof without end. Ein sof is also another term for the name of God. And in Jupiter and beyond the infinite, we have the most mystical section of the film, and that is the samach in Pardes, which is sod, which means secret, which is also akin to Kabbalah. So the fourth section is the most Kabbalistic. It's the most bizarre of the whole thing. What is going on. And in that, you've got some quite clear Kabbalistic ideas. Reincarnation. That's a Kabbalistic idea. I'd say we own that. Buddhist also believe in that. But we see the. The Gilgul, right, is reincarnation in Hebrew. And what was the name of Kafka's Metamorphosis in Yiddish? Gilgul. So there's a nice little link there.
- [77:43]
B
There's also a link to the Hebrew word for. For skull, right. And skulls play a key role in the Moon Watcher in the beginning, Right?
- [77:51]
A
Exactly, exactly. Got. Yeah. Called. Well, Golgotha is the kind of Christian rendition of that term. But Gol Gelat is. Yeah, exactly. Right. You just took the thought exactly in my head. So there's nice little links. And then you get things like. So with the smashing of the glass, there's three possible things. You've got the breaking of the vessels that. Idirn. Kabbalah is one of them. Arthur C. Clarke wrote in his diary that this was Kubrick showing his Jewish side. That clearly it was that reference to the smashing of the glass at Jewish weddings, which itself is a means to remember the temple. And then there's two other readings, one which other people come up with and one which is mine. The third one is Kristallnacht, that there's a Holocaust theme that runs through all of Kubrick's work. I've got students just written a thesis on that. So there's this shattered glass could refer to that. That makes more sense if I went through all the other Holocaust references. We don't have time for that now. But the one I like is. So I read David Bowman as a Jewish character. It's called David. Right. David was a bowman, as in an archer, Odysseus. But a bowman's also somebody who plays a lyre like a harp. King David did that. King David kills Goliath. Howls of Goliath. Nearly not Jewish, although he wanted. He joked that he should have Jackie Mason do it. Or. And he did screen test Martin Balsam, Jewish actor, to do the voice. At one moment, he joked he should have Barbra Streisand do it. So. So. But I don't know how serious he was. He was a big fan of Barbra Streisand, by the way. Well, that tells you about Kubrick. I'll leave up to you to decide. Anyway, there he is sitting at a table, and he knocks the glass up. Because he's such a klutz. Right? To. Jews lack the proper decorum. And it's a whole idea that comes from a guy that re influenced me for this book. John Murray Cudahy. Depending on where you are, that's either the most anti Semitic book ever written or the most insightful book about Jewishness ever written. I stand on the latter side. And there's this sort of klutziness about Bowman and there's other little readings in there. So when he steps out of the spaceship into this room, the first thing we see is a bathroom. Right. Of course he wants to go to the bathroom.
- [80:11]
B
Right.
- [80:12]
A
He's been on a long trip. You know, it's one of the Kubrick's jokes in the movie. Where are the Ten Commandments in 2001? They're not on the monolith. They're on the door to the toilet. All right. It's one of his little jokes. So that's that toilet sense of humor that I mentioned much earlier on that we see that we see in Strange Labs. Although it's quite a sterile, sexless movie. 2001, there's loads of jokes in there. And that's how I would read that this beautiful combination of. It's Homer's odyssey, obviously, but 2001, a space odyssey. So not just a strict rendition. You've got the one eyed Cyclops in hell, and Odysseus is an archer, and Odysseus is trying to return home. And that's what Bowman does. So we've got that. We've got references to Kabalao, we've got biblical references. We've got references just to Jewish culture. I think all of that's in there. Plus, you've got all the stuff you can just analyze in the mise en scene in that room. It's, like, very much a precursor to what we see in Barry Lyndon. And then you've got nice symmetry of the paintings and so many other things going on. So I think the beauty of it is, whilst I can make this Jewish reading I'm not trying to suggest it's the only one, but it's the one I feel is the least done. So I wanted to really push that. That. That angle because, you know, I just thought no one had really situated Kubrick in the milieu. He knew. Right. Which is a Jewish one.
- [81:44]
B
I thank you so much, Nathan. That's really, really interesting. And I. You know, I promise I'd keep it at about an hour. We're already way over. But this is what happens when. When I have such an interesting guest talking about such an important topic. Let me. Let me. One final question on exactly this. I'm reminded this summer, my daughter just became a high school student and she was assigned to read the Odyssey this summer. So we read it together. And I was reminded about many things, but where it relates here, Odysseus's wound that was discovered when he was in the bath and he came back home. He finally made his way back home. And this wound was kind of symbolic of what some see as a kind of initiation ritual with the wild boar. Right. So there's this reading of the wound as a kind of. As a spiritual wound, the space through which the spirit enters in initiation rituals. But along with you, I'd like to suggest that for Kubrick, there are Jewish themes often just below the surface. And here in 2001. And he's kind of maintaining both parallel themes, the kind of. The Homer Odyssey theme. But there's this also kind of just submerged theme where we see the idea of the wound also appearing potentially in a Jewish reading where maybe. I think you've written that the wound that we see not only David Bowman limping, of course, Barry Lyndon limping. We see Jack limping. Right. I'm sure you can point out other places. So what's the idea here for Kubrick in a kind of Jewish reading? The idea of the wound or some kind of struggle. Can you say something about that? What struggle might he be pointing to that would lead to this kind of.
- [83:48]
A
Yeah, I have to admit I hadn't made the connection to Homer there. So you've just elucidated better than. But what I have tried to do is, particularly when we point to someone like Jack in the Shining, that he's got the name of the biblical patriarch who struggled with an angel. And subsequently his name was changed to Israel. And he had the limp, which is well said. Ashkenazi Jews don't eat the sciatic nerve. Right. So just remove the whole of the carcass from however many ribs down. And for me, it strengthened the reading of Jack as Jewish. But there's also that idea Sade Gilman writes about in the book the Jew's body, that certain Jewish deformities or alleged Jewish deformities marked the Jew's body. So a kind of. In medieval period, it was a cloven hoof. Right. Jews had clothes and hooves because they were like the devil. But such, you know, by the modern era that became a kind of a deformed foot or a limp that then rendered Jews unfit for military service in the infantries as foot soldiers of the new modern nation states. So what started off as a sort of medieval anti Jewish canard turns into a modern anti Semitic canard where I suppose one could look through and there is some kind of deformity with the legs. You know, Dr. Strangelove can't walk. Jack has the limp administered by Wendy the Barry Lyndon loses her leg. All right, in, in, in, in Barry Lyndon, not all characters do. I don't recall that Bowman got injured in the same way, though. Not sure that he did.
- [85:35]
B
If I remember correctly. I think that. I think in that final scene in this soon maybe after the shattering of the vessel there, there was a, a limp. I don't remember.
- [85:43]
A
He's in a chair with wheels because I think he's just, he's old. Yeah. You know, when you earlier said he's submissive to this monolith, I'm thinking he's also on his deathbed, so give him a break. I think we're all going to be submissive right at that point in our lives, just in the chance that we spent our whole life believing in one thing and perhaps we're wrong. And I think if I remember rightly, somewhere in my memory, I think Jan Harlan, his brother in law, suggested that Kubrick was his bet that there was something else as well. Just in case, you know, I, I would characterize him agnostic, but he didn't want to fully go there just in case he was wrong.
- [86:21]
B
I think his wife in an interview said that 2001 was his agnostic prayer. Right.
- [86:27]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and I think, you know, he describes as a sick. As a $6 million religious movie. And in an era when people weren't making science fiction movies, they were making movies about the Bible, Right? And there was a big production of a biblical of the adaptation of Bible and in similar years. So I, I think it's his Clockwork Oranges is the most, is the movie that deals most of religion. But 2001 is his most religious movie, almost akin to a sort of numinous experience of the divine. And I think it must have been watching that, that film on the big screen when it goes from darkness to light, that's a recreation of Genesis, which with hubris and chutzpah, he probably says, look, I can do better than the creator. I've got Panavision. What has he got?
- [87:23]
B
Fair, perfect, perfect place to end. Thank you so much. This has been a fascinating conversation. I really appreciate you joining us here on International Horizons. Thank you very much.
- [87:36]
A
Pleasure. I enjoyed it. Thank you.