Kubrick’s Lolita, Or The Lingering Corruption of the Lollipop-Lolita Part 4

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"How Did They Ever Make a Movie Out of Lolita?", Camp Climax, Christopher Hitchens, Claire Quilty, Film, film review, Humbert Humbert, James Mason, Literature, Lolita, Lolita Garden Scene, Novel, pedophilia, Peter Sellers, Psycho, Robert Osbourne, sex, Sexual Perversion, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, Sexualization of Girls, Shelley Winters, Stanley Kubrick, Sue Lyon, TCM, Vladimir Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov: Hurricane Lolita

“How did they ever make a movie out of Lolita?” is a sentence I despise, largely because I didn’t think of it first.  I know it’s petty, but being a writer and being likeable is difficult enough, that’s why I suspect most of us try and begin our essays and novels with catching, opening lines that invite our reader to give a shit.  And so when one of us comes up with a catchy line that nobody can forget it tends to leave us bitter and grumbling in front of our word processors.

My regular reader will no doubt have observed that I’ve been going through a dedicated Lolita phase.  After finishing the novel again recently I’ve decided to sit down and really dig into the material of the book, of the writer Nabokov, and of the various books and art products that have emerged since the publication of the book.  Having written now about the novel, and the novella precursor, it seemed only appropriate to tackle the 1962 film by Stanley Kubrick given the fact that it’s this film which has partly helped the Lolita phenomenon become what it was and is.

I honestly can’t remember what my earliest experience with the film actually was, though I’m almost positive that it had to be TCM.  My parents were good to me in the fact that they almost always had either TCM or TV Land playing on the television, that is when I wasn’t being a little tyrant and demanding the right to watch Freakazoid and Loony Tunes.  I consider Robert Osbourne a kind of third parent because he introduced me to people such as Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Sydney Poitier, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, and of course John Wayne.  This education of yester-year’s cinema eventually became a boon to me as I could relate and communicate with older people who had grown up watching such movies and programming, and it taught me the language of films and film history as well.  My first impression of Lolita then, was one of the “commercials” that ran between the films and Osborne’s intros, and of course it began with that line that I both despise and adore.

It wasn’t long thereafter that I eventually saw the film, though I did make sure that I had read the novel first.  I’d like to say that the film’s content made a distinct impression on me and that I became aware of the brilliance of the film, and of course of it’s director Stanley Kubrick, but I was a teenage boy.  I was far more interested in memorizing every episode of Family Guy and every line of Pulp Fiction.

I recently bought Lolita on Blue-ray and watched it again and my impression of the film has changed dramatically because, much like the novel, Stanley Kubrick’s movie is one long fascination with a disturbing idea which Christopher Hitchens noted in his essay Vladimir Nabokov: Hurricane Lolita:

The most unsettling suggestion of all must be the latent idea that nymphetomania is, as well as a form of sex, a form of love.  (76).

This observation is absolutely everything when approaching Lolita, whether it’s the novel or the film, though it’s especially important when tackling the film because the way Kubrick directs the picture is as a traditional Hollywood love story.  Throughout the film Lolita and Humbert Humbert interact, not as a young girl and a fully grown man, but almost as emotional equals.

Throughout the film Delores Haze, who is oddly enough never referred to as Delores but always as Lolita, is presented a precocious teenager girl, but also as a mature individual with her own will and idea of who and what she is.  When Humbert and Lolita arrive at the hotel where the first rape actually takes place, Kubrick plays the dynamic of the two not as a hungry, perverted man lusting after a child, but as Lolita seducing Humbert:

Lolita Haze: Why don’t we play a game?

Humbert Humbert: A game? Come on. No, you get on to room service at once.

Lolita Haze: No, really. I learned some real good games in camp. One in “particularly” was fun.

Humbert Humbert: Well, why don’t you describe this one in “particularly” good game?

Lolita Haze: Well, I played it with Charlie.

Humbert Humbert: Charlie? Who’s he?

Lolita Haze: Charlie? He’s that guy you met in the office.

Humbert Humbert: You mean that boy? You and he?

Lolita Haze: Yeah. You sure you can’t guess what game I’m talking about?

Humbert Humbert: I’m not a very good guesser.

Lolita Haze: [whispers in his ear and giggles]

Humbert Humbert: I don’t know what game you played.

Lolita Haze: [whispers in his ear again] You mean you never played that game when you were a kid?

Humbert Humbert: No.

Lolita Haze: Alrighty then…

There’s also an earlier scene shortly after Humbert picks Lolita up from the summer camp, brilliantly called “Camp Climax for Girls.”  As they’re driving Humbert attempts small talk and Lolita speaks with him seductively.

Humbert Humbert: You know, I’ve missed you terribly.

Lolita Haze: I haven’t missed you. In fact, I’ve been revoltingly unfaithful to you.

Humbert Humbert: Oh?

Lolita Haze: But it doesn’t matter a bit, because you’ve stopped caring anyway.

Humbert Humbert: What makes you say I’ve stopped caring for you?

Lolita Haze: Well, you haven’t even kissed me yet, have you?

And looking near the end of the picture when Lolita is pregnant and living with a sweet but simple man named Dick, she offers Humbert a kind of apology for her “roaming” from him physically.

Lolita Haze: [Trying to console Humbert] I’m really sorry that I cheated so much. But I guess that’s just the way things are.

If the reader is somewhat sickened by these passages it’s just a sign that they recognize how bizarre, and in fact how disturbing this presentation actually is.  It’s not uncommon for young women to develop crushes on older men during puberty, but this has more to do with emotional and sexual development.  Such crushes and infatuations are early attempts to understand attraction and to experiment and play with it so that, when they are more mature, they can actually act on their feelings.

Kubrick might be faulted or criticized for presenting Lolita as an emotionally mature young woman who openly and freely engages in a relationship with an older man who’s clearly using her, but as I watched the film again I realized that in fact, much like Nabokov himself who manipulated his reader through prose, Kubrick is using the language of cinema to imply perversion without ever outright showing it.

Because the film premiered in 1962, Kubrick was still working with the censorships and sensibilities of film companies at that time.  This can be fun for the reader intellectually if they pay attention because in one scene Charlotte Haze, while showing Humbert about the house, actually flushes a toilet.  When the reader remembers that, until the movie Psycho premiered just two years before this film, a director could neither flush nor even show a toilet on camera.  There’s a feeling while watching such a small act that Kubrick is beginning the small subversions that would eventually allow film makers more freedom.  But of course past the toilet flush there is the now iconic garden scene in which Humbert Humbert actually sees Lolita out and about and sun bathing.

I remarked to my sister how well this scene is done while we were watching it, because Kubrick is smart enough to leave Lolita, played by a then sixteen year old Sue Lyon as the center of the everything.  The viewer first sees Lolita from the back, sunbathing and wearing nothing but a large feathery hat, dark sunglasses, and a pink bikini (the film is black and white but some color photographs exist revealing the outfits actual color).  The shot shifts from behind Lolita to Humbert’s shocked and obviously aroused expression before going back to Lolita and from there Kubrick works his ability as a director.  Charlotte Haze describes the garden while the viewer is left to “gaze” upon Lolita.  Lolita herself looks up from her book, stares at the viewer, slowly removes her sunglasses, and offers up a look that hints at curiosity and mild erotic interest, meanwhile she never steps out of her pose.  The scene lingers and the viewer becomes aware that they are not looking at a young girl who is beginning to, if I can borrow the botanical term, “blossom” into womanhood.  In fact they are looking at Humbert’s desire, for the lingering shot and her entire suggested sexuality is entirely Humbert’s imagining.  And so the so the viewer is invited to participate in Humbert’s erotic fascination with Lolita, looking at her body and wondering to themselves if this gaze that is centered on her isn’t just implied, but something that is actually erotic.

Naturally, when you’re a teenage boy the same age as Sue Lyons was when she made the movie, the eroticism doesn’t feel weird at all because you’re the same age.  It’s just crush.  As I age however, I notice more and more that whatever initial erotic feelings I had at this image feels creepier and creepier.  It’s now at a point where I can remember being young and attracted to girls that age, but I refuse to acknowledge any kind of erotic fascination with the image.  That’s all a fancy-pants way of saying that when I watched Lolita again I felt absolutely repulsed at the erotic suggestion.

But that recognition was enough for me to recognize that Kubrick was purposefully playing up that angle.

Much like the actual novel Lolita, Kubrick tries to make the story feel like a love story to show that, beneath the surface of a supposed love story there is in fact nothing but sexual corruption.  This is easily apparent in the various little moments of the story, and one of the best elements is the afore mentioned “Camp Climax for Girls.”  The reader actually gets a moment when Humbert is surrounded by young women, many of them wearing swim-suits, and the viewer is left watching the image of all these young girls displaying their bodies.  The shot works because the viewer is invited to consider the sexual nature of all these girls, but at the same time is reminded that, because of Humbert’s presence that this erotic display really isn’t one.  It’s just girls being girls.  Likewise later on in the film Delores Haze participates in a play by the corrupt playwright Clare Quilty.  The “play,” when the viewer actually sees it, is in fact a kind of fertility display and this lets the reader observe the sexual undercurrent running throughout.

But Quilty himself needs to be addressed because he is arguably the most incredible part of the movie, largely because he is played by the chameleon Peter Sellers.  Sellers presents Quilty as this aloof yet wacky man who is sexually corrupt and, if I can borrow an old expression, “queer as a three dollar bill.”

As a queer man I should probably be offended by the implied idea that Quilty is queer, but if the reader actually observes Quilty it becomes clear that the man isn’t part of the LGBT community.  Quilty is just a sexual pervert.  Before Humbert and Lolita arrive at the hotel the reader is given a small scene in which Quilty and his partner, a largely silent asian woman, are conversing with a bellhop named Swine:

Clare Quilty: She’s a yellow belt. I’m a green belt. That’s the way nature made it. What happens is, she throws me all over the place.

Swine: She throws you all over the place?

Clare Quilty: Yes. What she does, she gets me in a, sort of, thing called a sweeping ankle throw. She sweeps my ankles away from under me. I go down with one helluva bang.

Swine: Doesn’t it hurt?

Clare Quilty: Well, I sort of lay there in pain, but I love it. I really love it. I lay there hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness. It’s really the greatest.

This would be strange enough were it not a later scene when Quilty so obviously attempts to get Humbert to let him see Lolita.

Humbert Humbert: Well, it’s nothing, but… she had an accident.

Clare Quilty: Oh gee, she had an accident? That’s really terrible, I mean, fancy a fellow’s wife having… a normal guy having… his wife having an accident like that. W-what happened to her?

Humbert Humbert: Er, she was hit by a car.

Clare Quilty: Gee, no wonder she’s not here. Gee, you must feel pretty bad about it. W-w-w-w-when uh eh w-what’s happening, is she coming out later or something?

Humbert Humbert: Well, that was the understanding.

Clare Quilty: What, in an ambulance? Hahahaha! Gee, I’m sorry, I-I-I-shouldn’t say that; I get sorta carried away, you know, being so normal and everything.

It’s easy to read this passage and observe that Quilty is a strange man, but it’s in Seller’s performance of Quilty as a bumbling, queer sort of man that the viewer is able to really feel the corrupt sexual nature.  Sellers is the key to the movie Lolita, because while James Mason plays Humbert as a dominating, sexual deviant, Kubrick plays him up as a man in love, while Quilty is simply a sexual predator.  In this way the suggestion of Nymphetomania as a form of love is progressed because Humbert becomes not a corrupt man, but just a man who loses his love to a man “more” perverted than himself.  Lolita herself acknowledges and confirms this for the reader during the final scene in which Humbert discusses with her how she left him:

Humbert Humbert: [Referring to Quilty] What happened to this Oriental-minded genius? When you left the hospital, where did he take you?

Lolita Haze: To New Mexico.

Humbert Humbert: Whereabouts in New Mexico?

Lolita Haze: To a dude ranch near Santa Fe. The only problem with it was he had such a bunch of weird friends staying there.

Humbert Humbert: What kind of “weird” friends?

Lolita Haze: Weird! Painters, nudists, writers, weightlifters… But I figured I could take anything for a couple of weeks.

This final reveal is a bit of strange experience because, when Lolita finally divulges this, many of the suspicions are confirmed and Quilty becomes the monster of the film, rather than Humbert himself.  At least that is the perception that I ended the film with after watching it again.  And of course, that reaction troubled me immensely because it neglects the reality that Humbert Humbert is a pedophile who seduced Lolita’s mother so that he could get closer to Lolita so that he could ultimately rape her.

I’ve addressed in my previous Lolita essays that Humbert Humbert writes the entire narrative of Lolita, leaving the poor Delores Haze in a position where her story is told without her consent or input.  The film offers something different than this vision, and while Lolita does seem to have some kind of agency in the film, it’s important to remember that Kubrick, as a director, was always concerned about the narrative structure of films and how the images crafted his visions.

At first glance Lolita appears to be a love story, but a closer examination reveals a troublesome story about a man manipulating a young woman who is still trying to figure out who she is and what she wants.  Lolita is never given any kind of freedom to determine who she is, and while on the surface she seems to be inviting Humbert and Quilty to engage with her sexually, this still is undercut by the reality that she’s a young teenage girl who’s barely figured out her sexuality, let alone her actual personality.

Lolita is a story about the troublesome surface and reality of sexuality in America during the early 1960s.  And Kubrick is successful in constantly pointing out that sexuality was always hiding beneath the surface of everything.  Under the veneer of the gardens and suburban homes there was a lurking sexuality that was at times troublesome and even corrosive.  Children were vulnerable to predators, and because the narrative of sex was something that was still taboo, even when it was out in plain sight, what was obvious couldn’t be actually said aloud.

Lolita as a film is a story about the constant suggestion and implication that is hidden beneath what is actually said and done.  In this way the film offers a beautiful way of storytelling because, unlike prose, more viewers will recognize the leering gaze as Lolita Haze lays in the backyard.  They’ll recognize what’s being suggested is the idea that Lolita is a sexual object, and, hopefully, they’ll recognize that it isn’t their suggestion but in fact the suggestion of a corrupt man who’s writing her story right out of her control.

 

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes taken from the film Lolita were provided by IMDb.

 

**Writer’s Note**

It’s actually pretty difficult to find ANY video bloggers who have attempted to analyze to explore the film.  However I did find two people on YouTube who seemed up to the challenge.  If the reader would like they can follow the link below to the videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IpBNS5kksE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdj0dKrKnUw

I’ve also found a brief video that is a three minute interview with Suellyn Lyon, the main star of the film, about the actual movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bHz-N6bJ3I

 

***Writer’s Note***

The life story of Sue Lyon is not particularly pleasant, and Kubrick’s film is largely the reason for it.  I suppose that’s why I wanted to end on a positive note, and so I found two pictures of Lyon and Kubrick rehearsing lines and seeming to enjoy themselves.  A lovely reminder that beneath the “sexual icon,” there was a young woman wanting to become an actress and working with one of the greatest directors of all time.

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Shining Light on Bloody Elevators: Why so Cold Mr. Torrance?

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"All Work and No Play Make Jack a Dull Boy", Bob's Burgers, Christine, Cujo, Domestic Abuse, Family Guy, fathers, Film, film review, Here's Johnney!, horror, It, Jack Nicholson, Novel, Pet Cemetary, REDRUM, REDUM = MURDER, Scatman Crothers, Shelley Duvall, South Park, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, The Pagemaster, The Shining, The Shining Pop Culture References, The Simpsons, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Writers, Writing

 

It’s pathetic really, but I honestly didn’t get that REDRUM was MURDER spelled backwards until Danny wrote it on the door.  My only defense, the only one I can offer, is that my mind has never been strong when it comes to anagrams.  Some people, though only in films or books conveniently enough, are blessed to immediately unscramble words and find the hidden meaning and so such a realization wouldn’t shock them, but when I was reading The Shining I kept watching that word appear wondering what it could possibly mean and what horrible reality it would reveal in the Overlook Hotel.  When the switch finally came, I admit freely that it legitimately scared me.  In fact, I might have gasped, clutched my hand to my heart, and made sure the blinds were closed.

There was a time in my life when I devoured the writings of Stephen King.  After my Sophomore English teacher gave me her copy of The Green Mile and I read through that water damaged paperback in about a week.  When I finished I had, emphasis on that word, had to read more of the man’s work.  I hopped into Cujo after that.  The Half Price Book Store in Dallas had an entire Stephen King section, and old Signet paperbacks with their pastel spines were lined up like gems Scheherazade might have described to Shahryār as her hero looked upon discovered treasures of some long lost kingdom.  I bought Cujo and read it quickly, moving then to The Shining.  As I remember I tried starting The Stand but it didn’t move quickly enough for me.  I also bought It, Pet Cemetery, and Christine, but as of this writing I’ve only read to completion the middle book which remains the book after The Shining which scared the evr-living piss out of me.

If Cujo terrified me, I did live in a house with three dogs at the time, The Shining was something else entirely.  Though I knew and had experienced the “haunted house” story before, most of these were old and English and none of the characters in those books and films talked the way Jack Torrance did.  The first line alone, which I’m not too big on to be honest, hooked me straight away:

Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.  (3).

I suspect part of the reason King appealed to me from such a young age was partly because of his profanity.  The books we read in school rarely possessed any profanity.  There would be the odd “nigger” in To Kill a Mockingbird, but that wasn’t a word I would feel comfortable repeating.  Whereas prick, fuck, bastard, and shit were all lovely words to use when talking to my friends and so King’s appeal was partly for the fact that he wrote the way I and many people I knew talked.  I ate up his book and began looking for films based upon his work.

About the same time, I discovered King, I also found the films of Quentin Tarantino, who became god to me, Martin Scorsese, and finally Stanley Kubrick.  This last film maker left his own impact on me largely because of his eclectic style of selecting stories to tell, but also because his films were so different than anything else that I watched.  It’s not being unfair or hip to suggest that Stanley Kubrick’s movies are unique for their presentation, cinematography, and acting period.  Kubrick’s characters are often caught between acting like archetypes and real living people, and so when approaching Kubrick’s The Shining and Jack Torrance’s character, I really didn’t mind the fact that he was different from King’s Jack Torrance.  The fact that he was also Jack Nicholson didn’t hurt either because I had grown up watching that man play as Joker on repeat almost non-stop.  Wanting to start celebration of Halloween early this year, my sister and I sat down and watched The Shining again, and after watching the film I knew I had to sit down and write about it because I’ve reached the point in my life where I can, mostly, avoid kissing the ass of those who influenced me during my formative years.

The Shining centers on the characters of Jack, Wendy, and their son Danny Torrance.  Jack has recently lost his job teaching at a prep school after assaulting a student who slashed his tires, and he is also recovering from a bout of alcoholism that contributed to him dislocating his son’s shoulder in a fit of rage.  He is hired to manage The Overlook, an isolated resort hotel in the mountains of Colorado, and operate the boiler during the winter months when the hotel is isolated from the outside world.  The family moves into the hotel and while Jack tries to work on a play the family is slowly falling prey to the natural forces of cabin fever and, though it’s never suggested till near the end of the film, it’s clear that supernatural elements living in the hotel are trying to corrupt them.  Specifically, they want Danny’s soul because he possesses the ability of “shining” which is a slang word for telepathy.  The film ends as Jack loses his mind and tries to kill Wendy and Danny, manages to kill Halloran the Head cook of the hotel who returns to save the family, and eventually gets lost in the hedge maze outside the hotel before freezing to death and having his soul forever trapped by the hotel.

The film, like so many of Kubrick’s other films, has become iconic and almost cartoonish for the fact that everyone between The Simpsons, to Rocko’s Modern Life, to Bob’s Burgers, to Family Guy, to The Pagemaster, to South Park, and even Toy Story 3 have all referenced some element of the film.  For the record my favorite remains Bob’s Burgers for it’s almost loving recreation of the Lloyd bar-tender sequence, and of course the other being Stewie shooting a rocket at the Grady daughter’s at Cherrywood.  These references however only prove the lasting impression of the film upon cinema history for whether it’s Jack hacking the bathroom door to bits before uttering the famous lines:

Jack Torrance: Here’s Johnny!

Or whether it’s Wendy looking at Jack’s manuscript and reading:

Jack Torrance: [typed] All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Or whether it’s the Grady twins standing at the end of the hallway blocking Danny’s path:

Grady Daughter, Grady Daughter: Hello, Danny. Come and play with us. Come and play with us, Danny. Forever… and ever… and ever.

These scenes have been repeatedly re-imagined because Kubrick’s movie is a masterpiece of cinematography and horror.  An added benefit to the film is that even despite the endless pop-culture references The Shining, unlike other horror films before and after it, remains legitimately horrifying to this day.  I might argue that the only other exception might be Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but that’s because the content of that film remains disturbing regardless of how old it gets.

Watching The Shining again my mom was walking through the house tending to the numerous little jobs and tasks she handles and catching one moment of the film she made a fascinating observation.  The scene in question is Jack typing in the open hall by the fireplace.  The camera holds the great emptiness of the room centering Jack in the middle of it and the viewer is left sitting and feeling that great emptiness and symmetry until Wendy, played by Shelley Duvall, interrupts from the right side of the screen calling Jack.  Kubrick usually employs this destruction of symmetry for effect, and when Wendy walks up to Jack the music breaks as Jack rips the paper out of the typewriter to look up at her.  Wendy offers to make him some sandwiches and then read his manuscript when he’s finished and Jack responds:

Jack Torrance: Wendy, let me explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me, you’re breaking my concentration. You’re distracting me. And it will then take me time to get back to where I was. You understand?

Wendy Torrance: Yeah.

Jack Torrance: Now, we’re going to make a new rule. When you come in here and you hear me typing

[types]

Jack Torrance: or whether you *don’t* hear me typing, or whatever the *fuck* you hear me doing; when I’m in here, it means that I am working, *that* means don’t come in. Now, do you think you can handle that?

Wendy Torrance: Yeah.

Jack Torrance: Good. Now why don’t you start right now and get the fuck out of here? Hm?

As Wendy walks away my mother “Hmmed” and said, “So the film’s about spousal abuse, why didn’t anybody tell me?”

The first time I watched The Shining I never really noticed this because I was still a teenage boy.  I was only interested in the violence and the idea of supernatural influence, and to reveal myself completely, at that age I found anti-heroes admirable.  Jack Torrance was a figure who seemed to embody the same kind of nightmare darkness that I occupied at that age, or at least he seemed to, and as my local comic-shop owner said so beautifully to me “perception really is reality.”  Watching it again however, and paying-heed to my mother’s observation, The Shining took on a new dimension because it became less a chance to perform a morbid hero-worship and instead became an exploration of domestic violence.

The great horror in the plotline of The Shining, both the novel as well as the film, is the question of whether or not Jack Torrence is behind the atrocious actions or whether it’s the Overlook Hotel influencing him and corrupting his will.  If it was just a story about the Overlook corrupting Jack then the story most likely wouldn’t remain so terrifying to viewers and readers to this day.  If his behavior is just because of the influence of the supernatural, if it’s just a haunted house, then there’s nothing scary because haunted houses aren’t real and the appeal stops there.  If it is Jack however, then no matter how many years go by this will remain horrific because there isn’t anything so terrifying as when someone who’s supposed to love his family turns on them with violence.

I suspect the reason domestic violence is so disturbing is because husbands and fathers are supposed to be the emotional protectors against the outside world.  Even if men aren’t supposed to be terribly emotional creatures, there’s still an understanding in families that fathers are supposed to love their children and husbands are supposed to love their wives.  Watching the film after my mother made her great comment I was watching a later scene as I had never watched it before.  Wendy walks into the main lobby, finds Jack missing, and discovers his manuscript which is composed of nothing but the phrase “All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy.”  Realizing that her husband has lost his mind, and steadily has been losing his mind, she begins to weep when Jack appears and the following dialogue exchange occurs:

Jack Torrance: What are you doing down here?

Wendy Torrance: [sobbing] I just wanted to talk to you.

Jack Torrance: Okay, let’s talk. What do you wanna talk about?

Wendy Torrance: I can’t really remember.

Jack Torrance: You can’t remember… Maybe it was about… Danny? Maybe it was about him. I think we should discuss Danny. I think we should discuss what should be done with him. What should be done with him?

Wendy Torrance: I don’t know.

Jack Torrance: I don’t think that’s true. I think you have some very definite ideas about what should be done with Danny and I’d like to know what they are.

Wendy Torrance: Well, I think… maybe… he should be taken to a doctor.

Jack Torrance: You think “maybe” he should be taken to a doctor?

Wendy Torrance: Yes.

Jack Torrance: When do you think “maybe” he should be taken to a doctor?

Wendy Torrance: As soon as possible…?

Jack Torrance: [mocking/imitating her] As soon as possible…?

Wendy Torrance: Jack! What are… you…

Jack Torrance: You think his health might be at stake.

Wendy Torrance: Y-Yes!

Jack Torrance: You are concerned about him.

Wendy Torrance: Yes!

Jack Torrance: And are you concerned about me?

Wendy Torrance: Of course I am!

Jack Torrance: Of course you are! Have you ever thought about my responsibilities?

Wendy Torrance: Oh Jack, what are you talking about?

Jack Torrance: Have you ever had a single moment’s thought about my responsibilities? Have you ever thought, for a single solitary moment about my responsibilities to my employers? Has it ever occurred to you that I have agreed to look after the Overlook Hotel until May the first. Does it matter to you at all that the owners have placed their complete confidence and “trust” in me, and that I have signed a letter of agreement, a “contract,” in which I have accepted that responsibility? Do you have the slightest idea what a “moral and ethical principal” is? Do you? Has it ever occurred to you what would happen to my future, if I were to fail to live up to my responsibilities? Has it ever occurred to you? Has it?

Wendy Torrance: [swings the bat] Stay away from me!

This would be hard enough but for the scene that follows:

Wendy Torrance: [crying] Stay away from me.

Jack Torrance: Why?

Wendy Torrance: I just wanna go back to my room!

Jack Torrance: Why?

Wendy Torrance: Well, I’m very confused, and I just need time to think things over!

Jack Torrance: You’ve had your whole fucking life to think things over, what good’s a few minutes more gonna do you now?

Wendy Torrance: Please! Don’t hurt me!

Jack Torrance: I’m not gonna hurt you.

Wendy Torrance: Stay away from me!

Jack Torrance: Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I’m not gonna hurt ya. You didn’t let me finish my sentence. I said, I’m not gonna hurt ya. I’m just going to bash your brains in!

[Wendy gasps]

Jack Torrance: [laughs] Gonna bash ’em right the fuck in!

Wendy Torrance: Stay away from me! Don’t hurt me!

Jack Torrance: [sarcastically] I’m not gonna hurt ya…

Wendy Torrance: Stay away! Stop it!

Jack Torrance: Stop swingin’ the bat. Put the bat down, Wendy. Wendy? Give me the bat…

It’s fascinating watching this scene because several years ago while riding on my Stanley Kubrick kick I watched an interview with Steven Spielberg and another with Stephen King, and the sentiment from both of these men is that, while the film is brilliant, they didn’t like Jack Nicholson’s character because they felt he was cold or, in Spielberg’s own words, that it was too much like Kabuki theatre.  I agreed with this sentiment the first time I watched The Shining, but with each subsequent viewing I began to disagree with this because, while his behavior was dramatic, Kubrick’s film was about madness and a person imploding while also becoming more and more susceptible to outside supernatural influence.  There’s no doubt by the end of the film that the hotel is possessed by malevolent spirits who want Danny so that his ability can be used to attract more and more souls to the hotel, but the consistency of the horror to me is really the idea that Wendy and Danny are trapped in a physical space with a man who is imploding.

Before Wendy’s discovery of the manuscript she finds Jack suffering from a nightmare and he wakes up to tell her about his dream:

Jack Torrance: The most terrible nightmare I ever had. It’s the most horrible dream I ever had.

Wendy Torrance: It’s okay, it’s okay now. Really.

Jack Torrance: I dreamed that I, that I killed you and Danny. But I didn’t just kill ya. I cut you up in little pieces. Oh my God. I must be losing my mind.

It’s not enough that Jack suffers this atrocious nightmare, for by itself this wouldn’t contribute much to the film.  As always with Stanley Kubrick this detail is horrifying to the viewer because of its sense of foreboding, or, really, it’s familiarity at this point.  In just the opening moments of the film Jack is interviewed for the job and is told about the previous caretaker:

Stuart Ullman: I don’t suppose they told you anything in Denver about the tragedy we had in the Winter of 1970.

Jack Torrance: I don’t believe they did.

Stuart Ullman: My predecessor in this job left a man named Charles Grady as the Winter caretaker. And he came up here with his wife and two little girls, I think were eight and ten. And he had a good employment record, good references, and from what I’ve been told he seemed like a completely normal individual. But at some point during the winter, he must have suffered some kind of a complete mental breakdown. He ran amuck and killed his family with an axe. Stacked them neatly in one of the rooms in the West wing and then he, he put both barrels of a shot gun in his mouth.

Jack will eventually meet Grady during the “Party” in the gold room and after Grady spills an avocado desert on his jacket and they adjoin to the men’s room he once again summons the imagery of familial destruction:

Delbert Grady: Did you know, Mr. Torrance, that your son is attempting to bring an outside party into this situation? Did you know that?

Jack Torrance: No.

Delbert Grady: He is, Mr. Torrance.

Jack Torrance: Who?

Delbert Grady: A nigger.

Jack Torrance: A nigger?

Delbert Grady: A nigger cook.

Jack Torrance: How?

Delbert Grady: Your son has a very great talent. I don’t think you are aware how great it is. That he is attempting to use that very talent against your will.

Jack Torrance: He is a very willful boy.

Delbert Grady: Indeed he is, Mr. Torrance. A very willful boy. A rather naughty boy, if I may be so bold, sir.

Jack Torrance: It’s his mother. She, uh, interferes.

Delbert Grady: Perhaps they need a good talking to, if you don’t mind my saying so. Perhaps a bit more. My girls, sir, they didn’t care for the Overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of matches, and tried to burn it down. But I “corrected” them sir. And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, I “corrected” her.

All of these quotes only demonstrate that, while The Shining is most certainly a ghost story that relies on the Supernatural for its final climax, at work in the narrative and cinematic direction, there is a terrifying sense of claustrophobia that leads to spousal and familial abuse.  Jack Torrence is supposed to be a good man who’s trying to do right by his family after failing them and actually physically hurting them, and by the end of the movie his mind is so warped he tries to kill his son and wife in the exact same manner his predecessor’s did.  Stephen King is right in his assessment that The Shining is a “cold” movie, but if I may correct one of my literary heroes, that doesn’t make it any less horrifying than the novel.

While it is somewhat clichéd at times, the family is the core of most of human society because it’s the space where we learn about love, morality, trust, virtue, and proper behavior.  It’s also supposed to be the space where we can retreat from the harshness and often unfeeling cruelty of real life.  Stanley Kubrick’s film is a great testament to the horror genre because horror is supposed to explore territory that many find questionable or uncomfortable.  The idea that the family could become so corrupted that the father would murder his own children unnerves us, because it’s a violation of the family unit, that unit which is supposed to be safe.

There are other avenues to explore in the film, but looking back on my mother’s passing sentiment my impression of the film changed dramatically, and that in itself is worth exploring in writing.  The Shining is no longer just a superficial film about paranoia, claustrophobia, and ghosts, it’s about what happens when the men in families fail to do right by their loved ones.

On a final note, it may be unfair to call Jack a complete fuck-up, but then again the man does squander his chance to make his life something new.  And perhaps it’s just out of habit, but by the end of the movie the man has become yet another person claiming to be a writer and producing little to nothing.  This would make Jack Torrance only slightly more of a monster than those people who write screenplays at Starbucks.

Then again, I’m told possession by evil spirits may allow some forgiveness for writer’s block.

 

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

Because I love The Shining so much, while I was working on this essay I looked up just about every video on YouTube that I could and found a few gems:

The first is the interview with Spielberg where he discusses Kubrick as a man and filmmaker period:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd97Og-20Yc

The second is an episode of Charlie Rose shortly after Kubrick’s death where he interviews Kubrick’s widow and Matin Scorsese:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZQBkwv7qa4

This is just a brief video showing the complicated relationship between Kubrick and Shelly [NAME]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5M_qt1gi2s

The Making of The Shining:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQVvHj2dwK4

A Collection of behind the scenes footage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o-n6vZvqjQ

And finally, here’s a video of Stephen King’s impression and opinions of The Shining movie, and, forwarning, he’s not a huge fan of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGOd_cM_voY

 

 

**Writer’s Note**

Long before I decided to write this essay I watched a video on YouTube which explored the famous shot of the elevators exploding into the river of blood.  Rob Ager is a film critic with his own channel who has argued some controversial claims about Stanley Kubrick’s films in the past, but his observation permanently changed the way I watch The Shining because he notes that at the start of the elevator doors opening there’s some solid object which lands at the bottom of the river of blood on the left (facing) side.  It’s a quick shot, a quick moment, and easy to miss, but Kubrick was too meticulous a film maker to leave something like that to chance.  I definitely encourage you to watch the video, because when I watched the film again I noticed the shape in the blood, wondering if it couldn’t possibly be a human being, but then, we find in vagueness what we wish to find:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7-GKHM5HZ8

 

***Writer’s Note*

All passages from the novel The Shining were taken from the Doubleday First edition hardback.  All quotes from the film were provided care of IMDb.

The Inconceivable Four: Divinity, Manhattan, the Monolith, and the Time Traveler

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"arrow of time", 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Brief History of Time, A Brief History of Time: From The Big Bang to Black Holes, Abram Adams, Alan Moore, Back to the Future, Bender, Bender's Big Score, Book Review, clocks, Comics, Cube, Dave Gibbons, Divinity, Dr. Manhattan, evolution, Film, film review, Fourth Dimension, Futurama, geometry, graphic novel, H.G. Wells, Human evolution, Literature, Math, Novel, Perception of Time, Philosophy, Reality, Role of Science Fiction in society, Science, science fiction, Space, Stanley Kubrick, State of Being, Stephen Hawking, The Monolith, The Time Machine, The Time Traveler, Third Dimension, time, Time Travel, U.S.S.R., Watchmen

I’ve tried once to explore the fourth dimension, but only in writing.  I was taking a creative writing course and riding the high of being one of the few top writers in the class.  This wasn’t ego on my part, because if it hasn’t been made apparent at this point in my life my fatal flaw is my inability to sing my own praises.  Whatever the case most of the students in the class would confide in me and tell me that they thought I was a great writer and the teacher seemed to support this sentiment, and riding that high I thought about Stanley Kubrick.

Kubrick is a bit of an acquired taste, and sometimes I do honestly believe some critics sing the man’s praises because they want to make other people think that they understand his creative ethos, but being a teenager I suffered the delusion that I would be a film director and so I began watching interviews with film makers who would often drop the man’s name.  On a small tangent my desire to be a director shifted after reading Slash’s autobiography and so for a number of years I suffered under the delusion that I could be a rock star.  This faded when I remembered I had little to no musical talent.  Kubrick was a film maker that I enjoyed because his narratives were so eclectic.  Looking at just few years he made in respective order: Paths of Glory, Sparticus, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and Barry Lyndon, and to put this in perspective he moved from a World War I epic to a gladiator rebellion, to a Pedophile capturing a young girl, to the Nuclear apocalypse, to a science fiction philosophy opera, to a dystopian nightmare, and finally to a period piece about an Irish peasant ascending to the British Nobility.

2001: A Space Odyssey is probably one of his best known films, though often because many people in the 70s got stoned and watched it with their kids.  What they missed in their induced state was that in his own way Kubrick was attempting to do what I tried in my own small essay about how we tell stories.

Human beings exist in the third dimension, and if I can remind you of your brief high school geometry class the third dimension’s quality is that it allows figures to move through space.  In the first dimension objects and organisms could only move to the left or right, whereas in the second objects could then move up and down left and right.  The Third dimension allows objects and organisms to move forward and back and they do this by moving through space.  Human beings exist and interact with a three dimensional reality, and it needs to be made clear this is a simplistic breakdown of a complicated philosophical, mathematical, and psychological problem.  Many scientists turned philosophers have mused about our three dimensional reality, and looking to inspiration from science fiction authors, the next frontier seems to be to understand if it possible to break into the reality of the fourth dimension who’s defining quality and nature is time.

Steven Hawking, the noted theoretical physicist and part-time Simpsons character, explores this in his book A Brief History of Time.  When I first read the book I was fresh out of high school and it should be noted that at the time I understood little if any of the actual text, however over time this changed.  That’s a bad joke so I’ll move on.  In a chapter dealing with wormholes, pockets of space in which it is believed human beings might, and a big emphasis on might there, be able to move through large stretches of the galaxy relatively quickly Hawking writes:

Because there is no unique standard of time, but rather observers each have their own time as measured by clocks that they carry with them, it is possible for the journey to seem to be much shorter for the space travelers than for those who remain on earth.  But there would not be much joy in returning from a spae voyage a few years older to find that everyone you had left behind was dead and gone thousands of years ago.  So in order to have any human interest in their stories, science fiction writers had to suppose that we would one day discover how to travel faster than light.  (161-2).

It’s important to note that, while Hawking is an unapologetic science fiction fan even once appearing on an episode of Star Trek, the passages immediately following this quote explains why these writers’ descriptions of travels through space and time were rather inaccurate or else impossible.  The problem of human beings entering or attempting to move through the fourth dimension is either plagued by the actual science, or the fact that actually passing into that dimension requires individuals who are willing to do so without concern of what they’re leaving behind.  As such I look back to Kubrick, but before I do I look to H.G. Wells.

Hawking actually bothers to mention Wells at the beginning of the chapter from which I received the previous quote, and the reason for this is Wells’s small novel The Time Machine.  The book is a slim narrative but contained within its pages is in fact some of the earliest inclinations of the science that men like Steven Hawking would write into reality.  Wells, it should be noted, is often considered one of the “founding fathers” of science fiction, and while it should be noted that there were other writers writing into similar territories and ideas, Wells work boosted the aesthetic of science fiction into something concrete and often inspired future engineers and scientists.  Looking at just the opening pages of The Time Traveler it’s incredible to see the man’s foresight:

“Can a cube that does not last for any time at all have a real existence?”

Filby became pensive.  “Clearly,” the Time Traveler proceeded,” any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have length, breadth, Thickness, and—Duration.  But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact.  There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.  There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.  (4).

The” arrow of time” is a concept that is explored even outside the studies of physicists and mathematicians for poets and writers have been relying on that damned symbol almost since the first arrow was painted on a wall.  It should be noted that part of the reason for this is that the shape is incredibly phallic, but I don’t have the time to explain that all of history is just men measuring dicks.

The Time Machine made its first appearance in 1895 and, according to some, effectively established the genre of science fiction though this last point is debatable.  What’s still incredible about the book is how well Wells managed to explain out the idea of dimensions in just one paragraph.  Employing the “arrow of time” in order to convince his companions about his ideas concerning the fourth dimension, The Time Traveler, who is never named by the narrator thus launching him into the territory of archetype, manages to begin the first question: can man step out of his comfort in the third dimension in order to see his potential.

That last word has been chosen carefully as I get closer to my later conclusions.

But along with his observations of the abstract concept of time the Time Traveler also makes a fascinating observation about human beings:

“Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this geometry of Four Dimensions for some time.  Some of my results are curious.  For instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight years old, another at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at twenty-three, and so on.  All these are evidently sections, as it were, Three Dimensional representations of his Four-Dimensional being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing.  (6).

From here the Time Traveler makes his argument that it would be possible for man to break free from the “arrow of time” from which he is forever caught by his perceptions, and, given the supposed hypothetical conditions, almost anything could be possible, specifically time travel.  Because this is the late Victorian period and science had only proceeded so far The Time Traveler produces the Time Machine, and it’s important to note how that dates the book, but not necessarily in a bad way.  It’s through an external device or machine that man is going to be able to achieve his destiny and this idea of man riding a kind of time traveling vessel is not outdated for the Back to the Future movies proved that this concept is still alive and well.  What changed over time is revealed in this second quote.

The Time Traveler notes that human beings are three-dimensional beings but that is only because they haven’t unlocked the ability to see and observe their true potential.  This is actually a brilliant idea being expressed that, while it has enormous philosophical implications, seems to counter act the very necessity of a time machine. Simply put, human beings are Fourth-Dimensional creatures they just haven’t realized how to actually tap into that reality. Human beings typically perceive their existence like a three dimensional cube.  They recognize the length, width, and girth of the physical space they occupy, but because they can only perceive time as an arrow moving through time they don’t recognize that they are actually able to be a four-dimensional cube, a shape that, in its true form is malleable and constantly regenerating itself.  I don’t want to suggest that this is immortality, but the direction two science fiction narratives have taken seems to be just that.

I had no real intention of reading Divinity because before I saw the advertisement in the back of Faith Vol.1 I had no idea that it actually existed.  The image of an astronaut, later revealed to be a cosmonaut, caught me because despite my trepidation I do actually enjoy science fiction stories they just have to be grounded in or around planet Earth or its history.  I asked my friend Michael (one of the three Michael’s I know and talk to regularly) what the book was about seeing as how he is the go-to Valiant expert.  His exact description was: “I mean, I liked it. If you ever watched 2001 and were like “man, this sure would be better as a superhero comic”, well, that’s Divinity in a nutshell.”  Given the fact that I loved 2001: A Space Odyssey (though let’s be fair I really like the idea of it far more than the actual film) I was intrigued and so I bought the book a week later and devoured it in four days.  The only reason it took four was because I tend to read books one chapter at a time per day; it helps me get through a lot of books.

Divinity is about a cosmonaut named Abram Adams who assigned a top secret task of being launched into space.  The U.S.S.R., desperate to defeat the Americans launches Adams to the very edge of the galaxy and when he arrives at his destination after years of isolation and Cryogenic stasis he encounters an energy force, a plane of white light that some would call god and other might refer to as the ground of being, that enters his body and alters his consciousness.  Abrams effectively becomes a god but what’s most important is the fact that the story is told is a splintered fashion.  Rather than follow Adams and then show MI-6 sending in The Eternal Warrior and X-O Manowar to take him down, Matt Kindt writes the book so that events are taking place in the past, in the present, in the future, in individual’s imaginations, and in people’s memories all at the same time.

Abram Adams hasn’t just become just a superhero, his has accessed his fourth dimensional being.

Reading Divinity I was struck by how much I thought of the graphic novel Watchman and my favorite character from that book Dr. Manhattan.

Watchmen was published through the years of 1986 through 1987 in twelve installments, which is rather fitting given the clock imagery deliberately inserted throughout the book.  If the reader has never read it before that’s a terrible shame because there really are few great books in existence and Watchmen most certainly fits that category.  The graphic novel follows a group of superheroes in the year 1985 right after one of them, the sociopath ex-government agent The Comedian, is thrown from his apartment window and killed.  From there the characters Rorschach, Silk Specter, Night Owl, Ozymandias, and Dr. Manhattan each in their own way try to discover who is trying to kill former superheroes and why, while in the background a nuclear war is looming against the U.S.S.R. and President Richard Nixon seems only to be baiting and encouraging it.  There’s also a pirate comic book that’s being read throughout the text but that’s for another essay.  While each hero has at least one issue dedicated to them, it was the Dr. Manhattan chapter that always intrigued me (Rorschach’s is really fun too, though I use the word “fun” loosely) because it’s written from his perspective after he retreats from planet earth to live on Mars.  Dr. Manhattan is more or less a god and became so after he was working on a particle physics experiment that went horribly wrong and ripped every atom of his body apart.  He eventually pulled himself back together and became Dr. Manhattan, but what’s most important about his character’s chapter is its narrative structure.

Like Divinity, Dr. Manhattan is experiencing the past, present, and future seemingly all at the same time and looking at just a few passages from the book it becomes clear that his perception of time far exceeds human understanding.

I should finally address my contester however, for they remind me that most people cannot or will not perceive anything outside their own dimension.  What the point, or why should I care about books that are written about people outside of my own perception?  It’s impossible for human beings to break free from the “arrow of time” and spending your life trying clearly will only leave you isolated or destroyed or alienated from society, so why not try and enjoy your life?

These are all excellent points, and to be fair I’m not sure I have a satisfying answer to them.  Carpe Diem, or seize the day, may be a platitude but it’s one that leaves average people generally satisfied and happy with their lives.  Human beings have yet to reach a point in their evolution so that they would be able to access the Fourth-Dimensional being that they are, and it’s likely that such a stage is hundreds, if not thousands, of years away anyway, but books and films like Divinity, The Time Machine, Watchmen, and even 2001: A Space Odyssey try to offer up ideas of how human beings might access that next level.  For the most part it seems that humans will have to wait until a supernatural entity, whether it’s the black monolith or the white plane, arrives and bestows knowledge of being to them, but at least in the case of Watchmen and The Time Machine there’s an idea that, through their own devices, humans might make the next step themselves.  Even if it is through technology, humans might be able to expand their awareness and being and that’s an important idea, because in many ways we’re already trying to do just that.

Steven Hawking ends A Brief History of Time with a thought concerning the future of physics, philosophy, and possibly that of mankind:

Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is to ask the question why.  On the other hand, the people who business it is to ask why, the philosophers, have not been able to keep up with the advancements of scientific theories.

He concludes then:

However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists.  Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question why it is we and the universe exist.  If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason-for then we would know the mind of God.  (191).

The purpose of science fiction is largely to ask questions either about the nature of human beings, or their future.  While many have taken the opportunity to explore thought experiments and the more morbid conclusions concerning the future of humanity a few select have decided to question what if human beings could become more and explore a new dimension of being?  A while the general conclusion is that the result of this experiment would result in alienation or some kind of self-destruction I would argue that that reaction is rooted more in those left behind than those moving forward.

The closest success human beings have made in understanding this new state of being is fiction, and that’s perhaps the most telling but also the most encouraging.  Scientific enterprise depends upon imagination, and as more and more writers explore the notions of time travel and accessing new states of being, so too will scientists who will change our world in ways we can’t possibly even imagine.

Though if we ever get to the point where we start sending Bender back in time to steal precious masterpieces, we may have taken it a step too far.

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

While I was working on this review I found this essay on The New Yorker Website.  Enjoy:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/hearing-and-seeing-2001-a-space-odyssey-anew

 

**Writer’s Note**

I’ve included links to three videos below.  The first is the “star gate” sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou6JNQwPWE0

The second link is the final three minutes of the film in which the astronaut Dave ascends to a new state of being:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXS8P0HksQo

I’ve also found a small documentary a YouTuber produced in which he explains the Monolith.  This interpretation, as he notes, created a bit of a controversy because many fans loved the idea but certain film scholars didn’t.  I’ve posted Part 1 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSo6s_xrj4c

Gooooooooooooooooood Intro to a Wonderful Film About Free Speech, Dehumanization, and War

Tags

"Vietnam War Movie", Adrian Cronauer, Apocalypse Now, Barry Levinson, censorship, dehumanization, Film, film review, Francis Ford Coppola, free speech, Full Metal Jacket, Good Morning Vietnam, Literature, My Lai, R. Lee Ermy, racism, Robert Downey Jr, Robin Williams, Stanley Kubrick, Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, The Seventies, The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien, Tropic Thunder

 

For the record I know several lesbians who don’t own or wear comfortable shoes.  Despite this I’m still able to laugh at Adrian Cronauer‘s comments about “the protective dyke” because Robin Williams.

Adrian Cronauer: The Mississippi River broke through a protective dike today. What is a protective dike? Is it a large woman that says “Don’t go near there! But Betty- Don’t go near there! Don’t go down by the river!”… No, we can’t say “dyke” on the air, we can’t even say “lesbian” anymore, it’s “women in comfortable shoes. Thank You.”

The “Vietnam War Movie” has become a trope in American society just like the “World War II movie” has similarly become one.  The defining difference between these two films is ultimately the tone, and that doesn’t include “Holocaust” films because they possess their own genre to themselves.  The “Vietnam War Movie” has become such a trope it garnered its own satire in the film Tropic Thunder, a movie that I’m still determining whether is racist or not.  Robert Downey Jr. is white, but he’s playing his part in black-face, but it’s self-parodying black-face so that makes it okay, kind of, but even the characters in the film think it’s racist, and I’m getting off point again.

This semester my little sister is taking an entire class dedicated to the war in Vietnam and one of her assignments was to watch films about or set during the time period.  She took a similar course last semester over Cold War Cinema, and it was during that class that I was able to re-watch a film I had only seen once when we had an HBO preview for a weekend and there weren’t any Skinemax movies on.  Good Morning Vietnam was one of the options again this semester, alongside Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now, but neither of those have Robin Williams, they only have soul crushing sadness and long bouts of paranoia interrupted by esoteric cinematic techniques and references to poetry.  In fact these two films seem to have defined the “Vietnam War Movie” in their own right for if you follow their narrative arcs you begin to recognize a similar rhetoric model.

The Vietnam war in film is often a bloody chaotic mess that comes to become a symbolic statement about mankind’s internal corruption.  Apocalypse Now is probably the most obvious example because the film has become the standard, albeit most surreal, example of what happened to Americans during the war, not to mention capturing perfectly the madness that was the war near the end.  The film is a reimagined version of Joseph Conrad’s novel (I don’t believe in novellas) Heart of Darkness, and in its way it established most of the tropes and clichés of the genre.  Look at the first line of the protagonist Willard played by then a young Martin Sheen:

Willard: [voiceover] Saigon… shit; I’m still only in Saigon… Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle.

Willard: When I was home after my first tour, it was worse.

[grabs at flying insect]

Willard: I’d wake up and there’d be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said “yes” to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I’m here a week now… waiting for a mission… getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.

Later when he actually goes on his mission and meets Kurtz he has another soul searching soldier moment:

Willard: [voice-over] On the river, I thought that the minute I looked at him, I’d know what to do, but it didn’t happen. I was in there with him for days, not under guard; I was free, but he knew I wasn’t going anywhere. He knew more about what I was going to do than I did. If the generals back in Nha Trang could see what I saw, would they still want me to kill him? More than ever, probably. And what would his people back home want if they ever learned just how far from them he’d really gone? He broke from them, and then he broke from himself. I’d never seen a man so broken up and ripped apart.

The protagonist narration model, or having the protagonist describe his life to the viewer while events are unfolding, is a typical war narrative strategy because it delivers the inner thoughts of the soldier thus giving the film a sense of drama.  Before the reader thinks I’m hating I’m not.  Haters gonna hate but I ain’t…did I really just type that?  Full Metal Jacket, also considered one of the standard Vietnam War Films, followed this pattern principally through the character of Private Joker who offers the viewer moments like this:

Private Joker: [narrating] Graduation is only a few days away, and the recruits of Platoon 3092 are salty. They are ready to eat their own guts and ask for seconds. The drill instructors are proud to see that we are growing beyond their control. The Marine Corps does not want robots. The Marine Corps wants killers. The Marine Corps wants to build indestructible men, men without fear.

Private Joker witnesses numerous atrocities, often deflecting them with humor until he’s forced to take the life of a young woman who killed two of friends and begs him to kill her.  Much like Francis Ford Coppola did in Apocalypse Now, Stanley Kubrick tries to create a dark comedy out of the Vietnam War, showing how it either destroyed the weak and corrupted the strong, and all the while the Vietcong, the Communist army America was fighting at that time, becomes an “other” that American soldiers project their fears onto or else exploit.

Even prose isn’t completely spared from this trope because even novels about the Vietnam War eventually submits to this soul crushing darkness.  Tim O’Brien, a great author who’s made a living off writing about the Vietnam War, sealed that impression on me forever when I read his “novel” The Things They Carried (It’s really just a collection of Short Stories, but the novel as an institution is like Gozer from Ghostbusters, it can be whatever it wants).  In the chapter “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” a soldier named Mark Fossie manages to get his girl Mary Anne to come to Vietnam to live with him.  She arrives a sweet child of the Military Industrial Complex, however over time the war begins to get to her and after takking up with a group of Green Berets the reader is lead into a tent, and virtually entered into hell:

The Place seemed to echo with a weird deep-wilderness sound—tribal music—bamboo flutes and drums and chimes.  But what hit you first, Rat said, was the smell.  Two kinds of smells.  There was the topmost scent of joss sticks and incense, like the fumes of some exotic smokehouse, but beneath the smoke lay a deeper and much more powerful stench.  Impossible to describe, Rat said.  It paralyzed your lungs.  Thick and numbing, like an animal’s den, a mix of blood and scorched hair and excrement and the sweet-sour odor of moldering flesh—the stink of the kill.  But that wasn’t all.  On a post at the rear of the hootch was a decayed head of a large black leopard; strips of yellow-brown skin dangled from the overhead rafters.  And bones.  Stacks of bones—all kinds.  To one side, propped up against a wall, stood a poster in the neat black lettering: ASSEMBLE YOUR OWN GOOK!  FREE SAMPLE KIT!! (109-10).

Mary Anne eventually emerges like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now with a monologue about the darkness in the land of Vietnam, and ingesting it, and how Mark doesn’t get it because he’s still part of that other world and it’s about here that horror eventually merges back into a kind of racism…oh my god I just got Robert Downey Jr’s character.

The problem with many of these “Vietnam War Movies” is that they perpetuate this idea of Orientalism, that Vietnam like much of Asia is a land of mystery and magic that white people can project their fears and fantasies onto and in the case of Vietnam, much like Europeans did to Africa, Americans projected their fears and got nice wet bite in the ass for it.

The movie Good Morning Vietnam seems to answer this, check it, and in fact give something back to the land that was missing, namely humanity.  In the face of the abyss human beings tend to fall back either on insanity or humor, and absurdity tends to have far better results.

In walks Adrian Cronauer, an air-man flown in from Greece to do a morning radio program for the military.  From the first lines

Adrian Cronauer: Goooooooooooooood morning, Vietnam! Hey, this is not a test. This is rock and roll. Time to rock it from the delta to the DMZ! Is that me, or does that sound like an Elvis Presley movie? Viva Da Nang. Oh, viva, Da Nang. Da Nang me, Da Nang me. Why don’t they get a rope and hang me? Hey, is it a little too early for being that loud? Hey, too late. It’s 0600 What’s the “0” stand for? Oh, my God, it’s early. Speaking of early, how about that Cro-Magnon, Marty Dreiwitz? Thank you, Marty, for “silky-smooth sound.” Make me sound like Peggy Lee. Freddy and the Dreamers! [Puts on a record slow] Wrong speed. We’ve got it on the wrong speed. For those of you recovering from a hangover, that’s gonna sound just right. Let’s put her right back down. Let’s try it a little faster, see if that picks it up a little bit. Those pilots are going, “I really like the music. I really like the music. I really like the music.” Oh, it’s still a bad song. Hey, wait a minute. Let’s try something. Let’s play this backwards and see if it gets any better. Freddy is a devil. Freddy is a devil. Picture a man going on a journey beyond sight and sound. He’s left Crete. He’s entered the demilitarized zone. All right. Hey, what is this “demilitarized zone”? What do they mean, “police action”? Sounds like a couple of cops in Brooklyn going, “You know, she looks pretty to me.” Hey, whatever it is, I like it because it gets you on your toes better than a strong cup of cappuccino. What is a demilitarized zone? Sounds like something out of The Wizard of Oz, Oh, no, don’t go in there. Oh-we-oh Ho Chi’Minh Oh, look, you’ve landed in Saigon. You’re among the little people now. We represent the ARVN Army The ARVN Army Oh, no! Follow the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Follow the Ho Chi Minh Trail. “Oh, I’ll get you, my pretty!” Oh, my God. It’s the wicked witch of the north. It’s Hanoi Hanna! “Now, little GI, you and your little ‘tune-ooh’ too!” “Oh, Adrian. Adrian. What are you doing, Adrian?” Oh, Hanna, you slut. You’ve been down on everything but the Titanic. Stop it right now. Hey, uh, hi. Can you help me? What’s your name? “My name’s Roosevelt E. Roosevelt.” Roosevelt, what town are you stationed in?. “I’m stationed in Poontang.” Well, thank you, Roosevelt. What’s the weather like out there? “It’s hot. Damn hot! Real hot! Hottest things is my shorts. I could cook things in it. A little crotch pot cooking.” Well, can you tell me what it feels like. “Fool, it’s hot! I told you again! Were you born on the sun? It’s damn hot! I saw – It’s so damn hot, I saw little guys, their orange robes burst into flames. It’s that hot! Do you know what I’m talking about.” What do you think it’s going to be like tonight? “It’s gonna be hot and wet! That’s nice if you’re with a lady, but it ain’t no good if you’re in the jungle.” Thank you, Roosevelt. Here’s a song coming your way right now. “Nowhere To Run To” by Martha and the Vandellas. Yes! Hey, you know what I mean! [Starts the music and removes his headphones looking at Ed] Too much?

Reading it isn’t the same as watching however and so there’s a link at the bottom if you’d like to see most of that lengthy passage.  Robin Williams in his life was a force of nature in terms of his performance and most of the passage above, much like R. Lee Ermey’s lengthy opening monologue in Full Metal Jacket, was improvised on the spot.  Barry Levinson, the director of the film, aware of William’s particular style, supposedly told Williams to just riff and wound up shooting somewhere in the vein of five hours of footage eventually going back later and selecting the “best parts.”

The film Good Morning Vietnam isn’t just a long Robin Williams monologue however for it follows the struggle of Adrian Cronauer to perform on the radio during the Vietnam war.  While that may not at first sound complicated remember that he’s working for the military and so obviously there are jokes that can potentially lead you to disaster.  In one scene in particular Cronauer is informed he must play tapes of then Vice President Nixon’s visit to the country.  He does just that, however altered:

Richard Nixon: [Adrian has inserted his voice onto the press conference with Nixon] As I leave Vietnam today there will be no doubt in my mind that the Viet cong will be defeated. And this war will be won. It does involve as you have suggested give and take.

Adrian Cronauer: Well I really didn’t make that suggestion, sir, I’m sorry. 

Lt. Steven Hauk: Why would Cronauer’s voice be on this tape?

Private Abersold: I don’t know, sir.

Adrian Cronauer: Mr Nixon, thank you for that concise political commentary, but I think I’d rather delve into a more personal for the men in the field. How would you describe your testicles?

Richard Nixon: [Hauk turns to the radio in horror] That they’re soft and they’re very shallow and they serve no purpose.

Adrian Cronauer: So what are you saying, sir?

Richard Nixon: They lack the physical strength.

Lt. Steven Hauk: Oh, my God. Please don’t do this to me. 

Adrian Cronauer: How would you describe your sex life with your wife Pat?

Richard Nixon: It is unexciting sometimes.

Adrian Cronauer: Well, you can consider a sex change. There is an operation that can transform you into a female white dane or a very hell wung chihuaua. Mr. Nixon it is rumored that you have smoked marijuana. Are you planning to take some of the marijuana home back to the United States? How would you do that?

Richard Nixon: By plane. By helicopter and also by automobile.

This stunt doesn’t in fact lead to his termination but it does come close.  The larger concern in the film is that as a radio host he is required to occasionally read off pieces of news.  At the time the United States military carefully guarded what information was transported over the air waves.  The practical reason was to make sure the Vietcong who could also hear the radio, didn’t learn of troop movements or successful terrorist actions thus giving further cause to their movement.  The more complicated problem is that in this way the military is performing an active form of censorship, which Americans tend to look down upon.  Cronauer’s struggle becomes an issue of free speech as news items are heavily censored and he’s left reporting on new bulletins like economic developments in Italy and LBJ’s highway beautification.  When a bar he’s drinking at blows up he attempts to report it and is effectively stripped of his job leaving him almost broken:

Adrian Cronauer: I’m sayin’ I’m through, Ed. I’m tired of people tellin’ me what I can’t say. “This news isn’t official.” “That comment is too sarcastic.” I can’t even make fun of Richard Nixon and there’s a man who’s screaming out to be made fun of!

The film doesn’t just center on the idea of freedom of the press though because ultimately this is a “Vietnam War Movie” but unlike the previous examples the film attempts something that few others try to: make the Vietnamese characters human.

The reader might object, arguing that surely the other films give some kind of humanity to the Vietcong or at least the Vietnamese people, but the conflict is that really isn’t the case.  In Apocalypse Now there are no interactions between Willard and average citizens, and many of the Vietcong are usually shadowed creatures shooting at Americans or dying.  The film is surreal and leaves little room to understand their conflict, they’re simply there to be creatures of the dark forces Americans are fighting.  In Full Metal Jacket this situation is improved by the prostitute and the sniper at the end of the film, but these characters serve only to reflect the experience of Americans rather than exist as fully fleshed out human beings.  The “Vietnam War Movie” actively dehumanizes the Vietcong and the implication of this is that while American film makers are trying to show how corrupt the war was for us, they repeat the same incident of the Vietnam war.

Barry Levinson pursues a different approach in this film showing Cronauer’s interactions with characters like Jimmy Wah, a homosexual man who owns a bar that mainly serves American soldiers, Trinh, a young woman he falls for and tries to court, and her brother Tuan a young man who he comes to see as a good friend as he coaches a group of Vietnamese citizens in the English language.  Levinson shows Vietnam as a country as well as a culture showing both the urban landscapes of Saigon as well as local villages, and this approach is liberating from the typical clichés that dominate the genre.  Rather than turning the Vietnamese into stereotypes or pathos ridden cartoon characters, he turns them into real human beings existing in a country and a culture that is radically splintering both to internal corruptions as well as the influence of the United States.  The war is not just an excuse to show forests burning and shit blowing up, rather it becomes an opportunity to see how people are being hurt.

At the end of the film Cronauer is informed that Tuan is a Vietcong terrorist and he confronts him:

Adrian Cronauer: [to Tuan hiding from him] I know about the bombing, Sparky. No wonder you hauled ass. You were my friend. I trusted you.

[silence]

Adrian Cronauer: YOU HEAR ME?

Tuan: [hidden] You’re just a stupid guy. Now you have to go. You’re better off.

Adrian Cronauer: That’s not the fucking point! You understand me? I fought to get you into that bar! And then you blow the fucking place up! Listen… I gave you my

friendship… and my trust! And now they tell me that my best friend is the goddamn enemy!

Tuan: [in tears, showing himself] ENEMY? What is enemy? You claim our people miles from your home. We not the enemy! You the enemy!

Adrian Cronauer: [tersely] You used me to kill two people! Two people DIED in that fucking bar!

Tuan: Big fucking deal! My brother is dead. And my other brother, who be 29 years old, he dead! Shot by Americans! My neighbor, dead! His wife, dead. WHY? Because we’re not human to them!

Recently Netflix added The Seventies, a documentary series produced by CNN and Tom Hanks, which covers the cultural, political, and domestic history of the world, focusing primarily on the United States, during the 1970s.  The most recent episodes I watched involve the prolific numbers of serial killers that appeared during that decade, but another tracked the Vietnam war.  Near the end of the hour-long episode they covered the My Lai massacre, an event in which around 500 Vietnamese civilians were tortured, raped, and eventually killed by U.S. Soldiers who believed the villagers to be members of the Vietcong.  The incident was a National scandal, fucking obviously, and is considered one of the most damning actions undertaken during the war, but as the historians, reporters, and newscasters narrated there was one comment that struck my ear: “Many of the soldiers didn’t see these people as people,they honestly looked on them as vermin.”

Dehumanization is the stuff of the “Vietnam War Movie” and that’s why Good Morning Vietnam is one of the few films in this genre I can continually return to and not just because of Robin Williams.  The film tracks the war, and what a shit-for-shit show it was, but more importantly it tells the story of a man who recognizes Vietnam and its people, and rather than try and hide that, or censor it, he tried a better approach: make people laugh at it.

Adrian Cronauer: [impersonating an Intelligence Officer] We’ve realized that we’re having a very difficult time finding the enemy. It isn’t easy to find a Vietnamese man named “Charlie.” They’re all named Nguyen, or Tran, or…

Adrian Cronauer: [as himself] Well, how are you going about it?

Adrian Cronauer: [as Intel Officer] Well, we walk up to someone and say, ‘Are you the enemy? And, if they say yes, then we shoot them.”

Humor will always be a means of relieving the tension that arises from morbid absurdity, which there was certainly an abundance of in Vietnam, because recognizing how absurd something is makes it more difficult to take it too terribly seriously.  It can also, when done right, get people to start talking.

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

I didn’t get the chance to include it in the bulk of the essay, but I’d be remiss (fancy-pants word for careless) if I didn’t quote one of my favorite lines from the movie

Lt. Steven Hauk: Sir, the man has got an irreverent tendency. He did a very off-color parody of former VP Nixon.

General Taylor: I thought it was hilarious.

Lt. Steven Hauk: Respectfully, sir, the former VP is a good man and a decent man.

General Taylor: Bullshit! I know Nixon personally. He lugs a trainload of shit behind him that could fertilize the Sinai. Why, I wouldn’t buy an apple from the son of a bitch and I consider him a good, close, personal friend.

 

**Writer’s Note**

Here’s the link, hope you enjoy, then again it’s Robin Williams how can you not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erf2iFHG44M

Dr. Strangelove or: A Very Odd Film About How We All Will Die Over Sex

Tags

2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Abuse of Military authority, Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Full Metal Jacket, George C. Scott, Last Week Tonight, Lolita, merkin, Mutually Assured Destruction, nuclear annihilation, Nuclear War, Peter Sellers, phallus worship, sex, Sexual Rhetoric, Stanley Kubrick, The Cold War, The Shining

You would never think a film about nuclear annihilation would actually be nothing but sexual tension and imagery, but Dr. Strangelove most certainly is. Technically the full title is Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, but for the sake of simplicity, and what is left of my own mental state, let’s keep it simply Dr. Strangelove for now.

I was aware of the film since, in my late teens, I went through what could only be referred to as a Kubrick-krush (get it, I replaced the “k” with a “c,” it’s a joke, get it…We never talk anymore). I think it was the fascination with Tarantino that originally did it for me. There were so many names entering into my consciousness that were an indication of genius: Scorsese, Allen, Coopola(Francis and Sophia), Spielberg, Hopper, and Fincher to name a few, but the name Kubrick was spoken with a kind of reverence I didn’t fully understand until I’d watched a few of his films. I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey (the parts I watched while I wasn’t asleep were sublime), The Shining (which still gives me panic attacks), A Clockwork Orange (the first half hour kept me interested, I should probably re-watch it now), Full Metal Jacket (which remains my favorite), and Eyes Wide Shut (I was a teenage boy, nuff said).   Now at some point I also watched Lolita and was fascinated by it, but that’s for another post. The point is I became aware of Kubrick and I was able to see why so many people praised his work. Simply put the man creates paintings and then films the human beings that interact within them. Visually his work was always distinct, and to this day I try in my own creative efforts to follow the approach of never making the same work twice (and I fail miserably I might add). I dove into Kubrick until I began to realize I would never be a director (this was about the same time I recognized I would never be a rock star either since I could not actually play the guitar or sing, I can sing now but I realize that’s immaterial for this discussion). Kubrick remains one of the most important film-makers in my mind because of his ability to play with narrative and form.

Looking at this then I have no idea why I avoided Dr. Strangelove like the plague. My best guess is that it was the Breaking Bad effect. I knew it was good, but I wanted to see if it would out survive the hype. One day when my wife and brother-in-law were out of the house, I hooked up my DVD port, watched it, I fell in love…and for some reason I decided to wait two months before actually reviewing it. I knew I had made the right decision not long after hearing this line:

President Merkin Muffley: Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.

If you’ve never seen the film, a General Jack D. Ripper sends out “Wing attack Plan R” to a squadron of planes in the areas surrounding the Russian border. The plan in effect is a first strike against the U.S.S.R. using nuclear missiles at tactical locations to prevent, or at least delay, retaliation on the Russian’s part. He then orders the entire base of high alert telling his men that Russian’s will invade the base dressed as American military. The reason for this decision, well it’s quite lovely in fact, why don’t I let you read it yourself:

General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk… ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children’s ice cream.

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.

General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I… no, no. I don’t, Jack.

General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen… tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first… become… well, develop this theory?

General Jack D. Ripper: [somewhat embarassed] Well, I, uh… I… I… first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.

General Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue… a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I… I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.

General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh… women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh… I do not avoid women, Mandrake.

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No.

General Jack D. Ripper: But I… I do deny them my essence.

Believe it or not this is not actually the speech that lets you realize that general Jack. D. Ripper is a goofy as a goose, that scene is far more chilling and a lot less funny when you recognize that threat of nuclear annihilation is far less likely to come in the form of a terrorist organization, it’s often from within. Observe:

Ripper, through an almost inconceivable chain of command and bureaucracy is able to set this plot into motion and then when the President, one President Merkin Muffley tries to stop it discovers he can’t because it’s against the code that’s allowed the code to exist in the first place. “Plan R” sets the wheels in motion for what is without a doubt the most watchable parody of government bullshit you will probably find in your life.

The reader may object to the setup of the film suggesting that it could easily be solved by simply calling the planes back. Well…

President Merkin Muffley: And why haven’t you radioed the plans countermanding the go-code?

General “Buck” Turgidson: Well, I’m afraid we’re unable to communicate with any of the aircraft.

President Merkin Muffley: Why?

General “Buck” Turgidson: As you may recall, sir, one of the provisions of Plan ‘R’ provides that once the go-code is received, the normal SSB Radios in the aircraft are switched into a special coded device which I believe is designated as CRM-114. Now, in order to prevent the enemy from issuing fake or confusing orders, CRM-114 is designed not to receive at all – unless the message is preceded by the correct three-letter recall code group prefix.

President Merkin Muffley: Then do you mean to tell me, General Turgidson, that you will be unable to recall the aircraft?

General “Buck” Turgidson: That’s about the size of it. However, we are plowing through every possible three-letter combination of the code. But since there are 17,000 permutations… it’s going to take us about two-and-a-half days to transmit them all.

President Merkin Muffley: How soon did you say our planes will be entering Russian radar cover?

General “Buck” Turgidson: About 18 minutes from now, sir.

But I told you this film is really about sex so I supposed I should stick to that theme before exploring the political implications. Immediately one is struck by the sexual subtext of the film since the beginning of the film is nothing but stock footage of plane’s refueling. My reader may object and ask, “What’s so sexual about plane’s refueling?” Well, yet again…

In case you missed it there was the shot of the plane’s phallic tube bobbing in and out of the other plane filling the plane with its “Fluids” which brings me right back to General Jack D. Ripper. Ignore the immediate internet lingo of Ripper giving communists giving the “D” and instead remember his concern for fluids. Throughout the film Kubrick creates a kind of sexual tension that exists between Americans and the Communist. Ripper is afraid of penetration and vulnerability because he believes it will weaken him as a man and more importantly as an American. There’s only one woman in the entirety of the film, she’s on screen for only a few moments, and as the picture to the left clearly demonstrates it’s not necessarily that of a, to quote my lovely-lady-wife, Headstrong independent wo-man. To be honest I don’t even remember her name, she contributes very little to the plot, or to her love interest General “Buck” Turgidson played by the brilliant George C. Scott. Speaking of his name I should probably mention plants. You see when plant cells are full of water they enter a state known as “Turgid” which is the ideal state because the plant is engorged with fluids. You’re beginning to see it now I trust, but looking past Turgidson’s name there is also the President, Merkin Muffley.   Now normally Urban dictionary would do all the work for me but I have to assume my reader hasn’t seen the film or is NOT a seven year old boy with a working vocabulary. A “merkin” is a pubic wig, or a pair of underwear designed usually to demonstrate the appearance that the wearer has pubic hair. It’s often used by women in cinema when they have to film nude scene but don’t feel like showing off their vagina. As for “muffley” there is the term “muff” which is a euphemism for vagina, and, I kid you not I discovered this while researching for this essay, it is also a tube made of fur in which to warm the hands…let that sink in for a moment.

Well so what, my reader protests, so what is the film is really just a veiled metaphor for sex, why should I give a damn about this weird movie?

The reason you should care dear reader is because of this video.

In case you didn’t actually follow the link, and shame on you for not taking a few moments to improve your life with knowledge, the gist of it is across the United States there are at least 1000 nuclear warheads being contained and held, but not maintained. Along with this is the conflict that much of the technology required to actually launch these missiles is older than your grandfather and he owns a goddamn iPhone. The threat of nuclear annihilation is today an abstract concept, but barely twenty years ago it was a tangible reality. We taught children in schools how to prepare for a nuclear blast because the Communists were a real threat and they didn’t like us much. America for fifty years fought ideological and physical battles in order to stop the spread of Communism spawning a cultural reaction that still lingers. There’s a reason why the bad guys in Die Hard were East Germans rather than Middle Eastern terrorists. There’s a reason why Rocky 4 is so littered with pathos. Mankind had created the perfect means of erasing itself off the planet, and about the same time two factions discovered they really didn’t like each other.

This mutual distrust eventually merged into a kind of veiled sexual tension that culminates in Major T. J. “King” Kong riding a nuclear warhead, conveniently placed between his crotch all the way down upon his target before blowing up in a massive penis shaped, excuse me, mushroom shaped cloud of an orgasm, excuse me, explosion.

I won’t lie Dr. Strangelove is a weird fucking movie, but despite its oddity it is quite possibly one of the few successful slapstick satires of its kind. There’s the physical humor, but far more important are the one liners that are simply unforgettable:

Major T. J. “King” Kong: Survival kit contents check. In them you’ll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days’ concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings.

Shoot, a fella’ could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.

This is only one out of the many small gems that pop out to the viewer if they’re clever enough to catch them, and even if they aren’t, the sheer absurdity of the characters as they try to prevent their own established system of Mutually Assured Destruction is sure to provide a few laughs. Dr. Strangelove is first and foremost a comedy, and that by itself works for a larger design. Kubrick’s film can be understood as a kind of catharsis, an emotional release of a buildup of repressed emotions. Most human beings already suffer from some form of existential panic, but in the Cold War American society, at least, suffered a regular understanding that they’re way of life could end at any time through absolute destruction or slow infiltration. Ripper’s “Fluid” theory is borderline bonkers, but it catches the repressed sexual tension that was in the minds of many in the 1950s. We were all terrified of being replaced by the communist, infiltrated, penetrated, and impregnated with his ideological “fluids” just as he was terrified of similar fate. That’s why, near the end, as the men in the War Room are huddled together trying to formulate some strategy to combat the “Doomsday machine,” there exists what is quite possibly the most disturbing moment of the whole film. Dr. Strangelove, played by the brilliant Peter Sellers who also plays President Merkin and Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake, explains a plan to make a new society in abandoned mine shafts:

[Strangelove’s plan for post-nuclear war survival involves living underground with a 10:1 female-to-male ratio]

General “Buck” Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious… service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.

I’ll end my review with this note: In the face of the denigration and annihilation of the species, the one thing that can unite humanity is male bullshit and their obsession with their own dicks.