Stanley Kubrick and women
I haven’t posted anything here in almost exactly 4 years. But, I’m back up in this bitch! Hahaaa
Hello, hello.
Right now I’m toying with the idea of starting up a casual film club with some friends, while simultaneously doing a little exploring of film history n sociology myself, and along the way I’ve had a few more thoughts. I wanna share em, and I’ve used this tumblr to do exactly that before, so I figure, may as well do it again huh.
So. One goal in my lil casual film club has been to find really beautifully made films, and I’ve been rifling through the ones that everyone labels as classics to start with as that’s the easiest category to sort through. You don’t have to kiss as many frogs if you’re going by the ones no one ever shuts up about. And when we’re talking about classic, well-made films, one of the directors that no one shuts up about is Stanley Kubrick.
Over the past two or so months I’ve been watching his films. I tried to start from the very beginning of his filmography but my God I can’t stand war films so I started with The Killing (1956). I skipped a few of the other ones I found boring too (oops!), and ended up, in summary, watching The Killing, Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
While watching these films, I noticed some stuff. Mainly about misogyny.
Now I know sexism was much more societally active in the 1950s, when Kubrick started making feature films. To me his place in an actively and overtly sexist society seems to bounce between smart, roundabout critique and actively stoking the fire itself.
A Clockwork Orange and Lolita both explicitly depict the exploitation and abuse of women, through rampant and graphic sexual violence, and through mishandling the topic of paedophilia. In The Shining, the only female character is considerably naive, and spends almost the entire film running, crying and screaming from her murderous husband. In Full Metal Jacket, all the women are sex workers, except for one lone young sniper, who, fair play to her, was kinda cool, but also gets murdered after spending a while begging to be shot, so she can be put out of her misery.
Women are naked sex objects in a large portion of his films, if they feature at all, and if they aren’t naked, a considerable majority of them are being exploited, or being attacked. As you can see in this video, I’m not the only one who’s noticed this. Kubrick’s female characters are almost always victims of extreme violence. They rarely stand independently, and are almost always being seriously harmed by men instead. There’s something very unsettling about this running theme.
Stanley Kubrick’s casts are usually 90-99% male. If you look at Kubrick’s films as studies unpacking toxic masculinity, it makes some logical sense. He criticises war, and male sexual obsession, in nearly all of his work. However, in his films this criticism leans very heavily on the exploration of a toxically masculine evil, immersing the viewer in sexist violence, and generally harmful behaviour in boys’ club social groups before quickly pulling us out in the last 5-10 minutes, leaving us to make our own decisions about where we should go next. At times it feels as though this evil is being sensationalised, explored for entertainment because it’s unacceptable to do in real life. At times, it simply feels wrong, to me, in my gut. A Clockwork Orange and Lolita had a lot of those times.
I have respect for his lens on society, but looking at his work as one big patchwork, it’s pretty uncomfortable to watch as a woman, and its observation of sexist depravity feels more than a bit voyeuristic.
It also needs to be acknowledged that Kubrick’s own perfectionism caused him to overstep, and seriously mistreat Shelley Duval. It’s never acceptable to bully your talent, regardless of what performance you think it will pull out of them. That is crossing a line; art is never more important than human life. There have got to be better ways of creating great cinema than this, and I feel other great horror and thriller directors have proven this themselves. Perhaps the issue for Kubrick is that he’s a little imbalanced in his pursuit of an awesome cinematic experience. I certainly wouldn’t consider him an ally, though it definitely is crucial that men do their part in critically examining the patriarchy.
At the end of the day, the artistic merit and excellence in Kubrick’s work is clear, but both his work, and his approach as a director are also deeply flawed, and at many times his work becomes the misogyny he critiques. I think it’s important that other male directors take their criticism of patriarchy much further than Stanley Kubrick has done, and because of how violent the misogyny in Kubrick’s films are, I completely understand if some women would rather just avoid them altogether.
Gucci’s Gift Giving 2018 video(?)
I’m guessing this is a promo for their Thanksgiving season of clothes - I can’t say I follow the fashion houses that closely, very layman pesrpective here.
Though I gotta say, I hate the elitism and classisim of these pricey fashion houses… I see their art, and it’s always impeccably, inspiringly clean. I love the videos, I love the shoots, the mood of it all. I could honestly watch this type of stuff all day man. It’s a shame Gucci are… well, Gucci.
Dent - 181125
Pi-Slices’ Dent - 181125
dig this person’s gif art, kinda relaxing visuals but also a really slick intentional style
Music video for Oyinda’s Serpentine
Pussykrew (yep, that’s their name) made this video and they’re awesome, have posted about ‘em before
Being Unique Is Exhausting
I made this image today, while thinking about how lovely but also how painful, isolating and exhausting it is being an intersection of identities, especially when one of them is black. May make this mood and concept into a bigger project, we’ll see.
Something I made.