Movie Philosophy

If you let your past/anxiety about being exploited by a female take over, you might start seeing things 'only' through the paradigm of fanged-vaginas.

First wisdom any kind of warrior must in-corp-orate, is Don't Flinch.

If your spiritual composure is taken beyond the hedonist dualities pain/pleasure, with your eyes on neither, there's a self-trust that doesn't care to focus on what the other is upto. You can be aware of what the other is upto without letting the awareness Stress you. Don't Flinch. Castenada.

Lyssa wrote: "If you let your past/anxiety about being exploited by a female take over, you might start seeing things 'only' through the paradigm of fanged-vaginas. "

It's not an anxiety, really. More of an anger thing, anger towards myself for being so naive and weak and anger at the way I was abused. I don't believe in forgiveness and letting go of anger; I believe in dominating it and then channeling it into positive directions hence my weightlifting post.

There Will Be Blood wrote:

Lyssa wrote:

Aliens' Cameron co-scripted Rambo; you see Rambo as the Outsider trying to defend himself against a locale hunting him down... when all he wants is to be left alone. Of course, Rambo was all-American and had the typical ending, etc.

Its the mob that tries to get you to adapt and surrender that is feminine.

Beautifully enough it works both ways. Some interpret that movie to be a critique of capitalism, where as the most honorable are shoved to the sidelines, and broken by society. Others the exact opposite; Rambo as the rebel against the pathetic masses. A celebration of individualism. All the best movies are ambiguous.

Exactly.

Speaking of Capitalism, and since you are into Asian movies,,... Kim ki-duk's 'Pieta'. Masterpiece.


Kim ki-duk movies never spare you from thinking of the human condition. At one point, this movie verges on showing to what degree capitalism has been so alienating that a mother and son become so estranged, the very taboo that defines a mother-son relation is held as stake for proof. What could be more nihilistic than the great motor of money inverting and perverting every higher sentiment, in that one gripping scene of utmost perverse violence.
This movie made me shed tears. Most though found it very cheesy, soft-porn, etc.
Depends.
When you look at everything as a metaphor, the movie affects you with realizations on so many levels.

Han is Thymos-banking,, a Rage-Capital; only Plutonic philosophies can afford to understand this.


Reviews:

http://twitchfilm.com/2013/05/review-pieta-searching-for-humanity-unspeakable-monster.html

http://mobile.nytimes.com/movies/2013/05/17/movies/pieta-directed-by-kim-ki-duk.html?from=movies

http://www.dromemagazine.com/kim-ki-duk-pieta/

Kim ki-duk's films are full of Han and so mundane and nihilistic and degrading and perverse, decadent, and repressed, intense, quiet, and full of inexpressible pathos. He teaches and portrays in every film, how an individual reduced to the most slavish and hopeless, disadvantageous dead-end suicidal circumstances, can still find Honour, a way of living with dignity in the face of it all Without Negations. Affirmative attitudes born out of living-Through something without any Escapisms,,, and that's what makes him such a genius in the contemporary world.

Primal Rage wrote:

Lyssa wrote: "If you let your past/anxiety about being exploited by a female take over, you might start seeing things 'only' through the paradigm of fanged-vaginas. "

It's not an anxiety, really. More of an anger thing, anger towards myself for being so naive and weak and anger at the way I was abused. I don't believe in forgiveness and letting go of anger; I believe in dominating it and then channeling it into positive directions hence my weightlifting post.

No. Not anger, but self-severity should be the right word, - just my opinion.

"1540s, from Middle French severe from Latin severus "serious, grave, strict, austere"."

This should make you think on what is Integrity to you and how you define it for yourself as precisely as possible.

Thanks. I'm an absolute movie buff. In the process of making a top 200 all time list. Got a ton of watching to do.



This is one of the greatest movies on the topic of capitalism. Setting it self out as a anti-western, yet that becomes a question mark due to its almost nostalgic nature. Personally loved it; within my top 3 westerners so far.

Civility unmasked.
The secretive gentile, high cultured, sensitive, immaculate tastes, residing amongst his lessers.
He eats them as one would eat a chimpanzee.
He assimilates their animal essence, into his own, more refined, controlled, nature.

One would have to turn him into a monster to make him palatable.

Realism vs Idealism ( Nihilism )



I thought you guys here would enjoy this scene from the movie Platoon; this part of the movie, really, encapsulates the essence of the worldview polarities in this film. Sergeant Barnes represents reality; he is amoral, brutal, harsh, and indifferent. He doesn't believe in sugar-coating reality or escaping it through 'fluffy' idealisms. He believes that people should " shut up and take the pain!" ( a quote of his from an earlier scene in the movie). Elias and his band of hippies represent idealism; they enjoy escaping from reality via marijuana and fluffy idealisms. They are into 'Kumbaya' activities, basically.

Best scene in the entire movie.

Themes in Italian-American Gangster movies.

Quote :

"Disseminated through powerful mass media exposure, the gangster provides subliminal guidelines for manhood and serves as a cultural icon, reflecting chang- ing notions of masculinity in the United States. The gangster emerged in response to the evolution of corporate capitalism in the early twen- tieth century. Although criminal gangs had long occupied American cities, the Prohibition Act of 1920 and the desperate poverty brought on by the Great Depression in the 1930s provided opportunities for indi- vidual crime leaders to emerge and thrive.

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the exploits of gangsters such as Al Capone, John Dillinger, “Baby Face” Nelson, and “Pretty Boy” Floyd became national news, fueled fictional accounts, and captured the popular imagination. These real-life gangsters rose above ordinary criminals by committing their crimes with bravado; they were all blatant transgressors of the boundaries between good and evil, right and wrong, and rich and poor. As corporate capitalism promoted consumerism and widened the gap between rich and poor, Americans became infatuated with the gangster, a man of humble origins who affected stylish dress and fancy cars, defying the boundaries separating social classes.

These increasingly fascinating characters began to appear in Amer- ican films during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Early films often por- trayed gangsters as degenerate and overly feminized men losing their independence in the new capitalist society, but later films recast them as men who wielded power through sexuality and guns. Films such as Little Caesar (1930) and Scarface (1932) established a lasting association in popular culture between the gangster and particular ethnic groups: Jewish, Irish American, African American, Asian, and—especially— Italian American.

The Greek god Hermes came to represent popular appropriation of the trappings of aristocratic culture, and he can be seen as an archetype for performing masculinity.

To the ancient Greeks, equality was a reasonable rationale for thievery. Hermes tells his mother that “her scruples about his activities are childish; that he intends to put his own interests first and follow the career with the most profit in it; that a life of affluence and luxury would be better than living in a dreary cave; that he is determined to get equality with Apollo—by illegal means [thievery] if he cannot get it by legal means (that is, by gift of Zeus).” As Brown points out, Hermes’ intention to profit from his work connects him to the negative qualities of the newly developing commercial culture. Thus, Hermes becomes a figure associated with both the idea of clever thievery and the idea of profit. Brown also identifies Hermes as a trickster, whose “trickery is never represented as a rational device, but as a manifestation of magical power.” Hermes, like any gangster kingpin, is the wiseguy, the man with the plan.

Beyond Hermes’ relevance as a model for the gangster figure in soci- ety is his development as a god during a period of transition in Greek history. The societies of the Hellenic states changed radically from 1500 to 500 BC, as the decline of the self-sufficient family and tribe and the rise of monarchy forced a new organization onto the family. Over this time, class divisions were created and the landowning aristocracy gained control over some states. Popular resistance to aristocratic repression led in some states, notably Athens, to nascent forms of con- stitutional democracy. Brown writes: “In this vortex of social change were crystallized other phenomena which are themselves potent cata- lytic agents—the development of slavery, the codification of law, the invention of money.” He notes a corresponding shift occurring in the Olympian pantheon. “The component gods were given ranks and posi- tions analogous to the component orders in society. Hermes, previously an independent and autonomous trickster, becomes the subordinate of Zeus the King, his messenger and servant-in-chief.” Hermes becomes the patron of “a class of ‘professional boundary-crossers’—skilled and

unskilled workmen” subordinate to the king, representing “service obtained beyond the boundary, from outside the family.” In essence, he becomes what today we might call a “godfather” figure, one who con- nects the family to the world outside its boundaries and oversees the interactive mechanism between those inside and outside the family.

But as Brown points out, Hermes’ image eventually became tar- nished. In the time of Hesiod, around 700 BC, the figure of Hermes became associated with the sinister through his giving to Pandora, a woman whom Zeus created to answer to Prometheus’ theft of fire, the box of woes that triggers her “mind of a cur and a stealthy disposition9”. Through this act, Hermes plays a role similar to that of Eden’s serpent in Christian myth. He begins to represent a power against familial collectivism and for acquisitive individualism. Hes- iod interprets Hermes’ trickery as a design to gain profit. Wealth, up until this point, came the old-fashioned way, through the gods, and this was the ideal of success. But the new way to succeed was through individualism. Hermes became the model for the self-made man who gains power through profit, the antithesis of the behavior championed by Hesiod, Solon, and Plato who, in Brown’s words, “begin to use ‘theft’ and ‘robbery’ as interchangeable metaphors in their denunciations of acquisitive individualism, thus ignoring the earlier distinction between forcible and fraudulent appropriation.”

Enacted here is the traditional battle between the powerful and the helpless. “The theme of strife between Hermes and Apollo,” writes Brown, “translates into mythical language the insurgence of the Greek lower classes and their demands for equality with the aristocracy.” Hermes goes on to become god of the lottery, the means by which Athe- nians (after 487 BC) elected public officials. The lottery, Aristotle wrote in Politics and Rhetoric, reflects “the democratic principle of the abso- lute equality of all citizens.”12 In the Hymn to Hermes, the aspirations of the industrial and commercial classes are projected onto the figure of Hermes; their conflict with the aristocracy is projected into the conflict with Hermes and Apollo. On a final note, Brown tells us that “Hermes’ intrusion into the musical sphere [through his invention of the lyre, which he gave to Apollo to make amends for his cattle thievery] paral- leled the initiation of the lower classes into the cultured pursuits previ- ously monopolized by the aristocracy.”

In sum, Hermes becomes a champion for equality through the acquisition of what the ruling class has. He is, thus, an archetype of the gangster, especially the fictional gangster seen as a trickster figure used to represent deviant forms of behavior against which a society can form its ideas of proper behavior, and to create a sense of shared cultural identity.

The trickster archetype is one that provides for chaos and change. He takes people to places outside the boundaries of traditional and normal society; he reminds them that culture is human-made; and he shows them that those who reach for too much will eventually lose everything. Thus, the gangster can be seen as a natural trickster figure. Stanley Diamond, in his introduction to Paul Radin’s The Trickster, writes that civilization changes the primitive trickster into “a segregated and vicarious aspect of human experience” by suppressing the concrete image of the trickster and changing it into “the problem of injustice.” The “dual images of the deity as expressed in the trickster” that “are fused in the network of actions that define primitive society”; they become sepa- rated into the two distinct, abstract notions of good and evil. And this, says Diamond, is what enables the development of “moral fanaticism, based as it is on abstract notions of pure good, pure evil, and the exclusive moral possibility or fate of any particular individual—what may be called moral exceptionalism.”

In the moral fanaticism of Anglo-American–based culture, good and evil were separated, and as Americans strove toward the notion of pure good, they had to be able to measure their progress by personifying evil in others.

The mythographer Karl Kerényi sees the trickster figure as the one who brings disorder to a system: “Disorder belongs to the totality of life, and the spirit of this disorder is the trickster. His function in an archaic society, or rather the function of his mythology, of the tales told about him, is to add disorder to order and so make a whole, to render possible within the fixed bounds of what is permitted, an experience of what is not permitted.”

The trickster also works to help us organize our sense of community. Carl Jung sees the trickster as “[a] collective personification ... the product of a totality of individuals ... welcomed by the individual as something known to him, which would not be the case if it were just an individual outgrowth.”
The trickster, Jung writes, serves as a reminder of our shadow selves:

The so-called civilized man has forgotten the trickster. He remembers him only figuratively and metaphorically, when irritated by his own ineptitude, he speaks of fate playing tricks on him or of things being bewitched. He never suspects that his own hidden and apparently harmless shadow has qualities whose dangerousness exceeds his wildest dreams. As soon as people get together in masses and submerge the individual, the shadow is mobilized, and, as history shows, may even be per- sonified and incarnated.

Seeing the figure of the gangster as a trickster helps to explain America’s fascination with this character. Society needs a figure that can represent fringe behavior against which the mainstream can for- mulate its values and identity. The Mafia myth has thus served an important function in American society in defining both what is and is not American and what is and is not acceptable behavior in American society.

There have been three stages of development of the gangster figure within American popular culture, and each stage reflects a different function for the gangster. The first is the early use of the gangster as minstrelsy, as a way of performing Italian culture in an effort to con- trol the perceived threat to mainstream American culture posed by the difference introduced by a wave of Italian immigration. This stage began with the rise of Al Capone and faded with the Vietnam War, but it revives whenever a non-Italian puts on the mafioso mask to perform the gangster. A second stage began when Italian Americans started to use the figure of the gangster as a vehicle for telling their own stories of being Italians in the United States. The third stage started when Italian Americans began to parody, and, in doing so, renounce, the gangster figure as representative of their culture, as a means of gaining control of the story.

By the mid-twentieth century, traditional notions of American manhood began to be challenged by feminism and gay liberation. The Italian-American man evidences a traditional patriarchal sense of manhood derived from a European model that confronted an Ameri- can model of manhood. Therefore, he made a good foil for these new ideologies. The idea of using violence to establish and maintain honor was still clung to, even as the efficacy of patriarchy was disappearing. This is one reason why films like The Godfather had such an effect on American culture of the 1970s, and it continues to be culturally rel- evant today.

The Italian-American man has usually signified nothing but trouble in American culture. From the sweaty workers in the Boston Common who frightened Henry James to the exotic Rudolph Valentino’s sensu- ous strides across the silver screen into the hearts of American women, from the cocky strut of dapper gangsters across television screens to the gold-chained disco dude played by John Travolta, the Italian-American man has been called on whenever a breach of status quo civility needed to be displayed, especially through the body. Not until the third stage of the gangster representation is there a redefinition of the Italian-American man.


Whenever the Godfather opened his mouth, in my own mind

I heard the voice of my mother. I heard her wisdom, her ruthlessness, and her unconquerable love for her family and for life itself, qualities not valued in women at the time. The Don’s courage and loyalty came from her; his humanity came from her.

—Mario Puzo


In 1841, Catharine Beecher, author of five influential books dealing with domestication, wrote that “the ‘cult of true womanhood’ is linked to the home with piety and purity.”

This, Fishman suggests, was inherent in the creation of the earliest suburbs:

The city was not just crowded, dirty, and unhealthy; it was immoral. Salvation itself depended on separating the woman’s sacred world of family and children from the profane metropo- lis. Yet this separation could not jeopardize a man’s constant attendance to his business ... . This was the problem, and sub- urbia was to be the ultimate solution.

Although the suburbs generally imply a degree of emasculation of the traditional male, Don Corleone, who conducts most of his busi- ness from his city office, does use his home on the day of his daughter’s wedding to strengthen connections between his family and the outside world. Neighbors and community members are invited into the home for the wedding, bringing the outside world into the family space. His daughter’s marriage to Carlo isn’t the traditional marriage of a child of the powerful, intended to protect and expand family power. However, Vito Corleone’s daughter’s wedding does serve as the suburban back- drop for his continual expansion of his family’s power, demonstrated by granting favors to those in his service. These are favors that will ulti- mately strengthen his ties to the grantees. If the home is the place where the family is nourished and strengthened, traditionally through acts performed by women, then Vito Corleone represents a male version of this role, just as Lucia Santa in The Fortunate Pilgrim was a female version of a man’s role.

To prove he was a success in organized crime, a man had to display masculinity publicly:

It was essential, if one wished to succeed in the secret society, to at least give the appearance of prosperity and power, to exude confidence and a carefree spirit; although in doing so, the Mafia man’s life became more difficult for him in the larger world where government agents were watching him, tapping his phone, bugging his home, seeking to determine the source of his illegitimate income so that he might be indicted for income tax evasion. The Mafia man was consequently forced into an almost schizophrenic situation—while he was plead- ing poverty to Internal Revenue and was attempting to conceal his resources, he was also attempting to impress his friends by picking up checks, driving a new Cadillac or Lincoln, and by otherwise living beyond his means.

Castillo traces Mexican machismo back to Arab influences in Spanish culture: “The ancient culture of the Maghreb originated in North Africa, spread throughout the Mediterranean, and as a consequence of the conquest of the Americas via the Spaniards, to the Southwest United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean.” Castillo locates the notions of women as a man’s property, male honor, and the “vendetta” in the Maghreb culture: “What is the purpose of the vendetta? Usually to save family honor; that is, to regain some material loss; women are counted as a man’s material property. The male members of a family are responsible for a vendetta; in the case of an absent father, the task usually falls on the eldest brother.” When this notion of manhood is tied directly to a capitalist economy, it makes it nearly impossible for a young boy who wants to be considered a man to avoid acquiring capital at any cost. Again, Castillo perceptively connects this notion to social ills: “There is no justification for machismo. Morally there never was, although given the economic system that civilization developed, society depended on patriarchy to uphold its political and economic principles of change. Machismo has lost its raison d’être.”

D’Acierno observes: “Scorsese’s characters are subpolitical: they are ‘morti di fame’ in the Gramscian sense of the term, members of a para- sitic underclass that has no political or even class identity, marginals without a history and doomed to permanent underdevelopment ... . They exist in a cultural vacuum from which the laws of the father and the mother have receded.”

Scorsese’s gangsters are shown as men trapped forever in an immature stage—physically adult, but behaving like boys.

Cimino’s portrayal of Sicily revises the mother–son paradigm dominant in Sicilian culture into the father–son paradigm dominant in American culture. This emerges in a comparison of the historical reality of Giuliano’s life with Cimino’s adaptation of Puzo’s fictional portrayal. Understanding the Giuliano story takes familiarity with southern Italian family dynamics, especially those of the mother– son relationship. The local politicians in Sicily harassed Giuliano’s mother, his sister, and his father in an attempt to get to the son. In response, Giuliano sent messages designed to remind bureaucrats of this dynamic. One of them stated:

If you yourselves love your mammas and your country, refuse to fight this fratricidal war ... Do not be deceived by the propa- ganda of the press and your superiors, who call their war “a war against delinquency,” because the war that they make against me should be called “a war against motherhood.” Perhaps the reason for my success against this vast effort is due not only to my expertness but also to the Divine Hand whose aim is only one: To rein in those false prophets who want to destroy the greatest love that He defends for us, the most precious thing of our lives, our mammas.30

Giuliano sees his persecution as a public siege against the sacred mother–son relationship, a fundamental building block of Sicilian cul- ture. This Italian mother–son paradigm is one that fosters community instead of individuality. It stresses self-connection, a son protecting his mother. In contrast, the emphasis in the United States on self-invention comes from a dominant father–son paradigm, a son rebelling against his father and possibly becoming reunited with the father as a returning prodigal. Gaetano Cipolla points to the centrality of the mother in Sicilian culture:

The mother’s role, shaped by thousands of years of history, con- tinues to our day almost unchanged. She nurtures physically and psychologically, she performs social duties in observance of time-worn formulas, she sacrifices her whole life to her fam- ily, denying herself in the process and becoming a victim of her dedication to others. Her devotion to her family is so complete that as a Sicilian proverb has it, “La matri senti li guai di lu mutu” (The mother feels the troubles of the mute). Inevitably, however, in the battle between the children’s desire for free- dom and the mother’s desire to maintain the status quo—for this reason Leonardo Sciascia considered Sicilian mothers a cause of the stagnation in Sicilian society—conflicts emerge and mothers begin to consider themselves victims, adopting what may be called a martyr’s syndrome. In a recent article ... Angelo Costanzo suggested that Sicilian women everywhere eventually end up conforming with the image of the matri addulurata, that is, the sorrowful mother who grieves for the loss of her son. It is not a coincidence that in Sicily, out of all the possible scenes of the Madonna’s life, the most pervasive is certainly that of the grieving mother.


Throughout history, the further man moved away from his connection with woman as creatrix, the more spirituality was also disconnected from the human body.

—Ana Castillo



Returning to Christina Wieland’s analysis in The Undead Mother: Psychoanalytic Explorations of Masculinity, Femininity and Matricide, Wieland believes that the symbolic matricide that separates a man from his mother can also be responsible for much of the violent tendencies that often mark the onslaught of male adolescence, the point of male development that she sees as crucial to the evolution of the notion of woman as an object that needs to be possessed:

The stronger the attraction toward the female body, the stron- ger the banding together of young males because of the way this attraction unleashes the terror of being possessed by a woman, of being merged with a woman and becoming feminine. Thus the paradox: the ultimate expression of maleness—the sexual act—entails fears of loss of masculinity. The solution tradition- ally sought for this basic, masculine anxiety entails that the woman/mother becomes a possession, a part of the narcissistic self, under male control.

The search for this control over women leads to men’s objectification of women, something very much a part of the gangster’s persona. Women who resist this objectification, argues Wieland, enact what men perceive as the return of the “revengeful mother.” The reactions of Tony Soprano and his band of gangsters should be read with this in mind. Wieland attributes this development of male attitudes toward women as revengeful mothers to Western society’s preoccupation with the Oedipus conflict and its virtual ignorance of the symbolism at work in another profound work of myth, the Oresteia, especially in the matricide carried out by Orestes.

In a particularly illuminating reading of the behavior of Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Wieland presents some insights that work for reading Tony Soprano. Like Raskolnikov, Tony is fatherless, a state that Wieland suggests “signifies his lack of protection by a paternal super-ego, and its replacement by a grandiosity which is matched only by his contempt for all weakness and need.” This contempt for weakness, says Wieland, creates a “ ‘false father’, an omnipotent part of the self which offers protection in the manner of ... a ‘gang’ or ‘mafia’ ... (or of the Devil in Christian mythology).”

Since motherhood has been one of the few power centers for women, it has been used to challenge the father’s power, and its site “has become a place from which the father is excluded.” In order to move beyond this, men have employed symbolic matricide, something Wieland believes led to the creation of “the myth of the Virgin Mother, the infinitely loving and non-threatening mother who can control neither her fertility nor her (Divine) Son—a very reassuring version of the mother.” This is the typical presentation of the Italian-American mother, one replayed over and over, from Pietro Di Donato’s Annunziata in Christ in Concrete (1939) to Puzo’s Mama Corleone in The Godfather (more than in his The Fortunate Pilgrim). Livia is not like these mothers and, thus, her figure helps fracture the notion of the powerful/powerless woman. In the process, she represents an all-powerful woman who knows “how to speak to people” and how to manipulate them to serve her purpose.

Until recently, Italian-Americans have not associated formal education with strong masculinity. To be facile with words often signals femininity. An old proverb goes, “Parole femmine, fatti maschi” (“Words are feminine, actions masculine”)." [Fred Gardaphe, From wise guys to wise men]

Nice essay on the 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet, and the seamless world the film created

Quote :

Extraordinary suspension of disbelief is a hallmark
of Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film, William Shakespeare’s
Romeo + Juliet. Ruptures in logic like Romeo’s
bedroom near-miss are accepted by filmgoers conditioned
to conventions of fantastical escapism
alongside extreme verisimilitude. Luhrmann successfully
collides the familiar (of verisimilitude)
with the unfamiliar (of escapism), and meshes 1996
fashion, music and physicality with Elizabethan
language, laws and social restraints. Luhrmann’s
combined aesthetic is established within a distinctive,
created world, uniquely crafted and microscopically
detailed, in which every piece of text and
dialogue is an intertextual reference from almost
the entire breadth of the Shakespearian canon.

The difficulty of naturalizing Elizabethan language,
customs and themes on film has, over the
past century, yielded adaptations set in specific
time-frames or places to establish distance, aesthetics
employed by filmmakers including Olivier
and Branagh. The perils of neglecting distance
are seen in Michael Almereyda’s 2000 Hamlet,
set in modern-day Manhattan. Almereyda’s hindrance
was too-strong familiarity and blurred division
between the fictional and the actual, where
modern New Yorkers speak verse in well-known
settings. This choice permits the audience to linger
on anachronisms or overt familiarity, which undermines
the story and draws attention to artificiality.
The world of the director’s vision is essential to
the success of the adaptation. This article examines
the comprehensive world of Luhrmann’s William
Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet and the extraordinary
lengths taken – on a series of sliding levels – to
ensure the film’s internal verisimilitude.

Quote :

This is a version of Verona never before committed
to film: a ‘shimmering no-place’,5 a distinctive
world of its own, one ‘made up of
collage . . . visual collage, written collage, sonic
collage, and . . . musical collage’. The ‘pastiche
visual nightmare known as Verona Beach’ is a
dusty, urban coastal wasteland whose architecture,
weather, and style variously evoke Mexico City,
California,Miami and Rio. Familiar fashion,music
and accents encourage audience identification, but
Luhrmann avoids an identifiable American city to
emphasize Verona Beach’s other-worldly location.
Production briefs called for ‘a heightened created
world. . . recognizable to a contemporary audience
but . . . laden with and informed by the world indicated
by the language of Shakespeare

Quote :

Despite his ubiquity in Verona Beach, Hodgdon’s
‘Shakespeare myth’ is uneasily absent here,
as is Shakespeare himself, aside from one sly injoke
clear perhaps only to the filmmaker. Prior
to the lovers ‘meeting’ through a decorative fishtank,
Romeo passes a man at a urinal dressed in a
Renaissance-style costume. We see only the man’s
back for a brief second; according to Luhrmann,
that man is Shakespeare. The man wears an
elaborate hat, so no ‘Forehead’ is apparent; it is
a citation for insiders alone, yet its significance
lies in Shakespeare’s anonymous, background presence.
Indeed, the surprising fact that the word
‘Shakespeare’ is not used as a brand name removes
the author’s identity and emphasizes citation as
normalized speech. Critics who identify Verona
Beach as a ‘post-Shakespearian world’ disregard
that world’s construction; more accurately, Verona
Beach is ‘post-Shakespearian’ only for the audience.
Luhrmann does not ever suggest that the
film’s characters are quoting Shakespeare; rather,
Verona Beach is a world beyond the realms of contemporary
culture, where Shakespeare is a one-way
cultural icon, ironically absent for anyone within
the film but ubiquitous in the interpretation of
canny moviegoers.

https://www.academia.edu/188950/Behind_the_Red_Curtain_of_Verona_Beach_Baz_Luhrmann_s_William_Shakespeare_s_Romeo_Juliet

perpetualburn wrote:

Nice essay on the 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet, and the seamless world the film created

I strongly recommend you read Ted Hughes' 'Shakespeare and The Goddess of Complete Being'.

Lyssa wrote:

perpetualburn wrote:

Nice essay on the 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet, and the seamless world the film created

I strongly recommend you read Ted Hughes' 'Shakespeare and The Goddess of Complete Being'.

Great recommendation, looks right up my alley.

Quote :

Eyes Wide Shut 
PART I


The Hidden (And Not So Hidden) Messages in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” (pt. I)



“Eyes Wide Shut” was promoted as a steamy, suspenseful movie starring the “It” couple of the day: Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. While the actors were prominently featured in the movie, it is everything around them that told the true story of “Eyes Wide Shut”. Stanley Kubrick’s attention to detail and symbolism gave the movie an entire other dimension – one that cannot be seen by those who have their eyes wide shut. This multiple-part series will look at the hidden symbolism of Kubrick’s final film.



In fact, like most Stanley Kubrick films, an entire book could be written about the movie and the concepts it addresses. Eyes Wide Shutis indeed not simply about a relationship, it is about all of the outside forces and influences that define that relationship. It is about the eternal back-and-forth between the male and female principles in a confused and decadent modern world. Also, more importantly, it is about the group that rules this modern world – a secret elite that channels this struggle between the male and female principles in a specific and esoteric matter. The movie however does not spell out anything. Like all great art, messages are communicated through subtle symbols and mysterious riddles.

Stanley Kubrick unexpectedly died only five days after submitting the final cut of the movie to Warner Bros, making Eyes Wide Shut his swan song. Considering the fact that Eyes Wide Shut is about an occult secret society that eliminates those who cross its path, some theories arose about Kubrick’s death and its suspicious nature. Did he reveal to the public too much, too soon? Maybe.
Let’s look at the main themes of Kubrick’s last creation.

The Modern Couple

The stars of Eyes Wide Shut were the “It” couple of 1999: Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Those who were expecting the movie to be a sort of voyeuristic experience showing hot scenes of the couple were probably very disappointed. The audience rather got a cold, egoistic and profoundly unsatisfied couple, one that seems to be tied together not by pure love, but by other factors, like convenience and appearances. While the couple is very “modern” and “upper-class”, the forces that keep it together are the result of basic, primal and almost animalistic behavior. If we look at the instinctive behavior of humans and animals, males primarily look for females that have good child-bearing qualities while females look for a strong provider. Remnants of this behavior still exist today as males tend to display wealth and power to attract females while females showcase their beauty to attract males. In Eyes Wide Shut, the couple perfectly follows that instinctive script.

Tom Cruise’s character is called Dr. Bill … as in dollar bill. Several times during the movie, Dr. Bill either waves his money or his “doctor badge” at people to get them to do what he wants. Bill is part of the upper class and his dealings with people of the lower class are often resolved with money.

In order to get this taxi driver to wait for him in front of the elite mansion, Dr. Bill tears up a hundred dollar bill and promises him to give him the other half when he comes back. Dr. Bill’s motto is probably “Everybody has a price”. Does his own wife have a price?

Played by Nicole Kidman, Alice lost her job in the art world and is now fully supported by her husband’s salary. While she lives very comfortably, Alice appears to be extremely bored with her life as a stay at home mother. The name Alice is most likely a reference to the main character of Alice in Wonderland – a fairy tale about a privileged girl who is bored with her life and who goes “through the looking glass” to end up in Wonderland. In Eyes Wide Shut, Alice is often shown staring at the looking glass – grooming herself or … maybe looking for something more to life.

Alice is often shown in front of the mirror and making herself pretty. At the beginning of the movie, almost everyone who talk to her mention her appearance. Her daughter Helena (maybe named after Helena of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world) follows in her footsteps.

Promotional images for the movie feature Alice kissing Bill but looking at herself in the mirror, almost as if she was seeing an alternate reality.

While the couple shows signs of fatigue, Bill and Alice put on their “happy masks” when it is time to attend social events. Like the elite people they socialize with, there is a big difference between the facade they put on and reality.

Brushing With the Elite

Bill and Alice go to a classy party given by Victor Ziegler, one of Bill’s wealthy patients. Judging from Victor’s house, he is not simply rich, he is part of the ultra-elite. While his party is very elegant and is attended by highly cultured people, it doesn’t take long for the viewers to realize that this facade hides a disgusting dark side. Also, small details inserted by Kubrick hint to a link between the party and the occult ritual that occurs later in the movie.

When entering the party, the first thing we see is this peculiar Christmas decoration. This eight-pointed star is found throughout the house.

The star at Zeigler’s house is nearly identical to the ancient symbol of the star of Ishtar.

Knowing Kubrick’s attention to detail, the inclusion of the star of Ishtar in this party is not an accident. Ishtar is the Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war and, mostly, sexuality. Her cult involved sacred prostitution and ritual acts – two elements we clearly see later in the movie.

“Babylonians gave Ishtar offerings of food and drink on Saturday. They then joined in ritual acts of lovemaking, which in turn invoked Ishtar’s favor on the region and its people to promote continued health and fruitfulness.”
– Goddess Ishtar, Anita Revel


Ishtar herself was considered to be the “courtesan of the gods” and had many lovers. While inspired in bed, she was also cruel to the men that got attached to her. These concepts will constantly reappear in the movie, especially with Alice.
During the party, Bill and Alice go their separate ways and are both faced with temptation. Alice meets a man named Sandor Szavost who asks her about Ovid’s Art of Love. This series of books, written during the times of Ancient Rome, was essentially a “How to Cheat on Your Partner” guide, and was popular with the elite of the time. The first book opens with an invocation to Venus – the planet esoterically associated with lust. Interestingly enough, Ishtar (and her equivalents in other Semetic cultures) was considered to be the personification of Venus.

Sandor drinks from Alice’s glass. This trick is taken right out of Ovid’s The Art of Love. It sends Alice a message that is not very subliminal: “I want to exchange fluids with you”.

Sandor’s name might be a reference to the founder of the Church of Satan: Anton Szandor Lavey. Is this Kubrick’s way of saying that this man, who urges Alice to cheat on her husband, is a part of the occult elite and its decadent ways? The Hungarian man is apparently skilled in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) as he nearly hypnotizes Alice with well calculated phrases about the futility of married life and the necessity of pursuing pleasure.

Meanwhile, Bill is discussing with two flirtatious models who tell him that they want to take him to “where the rainbow ends”. While the meaning of this enigmatic phrase is never explicitly explained in the movie, symbols talk for themselves.

Rainbows Everywhere

Rainbows and multicolored lights appear throughout the movie, from the beginning to the end.

The name of the store where Bill rents his costume is called “Rainbow”. The name of the store under it: “Under the Rainbow”. Kubrick is trying to tell us something…Something involving rainbows.

As if to emphasize the theme of multicolored rainbows, almost every scene in the movie contains multicolored Christmas lights, giving most sets a hazy, dreamy glow.

Almost every time Bill enters a room, the first things we see are multicolored Christmas lights.

Sometimes Christmas lights are the focal point of attention.

These lights tie together most scenes of the movie, making them part of the same reality. There are however a few select scenes where there are absolutely no Christmas lights. The main one is Somerton palace – the place where the secret society ritual takes place.

Sharply contrasting with the rest of the movie, Sommerton is completely devoid of multicolored lights. Everything about this place is in sharp opposition with the “outside world”.

In Eyes Wide Shut, there are therefore two worlds: The Christmas lights-filled “rainbow world”, where the masses wander around, trying to make ends meet and the other world… “where the rainbow ends”- where the elite gathers and performs its rituals. The contrast between the two world give a sense of an almost insurmountable divide between them. Later, the movie will clearly show us how those from the “rainbow world” cannot enter the other world.

So, when the models ask Bill the go “where the rainbow ends”, they probably refer to going “where the elite gathers and performs rituals”. It might also be about them being dissociated Beta Programming slaves. There are several references to Monarch mind control (read this article for more information) in the movie. Women who take part in elite rituals are often products of Illuminati mind control. In MK Ultra vocabulary, “going over the rainbow” means dissociating from reality and entering another persona (more on this in the next article).

The models ask Bill to leave the “rainbow world” (there’s a Christmas tree right behind them) to indulge in the debaucherous rituals of the occult elite.

Behind the Curtain

Bill’s flirting with the models is interrupted when Ziegler calls him to his bathroom. There, we get a first glance of “where the rainbow ends” – the dark truth about the elite.

Bill meets Ziegler in his gigantic bathroom. The man is dressing up and is with a naked unconscious woman…who is not his wife.

If we rewind a little, when Bill and Alice first entered the party, they were welcomed by Ziegler and his wife in a room filled with Christmas lights. We saw two respectable couples talking about respectable things in room full of enchanting lights. But when Bill goes “where the rainbow ends” (notice there are no Christmas lights in the bathroom) we see reality: Ziegler with a Beta programming slave who overdosed on goofballs. When the woman gains consciousness, Ziegler talks to her in an odd, paternal matter, highlighting the fact that he’s the master and she’s the slave. The luxurious setting of this scene is Kubrick’s way of saying that extreme wealth does not necessary equal high morals.
Ziegler then urges Bill to keep everything he just saw a secret. The world “where the rainbow ends” must never be revealed to the outside world. It operates in its own space, has its own rules and depends on the masses’ ignorance.

Questioning Marriage

While Alice ultimately rejected Sandor’s advances, she was nevertheless enticed by them. The next day, Alice tells Bill that she could have cheated on him at the party. When Bill tells his wife that he loves and trusts her, she completely loses it. She then proceeds to tell him a story about how she was once ready to cheat on him with a naval officer she met in a hotel. This cruel story highlights the “Ishtar” side of Alice as she brings up in her husband feelings of jealousy, insecurity, betrayal and even humiliation. In short, Alice purposely summoned everything that is negative in relationships to pop Bill’s “love bubble”. This wake-up call prompts Bill to embark in a strange journey around New-York city, one that has multiple level of meanings. That strange night will ultimately lead him to the exact opposite of a monogamous relationship: Anonymous, masked copulation with strangers in a ritual setting. Bill’s journey will be further analyzed in the second part of this series of articles.

Conclusion of Part One

The first part of this series about Eyes Wide Shut took a broad look at Bill and Alice, a modern couple that has the “privilege” of brushing with the upper-echelon of New York. While everything appears great on the surface, Kubrick quickly tells the viewers to not be deceived by appearances and to not be impressed by exhibitions of wealth. Because, behind the “rainbow world”, exists a dark and disturbing reality, one that Kubrick exposes in many subtle ways throughout the movie.
While Bill and Alice are simply “guests” in the elite circle, they are nevertheless fascinated and attracted by it. They see in this lifestyle a way of fulfilling their dark and secret needs. In the next part of this series, we’ll look at the occult meaning of Bill’s journey – a story told by subtle symbols peppered throughout the movie.

PART II

The second part of this series of articles on Eyes Wide Shut takes a closer look at the elite secret society discovered by the film’s main character, Bill Harford, and how it resembles real life organizations. Was Stanley Kubrick trying to warn the world about the occult elite and its depraved ways?




Note: It is recommended that you read the first part of this series first. Also, gigantic spoilers.

In the first part of this series on Eyes Wide Shut, we looked at main characters of the film and the symbolic world Kubrick created around them. We saw that Bill and Alice Harford are a married upper-class couple that was not immune to the temptations of adultery. We also saw that the couple was in contact with the upper-echelon of New-York and its decadent ways – a world that fascinates Bill, but that has a dark side, one that is kept from the public. In this article, I will jump straight to the most unsettling part of the movie: The secret society ritual.

When Bill learns that his wife has considered cheating on him, he embarks in a strange series of encounters (which I will analyze in the third and final part of this series), eventually ending up in a luxurious house in Long Island where he encounters a large gathering of masked individuals partaking in an occult ritual. Since he was never initiated into that secret society, Bill was not even supposed to know that it existed, let alone bear witness to one of its “meetings”. So how did he find out about this thing? Well, a little birdie told him.

Nick Nightingale

At one point during his strange night out, Bill meets his old friend Nick Nightingale at a jazz cafe. The professional piano player reveals to Bill that he is sometimes hired by mysterious people to play, blindfolded, during mysterious parties that are full of beautiful women. This juicy piece of information intrigues Bill to the highest degree because, since his talk with his wife, he is appears to be looking for some kind of … experience. Nick ultimately makes a big mistake and agrees to provide Bill with all of the information needed to access the venue.

A nightingale is type of bird that is known for singing at night, just like Nick Nightingale “sings” secret information at the start of Bill’s fateful night.

The password to enter the ritual is “Fidelio”, which means “faithfulness”, a main theme of the movie. More importantly, as Nightingale points out, “Fidelio” is the name of an opera written by Beethoven about a wife who sacrifices herself to free her husband from death as a political prisoner. This password actually foreshadows what will happen during that ritual.

After getting the details from Nightingale, Bill rents a costume at a store named “Rainbow” (more about the store in the next article) … and then proceeds to go to Somerton, the estate where the party is being held.

The Occult Elite

The location selected to film the elite scenes is quite interesting. Mentmore Towers was built in the 19th century as a country house for a member of the most prominent and powerful elite family in the world: The Rothschilds. By selecting this location, was Kubrick trying to show his audience the “real world” equivalents to the ultra-elite shown in the movie? Incidentally, the name of Bill’s connection to the elite, Victor Ziegler, is of German-Jewish origin, like Rothschild.

It has been documented that the Rothschilds do actually partake in masked events very similar to those shown in Eyes Wide Shut. Here are rare images taken from a 1972 party given by Marie-Hélène de Rothschild.


In the movie, when Bill enters the mansion, he mixes with a crowd of masked people silently watching the ritual. One of these people appear to instantly recognize Bill (or the fact that he doesn’t belong here).


Venetian masks were originally worn during the Italian Renaissance in Venice and were a way for the powerful elite of the time to indulge in debauchery without reprisal.

Quote :

“Though the precise origin of the mask-wearing tradition can’t be known for certain, the prevailing theory goes something like this: beginning in the Italian Renaissance, Venice was an extremely wealthy and powerful merchant empire. Its position on the Mediterranean sea opened it up to a myriad of trading opportunities across Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor, and its powerful navy allowed it to exert the military force necessary to defend its vast wealth. In a city-state so prosperous, it’s a small wonder that Venetian society was class-obsessed and rigidly stratified. One’s individual standing was immensely important for the perception of his or her entire family, and so naturally the pressure to act in accordance with the social morays governing one’s social standing was immense and stifling. The Venetians, the theory goes, adopted the practice of wearing masks and other disguises during the Carnival season as a way of suspending the rigid social order. Under the cloak of anonymity, the citizens of Venice could loosen their inhibitions without fear of reprisal. Masks gained so much popularity that the mascherari (mask makers) became a venerated guild in Venetian society. However, as word of the famed Venetian Carnival spread, more and more outsiders flocked to the city every year to take part in the festivities. The Carnival celebrations became increasingly chaotic and debaucherous as the years progressed until their decline in the 18th Century.”
– Geoffrey Stanton, Guide to Venetian Carnival Masks

Since then, Venetian masks have been used in elite circles and have somewhat become a symbol of its dark occult philosophy. Even The British Royal Family appears to enjoy the same type of masks and events.


That particular Royal event featured masked women who were as NOT dressed as those in the Eyes Wide Shut ritual.


It seems evident that Kubrick carefully selected the Rothschild-owned location and hand-picked the masks worn by participants of the ritual, echoing real-life families and events.

Setting of the Ritual

When Bill enters Somerton, everything about the movie changes. There are no more colorful Christmas lights and no tacky decorations. Instead of incessant chatter between needy people, it is all about stillness and silence.


The music in the movie also changes drastically. The song heard in the background is called “Backwards Priests” and features a Romanian Orthodox Divine Liturgy played backwards. The reversal or inversion of sacred objects is typical of black magic and satanic rituals. By having this Christian liturgy played backwards right before widespread fornication is Kubrick’s way of stating that the elite is nothing less than satanic.


The interior scenes of the party were shot at Elveden Hall, a private house in the UK designed to look like an Indian palace. When the “festivities” begin, a Tamil song called “Migration” plays in the background, adding to the South-Asian atmosphere (the original version of the song contained actual scriptural recitation of the Bhagavad Gita, but the chant was removed in the final version of the movie). This peculiar Indian atmosphere, combined with the lascivious scenes witnessed by Bill as he walks around the house, ultimately points towards the most important, yet most hidden part of the movie: Tantric Yoga and its Western occultism derivative, Sex Magick. This last concept was “imported” by British occultist Aleister Crowley and is now at the center of the teachings of various secret societies:

Quote :

“Aleister Crowley’s connections with Indian Yoga and Tantra were both considerable and complex. Crowley had direct exposure to some forms of these practices and was familiar with the contemporary literature of the subjects, wrote extensively about them, and – what is perhaps the most important – he practiced them. In his assessment of the value of Tantra, he was ahead of his time, which habitually considered Tantra a degenerate form of Hinduism. Instead, he claimed that, “paradoxical as it may sound the Tantrics are in reality the most advanced of the Hindus”. Crowley’s influence in bringing Eastern, primarily Indian, esoteric traditions to the West extends also to his incorporation of the elements of Yoga and Tantra into the structure and program of two influential magical orders, the A.:A.: and the OTO.”
– Martin P. Starr, Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism

The above quote stipulates that Tantric concepts were incorporated in two important secret societies: the A.:A.: and the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis). The OTO is still extremely influential in elite circles and reaches the highest levels of politics, business and even the entertainment industry. At the core of these orders is the Thelema, a philosophy created by Aleister Crowley that he summed up with the saying “Do What Thou Wilt”.  This saying is actually a translation of “Fais ce que tu voudras” the motto of an 18th century secret society, the infamous Hellfire Club.

Hellfire Clubs were said to be “meeting places of ‘persons of quality’ who wished to take part in immoral acts, and the members were often very involved in politics”. According to a number of sources, their activities included mock religious ceremonies, devil worship and occult rituals. Although details are vague regarding that elite club, they were known for performing elementary Satanic rites as a prelude to their nights of fornication. These acts were however not just “for fun” or to “shock people” as some sources might claim, the members were initiates of occult mysteries and their rituals were based in ancient rites involving invocations and other forms of black magick.

In short, although Kubrick never actually names the secret society infiltrated by Bill, there are enough clues to understand what kind of club he is referring to. Most importantly, he is telling his viewers: These societies still exist … and they are more powerful than ever.

The Ritual and its Participants

The ritual begins with the High Priest, dressed in red, performing a ceremonial routine. He is at the center of a “magic circle” formed by young women who are very likely to be Beta Kitten slaves. Later, when Bill is unmasked, another magic circle is formed.

Amanda

At the beginning of the ritual, one of the Beta slaves goes to Bill and urges him to leave the house before he got caught. We ultimately learn that it was Amanda, the girl that was passed out in Ziegler’s bathroom. When Bill gets caught and gets (literally) unmasked by the High Priest, Amanda appears at the balcony in a very dramatic fashion and tells the High Priest she wants to “redeem” him, in a tone that approaches ritual drama. The Priest then replies “Are you sure you understand what you’re taking upon yourself in doing this?” This implies that she will be repeatedly abused and then sacrificed.

The next day, Bill discovers the true power of that secret society.


By freeze-framing and actually reading the above news article about Amanda, we learn important details about Amanda’s background (classic hidden sub-plot integration by Kubrick). To those “in the know”, the article perfectly describes the life of an entertainment industry Beta Programming slave (i.e. Marilyn Monroe). We indeed learn that Amanda was “emotionally troubled” as a teen and underwent “treatments” (a code word for MK Programming perhaps?), she had “important friends in the fashion and entertainment worlds”, and she had an “affair” with a powerful fashion designer who got “wowed by her private, seductive solo performances” (typical behavior of a Beta Kitten). What the article however conveniently doesn’t mention is that she was selling her body to elite people and being used in their occult rituals.

As it is the case for Beta Kittens who’ve gone “rogue”, she was eliminated by the people who controlled her life. The article states that she was last seen being escorted to her hotel room by two men and that she was “giggling” (drugged and dissociated?). Like “real life” elite sacrifices, “overdose” is cited as the cause of her death.

The High Priest

Like other participants of the ritual, the true identity of the High Priest is never revealed. However, Kubrick left a few clues hinting to his identity and his relationship with Amanda.

In the movie’s end credits (and sources such as IMDB), it is listed that the role of the High Priest was played by “assistant director” of the movie, Leon Vitali. If one carefully reads the news article mentioned above, Leon Vitali is the name of the London fashion designer Amanda had an “affair” with. Furthermore, the High Priest has an unmistakable English accent. We can therefore deduce that the High Priest is the fashion designer.


This hidden subplot is interesting as it reveals the true nature of the fashion and entertainment industry. High-ranking individuals in these fields are initiated in occult secret societies and deal with MK slaves.

The Power of the Secret Society

When Bill is uncovered by the High Priest, he gets told that he and his family would pay for any transgression. The next day, he realizes that he is being followed by strange people and becomes paranoid.


Right after Bill leaves the morgue to confirm that Amanda died,  Ziegler calls him and invites him over.


Although Bill is a rich doctor, he is not part of the elite. Ziegler’s attitude towards Bill makes it very clear. While Ziegler appears to want to be honest and straight with Bill, we realize that he is simply trying to cover the ugly truth. After all, Bill is an “outsider”. He tells Bill:

Quote :

“I don’t think you realize what kind of trouble you were in last night. Who do you think those people were? Those were not just ordinary people there. If I told you their names – I’m not gonna tell you their names – but if I did, I don’t think you’d sleep so well.”

Ziegler therefore admits that people attending the ritual were high-level, well-known and powerful people. Kubrick is therefore making clear that the richest, most powerful deciders of the “real world” meet in these types of rituals … and that these rituals are off-limits for the profane.

When Bill mentions Amanda, Ziegler gets more defensive and replies: “She was a hooker” – meaning that she was an Beta slave that could be easily disposed of. Then Ziegler tells Bill that everything that happened at the ritual was a charade to scare him, Bill answers:

Quote :

“You called it a fake, a charade. Do you mind telling me what kind of f—-cking charade ends with someone turning up dead?”

This highlights the fundamental difference between the public’s perception of occult rituals and what actually happens. Regular people are lead to believe that these elite rituals are nothing more than goofy meetings of people with too much time on their hands. In reality, these elaborate rituals often incorporate real attempts at Black Magick and include real blood sacrifices and other terrible acts.

Then Ziegler proceeds to telling Bill the same stuff media tells the masses when someone has been sacrificed by the elite: She OD’ed, she was a junkie, it was only a matter of time, and the police did not see any foul play.

Conclusion of Part II

The second part of this analysis focused exclusively on the unnamed secret society Bill stumbles upon and its ritual. Although nothing is explicitly spelled out to the viewers, the symbolism, the visual clues and even the music of Eyes Wide Shut tell reveals a side of the occult elite that is rarely shown to the masses. Not only does the movie depict the world’s richest and most powerful people partaking in occult rituals, it also shows how this circle has also the power to exploit slaves, to stalk people, and even to get away with sacrificial murders. Even worse, mass media participates in covering their crimes.

The secret society in the movie closely resembles the infamous Hellfire Club, where prominent political figures met up to partake in elaborate Satanic parties. Today, the O.T.O. and similar secret societies still partake in rituals involving physical energy as it is perceived to be a way to attain a state of enlightenment. This concept, taken from Tantric yoga, is at the core of modern and powerful secret societies. Although none of this is actually mentioned in Eyes Wide Shut, the entire movie can be interpreted as one big “magickal” journey, characterized by a back-and-forth between opposing forces: life and death, lust and pain, male and female, light and darkness, and so forth … ending in one big orgasmic moment of  enlightenment. This aspect of the movie, along with other hidden details, will be analyzed in the third and final part of this series of articles on Eyes Wide Shut.

PART III


In the third and final part of this series on Eyes Wide Shut, we’ll look at Bill’s journey as a whole and at its underlying esoteric meaning. We’ll see how symbolism placed by Kubrick connects all of the women in the movie, making Bill’s encounters a multi-faceted exploration of the feminine principle.




Note: It is recommended that you read the first and second part of this series first. Also, again, gigantic spoilers.

The previous parts of this series of articles on Eyes Wide Shut was solely dedicated to the secret society discovered by Bill. This elite club, attended by the world’s most powerful people, deals with Satanism, black magick and even ritual sacrifices. Aided by his friend Nightingale, Bill infiltrates one of the secret society’s occult rituals and witnesses a ceremony presided over by a high priest. Then an orgy ensued.

In the second article, I explained how real life secret societies, such as the Hellfire club and the O.T.O., actually practice these kinds of rituals. The occult principles behind them derive from Tantric yoga, where the energy generated by physical arousal is used to reach a “higher state”. This concept was reused (and maybe corrupted) by Aleister Crowley who called it “Sex Magick”. According to him and his peers, knowledge of this type of magick was the biggest secret of past secret societies and was only disclosed to the highest initiates.

There is, however, no (direct) mention of any of this in Eyes Wide Shut. In fact, the ceremony witnessed by Bill, with its elaborate choreography and its creepy music, appears to be one big, empty, phony piece of dramatic theater that simply exists to give the rich people some kind of mystical reason to engage in gratuitous debauchery. While Kubrick stripped the occult ritual of all of its esoteric, “magickal” meaning, he did infuse the entire movie with it. If one looks at the pace of the movie, at Bill’s journey and the people he encounters, it becomes somewhat apparent that the “magick” does not occur during the ritual itself but during the movie as a whole. Was Kubrick somehow initiated to occult secrets? Was he trying to communicate them through his movie? Let’s look at the concepts behind the ritual.

Kundalini Rising

The concept of magick through reproductive forces is said to originate from ancient ritual practices, as traces of it can be found in Hinduism, Taoism and in Medieval secret societies, such as the Knight Templars. In today’s Western world, the O.T.O is said to be the heir of this path as it claimed by Aleister Crowley and his acolyte, Theodor Reuss.

Quote :

“Theodor Reuss was quite categoric: the OTO was a body of initiates in whose hands was concentrated the secret knowledge of all oriental orders and of all existing Masonic degrees.(…) The order had “rediscovered” the great secret of the Knights Templar, the magic of sex, not only the key to ancient Egyptian and hermetic tradition, but to all the secrets of nature, all the symbolism of Freemasonry, and all systems of religion.”
– Peter Tomkins, The Magic of Obelisks

The basic principle behind this “great secret” is the raising of the Kundalini or “life force”, an energy that can be used for magickal purposes.

Quote :

“In all Tantric magic, the essential requirement – whether in the ecstasy of couples or the solo ritual of a priestess – involved the raising of the energy known as the serpent of fire, or kundalini. This mysterious energy described as lying dormant in the lowest of the seven chakras, can be aroused by two distinct methods, called, traditionally, the right- and the left-hand path. The right hand allots supremacy to the male principle, the left to the feminine. As the serpent power is aroused, according to clairvoyants, it climbs up the backbone of the adept, energizing each chakra, till it emerges from the skull – symbolically as the snake’s head like those so clearly depicted in Egyptian statuary.
(…)
As adepts describe the rising of the serpent, it unites with the “many-petaled louts of the cerebral region” to bring about illumination – or the highest form of initiation -as the current “climbs from the duality to unity by reversing the path it originally took the chakras to procreate humanity.”
Details of the OTO’s initiation into Hindu and Tibetan Tantra, including ceremonies involving the use of “exudation” from specifically trained priestess were brought to a wider public by Crowley’s follower Kenneth Grant. Sacred courtesans, experts in ritual eroticism, known in India as nautch girls (…) were exceptionally honored.”
– Ibid.

While sacred courtesans were “exceptionally honored” in Eastern esotericism, today’s twisted black magic orders use Beta Programming slaves and dispose of them when they are through with them. In short, the exact opposite of being “exceptionally honored”.

Kundalini rising, the concept behind Tantric magic is wholly represented in a single image, Eliphas Levi’s depiction of Baphomet.


So what does all of this have to do with Eyes Wide Shut? At first glance, nothing much. While we see a ritual involving “sacred courtesans” in the movie, there is absolutely no mention of “kundalini rising” during the whole thing. However, if we take a closer look at Bill’s journey as a whole, from the beginning of the movie to the end, we realize that the real ritual does not occur at the elite mansion, but within Bill’s head. As he encounters new women and is exposed to new opportunities, his kundalini rises – and Kubrick added clues to denote this fact.

The Movie as a Ritual

While Eyes Wide Shut appears to be all about sexuality, nobody in the movie ever reaches climax. While Bill has many chances of satisfying his urges with attractive women, it never actually happens. However, as the movie progresses, there’s a definite increase in desire and lust, but Bill manages to keep it under control. Managing this “life force” is at the core of Tantric magic. Viewers are constantly reminded of this process several times during the movie when Bill imagines his wife with a naval officer. Each flash is increasingly intense – going from kissing to all-out copulating.



The very last lines of the movie conclude and define Bill’s journey. After running around New York and getting aroused by all kinds of stuff, Bill stands face-to-face with his wife and talks about how “awake” he is now. With his “life force” fully charged, Alice ends the movie with a phrase completing the ritual:

Quote :

“- I do love you. And you know, there is something very important that we need to do a soon as possible.
– What’s that?
– F*ck.”

Ending the movie on that particular note suggests that the entire journey was one of increasing intensity, one that ultimately lead to a “magickally charged ” climax, the goal of Crowleyan-magick.

Bill’s journey was not all fun and games, however. As the movie progresses, there is a constant back-and-forth between pleasure and pain, attraction and repulsion, life and death, and so forth. The path is all about duality and, just like the floors of Masonic lodges are checkered in black and white, Bill’s journey consists on his alternatively stepping on black and white tiles – seeing the dualistic nature of all things.

Eros and Thanatos

Bill’s night out in New York City is characterized by numerous encounters with the female gender – each one of them offering a “cure” to a broken heart. However, each encounter also bears a potentially destructive aspect to it, one that counterbalances its appeal and attraction. While Bill is looking to procreate, he sees that his urges engender pain and even death. Bill’s journey is therefore a back-and-forth between man’s two basic impulses as defined by Freud: Eros and Thanatos.

Freud saw in Eros the instinct for life, love and sexuality in its broadest sense, and in Thanatos, the instinct of death, aggression. Eros is the drive toward attraction and reproduction; Thanatos toward repulsion and death. One leads to the reproduction of the species, the other toward its own destruction. While each one of Bill’s encounters promise the sweet temptation of lust, they also have a destructive counter side.


Each one of Bill’s female encounters promises gratification, but ends up being interrupted by something negative, such as guilt or potential danger. Also, every time Bill is in contact with the sleazy-yet-tempting aspects of lust (prostitution or slavery), he quickly discovers the dark, exploitative and destructive side of it.

For instance, right after Bill enjoyed the “delights” of seeing MK Kittens at work at the elite ritual, when returning his costume, he immediately sees the dark side of it all. The shop owner, who previously caught his underage daughter with two Asian businessmen and was outraged by it, had a sudden change of heart.


Bill’s journey is therefore one that continually alternates between the primal allure of lust and the destructive social constructs that are erected around it. There is nothing more basic and instinctual than carnal attraction, but our modern world has made these relations complex, bound by rules, and prone to exploitation. While lust is nature’s way of pushing humans to procreate, social constructs have created all kinds fetishes, distortions, games, and perversions around this primal urge … to the point that it has been denatured and debased into an unhealthy obsession.

As Bill navigates between joy and pain, monogamous marriage and anonymous debauchery, we notice that there’s a common thread uniting his various encounters.

Red-Headed Women

The most important women in the movie are Bill’s wife, his daughter Helena, Amanda (the Beta slave who was sacrificed at the ritual) and Domino (a prostitute he met on the street). All three adult women are somewhat physically similar as they are tall, well-proportioned, and red-headed. They also appear to be connected on “another level”.

While Alice is a respectable, upper-class lady, she makes a living using her looks in loveless relationship, a little like what a prostitute would do. On the other hand, the time spent between Bill and Domino is sweet and tender, a little with what happens in a loving relationship. Alice is therefore not very different from Domino, and vice-versa.

There are also links with Amanda. While Alice was (probably) not at the occult ritual attended by Bill, when he comes back from it, she describes to him a dream that is similar to what he just witnessed and what Amanda just experienced.

Quote :

“He was kissing me. Then we were making love. Then there were all these other people around us, hundreds of them, everywhere. Everyone was f-cking. And then I …I was f-cking other men. So many. I don’t know how many I was with. And I knew you could see me in the arms of all these men … just f-cking all these men.”

Alice’s dream “connects” her with Amanda who was at the ritual and who actually lived Alice’s dream.


Was Domino at the ritual? It is also interesting to point out that “Domino” is a type of mask used in these types of gatherings.


Looking closer at the “magic circle” formed by the women of the ritual, we can identify a few women who could be Domino. The day after the ritual, Bill shows up at Domino’s house with a gift, but her roommate informs him that she is HIV-positive … and that she might never be back again. Is this true or was Domino yet another “casualty” in Bill’s journey?  Like Amanda and Nightingale, Domino mysteriously disappears after the ritual.

The fact that these women are all connected reveals one fundamental fact: Bill’s journey is not about a specific woman, it is about the feminine principle as a whole. It is an esoteric quest to understand and “be one with” the feminine principle that is opposite to his.

Helena Down the Same Path?

Throughout the movie, Helena (Bill’s daughter) is shown to be groomed to be another Alice. There are also some cues linking Helena to Domino. For instance, there’s a stroller in front of Domino’s apartment and, at the end in the movie, in the toy store, Helena is very interested by a stroller and shows it to her mother.



There is also something strange about the scene above: the two men behind Helena happened to be at Ziegler’s party at the very beginning of the movie.


Why are these two men in the store, looking at toys? Is New York City such a small town? Was Kubrick lacking extras to appear in that scene? Unlikely. Could it be that they’re part of the secret society that’s been following Bill and his family? Strange fact: When the men walk away and disappear from the shot, Helena appears to follow them … and we don’t see her for the rest of the movie. The camera indeed zooms onto Alice and Bill, who are completely absorbed with themselves. Is this a VERY subtle way of saying that their daughter will be sucked in by the Beta slave system of the secret society? Another enigma.

In Conclusion

Stanley Kubrick’s works are never strictly about love or relationships. The meticulous symbolism and the imagery of all of his works often communicate another dimension of meaning–one that transcends the personal to become a commentary on our epoch and civilization. And, in this transitional period between the end of 20th century and the beginning of the 21th century, Kubrick told the story of a confused man who wanders around, desperately looking for a way to satisfy his primal urges. Kubrick told the story of a society that is completely debased and corrupted by hidden forces, where humanity’s most primal urge–procreation–has been cheapened, fetishized, perverted, and exploited to a point that it has lost all of its beauty. At the top of this world is a secret society that revels in this context, and thrives on it. Kubrick’s outlook on the issue was definitely not idealistic nor very optimistic.

His grim tale focuses on a single man, Bill, who is looking for an undefined something. Even if he appears to have everything, there is something missing in his life. Something visceral and fundamental that is never put into words, but that is quite palpable. Bill cannot be complete if he is not at peace with the opposite of him: the feminine principle. Bill’s quest, therefore, follows the esoteric principle of uniting two opposite forces into one. As suggested by the last lines of the movie, Bill will ultimately “be one” and get physical with his wife. After that, the alchemical process and the Tantric ritual would be complete. However, as Kubrick somehow communicates in the final scene, even if these two extremely self-absorbed, egoistical and superficial people believe they’ve reached a some kind of epiphany, what does it really change? Our civilization as a whole still has its eyes wide shut … and those were Kubrick’s last cinematographic words.

Children of Dune (movie trilogy).


At the near ending of the last chapter of the last part of the movie trilogy, Alia, whom is possessed by a ''demon'', or rather, a ''rotten ancestor'' whom manifested himself in Alia as a ''existence-memory'', begged her mother: ''mommy, help me..'' - as a response during her struggle with her possession.

Upon which Leto gave her a dagger, and told her: ''help yourself''.
Prior this scene actually, Leto exposed her as a part of the ''Atrocity'', with a capital A, and called her the ''Abomination''.

Alia has the ability to know the memories of her mother, a mother who called her at birth a ''Abomination'';
so through memory, by labeling her from birth with such a value, she was entrapped in a specific role.
So, did not she gave her punishment a meaning by becoming a ''Abomination'' in regards with their people's value system; constantly reminded of being a ''abomination'' through memory, through a label; did not her own mother made Alia, a genetically fit woman, a ''abomination''..?

It shows strength, will power and having ego - to grow above such a label and given value; but if the particular environment entraps the person, in this case Alia, within such a oral past, did they not themselves create the so called ''abomination'' and did she not gave her punishment a meaning by becoming a ''abomination''..

What choice did she have eventually, to kill Leto as him or else herself by herself, a Either / Or choice forced upon her by those who made her, who made her vulnerable to be seduced by this ''rotten ancestor''.

Very interesting analyses and a seemingly great collection of movies.
About the id-machine, ego and super-ego, libido, autonomous partial objects, fantasy and reality, the woman as ideal, mental rape (1:28:00) etc., etc. With scenes of movies as The birds, Red shoes, Fight club, Psycho, Blue Velvet, Dogville, Lost Highway and many more.

Only I do not know what to make of 1:18:10 ; where he states that flowers, in particularly Tulips, are like ‘’tentacle vaginas trying to swallow you’’, flowers as an ‘’open invitation to all the insects and beasts to come and screw me’’, that ‘’flowers should be forbidden for children’’..

Not sure if this fits, but I'll try. I have always loved the first three Star Wars movies that came out,though Im not a hardcore fan or have special knowledge about it, and I always viewed the Jedi as the ultimate source of good and an order I would gladly join. Train for combat against evil people and do good in general? Sure.
But , after coming to this forum basically, I find the Jedi less appealing. They moralise alot. Alot. Im still unsure how to describe them properly, but they seem to basically hold a Sword of Moral Judgement over everyones necks, almost killing or destroying (resources) at will whenever something they deem "evil" shows up.

They habitually use their "mind trick" to get people to 'better' themselves, which is terrifying. It's the #1 power modern man/nihilists would like to have. I think if the jedi order would follow its own convictions, they would absolutely forbid the use of the mind trick. Among other powers, pherhaps.

Im I have been involved in some stoicism and buddhist groups on FB and they all seem to hold the jedi very highly, for their various qualities - either stoic or buddhist/samurai-like ethos. But I can't help but think that most people would rather live like Sith - imagining themselves more powerful/resilient then they really are - rather then the harsh life of jedi monk.

Are jedi maybe the ultimate "moderns"?

Even so, I still find the idea of some kind of "Order" - like the jedi - would be awesome to see in action/real life. I just am not sure what would make such an order truly useful to the elite that serves it. But I do like all elite societies like that - Samurai, Knights, spartans, Indian warrior societies throughout time, Sacred band and even the legions I suppose.

This would perhaps be an improvement:

Jedi: Individualistic, emotional, rebels, 'peaceful' [not pacifist]
Sith: Collectivistic, emotion-less, follow orders, power-mad

Then the sith would be the moralising ones, following dogma, "because orders" or "conviction".

Why Jedis are Terrifying

Why Jedis might be Villains

Sith vs Jedi comparison





Trailers to the new movie coming up this christmas:

I find this comment very summing:

A movie which portrays the frictional Balkan wars.

The main character: His family got killed by Islamic terrorism; to escape the law and to have his own revenge continuing, he sides with the Serbs against the other Balkan countries, of which a few have Muslim populations.

This movie is so personal to me, as it had such a decisive impact on me as a teen. That it, - next to the great moments in my life and some great works of philosophy and allegoric literature that I have read, - shaped me and my worldview in a very impressionate manner, which will remain with me to the end.

Though, from my love for Serbia back then, I now have a love for all the Balkan peoples and cultures.

Saviour

It's been awhile since I last saw it, but I believe he was a mercenary, not really siding with any side per se..
The film did alright at portraying an impartial view of all sides involved in the conflict, even if that meant doing more vilifying than nullifying..
As for the characters, the Saviour represented the impulsive, soldier mentality, almost womanly or is it manly: act now, the consequences don't really matter, because even if you can see ahead, someone else can save your arse instead...the quickest, least resistant way to expel and repel whatever happened in the past...sacrifice others for yourself..
the Saved was more like the Saviour: farsighted (evinced in scenes when standing up boldly to her familial affairs and nourishing and eventually sacrificing for her little one), all exemplary strength in dealing with the past as it was..

I did not say ''he sided with the Serbs because of nationalist motives''. I wrote ''he sides with the Serbs against the other Balkan countries, of which a few have Muslim populations.'' Correlating ''muslim populations'' in my sentence, as to say, he wants to fight indiscriminate against muslims (due to his loss), and the Serbs happened to be on that side who fought muslims (as well against Catholic Croats)..

Different perspective then. As I can't see a single indicator of him (considering) ''being saved'' out of any mess. He endures. Strive, drama, loss, finding.
Without him, the baby would have been killed, by her. Or else by the fellow soldier, the Serb.

I have to write some day a detailed review.

Lynch and Lethe-argy.

Zizek wrote:

"Lynch's entire 'ontology' is based upon the discordance between reality, observed from a safe distance, and the absolute proximity of the Real. His elementary procedure involves moving forward from the establishing shot of reality to a disturbing proximity that renders visible the disgusting substance of enjoyment, the crawling and glistening of indestructible life. l Suffice it to recall the opening sequence of Blue velvet. After the vignettes of the idyllic American small town and the heart attack of the hero's father as he waters the lawn (when he collapses, the jet of hose water uncannily recalls surrealistic, heavy urination), the camera noses into the lawn, disclosing the bursting life there: the crawling insects and beetles, their rattling and devouring of the grass. . . . At the very beginning of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, we encounter the opposite procedure, which amounts to the same effect: first we see abstract white protoplasmic shapes floating in a blue background, a kind of elementary form of life in its primordial twinkling; then, as the camera moves slowly away, we gradually become aware that what we saw was the extreme close-up of a IV screen. Here we come to recognize the fundamental feature of postmodernist 'hyperrealism': the overproximity to reality brings about the 'loss of reality'; uncanny details stick out and perturb the pacifying effect of the overall picture.

The second feature, closely linked to the first, resides in the very designation 'Pre-Raphaelitism': the reaffirmation ofrendering things as they 'really are', not yet distorted by the rules of academic painting first established by Raphael. However, the Pre-Raphaelites' own practice belies this naive ideology of returning to the 'natural' way of painting. The first thing about their paintings that strikes the eye is their flatness. This feature necessarily appears to us, accustomed as we are to modern perspective-realism, as a sign of clumsiness: Pre-Raphaelite paintings somehow lack the 'depth' that pertains to space organized along perspective lines which meet at a distant point - it is as if the very 'reality' these paintings depict is not a 'true' reality but, rather, a reality structured as in bas-relief. (Another aspect of this same feature is the 'dollish', mechanically composite, artificial quality that clings to the depicted individuals: they somehow lack the abyssal depth of personality that we usually associate with the notion of 'subject'.) The designation 'Pre-Raphaelitism' is thus to be taken literally: as indicating the shift from Renaissance perspectivism to the 'closed' medieval universe.

In Lynch's films, this 'flatness' of depicted reality, which effectively cancels the perspective ofinfinite openness, finds its precise counterpart at the level of sound. Let us return to the opening sequence of Blue Velvet: its crucial feature is the uncanny noise that emerges when we approach the Real. This noise is difficult to locate in reality; in order to determine its status one is tempted to invoke contemporary cosmology, which speaks of the noises at the borders of the universe. Such noises are not simply internal to the universe; they are the remainders, the last echoes, of the Big Bang that created the universe itself. The ontological status of this noise is more interesting than it may seem, since it subverts the fundamental notion of the ' open ' , infinite universe that defines the space of Newtonian physics.

This modern notion of the 'open' universe is based on the hypothesis that every positive entity (noise, matter) occupies some (empty) space: it hinges on the difference between space qua void and positive entities occupying space, 'filling it out'. Here space is phenomenologically viewed as something existing prior to the entities that 'fill it out': ifwe destroy or remove the matter occupying a given space, the space qua void still remains. But the primordial noise, the last remainder of the Big Bang, is constitutive ofspace itself. it is not a noise 'in' space, but a noise that keeps space open as such. If, therefore, we were to erase this noise, we would not get the 'empty space' that the noise filled out: space itself, the receptacle for every 'inner-worldly' entity, would vanish. This noise is therefore, in a sense, the very ' sound of silence'. Along the same lines, the fundamental noise in Lynch's films is not simply caused by objects that are part of reality; instead, this noise forms the ontological horizon, the frame of reality itself, the very texture that holds reality together - if this noise were to be eradicated, reality itself would collapse. From the 'open' infinite universe of Cartesian-Newtonian physics, we thus revert to the pre-modern 'closed' universe, bounded by a fundamental 'noise'. The reversal of reality into the Real corresponds to the reversal of the look (of the subject peering at reality) into the gaze - that is, this reversal occurs when we enter the ' black hole ' , the tear in the fabric ofreality.

What we encounter in this 'black hole' is simply the body stripped of its skin. That is to say, Lynch perturbs our most elementary phenomeno­ logical relationship to the living body, which is based on the radical separation between the surface of the skin and what lies beneath it. Let us recall the uncanniness, even disgust, we experience when we endeavour to imagine what goes onjust under the surface ofa beautiful naked body - muscles, organs, veins. . . . In short, relating to the body implies suspending what goes on beneath the surface. This suspension is an effect of the symbolic order; it can occur only in so far as our bodily reality is structured by language. In the symbolic order, even when we are undressed, we are not really naked, since skin itself functions as the 'dress of the flesh'. This suspension excludes the Real of the life­ substance.

How, then, does Lynch perturb our most elementary phenomeno­ logical relationship to the bodily surface? By means of voice, of a word that 'kills', breaking through the skin surface to cut directly into raw flesh - in short, by means of a word whose status is that of the Real. This feature is most expressive in Lynch's version of Herbert's Dune. Suffice it to recall the members of the space-guild who, because they have overindulged in 'spice', the mysterious drug around which the story revolves, have became distorted beings with gigantic heads; as worm-like creatures made of skinless, raw flesh, they represent the indestructible life-substance, the pure embodiment of enjoyment.

What we have here is the typical Lynch child-fantasy notion of the human body as a balloon, a form made of inflated skin, with no solid substance inside. . . .
The skulls ofthe space-guild servants also start to crack when they run out of the spice - again a case of distorted, fractured surfaces.

What is crucial here is the correlation between these cracks in the skull and the distorted voice: the guild-servant utters unintelligible whispers, which are transformed into articulated speech only by passing through the microphone - or, in Lacanian terms, by passing through the medium of the big Other.

At the centre of Blue Velvet (and of Lynch's entire oeuvre) lies the enigma of woman's depression.  

What if depression is the original fact, what if it comes first, and all subsequent activity - Frank's terrorizing of Dorothy - far from being the cause of her malaise, is, rather, a desperate 'therapeutic' attempt to prevent the woman from sliding into the abyss of absolute depression, a kind of 'electroshock' therapy that endeavours to focus her attention?The crudeness of his 'treatment' (kidnapping her husband and son; cutting off the husband's ear; requiring her participation in the sadistic sexual game) simply corresponds to the depth of her depression: only such raw shocks can keep her active.

In this sense Lynch can be said to be truly anti-Weininger: if, in Otto Weininger's Sex and Character, the paradigm of modern anti-feminism, woman presents herself to man, endeavouring to fascinate his gaze and thus to drag him down from the spiritual heights into the pit of sexual debauchery - if, then, for Weininger, the 'original fact' is man's spirituality, whereas his fascination with a woman results from his Fall - with Lynch, the 'original fact' is the woman's depression, her sliding into the abyss of self-annihilation, of absolute lethargy; whereas, on the 'contrary, it is man who presents himself to woman as the object of her gaze. Man 'bombards' her with shocks in order to arouse her attention and thereby pull her out of her numbness - in short, in order to reinstate her in the 'proper' order of causality.

The tradition of a deadened, lethargic woman aroused from her numbness by a man 's call was well under way in the nineteenth century: suffice it to recall Kundry from Wagner's Parsifal who, at the beginning of Act II and Act III, is awakened from a catatonic sleep (first through Klingsor's rude summons, then through Gurnemanz's kind care , or ­ from 'real ' life - the unique figure of jane Morris, wife of William Morris and mistress of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

The fundamental axis of Lynch's universe consists of the tension between the abyss of ' feminine' depth and the pure skin surface of the symbolic order: bodily depth constantly invades the surface and threat­ens to swallow it." [Metastases of Enjoyment]