Kubrick And His Symbols: A Jungian Analysis (Part 1)
Bill Reid
There can be no doubt that Stanley Kubrick included many
"symbols" (as defined by Jung) in his movies. Of
course, Jung's theory about why these symbols appeared
repeatedly in many different cultures was that they
sprang from the "collective unconscious" of mankind.
An "artist" who was "in touch" with his unconscious
life would not CONSCIOUSLY include them, but rather
use them because they just "felt right". In fact,
Jung thought that the "unconscious mind" quite
often takes over the actions of writers and artists
resulting in works that are a surprise and a mystery
even to them. Interestingly, Kubrick himself allowed
that some ideas in "art" may not have actually been
CONSCIOUSLY inserted by the "artist".
However, it is always stated that Kubrick was an
extremely well-read individual on a multitude of
topics, and we know for a fact that he had at
least passing knowledge of Jung's writings by the
late 1960s, referring to the black monolith in
"2001" as "something of a Jungian archetype".
And he DID specifically include a reference to Jung in
the movie "Full Metal Jacket", which had several images
that can be interpreted as Jungian symbols.
But what conclusions can we draw about Kubrick's CONSCIOUS,
RATIONAL thoughts in relation to Jung's opinions throughout
his entire filmography? What parallels can we find between
Jung's writings and Kubrick's own commentary and his well-documented
method of creating movies? And just as a little bit of fun (you
know, maybe stir some "stuff" up), how might have Jung "diagnosed"
the "neuroses" of Stanley Kubrick: his widely-discussed (real,
debatable, and admitted) "eccentric" personality traits?
Jung vaguely thought that the "unconscious mind"
largely sprang from man's "animal nature" but he in no
way was versed in or concerned with any actual biochemistry
or known animal behaviors, both as a factor of his intellectual
focus and the state of knowledge in the time in which
he lived and worked. In some ways his distinction between
the "unconscious mind" and rational conscious thought
parallels the "mind-body" split of Descartes. Jung however
never referred to any actual direct physical mechanism
that produced the "unconscious mind", but rather just
documented what he considered to be all of man's common urges
and emotions and reactions to the reality of human life,
which Jung classified into several "archetypes".
He did theorize that there was a fundamental
contest between "rational" or "conscious" thought,
which involved words, logic, technology, and science,
and "unconscious emotions", which are non-verbal and
seemingly irrational and indescribable to the "conscious"
mind. He also tended to believe that rational thought
was sporadic at best and largely ineffective as a method of
controlling our actions.
Whether we like it or not, and maybe even MORE so
if we DON'T "like it", he thought our unconscious mind
tends to control our actions, and that attempts to
suppress our unconscious urges resulted in "neurosis"
because only the most negative and destructive aspects
of our unconscious minds would wind up in control.
This was based on his concept called the "shadow",
that he thought was the unconscious opposite of any
particular dominant personality trait, and which would
assert itself destructively if supressed. He thought that
our best shot at "non-neurotic" behavior was to become aware
of our unconscious drives, in many cases as revealed in dreams,
and to naturally accept and integrate the positive aspects
contained therein with our conscious rational existence.
He also tended to subscribe to the widely-held belief that
"primitives", technologically non-advanced people, including
children, were more naturally in tune with their unconscious
emotions, and thus less naturally "neurotic". He saw
modern man in general as an extreme form of a "thinking"
personality trait with the destructive irrational "shadow"
behaviors of alcoholism, drug addiction, pornography,
prostitution, etc.
Jung's focus on dreams and their relation to the unconscious
of course began with his early work with Freud who extended
earlier concepts of dream analysis and the "subconscious". Jung
ultimately split with Freud on certain aspects of their
differing interpretations of the "unconscious" and "subconscious"
respectively, and specific techniques of dream analysis. He
also undertook a collection and analysis of cross-cultural world-wide
mythical, mystical, and symbolic beliefs and behaviors to develop a
much different and remarkably more ambitious theory of personality
development and pathology that extended beyond individuals to entire
societies and even to the entireity of all mankind. He
theorized that the basic emotional "archetypes" that drive
our unconscious mind are revealed to and acted upon by the
conscious mind as "symbols" in the form of dreams, myths,
religious rituals, etc.
It was Jung who actually pioneered the cross-cultural concept
of the "hero myth" most recently popularized by Joseph Campbell,
and he cataloged numerous other cross-cultural "symbols", "archetypes",
myths, beliefs, and behaviors. He thought that all of these similarities
between radically different cultures proved his concept of a
"collective unconscious", a common state of man's mind despite
apparent differences between technological acheivement or specific
political or theological beliefs.
For filmmakers as "artists" in particular, Jung's greatest
importance may lie in his idea that certain images and story
lines have unspoken world-wide "mythical" emotional power, which
is the defining aspect of his concepts of "symbols" and "archetypes".
A filmmaker who either consciously or "unconsciously" includes
well-known "Jungian symbols" in a film may very well acheive a certain
emotional resonance with audiences while apparently confounding
those looking for the literal "plot" of the movie.
So probably the best Kubrick film to start with is "2001: A Space
Odyssey", certainly widely-regarded as the cornerstone movie in Kubrick's
filmography. And it is this film, more so than any other Kubrick
movie, that is justifiably notorious for its apparent lack of
a conventional linear "plot", and its total reliance on non-verbal
images that proved baffling to so many and yet so engrossing
to others. The film in many ways serves as not only the perfect
illustration of Jungian concepts in the work of Stanley Kubrick at
several levels, and also in modern society and its media as a whole.
The first thing we HAVE to notice is the title, which
includes the word "Odyssey", which of course is derived from the myth of
"Odysseyus". And we HAVE to admit that indeed the myth of "Odysseyus"
was explicitly referenced by Jung as a classic example of his cross-cultural
"hero myth", or the "hero's journey", the mythical projection of
symbolic personality development through the stages of life
into the "mystery of death".
Jung saw the myth of the "hero's journey" as being divided into four
distinct phases:
1. The juvenile/primitive/"Trickster" phase, the beginning of the
hero's life, in which he is more of a wiley "joker" than a hero
2. The "superhuman" or adult phase where the hero performs amazing
feats that become legendary
3. The "fall from grace", where the hero's pride ("hubris") leads
to his downfall and possibly death
4. The death or other annihilation of the hero, which does not
necessarily diminish his legendary status, but may actually serve to
transcend it, and the hero himself may actually transend death and
become transformed beyond mere mortality
Note that "2001" can be divided into four phases that correlate
the stages of Jung's "hero's journey" to the entire past history and
projected future of mankind:
1. We first see man in a primitive state, a "monkey"; Jung quite
often specifically related dreams about monkeys to the juvenile/primitive
or "Trickster" phase of the "hero myth", because everybody knows
monkeyz iz funnee!
2. We then jump to the "future" (six years ago!) and see that
man is now capable of amazing technological feats, such as routine
space travel, and talking to your back-scratching daughter on
a picture-phone
3. Then we sadly see man's technological feats, specifically the
computer HAL, almost lead to his complete annihilation, and note carefully
that "Marty Naimer" of the BBC specifically detects PRIDE ("hubris")
when HAL talks about his capabilities; Kubrick himself said "In the specific
case of HAL, he had an acute emotional crisis because he could not accept
evidence of his own fallibility."
4. Dave Bowman then takes the final transcendant journey towards,
through, and past death, and is presumably transformed beyond mortality
So there seem to be fairly clear parallels between Jung's
"hero myth" and the "plot" of "2001". Are there any other
Jungian "symbols" or "archetypes" in the movie?
Well, as a matter of fact, there is, a big honkin' one: the
so-called "monolith" (literally, "single stone"). According to
Jung, stones have a very powerful cross-cultural symbolic value,
and men around the globe and throughout history have exhibited
the peculiar but persistent behavior of setting stones up
on their ends in one way or another. You see this on gravestones
(and the Jewish custom of putting stones on graves), the Easter
Island statues, the Pyramids (Mayan and Egyptian), Stonehenge,
"skyscrapers", carving statues of "heroes", not the least example
of which is Mount Rushmore (and note the habit of destroying
and breaking up statues of "dictators" after they are removed
from power), etc. Also note that in many cases, stones are
quite often carefully aligned with the Sun and certain stars at
certain times that have mystical significance (such as Stonehenge
and the Egyptian Pyramids).
In Jungian terms, stones generally symbolize the permanent and
immutable wisdom and unknowable essence of the universe (in short,
the "God archetype"), and setting a stone on it's end serves as a
symbolic guidepost to man's (or a man's) connection to this universal
mystery. So the image of a black stone improbably standing upright
has immediate mythic emotional impact according to Jung.
Remember that Clarke joked that they had made a "religious movie",
but certainly there was no specific known theology presented. Rather,
the movie seemed to present a novel "religious" myth, previously unknown
to any culture or society, but it still seemed to curiously arouse
a strong "mystical" emotion in many viewers. As Kubrick himself
said:
"If the film stirs the emotions and penetrates the subconscious of the
viewer, if it stimulates, however inchoately, his mythological and religious
yearnings and impulses, then it has succeeded."
- Stanley Kubrick
In a well-known story about the movie, it may have suceeded
too well! Allegedly, at one screening, a young viewer, possibly
"under the influence", screamed "IT'S GOD!" when the image of
the monolith appeared, and ran towards and crashed right through
the screen! Certainly, many viewers, possibly the majority,
immediately interpreted the monolith as "God" and not as the
alien machine it "literally" was...
Is this why Kubrick chose that particular image for the movie? He
not only chose a featureless black stone standing on its edge, he
coupled its appearances with the orbital alignments of planets and
moons, just as was done by the "primitives" who built Stonehedge
and the Egyptian Pyramids, and he explicitly stated that he was trying
to acheive "the strange sensation one has when the alignment of the
Sun takes place at Stonehenge."
Note that in the novel he co-wrote with Arthur C. Clarke, the
"monolith" wasn't so much a "single stone" but rather an animated
"teaching machine" that taught the monkeys how to use tools.
Kubrick chose not to use that bit of technological literalism,
but rather relied on the pure mythic emotional power of the
"single stone" itself, coupled with the Ligeti chorus of what
seems to be thousands of non-verbal human voices (the "collective
unconscious" expressed as music?). Was this actually a canny and
CONSCIOUS appeal by Kubrick to the emotional reactions predicted
by Jung's theories when people see a "stone" symbolizing the
"God archetype"?
Kubrick himself actually supplied a presumably canonical answer
in the previously-mentioned quote where he acknowleged that the
monolith was "something of a Jungian archetype", but he specifically
did not say that he selected a "monolith" as a Jungian "God" symbol,
but rather as an "artistic" attempt to convey "something of its
quality":
"From the very outset of work on the film we all
discussed means of photographically depicting an
extraterrestrial creature in a manner that would be
as mind-boggling as the being itself. And it soon became
apparent that you cannot imagine the unimaginable. All
you can do is try to represent it in an artistic manner
that will convey something of its quality. That's why we
settled on the black monolith -- which is, of course,
in itself something of a Jungian archetype, and also a
pretty fair example of 'minimal art'."
- Stanley Kubrick
Notably, he also said this about trying to depict the
object as a literal alien machine of some sort:
"I eventually decided that to depict the monolith in such an
explicit manner would be to run the risk of making it appear
no more than an advanced television teaching machine. You can get
away with something so literal in print, but I felt that we could
create a far more powerful and magical effect
by representing it as we did in the film."
- Stanley Kubrick
These quotes are actually quite interesting in relation to
the Jungian distinction between verbal rational conscious
thought and the unconscious emotional "archetypes", particularly
if you look at the actual development of the movie. It is
well-known that Kubrick and Clark developed a very specific
"science-fiction" plot concerning an advanced race of space
aliens for the movie and the subsequent novel of the same name.
One of Kubrick's original ideas was to actually precede the movie
with a 10-minute documentary where various scientific experts
would in essence provide "rational" support for such a plot.
He also intended to include specific narration in the movie to
"explain" what was happening when the visual images did not
make it clear.
But gradually, he abandoned any and all techniques of rational
literalism for the movie, in favor of a series of non-verbal
metaphorical images that strongly coincide with certain Jungian
"archetypes". He had initially pitched the movie to the MGM
studio bosses as nothing more specific than the "proverbial
good science-fiction movie" with state-of-the-art special
effects. He had no specific plot in mind, rather a very
general initial concept about man's exploration of space
leading to a first contact with extraterristrial life.
But over the years, this self-described non-religious
rationalist made a series of story and presentation choices
that led down paths where he first speculated, irrationally
with zero supporting evidence, that intelligent life absolutely
MUST reside elsewhere in the universe, then he imbued these
imaginary space aliens with magical godlike powers, PLUS the
desire to make man immortal and godlike like them, then he
stripped out any explicit reference in the movie to
space aliens at all, instead apparently encouraging
people to interpret the events in the movie as the
actions of "God"!
Here is his actual "rationalization" of
the plot of "2001"; note the extreme length of this
ridiculous IRRATIONAL discourse:
"I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001 but not any
traditional, anthropomorphic image of God. I don't believe in any of
Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct
an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept the fact
that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone,
that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are approximately
100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe. Given a planet in
a stable orbit, not too hot and not too cold, and given a few billion
years of chance chemical reactions created by the interaction of a
sun's energy on the planet's chemicals, it's fairly certain that
life in one form or another will eventually emerge. It's reasonable
to assume that there must be, in fact, countless billions of such
planets where biological life has arisen, and the odds of some
proportion of such life developing intelligence are high. Now,
the sun is by no means an old star, and its planets are mere
children in cosmic age, so it seems likely that there are billions
of planets in the universe not only where intelligent life is on
a lower scale than man but other billions where it is approximately
equal and others still where it is hundreds of thousands of millions
of years in advance of us. When you think of the giant technological
strides that man has made in a few millennia--less than a microsecond
in the chronology of the universe--can you imagine the evolutionary
development that much older life forms have taken? They may have
progressed from biological species, which are fragile shells for the
mind at best, into immortal machine entities--and then, over innumerable
eons, they could emerge from the chrysalis of matter transformed into
beings of pure energy and spirit. Their potentialities would be
limitless and their intelligence ungraspable by humans."
- Stanley Kubrick
Then, after all of that, he went on to say:
"I don't have the slightest doubt that to tell a story like this,
you couldn't do it with words."
- Stanley Kubrick
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!
Then why did it take you all those words to explain it, Stanley??!!??!!
Perhaps this is what actually drives his apparently contradictory
behavior and statements on the subject:
"If Man really sat back and thought about his impending termination,
and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would
surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might
ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to
make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary
microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of
space?"
- Stanley Kubrick
Perhaps for Mr. Kubrick, it is as Carl Jung so presciently noted about
the genesis of the "God archetype":
"People feel that it makes, or would make, a great difference if only
they had a positive belief in a meaningful way of life or in God
and immortality. The specter of approaching death often gives powerful
incentive to such thoughts. From time immemorial, men have had ideas
about a Supreme Being (one or several) and about the Land of the
Hereafter. Only today, do they think that they can do without such
ideas. Because we cannot discover God's throne in the sky with
a radiotelescope...people assume that such ideas are 'not true'.
I would rather say they are not 'true' ENOUGH, for these are
the conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from
prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness
at any provocation."
- Carl Jung
And indeed, it appears that the "God archetype" broke through
into Kubrick's "consciousness" as he was making his ostensibly
"rational" scientific movie. And as to whether or not "God" is
"true" or "not true enough" according to Jung, note carefully
this quote by the "thinking man" Stanley Kubrick:
"Sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much the think
of it, but the feel of it."
- Stanley Kubrick
And this somewhat longer version of the same "thought",
which we can easily note was not an original point, having
been made by Jung decades earlier:
"There are certain areas of feeling and reality or unreality
or innermost yearning, whatever you want to call it which are
notably inaccessible to words. Music can get into these areas.
Painting can get into them. Non-verbal forms of expression can.
But words are a terrible straitjacket. It's interesting
how many prisoners of that straitjacket resent its being loosened or
taken off. There's a side to the human personality that somehow senses
that wherever the cosmic truth may lie, it doesn't lie in A, B, C, D.
It lies somewhere in the mysterious, unknowable aspects of thought
and life and experience. Man has always responded to it. Religion,
mythology, allegories, it's always been one of the most responsive
chords in man. With rationalism, modern man has tried to eliminate it,
and successfully dealt some pretty jarring blows to religion...One
wants to break out of the clearly arguable, demonstrable things
which really are not very meaningful, or very useful or inspiring,
nor does one even sense any enormous truth in them."
- Stanley Kubrick
In pure Jungian psychoanalysis, you might have to conclude
that although Kubrick seems quite logically self-contradictory
at this point in his life, he appears to be fairly well "integrated",
because he not only did not supress his "shadow" realization
of the "God archetype", he fully committed to it as his
"artistic vision" for the movie.
However, did he ever actually understand the process that
went on in HIS own mind that led to the movie as we know it?
I don't believe that Mr. Kubrick ever was quoted as saying
that the movie represented a personal journey of acceptance
of HIS need for a religious experience, rather he tended to
project that need onto the audience:
"2001 is a nonverbal experience; one that bypasses verbalized
pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an
emotional and philosophical content. To convolute McLuhan, in 2001
the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely
subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level
of consciousness [...]. You're free to speculate as you wish about
the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film -- and
such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in
gripping the audience at a deep level -- but I don't want to
spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will
feel obliged to pursue or else fear he's missed the point."
- Stanley Kubrick
Well, except of course, Stanley, you DID spell out a
verbal road map, you just never mentioned your own PERSONAL
emotional involvment in the subject, and only passingly referred
to Jung, who seems to have laid out the exact same road map years
earlier, plus this additional direction:
"The motto 'Where there's a will, there's a way' is the superstition
of the modern man. Yet in order to sustain his creed, contemporary
man pays the price in a remarkable lack of introspection. He is blind
to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, his is
possessed by 'powers' that are beyond his control. His gods and demons
have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names."
- Carl Jung
With that let's bring this initial part of the discussion of
Jung and Kubrick to an end. In future installments, I'll turn
the focus to the many other appearances of Jungian symbols in
other Kubrick movies, including but not of course limited
to "Full Metal Jacket", with its explicit Jungian dialog
reference. But I'll leave with this particular quote by
Jung, and let you decide how it relates to the themes of
"Dr. Strangelove", "2001", and "A Clockwork Orange", which
I and many others consider to be Kubrick's best, and to
Kubrick's own mental state throughout the remainder of
his life after those movies:
"As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become
dehumanized. Man feels isolated in the cosmos, because he has
lost his emotional "unconscious identity" with natural phenomena.
...
Our intellect has created a new world that dominates nature, and
has populated it with monstrous machines...Man is bound to follow
the adventurous promptings of his scientific and inventive mind
and to admire himself for his splendid acheivements. At the same
time, his genius shows the uncanny tendency to invent things that
become more and more dangerous...In spite of our proud domination
of nature, we are still her victims, for we have not even learned
to control our own nature. Slowly but, it appears, inevitably,
we are courting disaster."
- Carl Jung
For extra credit, Google(TM) the almost exact same quote by
Stanley Kubrick where he talks about nuclear weapons and technology
in general...
---
William Ernest "Gustav" Reid
Don Stockbauer
Cybernetics to the rescue.