Kubrick And His Symbols: A Jungian Analysis (Part 2)
Bill Reid
So Kubrick, either "consciously" or "unconsciously",
presented the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" as a non-verbal
appeal to the "emotional truth" of audiences, using
symbols that Jung had classified years earlier, which
represented the "God archetype" and the "hero myth"
(which represents the archetype of human life acheivments).
What other Jungian "symbols" can we find in Kubrick's
films, and what can we conclude about whether he
"consciously" included them, and what do they
possibly say about Kubrick himself?
Certainly one of the most persistent, remarkable,
innately disturbing, and controversial images
in all the films of Stanley Kubrick involve his
portrayal of women. Kubrick quite often presented
women only as prostitutes, temptresses, "witches",
and objects of rape and violence and pornography,
and this did little to endear his works to many
female members of his audience. In fact, many people
tend to dismiss appreciation of Kubrick's movies as a
"guy thing", perhaps one step above "The Three Stooges"
in terms of content quality, and his clear negative
repeated objectification of women is often given as
the primary reason.
But Jung was very clear about the meaning of certain
images of women as "symbols" when these images entered
the conscious mind of a man through dreams, "art",
pornography, etc. Jung used his concept of the
"shadow", the part of a person's (or society's)
personality that is the unconscious opposite of the
dominant personality trait, to explain how supression
of the "shadow" trait can result in the "neurosis"
of negative manifestations of the "shadow" trait.
For a man, whose dominant personality traits are
"masculine", which according to Jung are "thinking" and
"sensation", the "shadow" traits are "feminine", whose
distinguishing traits are "feeling" and "intuition". Jung
had a specific name for the "shadow" feminine traits
in a man, which he called the "anima". According to
his theory about suppression of the "shadow", these traits
could either be destructive/negative in nature or
constructive/positive, depending on whether the
"shadow" was "supressed" or not. The state of a
man's (or society's) personality "integration", his
acceptance of his unconcious feminine traits, could
be determined by either negative or positive images
("symbols") of women appearing in dreams, popular culture,
"art", and behavior.
The differences between destructive/negative and
constructive/positive anima symbols can largely be boiled
down to the whore/mother dichotomy. Jung thought
that a man (or society) who suppressed his (its) "shadow"
feminine side would tend to "see" women as prostitutes,
pornographic object, evil temptresses who lead men to their
doom, and ugly evil "witches". A man who is
"well-integrated" with his "unconscious" feminine
traits will see women as nuturing, caring, loving, mother
figures.
With this in mind, let's look at the many specific
images of women in Stanley Kubrick movies, which are partly
notable just because many Kubrick movies did not feature
women in prominent roles; in many of his movies, they barely
appeared at all, which perhaps is itself significant,
considering the Jungian notion of a "neurotic" man
"suppressing" his "shadow" feminine traits.
Going all the way back to "The Killing", Kubrick presented
a striking image of a Jungian "evil temptress", the harpy wife
of Elisha Cook, Jr. She constantly "belittles" rather
than nuturing her husband, entreats him into a destructive life
of crime that ultimately costs him his life, and betrays
him repeatedly. Kubrick carefully and specifically portrays
her as a "painted harlot", lingering over her behavior of
applying make-up to seduce her husband into his destruction with
her artificial "beauty". The only other woman in the movie,
Johnny's girlfriend, is portrayed as being "ineffective" in
HER role as a woman, because in her own words, she isn't
"beautiful" enough.
Later, in "Lolita", Kubrick devotes an entire movie that
presents the images of seductress versus mother. We see
the immature Humbert led to his eventual destruction by
the youthful Dolores, who betrays him, while he subverts,
tricks, uses, and discards the middle-aged Charlotte
"mother figure". In "Dr. Strangelove", one of Kubrick's
several "war movies", the sole appearance of a woman is
"Miss Foriegn Affairs/Miss Ross", who is depicted as a
pornographic image in "Playboy", and as "General Buck
Turgidson"'s whorish concubine.
But it is in Kubrick's later movies that he tended to
present some of the most striking and telling (in Jungian
terms) images of women. In "A Clockwork Orange", the opening
scene of the movie depicts a society apparently obsessed with
pornography and subjugation of women, with the bound subservient
plastic statues of nude women in the Korova Milkbar.
We later see that statues dispense drugged milk from
their breasts, the ultimate perversion of the mother
figure, as this is literally the "milk of human badness" that
impels the "boys" to acts of abominable destruction.
We also see Alex's mother portrayed in a mini-skirt
and a whorish wig and make-up, as Kubrick confronts us
with an onslaught of conflicting images that are the
ultimate perversion of the positive Jungian feminine
"anima".
In "Full Metal Jacket", another "war movie", we see
exactly three women: two prostitutes, and a sniper that
kills three men, before "Joker" kills her, perhaps
as a "symbolic" act of the ultimate suppression of the
feminine "anima".
So did Kubrick ever show "positive" images of the
"anima"? Well, indeed he did, in certain movies, at
certain times, and those instances can be seen
in Jungian terms as the struggle of a man to "integrate"
his positive feminine "anima" into his total personality.
In these terms, "The Shining" can be seen as a series
of many different classic Jungian concepts and symbols
where a man ultimately fails to integrate his feminine side.
The story is told in the minimal: a man, and a mother
and child. Thus, the entire movie strips away the
element of societal projection of personality, and
reduces the symbols to those seen in those three
characters, and environment they occupy.
This "environment" is of course the significantly
named "Overlook Hotel"; in Jungian terms, Jack Torrance
is literally "overlooking" the feminine unconscious
"feeling/intuition" portion of his personality in favor
of the masculine conscious "thinking/sensation" portion.
To Jung, this is a recipe for disaster, if Jack chooses
not to properly interpret the negative images of
his feminine "anima" that are revealed to him within
the environment of the hotel.
This hotel is thus itself a significant classic Jungian
"symbol", the "maze" or "labyrinth", representing the
"self-discovery archetype". Not only does the hotel itself
consist of numerous long, winding, and branching hallways
(which Kubrick emphasized with long tracking shots), the
hotel also prominently features the infamous "hedge maze".
Jung said that myths and images about "mazes" and
"labyrinths" are found in cultures around the world
throughout history, and represent the difficulty of
man's conscious mind to comprehend his unconscious
emotions. In Greek mythology, a "hero" famously enters a
"labyrinth" to slay a "monster"; in Eastern cultures,
there is the symbol of the "mandala", a circular
representation of a maze-like structure, representing
to Jung both the unity but complexity of the "unconscious
mind".
We can note that Kubrick actually used the "labyrinth"
symbol in several movies, and it was actually one of
several visual motifs that strikingly distinguish his
movies. Kubrick was known for "tracking shots" though
maze-like structures, such as the General's inspection
of the troops in the trenches in "Paths of Glory", Tom
Cruise exploring the various rooms of orgiers in "Eyes
Wide Shut", and the "light show" at the end of "2001".
But the symbol was never quite so didactically and
visually explicitly used in Jungian terms as in "The Shining",
which even included a scene of Jack Torrance "overlooking" a
model of the hotel hedge maze with a blank stare on his
face, which dissolved to a shot of nuturing mother/child
successfully navigating the maze!
Thus the "Overlook Hotel" is a symbolic metaphor for
Jack's literal personality "disintegration", as he
figuratively is unable to slay the "monster" in the "maze".
In one of the most striking scenes in the movie, he
encouters a nude beautiful temptress in a bathroom that
suddenly transforms into a horribly ugly cackling witch as
he embraces her, combining in one scene much of the
possible symbolic negative images of the "anima".
But when questioned about this encounter by his wife,
he says "nothing happened", failing to get in emotional
touch with this terrifying image of his supressed
negative "anima".
He also notably "overlooks" his other encounters with
irrational "ghosts" as he wrestles with his nagging
feminine "guilt", as he excuses in his mind the incident
in which he injured his son with a "masculine/rational"
mathematical equation: "it was only a few feet/seconds
per square inch too much pressure, but SHE won't let ME
ever forget it!"
He also "overlooks" the positive anima image right before
him of the nuturing mother, his wife, who is shown happily
caring for and joyfully playing with her son. He instead
retreats into his "verbal/thinking" world of ostensible "writing",
totally unaware of the futility of this to deal with his own
unconscious nature and the "monster" in the "maze within".
He explicitly "shuts out" his wife (his "feminine" side)
from this Jungian representation of his fulminating neurosis,
telling her, "Whether I'm typing or not typing or whatever
I'm doing, I DON'T WANT YOU IN HERE!!!"
There is also another interesting parallel with Jung's
theories in the movie, specifically the title itself,
"The Shining". The "shining" is vaguely described by
Scatman Crowthers as an ability of a person to be
"sensitive" to the emotional states of places and people
at a distance, without the use of any type of traditional
verbal communication. As he says, "Some people shine,
and some people don't."
Jung of course felt that the key to successful non-neurotic
personality development was to be in touch with your "irrational"
non-verbal "unconscious" emotions. He felt that children
and "primitives" were more able to acheive this type of
personality integration; he also saw it as a one of the
opposing traits of the masculine/feminine dichotomy, as
part of the "thinking vs. feeling" and "sensation vs.
intuition" distinguishing traits of men and women. So it
seems significant in Jungian terms that the child "shines",
that is, he could "feel" the emotional events of the hotel's
past as revealed to him in images, and relay these images
to his mother, especially of course since the hotel itself
is a symbol of his father's neurotic personality, while
Jack himself never could comprehend or speak of his
own encounter with the "ghosts". (I will not delve
into why Mr. Crothers, a black man, was also portrayed
as having the "shining" by Mr. Kubrick, in light of
Jung's theories about "primitives", since I think we
may have already exhausted that thread.)
Also tellingly, from the standpoint of Jung's theories about
dreams revealing the truth of the state of our personality
"integration", and how proper analysis of dreams can serve
as a method to combat our "neuroses", Jack's one apparent
revelation about his deteriorating mental state occurs
as the result of a dream. He is shocked and terrified
by a dream he has that has him killing his wife and child.
But the one dream is clearly not enough, as Jack is
ultimately shown dying of exhaustion in the hedge maze
(the classic Jungian "labyrinth" symbol of the unconscious
personality) as a result of his attempt to "kill" the
positive "nuturing mother/child" anima aspect of his
personality.
Of course, Kubrick's last movie was "Eyes Wide Shut", which
featured numerous images of prostitutes, intermixed with
other classic Jungian symbols of the nuturing mother/child
"anima". I think, however, that it is time to close this
particular phase of the discussion dealing specifically with
Kubrick's Jungian images of women by jumping back and
considering a movie that only had a single female speaking
part in one crucial scene, and perhaps to ponder the significance
of this one scene in the context of Kubrick's actual life
and relationships with women.
The movie is of course "Paths Of Glory", another "war movie",
and the only woman is the captured German girl who is forced
to sing in the bar before a group of initially abusive French
soldiers. In the scene, she is first presented by the
bar owner as a classic object of sheer negative pornography;
he degrades her as having "no skills except maybe a
little natural talent--if you know what I mean". The soldiers
instantly seize on this as an image of negative "anima", and
catcall and whistle at her derisively. But as she sings
a simple song about the unconditional nuturing love of
a mother for a child, their "mood" changes, and they are suddenly
overwhelmed by the "emotions" of the positive aspects of
the "anima", and they begin to sing along and weep.
You would never see an image like this, a scene like this,
with this dramatic type of emotional shift, involving a woman
in any future Kubrick movie. Of course, as I think we all
know, he married the actress in the scene, which was his
last and presumably very happy marriage that lasted to the
end of his life, producing several children. While he would
go on to mostly present truly abhorrent images of woman for the
"entertainment" of his audiences, in this one case, he visualized
a woman as a simple transforming emotional force of nature.
In the same sense that "2001" can be seen as Kubrick's personal
desire for a "Jungian" unconsciously significant religious experience,
he may have projected his desire to integrate a positive feminine
image into his own personal life into "Paths Of Glory". In
the next installment, however, I'll be taking a much closer
look at the entire issue of how we can relate Kubrick's life,
personality, "neuroses", and his actual "working" methods
as to how they relate to Jung's theories and Kubrick's "conscious"
or "unconscious" acceptance of them.
---
William Ernest "Life's A Bitch" Reid