The Grotesqueness of Black-and-White: Portrayals of Über-Authority and Counter-Authority in Three Stanley Kubrick Films

Paper by Audrey Lapointe . Viewed on DVD.

Many articles have been written about Stanley Kubrick’s directorial techniques and how they reflect on his sense of auteurship. James Naremore, for instance, writes in his article, “Stanley Kubrick and the Aesthetics of the Grotesque” (Fall, 2006) that Kubrick’s detached treatment of his characters gave his films a “cold” emotional tone that reflects his attitude toward “dealing with the movie industry and his own celebrity” (4). Exploring this personal aversion, Calder Willingham describes Kubrick’s attitude as “near psychopathic indifference to and coldness toward the human beings in the story. . . . [H]e doesn’t like people much; they interest him mainly when they do unspeakably hideous things or when their idiocy is so malignant as to be horrifyingly amusing” (qtd. in Naremore 4). Naremore further suggests that Kubrick’s use of the wide-angle lens creates “an eerie, dynamic, sometimes caricatured sense of space” (4) and this, coupled with his cool, “aesthetic detachment” (4), alienates the viewers and, thus, creates a sense of “melodrama” (4-5). However, Naremore points out that this style of Kubrick’s is more a form of stark grotesqueness. As he explains, “aesthetic of the grotesque” is an art form (5), originally referred to as an “ancient style of ornamentation”(6), which later gained pejorative connotations that include elements of both “the ludicrous and the fearful” (John Ruskin, qtd. in Naremore 6). This paper will show how the form of the grotesque is used by Kubrick to portray the conflict between über-authority and counter-authority in A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut, and Full Metal Jacket and is his trademark evidence of auteurship.

The conflict between über-authority and counter-authority is nowhere more clear than in A Clockwork Orange, as Kubrick blatantly portrays the black-and-white theme of the “we-they” binary contradiction. He achieves this in several ways. The first half of the film is devoted to establishing the lines of authority –what is referred to in children’s films as a very black-and-white demarcation of the heroes and villains – for children’s films, this is done by the director’s establishing early-on who is the ‘good guy’ and who is the ‘bad guy,’ through clear plot action and/or character dialogue. Kubrick complicates this demarcation by adding seemingly contradictory elements: elements of virtue to the villainous counter-authority figures and elements of evil to the supposedly good authority figures. In this way, each type embodies a grotesqueness that is both ludicrous and fearful, as mentioned in Ruskin, above. A good example is that, throughout the movie, Kubrick juxtaposes soothing, classical music with acts of violence, crime, and torture committed by Alex and his droogs. Another example are the voice-overs by the wayward Alex; these voice-overs give us insight into Alex’s twisted worldview and motives, but are delivered as soothing narrative litanies, and so become a ludicrous contradiction to the film’s action. Likewise, the governmental authorities’ seemingly benevolent intentions in administering the Ludovico technique essentially lobotomizes the free will of the recipients, turning them into lab rats who vomit at the least suggestion of adverse stimuli. Naremore writes that Kubrick “had a fondness for the wide-angle lens, which he employed in the manner of Orson Welles, to create an eerie, dynamic, sometimes caricatured sense of space” (4). Kubrick’s wide-angle shots create not only a sense of caricatured space, but also of alienation that helps establish the characters’ motives; one example takes place at the beginning of the film, when Alex and his droogs accost the drunkard in the empty alley: the wide-angle shot captures both the condition of the drunkard and the advancing thugs, so that the audience has 360, arena-like awareness of all the elements. This dynamic view gives the audience the “eerie,” ominous sense of space violation and also allows the audience to develop prescience of the impending action before it occurs. The camera angles and overtly lewd acts of the characters contribute to the grotesqueness of the film, but Kubrick ensures grotesqueness by using wild, pop-art style set décor and bizarre costuming (for instance, the purple hair and plastic-metallic dress of Alex’s mother). These garish visual elements provide the ludicrous effects that accentuate the fearful elements of Kubrick’s grotesque aesthetic; they are both a symbol that stands for the whole garishness of Alex’s life and also an offset to the orderly, less colorful symbol of the über-authority.

In Full Metal Jacket, the dividing lines between authority and counter-authority are again quite clearly established in blatant stereotypes: the harsh drill sergeant, the idiot “Gomer Pyle” soldier (Leonard), the conflicted character of Joker, who feels sympathy for Leonard, but also loyalty to the other soldiers in his platoon. Because this film is about war, and the audience expects a certain amount of grotesqueness, Kubrick has to be more subtle in his aesthetic. Thus, Kubrick establishes these easily identifiable character stereotypes early in the film and depicts the grotesqueness of war as the catalyst that changes them: gentle Gomer buckles under the pressure of boot camp and kills both the sergeant and himself (thus triumphing over authority); Joker violates the authority of his own conscience when he shoots the injured young female sniper in a mercy killing. As in A Clockwork Orange, though, Kubrick is overly obvious in the points that he is making. This is quite apparent in the final scene, just after the mercy killing, when the troops are marching away singing the theme song to “Mickey Mouse,” included for several purposes: as a connection to something completely American; as a mockery of military authority; as a statement about the (small) value of a soldier’s life; as a statement about the inanity of war. (As the song goes, “Who’s the leader of the band [i.e., the war, the troops, etc.] for everyone to see? M-i-c, k-e-y, M-o-u-s-e!”)

In his article, “Full Metal Jacket– Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam Combat Movie” (Winter 1988-1989), Thomas Doherty makes an astute observation that supports the idea that Kubrick used this film as a personal expression of auteurship:

“The stylization in the set design (even the bullets in the brick walls seem distributed with mathematical randomness) and the textbook flourish of the combat montages (the waist-level advance of the Steadicam, the studied entrapments of the mise-en-scene, the slo-mo rending of flesh) are calculated compromises. Kubrick chooses imagistic control over location verisimilitude or documentary realism. His Hue looks nothing like Vietnam-not even Thailand, the Philippines, or Mexico, the usual scenic backdrops for the Vietnam genre. Lacking the authority of the participant-observer, Kubrick won’t compete with Oliver Stone on his own turf. Full Metal Jacket is not Vietnam As It Really Was, but as Kubrick realized it.”

However, Kubrick’s use of other types of camera shots establishes within the mis-en-scène a sense of realism – for instance, when Joker and Rafterman (the army cameraman) were interviewing the soldiers (when Animal Mother is first introduced), Kubrick’s camera swerves and bobs as they he were the Rafterman. In the scene in which the soldiers pay their respects to their two fallen comrades, the men stand in a circle over the dead men, and the camera focuses in a close-up shot of each man in turn, as they murmur a profound sentiment, and by this the viewers are brought in, as it were, to the immediacy of the emotion. Yet, even in this scene, Kubrick his worldview as auteur to voice his opinion against the war; Animal Mother comments, “You think we waste gooks for freedom? This is a slaughter. If I’m gonna get my balls blown for a word, my word is poontang.” The binary opposition of über-authority vs. counter-authority in Full Metal Jacket is established as not only the initial conflicts between the drill sergeant and the recruits, but also within the ranks of the troops on the battlefield. Animal Mother defies Cowboy’s authority at the ambush with the young female sniper, but doing so results in more death. In this instance, Kubrick seems to be contradicting his theme of binaries; however, within the scope of Kubrick’s aim as auteur to make a statement about the senseless of war, the inclusion of this outcome makes sense and is in keeping with Animal Mother’s character an adds to the overall grotesqueness of war itself.

Kubrick repeats the aesthetic of the grotesque in Eyes Wide Shut. Again, Kubrick sets up the binary of über-authority vs. counter-authority; however, in this film, the main characters (Bill and Alice Harford) around which the film revolves are the ‘good guys,’ sealed within the safe cocoon of how they choose to view the world (eyes wide shut against their hidden lusts and desires). The conflict between the authority of their marriage to which they initially adhere and the larger possibilities of sexual freedom and abandon (the über-authority of this film) is developed subtly at first, in the discussions between the Harfords, then more blatantly, as Kubrick reveals the grotesque reality of the forbidden sexual underground. However, as Tim Kreider notes in his article, Eyes Wide Shut (2000), the film is “not about ‘sex.’ The real pornography in this film is in its lingering, overlit depiction of the shameless, naked wealth of end-of-the-millennium Manhattan, and of the obscene effect of that wealth on the human soul, and on society” (41). Nonetheless, the obvious elements of this grotesqueness are represented in both the stark nudity and the elaborate costumes at the sex club and also by the music at the club –the frightening, drum-beat drone of the baritone and bass a cappella chanting heightens the sense of danger and secrecy. Interestingly, the Hartfords’ encounters with the grotesque (Bill’s involvement with the orgy mansion folks, Alice’s admission of attraction to another man earlier in their married life and her wild sexual dream) create the rift that makes the Harfords see that they have been living on the periphery of a vast sea of possibilities – and, in an ironic twist at the end of the movie, they overcome the urge to succumb to the larger, über-authority, but are changed by the knowledge that they are capable of such a life. Like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, who overcomes the effects of the Ludovico treatment and reverts to his life of crime, the Harfords revert to their married life – but that life will be forever altered by the undercurrents of what they have discovered. The black-and-white has become muddied. This seems a reflection of Kubrick’s relationship with the film industry: at this point in his career (Eyes Wide Shut having been the last film he made before his death), Kubrick has had to learn to live with the “other,” the über-authority of an industry that both allowed him to express himself, but also had its limits in what it allowed. Kubrick, like the Harford’s, lived with compromise as an auteur.

Kubrick’s worldview, as presented through these films, focuses on the binary theme of über-authority vs. counter-authority and is a vivid statement of this dichotomy, which he expresses through the aesthetic of the grotesque. In each of these films, Kubrick presents the authority as forceful, blind, and/or abusive or inept and the anti-authority groups as developing their own form of authority in a “herd” mentality that counters the über-authority. This is relevant today as a psychological statement of anti-establishmentarianism and also as an insight into Kubrick’s role as auteur.

Works Cited

Doherty, Thomas. “Full Metal Jacket –Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam Combat Movie.” (Winter, 1988-1989). JSTOR. Web. 5 Jul. 2011.

Kreider, Tim. “Eyes Wide Shut.” Spring, 2000. JSTOR. Web. 5 Jul. 2011.

Naremore, James. “Stanley Kubrick and the Aesthetics of the Grotesque.” (Fall 2006). JSTOR. Web. 5 Jul. 2011.