Wendy? Darling? Light of my life. I’m not gonna hurt ya. You didn’t let me finish my
sentence. I said I’m not gonna hurt ya, I’m just gonna bash your brains in. I’m just gonna
bash them right the fuck in. The Shining, 1980.
By Cian D. O'Sullivan
In some species, 5% of the males in any given population can account for up to 95% of the
mating. These are called tournament species: animals that compete with each other in order to
mate –the prime focus of all animal conduct. Tournament species stand out for their aggression
and self-centered behavior. Lions and mountain gorillas are great examples of species whose
males behave this way. Hyenas operate the same way, except in this case it’s the female
who does all the competing. On the other end of the scale, we find pair-bonding species like
owl monkeys or bald eagles. As opposed to tournament species, these animals form
monogamous bonds –so the mating is equally divided- and they are therefore much more
peaceful in their conduct.
How do humans fit into this? Well, as Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky puts it: “complicatedly, we’re somewhere in the middle”.
Humans have a curious and relatively unpredictable relationship with violence and aggression, and it’s not just biologists like Sapolsky who have studied it.
If you’re lucky enough to be in Barcelona before the 31st of March, the Stanley Kubrick exhibition is open to all in the city’s CCCB (or Centre of Contemporary Culture). The exhibition boasts an impressive amount of the late-great director’s memorabilia as well as original props and costumes from his nearly fifty-year film career. It follows his full trajectory, dedicating separate spaces to his early work and each of his major productions. In all of these we find an important recurring theme: violence –sometimes physical and explicit, other times symbolic and disguised.
The Bronx-born director’s name in large red letters on a coal black wall greets the visitor into the gallery. Two girls are reading a timeline of the director’s career just past the entrance. They’re discussing the films they’ve seen and ones they’ve heard of. Their large matching glasses give them a wise look beyond their years. “Films just reflect society, if society is violent, then so are films” says Angy, age 19. “Sometimes you see stuff on the news that you just can’t believe, but it could be happening right next door” she adds, possibly remembering the terror attacks that shocked Spain’s second city in August 2017. The CCCB is just a short walk away from the place where a 22-year-old drove a van into the Ramblas crowd, killing fourteen people.
Angy’s friend Ania, however, says that it’s not just a question of films reflecting society. It can also work the other way around with Disney films solidifying gender roles. In that case, does Kubrick’s work make people violent? Is it safe for young people to be exposed to it? “It’s important to teach your kids that it’s a different reality; a fabricated world, one that shouldn’t be imitated”. They fear this is especially worrying for boys: “men aren’t born more violent than women, but the socialization process –which has many inputs- creates a specific violent role for boys” Angy adds, slowly emphasizing every syllable in the long words.
Kubrick’s first film –he had previously worked as a magazine photographer- was a short documentary called The Day of the Fight about a boxer called Walter Cartier. A few more documentary pieces led to his first works in fiction Fear and Desire, Killer’s Kiss and The Killing. People gather in front of a short fragment of Killers Kiss being projected on the dark walls of the exhibit. It shows a comical scene of two men fighting in a mannequin factory. Confrontation like this is a big part of Kubrick’s work from the very beginning. “Maybe the Bronx environment he grew up in was violent and that fascinated him” says Jaime, trying to make sense of it. Jaime is in his early seventies, he’s got short white hair and dark plain clothes. He’s nervous in the presence of a voice recorder. He walks toward the next part of the exhibit – another large projection on the wall; in this case it’s the battle scene in the 1960 film Spartacus.
The Spartacus scene takes a long time to kick off, biding its time with both armies eyeing each other and one of them running for what seemed like an eternity to attack. The visitors, including Jaime, have their eyes locked to the screen, waiting in morbid anticipation for the bloodshed. Kubrick plays with this anticipation constantly in his movies, most notably with his steady-cam scenes following Danny through the Overlook Hotel’s corridors in The Shining or the sniper scene in Full Metal Jacket. But where does this vice come from, why do we long to see horrible images?
The New Zealand mass shootings that took place earlier this month were recorded with a first person camera and live-streamed on YouTube and Facebook. The video instantly went viral and, during the first twenty four hours after the massacre took place, Facebook’s software removed around 1.5 million copies of it. Why does this happen? Why do we need to consume violence? Is this an indicator of some obscure, evil part of us?
“We definitely have a violent side” says Jaime, “we have to remember that we’re all part animal. I don’t think it’s the main force that drives us, but it’s definitely there”. Jaime reckons that this is the reason why Spain’s growing far-right party Vox is wrong about gun control. Last week they made headlines announcing that, if they made it to government, they would reinstate the right to bear arms for self-defence purposes. “As an advanced society there’s no place for weapons in people’s homes”. Angy and Ania would agree “giving someone a weapon just promotes violence”.
In that case, are humans just a weapon away from being killers?
2001: A Space Odyssey starts with a revolutionary first scene. Kubrick calls it The Dawn of Man: in it, we see a primitive ape figure out how to use a bone to beat his enemies. The fact that Kubrick draws the border for mankind here is interesting and seems to indicate that our manipulations of nature are precisely what make us human. However, we can’t ignore the fact that the original manipulation is motivated by the destruction of one another. This could also be an essential part of the human condition; maybe we’re condemned to violence at such a deep level that it’s literally incurable.
A mannequin wearing a white suit with a jockstrap and a top hat poses dynamically to welcome the visitor to the next section of the exhibit. “The forced marriage of an organism to a mechanism, of a living thing, growing, sweet juicy, to a cold dead artefact –is that solely a concept of nightmare?” this is how Anthony Burgess, author of the novel A Clockwork Orange, explains the main idea of the story. Alex, however violent and perverted, is alive and can’t be categorized: he’s at the same time great and terrible. To try to control him, to correct him, -to have him function like clockwork- implies the use of static, unnatural and ultimately ineffective methods. “Alex breaks from his perfect society by regressing to a more animal state” Christopher Thorne, a thirty two year old Kubrick fan with an English accent explains. Christopher wears a red t-shirt and his arms are filled with tattoos. By the way he talks you can tell he loves the subject: “I don’t think violence can really be cured, but we do need to try to understand it, and I believe some people can repent on what they’ve done. However, people who’ve gone the whole way -madmen like Jack in The Shining- can only really find one way out: their own death”. A Clockwork Orange works on this level; Alex can’t be cured, to try and turn him into a mechanical, exemplary, citizen is in itself an unforgivable act of violence.
Kubrick’s movies don’t just contemplate the physical aspect of violence; they also describe symbolic and institutional methods –and their eventual consequences.
Barry Lyndon is an interesting example. An Irish peasant becomes a powerful lord on a British estate through a series of confrontations and lucky escapes. However, systemic forces can’t allow him to remain there and he is eventually dragged down deeper than to where he had originally started. Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket is driven mad by bullying from the sergeant, and eventually explodes from humiliation in a famous scene that covers the wall in the film’s area of the exhibit. The use of humiliation is also present in earlier parts of his career: for example, Lolita’s Humbert humiliates Charlotte, but is eventually humiliated himself by his perverse obsession for the teenager.
Eyes Wide Shut is the last stop of the exhibition. The original masks are revealed in a glass case, but there’s no more time. “Finito, we are closed” the security guard exclaims.
She’s had enough for today -after a long ride through the disturbing career of one of Hollywood’s greatest, we probably all have.
Scene from the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket
How do humans fit into this? Well, as Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky puts it: “complicatedly, we’re somewhere in the middle”.
Humans have a curious and relatively unpredictable relationship with violence and aggression, and it’s not just biologists like Sapolsky who have studied it.
If you’re lucky enough to be in Barcelona before the 31st of March, the Stanley Kubrick exhibition is open to all in the city’s CCCB (or Centre of Contemporary Culture). The exhibition boasts an impressive amount of the late-great director’s memorabilia as well as original props and costumes from his nearly fifty-year film career. It follows his full trajectory, dedicating separate spaces to his early work and each of his major productions. In all of these we find an important recurring theme: violence –sometimes physical and explicit, other times symbolic and disguised.
The Bronx-born director’s name in large red letters on a coal black wall greets the visitor into the gallery. Two girls are reading a timeline of the director’s career just past the entrance. They’re discussing the films they’ve seen and ones they’ve heard of. Their large matching glasses give them a wise look beyond their years. “Films just reflect society, if society is violent, then so are films” says Angy, age 19. “Sometimes you see stuff on the news that you just can’t believe, but it could be happening right next door” she adds, possibly remembering the terror attacks that shocked Spain’s second city in August 2017. The CCCB is just a short walk away from the place where a 22-year-old drove a van into the Ramblas crowd, killing fourteen people.
Angy’s friend Ania, however, says that it’s not just a question of films reflecting society. It can also work the other way around with Disney films solidifying gender roles. In that case, does Kubrick’s work make people violent? Is it safe for young people to be exposed to it? “It’s important to teach your kids that it’s a different reality; a fabricated world, one that shouldn’t be imitated”. They fear this is especially worrying for boys: “men aren’t born more violent than women, but the socialization process –which has many inputs- creates a specific violent role for boys” Angy adds, slowly emphasizing every syllable in the long words.
Kubrick’s first film –he had previously worked as a magazine photographer- was a short documentary called The Day of the Fight about a boxer called Walter Cartier. A few more documentary pieces led to his first works in fiction Fear and Desire, Killer’s Kiss and The Killing. People gather in front of a short fragment of Killers Kiss being projected on the dark walls of the exhibit. It shows a comical scene of two men fighting in a mannequin factory. Confrontation like this is a big part of Kubrick’s work from the very beginning. “Maybe the Bronx environment he grew up in was violent and that fascinated him” says Jaime, trying to make sense of it. Jaime is in his early seventies, he’s got short white hair and dark plain clothes. He’s nervous in the presence of a voice recorder. He walks toward the next part of the exhibit – another large projection on the wall; in this case it’s the battle scene in the 1960 film Spartacus.
The Spartacus scene takes a long time to kick off, biding its time with both armies eyeing each other and one of them running for what seemed like an eternity to attack. The visitors, including Jaime, have their eyes locked to the screen, waiting in morbid anticipation for the bloodshed. Kubrick plays with this anticipation constantly in his movies, most notably with his steady-cam scenes following Danny through the Overlook Hotel’s corridors in The Shining or the sniper scene in Full Metal Jacket. But where does this vice come from, why do we long to see horrible images?
The New Zealand mass shootings that took place earlier this month were recorded with a first person camera and live-streamed on YouTube and Facebook. The video instantly went viral and, during the first twenty four hours after the massacre took place, Facebook’s software removed around 1.5 million copies of it. Why does this happen? Why do we need to consume violence? Is this an indicator of some obscure, evil part of us?
“We definitely have a violent side” says Jaime, “we have to remember that we’re all part animal. I don’t think it’s the main force that drives us, but it’s definitely there”. Jaime reckons that this is the reason why Spain’s growing far-right party Vox is wrong about gun control. Last week they made headlines announcing that, if they made it to government, they would reinstate the right to bear arms for self-defence purposes. “As an advanced society there’s no place for weapons in people’s homes”. Angy and Ania would agree “giving someone a weapon just promotes violence”.
In that case, are humans just a weapon away from being killers?
2001: A Space Odyssey starts with a revolutionary first scene. Kubrick calls it The Dawn of Man: in it, we see a primitive ape figure out how to use a bone to beat his enemies. The fact that Kubrick draws the border for mankind here is interesting and seems to indicate that our manipulations of nature are precisely what make us human. However, we can’t ignore the fact that the original manipulation is motivated by the destruction of one another. This could also be an essential part of the human condition; maybe we’re condemned to violence at such a deep level that it’s literally incurable.
A mannequin wearing a white suit with a jockstrap and a top hat poses dynamically to welcome the visitor to the next section of the exhibit. “The forced marriage of an organism to a mechanism, of a living thing, growing, sweet juicy, to a cold dead artefact –is that solely a concept of nightmare?” this is how Anthony Burgess, author of the novel A Clockwork Orange, explains the main idea of the story. Alex, however violent and perverted, is alive and can’t be categorized: he’s at the same time great and terrible. To try to control him, to correct him, -to have him function like clockwork- implies the use of static, unnatural and ultimately ineffective methods. “Alex breaks from his perfect society by regressing to a more animal state” Christopher Thorne, a thirty two year old Kubrick fan with an English accent explains. Christopher wears a red t-shirt and his arms are filled with tattoos. By the way he talks you can tell he loves the subject: “I don’t think violence can really be cured, but we do need to try to understand it, and I believe some people can repent on what they’ve done. However, people who’ve gone the whole way -madmen like Jack in The Shining- can only really find one way out: their own death”. A Clockwork Orange works on this level; Alex can’t be cured, to try and turn him into a mechanical, exemplary, citizen is in itself an unforgivable act of violence.
Kubrick’s movies don’t just contemplate the physical aspect of violence; they also describe symbolic and institutional methods –and their eventual consequences.
Barry Lyndon is an interesting example. An Irish peasant becomes a powerful lord on a British estate through a series of confrontations and lucky escapes. However, systemic forces can’t allow him to remain there and he is eventually dragged down deeper than to where he had originally started. Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket is driven mad by bullying from the sergeant, and eventually explodes from humiliation in a famous scene that covers the wall in the film’s area of the exhibit. The use of humiliation is also present in earlier parts of his career: for example, Lolita’s Humbert humiliates Charlotte, but is eventually humiliated himself by his perverse obsession for the teenager.
Eyes Wide Shut is the last stop of the exhibition. The original masks are revealed in a glass case, but there’s no more time. “Finito, we are closed” the security guard exclaims.
She’s had enough for today -after a long ride through the disturbing career of one of Hollywood’s greatest, we probably all have.
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