This volume features a set of thought-provoking and long overdue approaches to situating Stanley Kubrick’s films in contemporary debates around gender, race, and age—with a focus on women’s representations.
Offering new historical and critical perspectives on Kubrick’s cinema, the book asks how his work should be viewed bearing in mind issues of gender equality, sexual harassment, and abuse. The authors tackle issues such as Kubrick’s at times questionable relationships with his actresses and former wives; the dynamics of power, misogyny, and miscegenation in his films; and auteur "apologism," among others. The selections delineate these complex contours of Kubrick’s work by drawing on archival sources, engaging in close readings of specific films, and exploring Kubrick through unorthodox venture points.
With an interdisciplinary scope and social justice-centered focus, this book offers new perspectives on a well-established area of study. It will appeal to scholars and upper-level students of film studies, media studies, gender studies, and visual culture, as well as to fans of the director interested in revisiting his work from a new perspective.
Author(s): Karen A. Ritzenhoff, Dijana Metlić, Jeremi Szaniawski
Series: Routledge Advances in Film Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 350
City: London
Cover
Endorsement Page
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Introduction
“Hacking Kubrick”: Our Contributors’ Chapters Summarized
Gender, Power, Identity, and Beyond
Acknowledgments
Films
Notes
Chapter 1: The Problems with Lolita (1962)
Introduction
Context for Lolita
Auteur Apologism and Women’s Film History
Conditions of Production
Conclusion
Films and Television
Notes
Chapter 2: Sue Lyon and the Consequences of the “Lolita Look”
Introduction
Closed and Open Spaces
Nabokov: No Girl on the Cover!
Kubrick and Sue Lyon: They Did It, Lolita Is a Movie!
The Press of the 1960s and Sue Lyon’s Lolita
The “Lolita Look”
Films
Notes
Chapter 3: The Legacy of Spartacus (1960) in the Depiction of Ancient Slavery On-Screen: Draba and His Heirs
Introduction
The Black Male Gladiator
Glycon: Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
Draba: Spartacus (1960)
Juba: Gladiator (2000)
Draba: Spartacus (2004)
Oenomaus: Spartacus (2010–13)
Atticus: Pompeii (2014)
Conclusion
Films and Television
Notes
Chapter 4: From Female Stereotypes to Women with Agency: Elite Women and Slave Women in Howard Fast’s 1951 Novel, Spartacus (1960), and Starz Spartacus (2010–13)
Introduction
The Romans: Helena and Claudia Reimagined
The Power to Look: Looking and Being Looked At
The Warrior Woman: Varina Regains Her Sword
Films and Television
Notes
Chapter 5: Fear and Desire, Casual Misogyny, and 1950s Art House Cinema
Introduction
The Film and Its Context
Art Cinema in Mid-20th-Century America
Exploitation in Marketing Fear and Desire
Art and Exploitation in Kubrick Films
Conclusion
Films
Notes
Chapter 6: The Shining and UK Feminist Activism
Introduction
The “Yorkshire Ripper” Case, Toxic Masculinity, and the Popularity of the Horror Genre (circa 1980)
The Shift in Advertising The Shining
Tailoring the Product to National Markets
The Feminist Backlash against Violence Done to Women (and Protesting The Shining)
Between Film Culture and Rape Culture: “Men in Public Places”
Echoes in the Press
Conclusion
Films
Notes
Chapter 7: Mothers Trapped between Law, Economy, Society, and Desire
Introduction
Spartacus
Lolita and A Clockwork Orange
Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut
The Shining
Conclusion
Films
Notes
Chapter 8: A Feminist Kubrick?: Or, What If Women Were the Main Character(s) in Stanley Kubrick’s Films?
Introduction
Kubrick’s mise-en-scène of Women
A Female Odyssey
Eyes Wide Open on Feminism
Conclusion: What about Today?
Films
Notes
Chapter 9: Kubrick’s and Klimt’s Femmes Fatales : Eyes Wide Shut and the Crisis of Masculine Identity
Introduction
Femme Fatale: Fear or Desire?
Intellectual Life in Vienna at the Turn of the Century
Klimt and Kubrick: Social Roles and Sexual Drives
Women’s Hopes and Dreams
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Films
Notes
Chapter 10: Kubrick and Sex: Exploring the Gender Politics of His Cinema
Introduction
Representations of Women: (In-)Frequency and Characteristics
Kubrick and Rape Culture
Dramatizing Rape Myths
Rape and Dominance
Irony or Ideology?
Toxic Masculinity: War and Manhood
The Privileges of Patriarchy: Mothers and Whores
Conclusion
Films
Notes
Chapter 11: Kubrick’s Crypto-Jewesses
Introduction
Reading Jewish in Kubrick’s Films
Pentimenti
Conclusion
Films
Notes
Chapter 12: Misogyny and Music in A Clockwork Orange
Introduction
Music and Characterization
Music, Gender, Power
Women and Music in the Film
Alex’s Assault on the Alexanders
The Ludovico Effect
Conclusion
Films
Notes
Chapter 13: Wendy Torrance and Alice Harford, Shrews Who Will Not Be Tamed
Introduction
Marriage Stories
Bodies and Voices
Women in Arms
Films
Notes
Chapter 14: Violence and Power in Kubrick’s Later Cinema
Striking the Ancien Régime
American Superpower
Toward a Reappraisal of Kubrick’s Humanism
Films
Notes
Chapter 15: Female Transgression and Discontent in Barry Lyndon
Introduction
Nora Brady: Find the Ribbon
Barry’s Mother: Oedipal or Class Narrative?
Lady Lyndon: Elegant Carpets and the Eyes of Discontent
Films
Notes
Chapter 16: Kubrick and Bergman: Scenes from a Marriage
Introduction
The Horror of Marriage
Confessions and Adulteries
Conclusion
Films
Notes
Chapter 17: Someone to Care About: Children in Stanley Kubrick’s Films
Introduction
Brutalization: The Shining
Nostalgia
Race
Queer Innocence
Conclusion
Films
Notes
Chapter 18: Old Age, Aging, and Fatherhood in Kubrick
Introduction
The Passage of Time
Aged Fathers
A Clockwork Orange
Barry Lyndon
Conclusion
Films
Plays
Notes
Bibliography
Index
