Kubrick's Marxist Finale

[Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx <xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

***Kubrick's Marxist Finale

Herbert J. Gans

Herbert J. Gans is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia
University. His latest book is a revised and updated edition of Popular
Culture and High Culture (Basic Books,1999). From 1971 to 1977, he wrote
the "Gans on Film" column for Social Policy.

Sociologists, seeing a film as sociologists, look especially for the
structures and processes of society depicted in it?at least this
sociologist has always done so and did so again in trying to understand
why "Eyes Wide Shut," Stanley Kubrick's last film, seemed so lifeless. I
even have a possible answer. Perhaps Kubrick had a very different agenda
from the ones that his unhappy reviewers and fans ascribed to him, for I
saw "Eyes Wide Shut" as a Marxist analysis of sex in society. Whether
this was his intent may never be known but, from a sociological
perspective, what audiences perceive is more significant than what
filmmakers intend.

By now, I assume the proverbial everyone is familiar with the film's
basic story: how Bill Harford, MD (Tom Cruise) is spurred on by his
wife's (Nicole Kidman) adulterous fantasies to embark on a set of
unsuccessful adulterous adventures, climaxed by his being ejected from a
mysterious upscale orgy. The film ends with the Harford's promise of
sexual reconciliation and apparent renunciation of extramarital thoughts
or acts.

Kubrick's America consists of three classes: an unspeakably rich and
powerful ruling class, a professional and merely affluent upper middle
class (the Harfords), and a lower or serving class?most of whom are sex
workers of one kind or another. These classes are, unlike Marx's, mainly
busy with sex. But like Marx's, they are still distinguished by their
access (or lack of it) to the same old means of production.

In Kubrick's world, sex is freely?and very freely?available only to the
ruling class, provided at an exclusive and carefully hidden orgy. As
highly ritualized and impersonal as a male upper-class club (the men are
all masked and the proceedings begin with a nearly interminable
quasi-religious ceremony), the orgy is decidedly off-limits to those not
of the upper class. Indeed, Dr. Harford is threatened with death if he
does not stop trying to live above his sexual station. Even the piano
player who supplies music for the orgy must play blindfolded.

Kubrick's orgy was censored for the American audience so that the actual
sexual scenes were not shown. Possibly, he was trying to show the
ticket-buying lower orders how much fun the upper class was actually
having. But maybe he was just seeing how much frontal nudity he could
show his fellow citizens.

In Kubrick's view of society, the upper class is served sexually by the
lower class. Notably, similarly breasted young women with similarly
coifed pubic hair service the men at the orgy. Other sex workers earn
their living as prostitutes or as providers of unrevealed sexual
services, including those described as "arrangements" by a costume
dealer that his daughter provides and the equally unknown proposition of
the gay hotel clerk who comes on to Dr. Harford. But, as in the real
world outside the cinema, the largest number of workers provide no
sexual services at all; they protect the safety of the upper class, and
the secrecy of its way of life.

Sex work can be as deadly as laboring in capitalism's "Satanic mills,"
as one of the sex workers at the orgy overdoses fatally on drugs after
nearly being worked to death "fucking her brains out." A prostitute whom
Dr. Harford visits in her apartment turns out to be HIV positive. The
piano player is luckier; he is only kidnapped and sent home jobless for
helping his school chum, Dr. Harford, get to the orgy.

The professional class never actually has sex but only fantasizes or
talks about it. This is true particularly of the Harfords themselves,
who fail to fulfill their adulterous desires but do a lot of talking.
Dr. Harford only talks to the prostitute who invites him to her bed. But
to make sure we get this point, the film ends with Ms. Harford talking
to her husband about fucking after they come home from Christmas
shopping. Various minor characters, including a lovestruck daughter of
the doctor?s patient, also experience enforced abstinence.

Perhaps in exchange for its loyalty to monogamy, the professional class
is also spared from the dangers of sex.. Dr. Harford never beds the HIV
positive hooker, avoids death by leaving the orgy, and is, like his
wife, destined never to fuck his brains out.

As should be apparent, Kubrick's class society is also highly
gendered?sexist--but then so was Marx's. Men have the wealth, power, and
their professions, and women exist mainly to service and serve them. Ms.
Harford may be the heroine of the film, but she has given up a career to
take care of their daughter, and only she seems to suffer from
adulterous yearnings.

This analysis does not pretend to explain the entire film, but it is
also the only one that sheds some light on the film's mysterious title.
What, after all, are people's eyes wide shut about if not the class
system, as well as their exploitation by the rich and powerful?

--

Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222


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