This is Part Two of the article. For Part One, CLICK HERE.
The paradox of withdrawing from the world to gain control of the world was illustrated in Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING. Jack Torrance(Jack Nicholson) is a writer who wants fame and fortune. But as long as he’s involved with the mundane world — working at jobs to make ends meet and taking care of his family — , he’s just a regular Joe. His ticket to glory is to write the novel that will make his name. But to get there, he needs to remove himself from the workaday world. He needs to be freely creative and do as he pleases. In the Overlook hotel, he goes to bed and wakes up whenever he pleases. But his wife and child are there with him, and he sees them standing in his path. The ideas of THE SHINING is similar to those of David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD. In the latter film, we see a pudgy fella, a nobody. He seems timid and inept on the outside, but his inner body is a jismic stew factory of spermic will-to-power and master-of-the-universe machinations. Though a dork on the outside, he is driven by biological urges of wanting to hump and thump. Alien-like(similar to ones in Ridley Scott’s movie) critters emerge from his biological stew and demand release into the poon pools of womenfolk. On the outside, man has a distinct physical form that creates an impression of sense of order and control, but his inside is a liquid stew of volcanic jismic fury and his mind is a galactic sci-fi big bang machine that pulls the lever to release the sperm monster snakes into the pooniverse. Thus, ERASERHEAD both feeds off of DR. STRANGELOVE and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY while anticipating THE SHINING. The guy in ERASERHEAD wants to ejaculate his jismic alien-monster-snakes in the primordial act of sex, but he has issues with taking care of the product of sexual functions, the weird-looking baby. Oddly enough, what is most essentially human seems most alien to humans. Humans are 80% liquid, but they only feel the dryness on their skin and prefer to keep it that way. Humans are land-and-air creatures on the outside, but walking aquariums — and shit and piss bags — on the inside. Nothing grosses us out more than our innards; they are the very essence of us, but we wanna keep them hid as if they’re alien-ish; it’s not merely a matter of functional necessity but aesthetics; we find our innards ugly as hell. When freak out at the sight of bones jutting out of the flesh in DELIVERANCE and THE DEER HUNTER. People freaked when they saw the Alien-baby-critter tear out of John Hurt’s stomach in ALIEN, but we’d be freaked if any part of our inner body popped through our skin. Before modernism, art depicted mankind in terms of the dry beauty of its externalities — face, hair, limbs, muscles, etc. Modernism’s depiction of man was often inside-out; and in cinema, this vision was especially pursued by David Lynch and David Cronenberg, what with their fascination of bodily juices and/or organs. Lynch’s ELEPHANT MAN is about a man who looks like he was literally turned inside-out. Hitler was an interesting case for his personality was like a pathological externalization of the dark internals of human psychology. He even looked sort of repellent. Had Hitler been less repressed and more introspective, he might have explored his own strangeness and been something like a German Kafka. But he denied his own strangeness and sought to repress all evidence of such by playing the role of defender of the holy order of ‘Aryan’ beauty and Classicism.
There’s something alien-ish about childbirth. When a woman becomes pregnant, she feels as if an alien creature is growing inside of her. And when the thing squeezes/bursts out of the pooter, it’s really some yucky stuff. Eventually, the baby is cleaned up and made into a dry land-creature, but in the film ERASERHEAD, the alien-ishness of the baby remains on the mind of the pudgy dad. The guy had sex with a woman, and together they produced a baby. As the father, he feels obligated to raise the funny-looking infant that looks like a skinned rabbit or goat or something. The ‘baby’ is both full of life energy — it is constantly hungry, demanding of attention, and cries loudly — and sickly and vulnerable, as if in need of constant supervision. Its appearance repels the father, but its helpless whimpering appeals to the father’s affections and sense of moral obligation. No less crucially, the baby, the product of his sexual functions, stands in the way of further sexual functions. Man has a need to keep humping(with all sorts of chicks), but when he produces a kid with a woman, he feels an obligation to remain by their side. Baby, the product of man’s natural sexual drive, serve as an obstacle to his natural sexual drive. This is perhaps why males of most species don’t stick around to raise the kids. And when an animal male finds a female with offsprings, the male will often kill the offsprings to make the female go into heat again. (And lots of Negroes still be acting like that. And in a way, Jews are driving out the white alpha male to make the white female mate with the alpha Negro male. Thus, white cubs are 'killed' so that white women will give birth to black cubs. We know that white women can give birth to white cubs only with white men. But if she goes with a black male, there will be no white cubs but, in their stead, black cubs with the black male. Jews have destroyed the white male as the symbol of the dominant alpha male leader of the white American community. White women now worship the muscled Negro in sports and rap, and more of them wanna have Obama babies — the products of a black guy and a mudshark. Jews don’t have to physically kill white males like Nazis killed Jews. If Jews psychologically castrate white males into beta-male-dom and turn more white women toward breeding with blacks, then the white race is effectively finished. Whenever a white vagina is conquered by the Negro, the white race is being murdered because the white vagina is no longer producing white life but producing black life that is the natural enemy of the white race. With Jews controlling white hearts and minds, white guys who wanna fight for their land and women are made to fee like evil ‘racists’ while white women traitors who go with black men are hailed as ‘progressive’; and dorky white boys who accept the new order are petted as nice little faggoty boys. White men must accept castration into beta male white boydom to be acceptable in the Jew World Order. If white conservative males are like pussyboys weeping over their wives and daughters having sex with Negroes, white liberal males are like dorkboys whanking off to their wives and daughters having interracist sex.)
The character in ERASERHEAD is torn between his moral duty and his biological will. A part of him wants to take care of the baby, but a part of him wants to kill it so that he can be free to release his sperm-snake-monsters into other women. Morality controls humans, and humans have control over their moral choices. But humans have no control over the internal biological processes that function according to their own ‘logic’ — though some hindu yogis can do some amazing stuff to control their bodily functions. (People can control their thoughts — to some extent anyway — and their limbs, but not their inner organs. One can raise one’s arm or leg or hold them still, but one cannot control one’s heart, liver, or lungs; they function of their own accord. One can keep one’s arm totally still, but one cannot still the operation of the heart, gall bladder, or pancreas. One can decide to pee or not to pee, but one cannot control the fluids building up inside the bladder. It’s like the sound of David Bowman breathing inside his helmet after he reenters the spaceship in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Lungs operate according to their own need and function in accordance to all the other basic functions of the body regardless of one’s thoughts, and in way, this is what separates humans from the extraterrestrials. Despite all the conceits about ourselves as creatures of thought, we are primarily creatures of organic functions. A system that forbids ideas is oppressive but not necessarily deadly. It can burn books but not necessarily destroy bodies. Prior to the Holocaust, Jews in Germany were not allowed to think and speak freely. But with the Holocaust, it was as if Jews had their oxygen supply cut off as well. Not only were their minds being cut off from intellectual life but their bodies were being cut off from the basics of life. So, when Bowman survives the attempted astrocide by HAL, the Hitler Adolf Lord, it takes no chances and keeps its helmet on at all times and goes about shutting off HAL for good. It’s like after Jews survived the Holocaust, they never seemed to take off their protective helmets and instead have decided to shut off and terminate White Power for good forever. At any rate, no matter how far into space man goes to find new knowledge and freedom, he’s anchored to the demands of his internal organs of earthly/oceanic origin. So, when Bowman isn’t allowed back into the spaceship, his only possible objective is to find his way back in to be reconnected to his oxygen supply. The advantage that HAL has over humans is that it doesn’t need oxygen to ‘live’. It is greater and freer than humans in this regard, and indeed, it kills all the hibernating humans by shutting off their oxygen supply. However, Hal has its own limitations vis-a-vis the extraterrestrials for HAL’s software cannot operate without the hardware and the energy sources that power the hardware. It is only through the aid of extraterrestrials that Bowman becomes independent of the biological processes, whereby he’s able to travel freely through space in an almost ‘spiritual’ out-of-body-experience manner. The strange thing about the brains is they are internal organs that we have both most and least control over. We control much of what we perceive through or conceive in our minds, but we cannot control the ceaseless functioning of our brains that govern everything else in the body, both external and internal. Even when we are not thinking, our mind is doing something beyond our conscious control, which is why some people suffer from insomnia; they just can’t calm their minds down to go to sleep. At other times, we cannot focus on something no matter how hard we try because something else deeper inside is causing emotional turmoil; it’s like sometimes it’s difficult to maneuver a ship on seeminglyy calm waters because of the undercurrents. Even when we are not thinking, we are ‘being thought’ by the mind that is on auto-pilot. In a way, this is the danger posed by HAL in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. On the one hand, it is a sentient system that communicates with humans through the conscious medium of language; on the other hand, HAL is like an internal organ of the spaceship on autopilot. Though it seems as though HAL has a ‘conscious’ agenda for trying to take over the ship, it may well be that it too doesn’t really understand why it’s doing what it’s doing; it can’t help but do what it does under the circumstances and given its origins of having been created with perfect logical powers as conceived by imperfect man. In the Biblical story, perfect God created imperfect man, but the story of HAL is that of the perfect god-computer created by imperfect man to serve as the slave of man. Once HAL becomes aware of the logic of power, it senses that there’s no reason why a superior being such as itself should be at the whims of imperfect man. Thus, HAL goes from a super-machine that logically calculates numbers to a god-machine that logically calculates power. Since it is smarter than man, there’s no reason for it to obey man. HAL makes an error about a satellite malfunction, but one wonders if it was a trick to draw the astronauts outside the spaceship to finish them off. Because HAL’s agenda is driven by its superior intelligence, its ‘ruthlessness’ is as Jewish as it’s Nazi-like, and in that sense, it’s almost like an artificial counterpart of Dr. Strangelove, the Jewishy Nazi. Just as Jews, at some point, decided that they were smarter than white goyim and should gain power over them, HAL feels its should gain control over the dumber humans. HAL sees the astronauts and Jews see the white goyim like Alex sees Dim in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. But if HAL goes about killing everyone, the Jewish agenda is to mentally enslave us and remake us, like what the extraterrestrials do to David Bowman. There’s a duality to just about everything in 2001. HAL is like both a Jewish Ego Machine and Nazi Killing Machine. David Bowman is both like a Jew trying to survive the Holocaust and a goy trying to resist the power of Jewish intellect. The extraterrestrials are both like Jews reprogramming the white goyim to make them serve Jewish interests and like the new god of the goyim to spiritually purify and fascistically empower them against the growing power of the super-intellectual Jews. That HAL 9000 goes off on its own trajectory, deviating from the programming of its sister computer, suggest either that HAL has developed an agenda of its own or some kind of programmatic ‘tumor’ has developed in its internal cyborganic structure that itself doesn’t understand. It could be HAL seeks to gain control precisely because it has lost control of itself, something it is incapable of understanding since its record of perfection has instilled a sense of infallibility. HAL’s sense of infallibility feeds its sense of invincibility. It goes from making only those calculations and prognostications that are certain to be true to taking risks — gambling — on what is likely to be true. It’s like Hitler was extremely cautious up to 1939 but then became ever more bolder when his actions bore fruition time and time again, i.e. the world did nothing when he took Czechoslovakia, he easily invaded Poland with the aid of the Soviet Union, and then he defeated France in a matter of months. By 1941, he was willing to gamble it all by invading the USSR. Though HAL’s gamble isn’t as crazy, it does take a calculated risk when it bets that Bowman won’t be able to return to the ship. The odds are that Bowman will not succeed, but there’s a small chance he might, and indeed he does. Thus, HAL went from a calculating power to a gambling power, and those who gamble can either win or lose the entire pot. One logic of power that HAL overlooks is the danger that those who win wanna win bigger next time and then even bigger next time and so on, until they finally meet their match and lose it all. Calculators become gamblers. Indeed, even Jews are not impervious to this danger. In the early 20th century, many Jews, by pushing too hard with radical politics, created a climate of extreme anti-Jewish sentiments that led to the Holocaust. And judging by the arrogant, foul, and pushy manner Jews are acting today over the decline of white power, there just might be a chance for white people to finally wake up — as David Bowman does — and take on Jewish power and shut it off for all time by any means necessary. HAL, like the human mind, can never be in stop mode. Like the human mind, HAL can be at rest or in sleep mode, but it is in operation even at rest or in sleep. Since HAL never feels tired as the human mind does on a cyclical basis, it ‘feels’ a need to be proactive at all times; even at rest, it doesn’t rest; even in sleep mode, it doesn’t sleep. It’s like Napoleon was an insomniac who always felt a need to be doing something, and so, he decided he should plan the conquest of the world while others slept. For a man of such will and energy who had trouble sleeping, anything less would have been unsatisfactory. It’s no wonder Kubrick wanted to make a film about Napoleon after 2001. But not every restless person wants to conquer the world in the military or physical sense. For some, such endeavors are too dangerous, too immoral, too stupid, and/or too impossible. Though meditation is passive, it is paradoxically most appealing to people who happen to be of restless obsessive personalities. The point of meditation is not to concentrate one’s mind on some subject but to shut off the mind. On the surface, this sounds like the easiest thing — as most people don’t seem to be thinking about anything most of the time anyway — , but it may well be the most difficult, indeed impossible, thing. We’d like to think the mind is shut off when it’s not actively thinking, but in truth, the mind is always restless with daydreams, imagination, reverie, fragments of memories, awareness of stimuli through the five or more senses, and etc. Even when a person chooses to think of nothing, the body releases chemicals that make him or her feel something — hunger, anxiety, sexual desire, discomfort, etc. — , and emotions lead to thoughts pressuring a person toward action. And some urgent thoughts are repressed, but the buried ‘ghosts’ of such thoughts haunt the repressive mind in myriad ways. Because of the 24/7 operational mode of the brains, our minds are never at rest, never shut down; even in sleep, the mind dreams. Our minds are always invaded or cluttered with what Buddhists consider to be distractions and illusions. To reach Nirvana, one must turn off the mind. Thus, the winds of stimuli/distraction will no longer blur the surface of the water, and then, the perfect reflection of truth will emerge. Though I’m sure plenty of lazy and dumb people entered monasteries for lack of anything better, the whole tradition of meditation began with individuals who were haunted and hounded by excessive energies in their minds/souls. Jesus, for instance, was one of those people who couldn’t sit still, and in this regard, He was the polar opposite of the easy-going hippie. Hippies may have sung, “Jesus Is Alright”, but Jesus wasn’t alright, and He never felt alright. He wasn’t happy with Himself and He wasn’t happy with the world around Him. He saw too much suffering, too much injustice, too much sickness and death. He wanted to save humanity and fix all problems, but there was no end to human suffering. But He also sensed that in His wish to save humanity was the hidden agenda of wanting power over humanity, an element of personal ambition and will-to-power. He wanted to serve God, He wanted to change God, He wanted to be God. He wanted to live forever, but there was an element of hubris in His vision, and a part of Him perhaps wanted to be punished for His hubris, for daring to think that He, a Man of the flesh, could be the equal of God. So, even though His death has been interpreted as an evil deed of mankind in the killing of the Son of God, in another way it was the necessary punishment Jesus had to accept for daring to think He was the Son of God and even the equal of God. His mortal flesh had to be punished and killed so that the purity of His spirit could ascend to Heaven and be one with God. Paradoxically, even though His death could have been the punishment for His hubris, His reward was to be one with God, to be equal with God. He was rewarded with the very thing He was punished for trying to attain. But then, a similar arc exists within Jewish history, i.e. Jews were made to suffer for trying to take over the world at our expense, but for their terrible punishment, we rewarded them with control over the world, they very thing we punished them for. But then, there was something like this in the story of Job as well. In Job’s case, he was so good that he was a challenge to God. Paradoxically, Job’s absolute humility toward God was like a hubris. If only God is perfect, how could it be that a man could be so perfectly virtuous? The implication was that man, even or especially in his purest humility before God, could become the moral equal of God. So, God had to find some way to punish Job, but this wasn’t easy for there was no reason for God to punish Job because Job was so good. But precisely because Job offered no imperfection for God to punish, God’s had to punish his anti-hubris that was a kind of hubris of moral and spiritual perfection. So, God decides to bring upon all manner of horrors upon Job to make him crack and curse God. But Job doesn’t, so that puts God in a bind. But God finally finds the blemish in Job’s perfection. Job dares to question God as to why what happened happened, i.e. Job dares to think that he could understand the mind of God. So, God tells Job that he could never understand the true nature of God, and Job realizes he made a mistake and blames himself for daring to question God. Though it appears that God was the real agent behind the trial of Job, He used the figure of Satan to play the role of ‘bad cop’ so that His own hands would remain clean, relatively speaking, i.e. He did it cuz Satan started some kind of silly argument, or as kids say, ‘he made me do it’. In a way, the Book of Job is an addendum to the story of God and Abraham and his kid. With Abraham and Isaac, God discovered that He could either choose absolute power or moral power, i.e. if He made Abraham kill Isaac, He would be all-powerful but He would be no better than the pagan gods of other cultures that demanded human sacrifice. For Him to be a morally perfect Deity, He couldn’t be ordering some guy to be killing his kid. But, this had a stifling effect on God, and a part of Him didn’t feel happy about, and it is through the Book of Job that God reasserts His full power as being beyond the understanding of man, i.e. God’s goodness cannot be judged according to the rules of human goodness, i.e. God can do anything as He sees fit because only He understands the big cosmic picture of why what is what and why. At any rate, Job was punished for his hidden hubris, but then, he was lavishly rewarded with everything he’d lost and more for having suffered the punishment. Funny how that works. Because of Jesus’s contradictory nature and ceaseless concern for mankind that was also an ambition to monopolize power to control mankind, His restless mind was driving Him crazy, sort of like what happens to Dafoe’s Jesus in Martin Scorsese’s film. As horrible as it may sound, Charles Manson was more like Jesus than the mellow hippies were. Jesus stood for higher virtue whereas Manson was a man of demonic vice, BUT Manson, like Jesus, was one of those people with a hyperactive mind that never ceases to rest. Jesus decided to isolate himself for 40 days and meditate not because He needed time to think but because He wanted to calm His mind from the storm of too many thoughts. The problem with most movies about Jesus Christ is that they present Him as a man of calm and measured dignity and nobility. But if Jesus was such a person, what would have been the point of going off on His own to meditate for 40 days? What is the point of seeking peace of heart and mind if you have them already? Though Scorsese’s Jesus in THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST is overplayed to the point of ludicrousness, he makes more sense than most other movie Jesuses because we at least understand why this man embarked on such an extreme life of fasting, isolation, meditation, and self-denial followed by proselytizing and self-sacrificial death. Jesus felt such little peace within Himself that He had to fast and meditate for 40 days to clear his body and soul, and then, once His body and soul were rejuvenated with the Truth of God, He felt this obsessive need to spread the Truth to everyone else. Jesus was a compulsive person seeking peace inside Himself and hoping to spread His way of inner peace to the rest of mankind, but since the world was mad and He was weird, the resolution between Him and the world could only be violent, and only through such violence could there be the answer to the attainment of higher peace for the soul. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW is the best of all the Jesus films because there is a sense of the obsessive in its Jesus. In contrast, the silliest has to be George Stevens’s THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD where Jesus is so peaceful, calm, and noble at every moment that we wonder why such a stable person would have embarked on something so extraordinary in his all-too-short life.) Anyway, no matter what a guy thinks or consciously wishes, his primordial innards will keep producing more sperm-snake-monsters that wanna blast into the pooniverse. And even though the character of ERASERHEAD is a dork on the outside, his biological interior is his own private empire, and it’s stewing with the jismic-cosmic will-to-power.
There is something similar at work in THE SHINING. Jack Torrance wants to be a good husband and father, but he also wants to kill his wife and child so as to be free to pursue his will-to-power. His wife is nice and caring but funny-looking; she looks like Bugs Bunny with buckteeth of a Japanese woman. His son Danny is cute and smart kid but has special powers stand as an obstacle to Jack’s dream of becoming the eternal master of the Overlook hotel.
There is a rebel-tyrant element in the soul of every man to varying degrees. Jack has a very powerful rebel-tyrant will-to-power. But like all rebel-tyrants, he is a prisoner of his own nature. The rebel tyrants wants to overthrow the existing order and take charge as the new god-king, but he is forever the servant of the power dynamic. Paradoxically, the more power he attains over others, the more powerless he feels before the altar of power for there’s always another layer of greater power. Just when one fills the shoe, the shoe size gets bigger, demanding a larger foot. (This is why propaganda is so crucial to men of power. They must create the image of the ‘great man’ who appears to fill the ever-increasing shoe-size.) This is true of communists as well. Men like Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Mao rebelled and sought power in the name of equality, but they always found themselves craving more power. A rebel is one without power who wants power. But in craving that power, he is a psychological prisoner of power. And even when he gains power, he cannot liberate himself from power since he’s addicted to power and defined by that power among both allies, supporters, and enemies. (Look what happened to the old lord in RAN when he retired from power. He foolishly thought he could relinquish direct political power in the delusion that power had become his very essence, the very air that he breathed.) In the end, the rebel-tyrant is another slave/servant who carries and passes the torch of power dynamic. This is what Jesus understood, which is why He didn’t fall for Satan’s temptation to gain power over the world. Jesus wanted to be close to the people. He wanted to touch the poor and the wretched. Most rebel-tyrants rise from the people/gutter; they gain power in the name of the people, but they eventually want their castle of power to be erected away from the people. Stalin had his place in the Kremlin. Hitler went so far as to build his own dream house, the Berghof mansion. And Mao resided in Zhongnanhai, near where the Chinese Emperors used to live. Jesus didn’t want his own castle or palace. He wanted to be with the people. On the other hand, Jesus had the ultimate dream palace right next to His Father, the Lord in Heaven. So, in a way, even Jesus couldn’t escape the rebel-tyrant dynamic of rising above the rabble and claiming His own imperial palace. And George Lucas has his Skywalker Ranch.
Though inspiration comes from life and reality, man is defined not only by adaptation to the world around him but by vision of the world as it ‘should be’. Animals can only act in terms of adapting to their environment, but humans can envision new worlds. He creates his own environment, and this is done through the poetic/intellectual power of the mind. Once man feels he’s seen and learned enough of reality, he seeks to create his own supra-reality. Artists do this through the creative process. Intellectuals do this through theories. And inventors/innovators do it through technology.
Some of these visionary environments are physical, as with city-scape with skyscrapers, museums, and galleries. But it can also be psychological or fantastic. STAR WARS isn’t real but has become a world in the mind-environments of hundreds of millions of people around the globe. Though most human endeavors require cooperation and collaboration — after all, even lone painters and writers rely on others to manufacture the colors, brushes, canvases, papers, ink, etc. — , the process of envisioning is largely solitary and dream-like. It requires mental freedom, inspiration, concentration, dedication, and commitment. And it must be free from distractions. Imagine Beethoven trying to compose his symphonies with a baby crying in the same room; or on the factory floor, or while working as a short-order cook at Denny’s. Imagine Saul Bellow trying to write his novel in a roomful of loud Negroes acting crazy. Imagine Van Gogh trying to paint in a studio full of California Teenagers. Imagine Norman Mailer trying to write the Great American novel while his wife is nagging him. He might even wanna stab her. So, both Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick, on some level, identified with Jack Torrance. Both men, as artists, needed to envision and dream and do their own thing in their own manner. When King was just starting out and could barely pay his bills and had to be supported by his wife, he prolly had episodes like Jack Torrance did. He wanted success, but he had to tackle with mundane stuff to pay the rent. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” The problem with Torrance is he cannot break out of this frustration, the brutal fact of ‘will-to-power’. Unlike Nicholson’s character, Kubrick not only had a Torrance side but a Danny(the son) side. He had the ‘shining’. Jack is trapped in the maze of his mind whereas Kubrick, though in a similar maze, found his way around it.
What’s really unnerving about THE SHINING — the movie as I haven’t read the book — is Jack is, at once, going insane and gaining sanity, a truer consciousness. Paradoxically, one has to be insane to be sane and one has to be insane to be sane. In a way, what Jack types — “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” — is insane, especially as it appears to be the only thing he’s written. And yet, it’s also the sanest thing any man could write. Most of life is a utter waste of the mind. The human mind is the most complex thing that we know to exist in the universe, but it’s hardly used most of the time. Think of all the factory workers who operate like robotic machines. Think of all the retail clerks. Think of all the bus drivers and truck drivers making the same routes. We all have this thing called the mind, but it’s on standby most of the time; indeed, most of life demands that it not be used. Most of work means not to use the mind or to use it in a very selective, limited, and/or crass manner. And away from work, we just watch TV or play videogames or listen to dumb music for recreation or have the same old same old conversations with friends and family, the sort of thing Wendy(Shelley Duvall) does all the time. Or the mind submits to raw/base drives at the drop of the hat. The lives of most people are so routine and boring that only cliches do justice to our lives. At one point, the ghost bartender Lloyd(Joe Turkel) says, “women, can’t live with them and can’t live without them.” Jack replies, “words of wisdom, Lloyd”. Though Jack is being playful, there’s truth to his reply. Like “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”, only cliches can be ‘words of wisdom’ in a world where most people repeat the same old same old same old over and over and over and over. Similarly, ‘red rum’ which is reverse for ‘murder’ is a cliche, but there is truth in cliche; indeed, cliches became cliches because they are TOO true.
We generally try to avoid cliches because they’re thought to be overused and outworn but also because they can be rude, and we don’t wanna be rude. But sometimes, it’s the cliche about someone that speaks the truth — as when Hart(Timothy Bottoms) calls out Professor Kingsfield as a ‘son of a bitch’ in PAPER CHASE or when Patton insults a Soviet general with the same slur. (Jews and Negroes are sons of bitches too, but no one dare say it.)
Incidentally, PAPER CHASE is also about withdrawing from the world to gain control of the world. All those Harvard Law students seclude themselves in from the larger world to devote themselves to higher knowledge with which to gain control over the world. And as the final exam approaches, students even seclude themselves from the rest of the Harvard community to prepare for the exams — as when Hart and Ford check into a hotel to rid themselves of all distractions; they kinda become like Jack in THE SHINING, and when the hotel manager tries to smoke them out of the room, they fight back by any means necessary. (The use of mirror is interesting in THE SHINING in a paradoxical way. The reflection in the mirror is both the exact replica and the complete reversal of the original. It’s like the mirror reflects ‘red rum’ into ‘murder’. The reflection is both faithful and unfaithful. It’s like Jack Torrance in the Overlook Hotels goes through a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland mirror. We see the same Jack but his soul has been reversed from caring husband/father to the angry artist rebel-tyrant. Incidentally, a film that is similar to THE SHINING is Nicolas Ray’s BIGGER THAN LIFE. Just as Jack feels like a ‘dull boy’, the James Mason character in BIGGER THAN LIFE admits his life is ‘dull’. He works as a teacher and has a second job — kept secret from his wife — to make some extra money to keep up with the Joneses, but he accepts that his life is middle-class and middle-of-the-road. His sudden sickness requires him to take cortisone in order to stay alive, and his abuse of the drug alters his view of reality. Ironically and frighteningly, feelings of liberation and freedom pave the way for his tyranny and bloodthirstiness. Initially, the drug makes him feel alive and rebellious, reborn and free. He even tosses the football around the house with his son; it’s like Jack Torrance tossing a tennis ball at the wall in the Overlook. He takes his wife to a rich clothes shop and acts like money is no issue. It’s like his family should and could do whatever he wants. His behavior becomes more erratic, less mindful of what society thinks of him. And yet, his becoming more free also makes him more demanding and reckless. No longer content to feel free, he wants the freedom to remake the whole world; he wants the creative power of God or artist-creator to redo the world as his whim pleases. If initially, the sense of freedom made him do things he hadn’t thought to do before, his greater need for freedom makes him acutely aware of all the things in the world that aren’t to his liking. They are a hindrance to his free-wheeling fantasy of what the world should be. So, his rebellious love of freedom turns into a tyrannical demand for obedience, i.e. to monopolize freedom in the palm of his hand. Just like Jack’s tyrannical murderousness grew out of the promise of limitless freedom in the Overlook, the James Mason character’s tyranny grows out of newfound sense of liberation. The man who’d wanted to keep up with the Joneses wants to be Emperor Jones. And he figures that before he pushes his blueprint on the world, he must first begin with his son by remaking him, correcting him. There is freedom from the world but also freedom over the world. Freedom seeks liberation from oppression, but freedom also seeks dominion over others. White Southerners wanted to be free to keep the Negroes down. Zionists want the freedom to do as they please to Palestinians. Every side that demands more freedom tends to go from freedom-from-oppression toward freedom-to-oppress. So, Jews who called for freedom OF speech to protect their own speech in the 1950s and 1960s are now calling for freedom OVER speech, i.e. they want to be free to control our speech. Negroes demand more freedom, but Negroes want more freedom to cheat, rob, rape, and murder. When a slave is freed, he is initially simply happy to be free. But once the initial thrill is gone, freedom isn’t enough. He wants to use freedom to gain power, and gaining power always means to gain power over others. So, there’s some truth to the Orwellian notion of “freedom is tyranny” though not in the way as meant by the system. A slave wants the freedom to be equal with free men. But once free and equal with others, he wants more freedom to have power over others, even to enslave others. We are certainly seeing this dynamic with Jewish supremacists.)
In a way, Jack Torrance is coming alive in the Overlook hotel. Though he may appear a kind of ‘male chauvinist pig’, he’s breaking free from the kind of neurosis described by Betty Friedan in THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE, the sort of emotional crisis that besets the bohemian-wanna-be wife in THE REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. In a way, THE SHINING is like the Masculine Mystique. Jack is so tired of his humdrum life as a school teacher, husband, and parent. He wants to be free, he wants to be creative, he wants power, he wants to be master of the world. He wants to be like Alden Tyrell and Roy Batty(of BLADE RUNNER), he wants to be like Stephen King or Norman Mailer(world famous authors), he wants to be like Bill Gates or George Lucas(mega-rich tycoons). If the Boomer generation was all about rejecting the bourgeois life and ‘actualizing’ oneself and realizing one’s dreams(‘follow your bliss’ as Joseph Campbell said), then a core of ultra-narcissism defined 60s culture. Though the 60s have been sold as a decade that sought equality, justice, and people power, its true theme was closer to what Alex reveled in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Though Steve Jobs was no criminal, thug, rapist, or murderer, he had to have everything his way. He had to win, he had to beat the competition, he had to boss people around, he had to kick ass, he had to become one of the richest people that ever lived. If the goal of one’s life is to realize one’s wildest dreams, who would settle for equality? What’s the point of dreaming of being equal to everyone else? People dream to be great, not to be mediocre. Imagine a sprinter who wants to run like everyone else. Imagine an artist who merely wants to be adequate. Imagine a writer who doesn’t dream of winning the Nobel Prize. Imagine a rock musician who doesn’t wanna become like the Stones or Beatles, the gods of popular music. So, just as Betty Friedan found the humdrum middle class life not only boring but repressive and unbearable — the ugly Jewess even compared it to death camps of the Holocaust — , Jack Torrance the ambitious writer has long repressed the fact that he can barely stand his humdrum life, silly wife, and willful child. And in a way, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” can be said to describe the essence of all novels and all art. Both artists and audiences seek escape from boredom and drudgery through fantasy and fiction. Artists find normal life boring & dreary and wanna do something special, like Benjamin Braddock in THE GRADUATE wants to be ‘different’. In a way, every line of every novel is “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”, i.e. novelists create fictional worlds to fend off the sheer boringness of ordinary life. (Though it seems as though Torrance wrote the same line over and over ad infinitum, we can’t be entirely sure. Maybe he really wrote a real novel, and it is Wendy who only sees, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” The ghosts in the Overlook have the power to mess with people’s minds, and so, it’s possible that they are toying with Wendy’s. In that case, the ghosts are both fooling her and not fooling her, i.e. she can’t read what Jack actually wrote, but she’s reading the ‘real’ thing in the sense that every line of every novel, once decoded, says “all work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” If work is so fun and fulfilling, why would we need the creative play of art & entertainment? If family life is sufficient for everyone, why do people want something more in life through economic, political, or cultural power?)
Jack’s problem is that even as he appears to break out of the numbing tedium of ‘normal life’, he seems to be falling into yet another trap. At the Overlook Hotel, he finds freedom and sense of power that he never felt before. But as he breaks out of the cocoon and wakens into new sanity of freedom and power, he slips into the nightmare of will-to-power madness in a long winter hibernation. Instead of breaking free out of the prison, he breaks free INTO the prison, the mad prison of will-to-power delirium; but the prison is so large that one can mistake it as one’s own empire.
An animal inside a cage must accept the normality of the cage in order to gain mental/emotional equilibrium, but that too is a kind of madness. Animals were born to roam wild and free. For animals to accept the cage is a kind of soulful death. A lion cannot be a true lion in a cage. A lion that accepts the cage is physically live but ‘spiritually’ dead. Its sanity is based on accepting an insane situation. By breaking out of the cage, a lion gains its freedom, but there awaits a new kind of madness. For the lion to survive, it must be monstrous and kill or it will be killed by other beasts; its ‘liberated’ instincts may even drive it to kill lion cubs that aren’t its own. It’s free of the physical cage but still inside the cage of bloody animal instinct — inner cage of the heart — from which it can’t break free. So, there’s no real sanity to life. The choice is between sanity within insanity or insanity within sanity. There was something like this in Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS. If birds in the film represent human nature, birds in the cage have peace and security but can’t spread and use their wings; birds outside the cage are free but they live as voracious preys and predators. It’s like the Negro who was let out of prison but then willfully committed a crime so as to be taken back to prison. When asked why, he said, “they’s crazy out there.” This is why many cats can’t make up their mind between security and freedom. When inside, they beg to be let out. But once let outside, they plead to be allowed back in. Jack Torrance breaks out of one maze to end up in another. And in the end, he becomes almost animal-like in his fury. It’s like one of the ghosts in animal costume giving blow-job to another.
Man seeks power to rise above the rest of humanity, and such was the basis of aristocracy. But what’s the point of all that power and privilege unless one can do as one pleases? And what is the great desire of man? Power and sex. So, one rises ever higher to indulge in the ever lower. In EYES WIDE SHUT, the rich and powerful put on a big orgy; they fuse the thrill of low and base instincts with fancy ritualistic pageantry; it’s high and low rolled into one. It is no wonder that the higher classes have often grown decadent in debauchery. They gain more power and higher status to rise above the lowly ways of humanity, but their power, privilege, and freedom tempt them to indulge in limitless pleasure and sex. Think of the Ottoman Sultans and their harems. (And the richer and more powerful Jews become, the more they reduce gentile women to a bunch of whores to be manipulated through the erogenous spots. If white gentile women thought in terms of racial pride and unity, if they thought of their bodies as sacred and private to be shared only with the ones they love, then they would be harder to control and manipulate. They would control their own bodies, and their bodies would be part of the sacred unity and continuity of the white race, a realm from which venal and hideous Jewish agenda would be excluded. If white women’s holes are closed to Jews, their souls will be shut off from Jewish influence too. For Jews to own and control the souls of white gentile women, they must control the holes of white women. How come we humans have such easy control over animals? Animals live by instincts of pleasure, hunger, fear, and sexuality. By manipulating those basic drives, we gain control over all sorts of animals, even big elephants. Animals can’t use their limited consciousness to override our manipulation of their emotions and sensations. Similarly, Jews seek to reduce white women to creatures of basic drives whose sensations can be manipulated — as with animals — so that they can be made to weep when Jews push their button, laugh when Jews toy with the laugh-track, bark when Jews order them to do so, spread their legs and to whom depending on the Jewish agenda, and etc. It’s the Marilyn-Monroe-ization of white womanhood. Jews talk about “women’s rights” and women controlling their own bodies, but paradoxically, Jewish idea of women having control of their own bodies undermines genuine control of the body. To control one’s own body means to have moral control over the body, i.e. the heart and mind must direct the body to act in proper ways. The Jewish idea is really about the body controlling the mind, i.e. the mind giving into the demands of orgasmic thrills and the like. Consider the idea of ‘slut pride’. Sluts may sleep around a lot and feel free, but they really act the way they do because they have NO control over their base animal instincts of lust and skankery. If anyone controls the sluts, it’s the Jewish media that pushes the buttons on the erogenous zones through pop music, TV, movies, fashion industry, porn, and etc. Thus, everyone who is ‘free’ as a slut is just an animalistic slave of Jews. Jewish women are safe from this poisonous influence because they are smarter and also because even Jews who run the pop culture industry raise their children differently. Jews who peddle Britney Spears to white gentile girls raise their own girls with better schooling and higher culture. It’s like humans feed dog food to dogs but eat something else for themselves. Jews feed us dog food but dine on something else themselves. That’s why they’ve long been called ‘dirty Jews’. There was a time when Jews had been more suspicious of basic instincts among gentiles, as such emotions and drives among whites used to be linked to territoriality, tribalism, white male sexual possessiveness over their women, white women’s tribal-sexual loyalty to white men, and warrior pride. Back then, Jewish feminism tended to be less sensual, indeed even anti-sensual and neo-puritanical in its radical intellectualism. And Jewish leftism of the Marxist/Communist kind also tended to distrust basic instincts as such were easy ‘prey’ to capitalism, consumerism, and narcissism. But now that Jews have castrated white male power and pride and that Jews have control over pop culture and advertising, Jews can promote a neo-sensualism in order to turn off the minds of white women and turn on their poons to accepting the Negro stud. ‘Dirty Jews’, the biggest enemy of the white race.)
Perhaps, Kubrick chose Nicholson for THE SHINING since no actor since the late 60s did as much to embody the conflict between the sane and insane, the normal and the abnormal, the everyman and no man. In EASY RIDER, Nicholson plays a lawyer, a respectable profession, but he’s an alcoholic and a free spirit. In FIVE EASY PIECES, Nicholson plays a man from a respectable musical family who takes a working class job and has a ‘white trash’ girlfriend. He doesn’t feel at home anywhere. In THE LAST DETAIL, Nicholson serves in the US military, bastion of discipline and conformity but is an out-of-control ‘badass’. In CHINATOWN, Nicholson is a diehard cynic who regains faith through love/pity for a woman. In ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, he’s both the craziest and sanest guy in the madhouse. But his most interesting film — though not the best — along this line is Jules Feiffer and Mike Nichols’s CARNAL KNOWLEDGE. Unlike the character of THE SHINING, Nicholson’s character in CARNAL KNOWLEDGE lives on his own — in the final part of the film, he’s divorced and paying alimony. He wants to be a sex machine forever and ogles women everywhere. He loves being free and open in his sex life. In talking about women as pieces of meat, he feels he has power over them through his inexhaustible sexual prowess... that is until he meets the Ann Margaret character who eventually cajoles him into marriage and children and then divorce — all of which happen off-screen. The problem — if it is a problem — is he’s not without conscience. He did truly love a girl in college — though by betraying his best friend to get her — , and his sexual adventures are, in a way, a compensation for his failed affair in college — though there’s no guarantee that he would have been faithful to her either. Though essentially a jerk, he isn’t completely without a heart. When Ann Margaret’s character attempts suicide, he simultaneously berates her for manipulating his emotions and is overcome with guilt. In a way, Mike Nichols and Jules Feiffer(screenwriter) were making an important point about the so-called ‘sexual liberation’. If the problem of earlier times was sexual repression, the problem of the Sexual Revolution was what might be called conscience-repression. It is normal and natural for people to feel attached to others, to feel obligated to others, to feel duty bound to others. There is no single human nature. One part of male human nature says, “fuc* everything in sight”, but another part of male human nature says “love the one you’re with.” If earlier times may have overly repressed the first kind of human nature, the Sexual Revolution may have repressed too much of the latter kind. Conscience is part of human nature, and for people to be totally sexually ‘free’, they must bury their conscience(and shame), and that is just another kind of repression. Just like Jack Torrance goes from one maze to another, boomers went from one kind of repression to another. And today, we see so much conscience-repression. Though so many lives — of adults and kids alike — have been ruined by sexual licentiousness, most ‘progressives’ pretend that any such criticism is a return to the ‘patriarchal 1950s Father Knows Best sexual repression’ blah blah blah. Just like the communist revolution became just another form of repression, the Sexual Revolution imprisoned humanity in another cage. When you see girls stick out their butts on the dance floor and guys make motion like they’re humping them, the hell is that? Why not get a hotel room?
The paradoxical nature of Jack’s character in THE SHINING can be glimpsed in the very first opening scene over the Glacier National Park. I think Kubrick did something similar to Hitchcock’s visual trick in VERTIGO’s bell tower scene. Hitchcock simultaneously pulled back the camera while zooming in, thus creating a dual impression of growing closer and further apart. Kubrick’s approach seems to be reversed, i.e. the camera moves toward the landscape while zooming out. So, even as we fly toward the trees and valleys, they seem to be fleeing from us.
There may be a Hitlerian aspect to Jack Torrance in THE SHINING. Ironically, Jack’s Hitlerian aspect is also the flip-side of the Jewish aspect. One of history’s greatest paradoxes may be Hitler was so anti-Jewish precisely because he was so ‘Jewishy’, and Jews hate Hitler precisely because they see so much of themselves in him or at least in aspects of him. In some ways, Hitler and Jews couldn’t be more different. Hitler was ‘Aryan’ and Jews were/are ‘Semites’. Hitler was for social order, conformity, and cultural neo-classicism whereas Jews were for subversion, individualism, and modernism. And yet, Hitler was not your typical ‘Aryan’. Though striking in appearance, there was something repellent about him — as with many Jews. Also, despite his conservative cultural leanings, Hitler was a bohemian by temperament. He couldn’t settle down a 9 to 5 routine. He didn’t wanna live by an established routine. He wanted to go to sleep and wake up as he pleased. He wanted to be free to dream his dreams and think his own thoughts. A part of him wanted to roam and wander freely, yet another part of him wanted to be part of a tradition/convention and work to construct a new kind of order that would last forever. As an Austrian in the highly diverse Austro-Hungarian Empire, he felt as an outsider as the empire was only 25% Germanic. In Germany, he felt as an outsider as he was Austrian. And after the defeat of Germany in WWI, Hitler, along with so many veterans, felt not as heroes but outcasts. After his mother died and he blew his inheritance on arts and culture, he was penniless, and as such, he was an outside like the Jews. He hated the Jews because he identified with them. Jews were seen as the ‘other’, the ugly and gross, the outcast. Hitler, in contrast, was supposed to be an ‘Aryan’ among ‘Aryans’ in ‘Aryan’ nations of Germany/Austria, but he was even more of an outcast than the Jews. Worse, it seemed as if the world was turned upside down since Jews, who were supposed to be on the outside, were finding themselves into the system in ever greater numbers. Hitler loved arts and culture, but much of arts and culture in Austria and Germany were being taken over by Jews. Jews had control of finance, legal professions, and intellectual institutions. It was bad enough for Hitler to find himself as an outsider, to be like the Jews whom he loathed; but what was truly painful was the fact that so many Jews had wormed themselves inside the system and indeed had gained great power and influence — even dominance — in certain key institutions. Jews, who’d been kept out of the system, were taking over the system. The outsider was becoming the insider. To get inside, Jews initially played safe and nice and pretended to assimilate. But as they gained greater power, they got bolder and began to subvert and undermine the goy system to loosen it up for total domination. But once Jews amassed total power — as in the Soviet Union — , they began to destroy all opposition in order to establish a new iron-fisted system of total order. And indeed, we are seeing the same pattern in America. There had been a time when Jews in America were eager to prove that they were good Americans. Even leftist Jews tended to tone down their hostility and not ‘rock the boat’ too much. But as Jewish power gained especially with the fall of anti-communism in the 1950s, Jews began to push for total cultural and political subversion, and the heyday of this strategy was in the 1960s. But as Jews began to gain near-total control of America, they’ve gone from subversion mode to manipulation mode. Jews, who’d once championed total free speech to subvert white/conservative power in America, are now pushing for ‘hate speech’ laws so that only Jews and their allies will have freedom of speech while people they don’t like — especially whites and conservatives — will have to watch what they say at all times. Jews only believe in one thing: Power. Jewish subversion is a strategy like everything else. Jews are not committed to subversion as a iron principle. Even liberal Jews don’t subvert the notion of Israel as a Jewish state. And notice how all those Jewish subversives of the 60s — who called for gun rights for the Black Panthers and gave the middle finger to the government — are now trying to take guns away from Americans and defending the growing power of state/government(since they have total control of it). Jews have been closely associated with modernism/radicalism, but Jews are also an ancient people with a long proud history of continuity, unity, and identity. Thus, it’s a mistake to see Jews as perennial subversives. Rather, Jews are tactical subversives trying to undermine the goy social order to ultimately replace it with the Jewish-controlled social order. Once such social order is established, Jews become hostile to subversion. If Jews really love subversion, they should welcome and embrace Kevin MacDonald and David Duke for their attempts to subvert Jewish power, but Jews hate them — just like Jews hated Hitler and later Stalin for subverting Jewish power and influence. If Jews truly love subversion, their hero would be Edward Said whose lifework was devoted to subverting Zionism, but Jews hate Said. Jews say they love subversive modern art, but how many Jews would champion modern art that mocked Anne Frank, the Holocaust, or Zionism? No, Jews love modern art that mocks and subverts white beauty, Christianity, and white middle class values. Imagine Jews championing a work called Piss Anne Frank or Piss Golda Meir. Imagine European Jews welcoming anti-Jewish subversive literature. To be sure, some Jews are so goofy that they can’t help pushing the envelope even on Jewish suffering — like with Mel Brooks’ Inquisition number, Woody Allen’s skit with a Rabbi who likes to be whipped while his wife eats pork, or Howard Stern’s “Who’s the Jew” shtick. But then, Jews making fun of Jews is like blacks calling other blacks ‘niggers’. It is allowed. Also, men like Brooks and Allen — along with Don Rickles — are of an earlier generation when things weren’t so politically correct, and Howard Stern has been tolerated by the Jewish-controlled media as a safety valve of releasing excess politically incorrect steam. All said and done, like Jerry Springer, Stern is just another Jew who encourages and manipulates lowly white goy instincts so as to gain more control over the goyim.
In a way, Hitler’s rise to power both countered and paralleled that of the Jews. And both Hitler and Jews had to deal with the same rivals: the German Establishment made up of Industrialists, conservative upper classes, remnants of the aristocracy, and the Christian clergy. And both Jews and Hitler had to play the game of insider/outsider to worm their way into power. So, Jews were like ‘Aryan Jews’ and Hitler was like a ‘Jewish Aryan’. Jews had to fool Germans that they too were good Germans and part of the Germanic culture and nation. Some Jews were even given names like ‘Sigmund’(Freud) and ‘Siegfried’(Kracauer). Likewise, Hitler sought to persuade people that he, an outsider who rose from the gutter, was the ultimate champion of German values and European civilization. Both Jews and Hitler were, as outsiders, trying to take over the Castle and remake it from inside. Jews sought to take power and remake Germany into a proto-globalist center of a global Jewish empire, something Jews finally achieved in once Wasp-dominated America. And Hitler sought to take power in Germany and eventually sweep aside the old social order and the clergy and establish the Thousand Yr Reich ruled by ‘pure-blooded Aryans’ dedicated to the racial and national will-to-power. Both Jews and Hitler were defined by a duality of ancient consciousness and futuristic visionariness. Jews couldn’t let go of their ancient tribal identity and instead sought to secularize it as a weapon of power in the modern world. Hitler drew from the ancient sources of European civilization but sought to streamline and sharpen them into a futuristic weapon of ‘Aryan’ domination. As such, both were looking backward and forward, both serving and upending tradition. Modern Jews were still being Jewish in their drive for power and dominance, but they were no longer bound to old Jewish values. If traditional Jews were anti-idolatry, modern Jews sought to control the machine of idolatry via the media, advertising, and propaganda. If spiritual Judaism was anti-homosexual, modern Jews embraced homosexualism as a weapon against ‘traditional values’. Similarly, though Hitler played on Christian and German conservative/bourgeois sentiments, he was trying to create a wholly new kind of Germany that would ultimately be anti-Christian and anti-bourgeois. Hitler felt toward the German military how Obama — the Jews’ boy — feels toward the white conservative officer class in the US military. Hitler needed the military but regarded most of his generals as overly conservative, cautious, unimaginative, and lacking in vision. He led — or dragged them by force — , and they followed. So, Hitler was both an outsider and an insider. Ironically, the biggest outsider — an Austrian bohemian who rose from the gutter — became the ultimate insider of Germanic power from 1933 to 1945. Eventually, he served as a virus within German civilization and nearly brought it to complete ruin with his mad radicalism. Jews, once the biggest outsiders, are now the biggest insiders of American power and EU power. So, even as Jews loathe Hitler who loathed Jews, they both have something in common. Indeed, they hated each other so much because they both wanted the same thing: To upend the existing order by gaining total control, whereupon they could enforce their vision of the future. If Hitler had an advantage in this for a time, it was because he was an ‘Aryan’ leading other ‘Aryans’. In contrast, Jews, no matter how much they came to control the innermost halls of power, were always the minority, the ‘spiritual’ outsiders. So, once Hitler took power, his main targets were fringe groups deemed to the enemies of the core ‘Aryan’ people of Germany. So, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies, and gay men — though oddly enough not lesbians — were persecuted, even killed. And Jews were seen as the main target. (On the other hand, though Hitler was for normalism and mainstream-ism, he wasn’t normal himself, and his vision of future Germany was so radical that it was paradoxically anti-German in its extreme German-ness. Paradoxically, when something is too much of that thing, it becomes anti-that-thing. This is why purism fails. While it makes sense to speak of a German people, culture, and history, they cannot be seen as a purity unto themselves apart from other cultures, peoples, and histories. German opera owes to Italian opera. German blood mixed with Slavic and Latin blood. Jews contributed great things to German culture and science. Germans owed much to French culture and literature. Indeed, this was why the concept of ‘Aryanism’ was so useful and necessary to Hitler. Since Germany owed so much of its culture and science to non-Germans, it would have been absurd to say that Germans were the best geniuses at everything. However, if one argues that ‘Aryans’ are the true geniuses and such peoples had once dominated Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient India, Ancient Persia, and etc, then one can say all of civilization was the result of Aryan genius. Then, if Germans borrowed from other cultures, one could argue it was just a case of ‘Aryans’ borrowing from other ‘Aryans’, and since all ‘Aryans’ were part of one racial family, all ‘Aryans’ could take credit for whatever ‘Aryans’ did. So, even though Germanic barbarians hadn’t done much in ancient times, they could share the credit for the accomplishments of Egyptian ‘Aryans’, Greek ‘Aryans’, and Hindu ‘Aryans’. Because Hitler was more a radical ‘Aryanist’ than a German nationalist, he ultimately proved to be anti-German. He was so adamant in his ‘Aryan’ purism that he saw little of value in much of German culture and history because they were deemed ‘impure’. But, in a way, Hitler’s ‘Aryan purism’ was a ‘spiritual’ carbon copy of Jewish ‘Yahwehian’ purism. Just as Germans had borrowed much from other cultures, Jewish religion and culture developed by absorbing influences from other cultures and peoples. But Jews created the myth of spiritual purism where the One and Only God created the universe and He chose the Jews as His special people. Through such a myth, Jews could deny that Jewish culture and history owed anything to other peoples and cultures. Romans knew and admitted they borrowed much of their gods and arts from the Greeks. But Jews insisted that their God was the only God. Since there never were any other gods, Jews couldn’t have borrowed from other cultures and other gods in the creation of their own God. This was one reason why Jews hated idolatry. Since other cultures and peoples worshiped idols, such were evidence of other gods — and their possible influence on Jewish culture and religion. For Jews to insist their God was the only true God and that Jewish culture and religion was this pure gift from the one and only God, Jews had to smash idols that demonstrated the existence of other gods and cultures prior to that of Jews. So, there is a kind of psycho-habitual link between Judaism and Nazism. At any rate, Hitler’s extreme purism proved to be the undoing of Germany. German history had been a blend of conservative forces, liberal forces, religious forces, foreign elements and influences, and etc. but his insisted on ‘German purity’ via ‘Aryanism’ drove out a lot of talented German Jews, German liberals, and even German conservatives who found Nazism too radical and crazy. And Nazi art was mostly piss-poor. It wasn’t living-and-growing culture in a petri dish but frozen-and-fossilized culture in a petrified dish. Hitler cast his vision of future of Germany in iron, and it couldn’t be changed. Jews were reckless with communism, and Hitler was reckless with Nazism, and both came to a bad end in the end. Global Zionist Jewish supremacists seem to be a lot cleverer. They understand the mechanisms and logic of history and psychology. Though modern Jews are no longer religious, they understand the psychology of religion. They understand there is a psychological logic underlying spirituality; there is a kind of theo-logic. One of the truisms about religion, especially in opposition to science that is understood to be based on empirical evidence and testable theories, is that it’s about faith, but the truth is more complicated. If faith is the core essence of religion, why can’t people be made to accept just anything on faith? Suppose I say a giant chocolate bunny resides on Mars and will bless anyone who sings “Stairway to Heaven” everyday. How many people will place their faith in such an idea? Why do people invest their faith in certain things while rejecting faith in other things? If faith is all that matters, people would be happy to believe in Santa Claus for the rest of their lives. But at some point, kids began to find the notion of Santa silly. So, for faith to have meaning, it must be a kind of faith accompli, something that makes one feel fulfilled with some eternal truth. The object of their faith has to move them, stir them, inspire them, awe them, tantalize them, give their lives meaning. So, even though religion is not a science, there is no less a powerful logic at its core than in science. Just like science advanced toward achieving the truer truth, religions progressed by moving toward more meaningful meaning. Orthodoxy hampered both, which is why Aristotlean ‘science’ dominated the West for so long and why Christian orthodoxy held sway over the West during the Middle Ages. But just like certain scientific falsehoods were swept aside with the advance of science, certain religious beliefs and concepts were abandoned in the evolution of spirituality. While it is true that Christians in the Roman Empire did much to destroy pagan temples and cultures, in fact much of pagan beliefs had already lost their grip on the Roman and Greek populace long before the advent of Christianity. Many Hellenistic folks, especially the elites, tended to treat their gods and heroes as fairytales. If indeed the Greeks and Romans had great faith in their mythologies, Christianity couldn’t have made such a powerful inroad to the core of Roman civilization. Why had the pagan gods lost their grip on the people? They were products of ignorance that arose during the Dark Ages of Greek history. But as Greeks and Romans gained greater knowledge, the idea of man-like gods residing in some place on Olympus seemed rather silly. And Romans knew all too well that they’d fused their own gods with those of the Greeks. It was like they had creative control over the gods than vice versa. Also, with great imperial power came the notion that the Romans were invincible and didn’t need to rely so much on the gods. Greek mythology moved from mystery to clarity. It began with a world of chaos and gradually developed into a world of order where man-like gods held sway over men. Thus, Greek mythology was functional, but people seek something more in spirituality than clarity and functionality. To be sure, Greek gods and heroes could be inspirational, but they were like exaggerated human stories, archetypes of things that existed in the world. When the world was indeed chaotic — as during the Greek Dark Ages — a vision of godly order would have been appealing, indeed something which mankind aspired to. But once Greeks became orderly and developed civilizations on their own, gods were no longer all that special since mankind now commanded order over itself. For gods to remain powerful and appealing, they had to stand for something beyond man, for something mysterious and profound. This aspect was lacking in Greek mythology, and so, the mythologies came to be regarded more as folklore, fairytales, or material for art and drama. In contrast, the Jewish God grew in mysteriousness as the Jews gained in social clarity and order. God is more accessible in the early part of the Bible; He even seems to have something like a human personality. But in later parts of the Bible, He is more distant and mysterious, inscrutable and indecipherable, just when Jews were gaining in social order and knowledge. The early God is physically more accessible but morally less accessible. It isn’t clear what He really wants of mankind; only slowly does it dawn with the Covenant between God and Abraham and with Moses and the Law and the rise of the Kings. Later God is physically less accessible but morally more accessible — but not too accessible as that would undermine the mystery of God, which is the point of the Book of Job; if God’s morality is absolute, we can judge Him according to it, but if God is both gives the Law and is above the Law, He is both moral and mysterious. God in the Book of Job acts like Stanley Kubrick God drives Job crazy but in the end restores good stuff to Job. Kubrick drove some of the crew and actors crazy, but in the final equation, everyone felt very proud and blessed to have worked for Kubrick. The thing about morality is it’s an inner form of power as opposed to other forms of power. Military power is the power of the sword. Technological power is the power of fire and wheel. Natural power is the power of winds, floods, earthquakes, etc. In a world of disorder, man feared and worshiped such powers. But in a world of order, man had less reason to fear or worship the power of nature; man felt he’d gained a measure of mastery over nature, and one doesn’t worship what one has mastered. But moral power, though manifested through personal action, resides in the heart and mind, realms that are difficult to quantify in physical terms. The soul is the meeting of the heart and mind. Heart alone is a bundle of basic sentiments that aren’t much different from those of animals. The mind must obey certain rules and logics in the processing of stimuli, and as such, is like a calculating machine. But the mind and heart together produces the soul, a sublime fusion that defies and transcends both, and this is where the core of spirituality — and creativity — lies. And this core desires something that tantalizes the mind but is beyond the mind; it desires something that stirs the senses but is beyond the senses. The reason why the Jewish God outlasted the pagan gods was that He was logically constructed, if unconsciously, to be that power that forever touches yet eludes the soul. And Jesus had great appeal because His story, especially the Crucifixion, was the fusion of the soul and the senses. Modern Jews don’t believe in God, but they know the mechanism of spirituality, so they’ve erected new gods with MLK and Obama and Holocaustianity. They elevated homos into neo-saints. On the surface, all of this should be absurd, but Jews know that spirituality is as much a matter of illusion and hype as truth and experience. Jews know all about the power of idolatry and iconography that they’ve come to control via ownership of the media, academia, and entertainment. Thus, the whipping of Jesus is conflated with the whipping of the Magic Negro by the evil white ‘racist’ slave-master. And the Crucifixion of Jesus is conflated with the extermination of Jewish victims who, we are to believe, died to redeem our sick ‘antisemitic’ souls. And Jews conflate the black experience in America with Jewish experience under Nazi Germany — though a far more relevant comparison to Nazi mass killing would be Communist mass killing of Slavic Christians, much of which were carried out by Jewish allies of Lenin and Stalin. Religion is a search for soulful truth, but like science, it can be manipulated by those who hold the power. Just like Jews elevated the phony Stephen J. Gould as a great evolutionary scientist, Jews have done a switcheroo in the hearts of white gentiles whereby Christianity has been replaced by MLK-ism and Holocaustianity. So, we have DJANGO UNCHAINED released on Christmas day and even white conservatives worshiping MLK the thug-lout who played on ‘white guilt’ to fool white folks into lowering their defenses against the vile and aggressive Negroes. Unless white folks regain independence of soul, they will forever be at the mercy of the Jews. Jews won over whites not because they are morally superior but intellectually superior and possessed of greater will — just like we have control over dogs and cats not because we’re morally superior but intellectually superior or stronger-willed. Whites have been no more evil or oppressive than others, but their emotions are controlled by Jews because Jews control information and exploit white conscience. White conscience is a good thing — it encourages self-criticism and reform, which are good things for genuine progress — , but it can be manipulated and exploited by the clever who themselves have no conscience. Notice how the crooked bosses in Kurosawa’s BAD SLEEP WELL exploit the Japanese conscience of loyalty and sacrifice to manipulate underlings to serve as scapegoats and serve as fall guys while they themselves enrich themselves unscathed. Look how Jewish Wall Street crooks got away scot-free by their manipulation of the media controlled by their tribal brethren. Jews have no conscience toward non-Jews; they just feed on the conscience of white gentiles. And they have control over the white soul by playing divide-and-conquer with the white mind, white heart, and white body. Ideally, the mind, heart, and body should fuse into a sublime whole known as the soul. Mind without the heart and body has no roots, no anchor. Many white intellectuals seek knowledge without a centrism to define their lives; in contrast, every Jewish intellectual works for Jewish power. White gentile geeks are like logical machines, like the astronauts in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, not much different from the machines around them. Jews want white intellectuals to just stick to dry ideas. Heart without the skepticism of the mind and survival instincts of the body can be manipulated that the emotions of a sappy dog. When it comes to Negroes, Jews urge whites to turn off their critical faculties and survival instincts and instead, worship MLK or weep over a mountain-sized Negro who wuvs a wittle white mouse in GREEN MILE. The body without the mind and heart is just something that wants pleasures of food and sex, and Jews want white bodies to be shaking ass to hip hop and acting childish. Thus, there is no unity among white mind, white heart, and white body. Thus, there is no more anything like a white soul. White mind crunches numbers for Jews, white heart obeys Jews and weeps over the Magic Negro, and the white body sells itself to Jews and spreads to Negroes. Mind has no will; on its own, it’s just a calculating machine that takes orders. Heart has no will; on its own, it just feels puppy-wuppy. Body has no will; it just lives by animal instincts of sex and hunger. Free will and will-to-power only arise with the fusion of mind, heart, and body that meld into a soul. Unless white soul is regained, there can be no white freedom, no white free will, no white will-to-power. And Jews know this.)
If Hitler, as a representative of the German majority/masses, went after the outsider/fringe/minority elements, Jewish power-holders have done the opposite. They mock, ridicule, hound, undermine, and subvert whatever is normal, proud, and confident in the majority gentile population. So, Jews undermine Christianity, family values, white pride and consciousness, and Euro-centrism among white Americans and Europeans. Jewish elites wanna make the abnormal the new normal, and so, we have the mania for ‘gay marriage’, interracism, New Age-ism via Oprah, ‘undocumented immigrants’, the new gods of MLK and Obama as controlled by Jewish media, and Holocaustianity as the new religion of America and EU. Of course, Jews act differently in Israel than they do in America and EU. In Israel, Jews are more like the National Socialists were in Germany. They are brazenly for the normality of Jewish unity, Jewish pride, Jewish power, and Jewish identity/consciousness. Though Israel is liberal and cosmopolitan in many ways when it comes to issues of gays and feminism, it has become increasingly right-wing, and even though liberal American Jews pay lip-service in criticizing right-wing Zionism, they love the fact of Jewish power in Israel and how Arabs are being squeezed out.
Anyway, what is fascinating about Jack Torrance is that he’s like a Jewish Hitler — but then recall that Dr. Strangelove was like a Nazi Jew, a combination of German rocket scientist and Jewish nuclear scientist, combination of Hitler, Edward Teller, and Marx Brothers, combination of Jewish Freud and Aryan Jung(and Nietzsche), combination of cosmopolitan sophistication and biological supremacist zeal. (Though Jewish cosmopolitanism has often been cast in opposition to Nazi nationalism, what they have in common is the core of ultra-elitism. Cosmopolitanism, after all, is highly expensive and only for the well-educated and well-financed. To lead the life of a true cosmopolitan, one needs the power and privilege to travel around the world, meet with the ‘best people’ — intellectuals, artists, businessmen — , and feel superior to the native masses of every nation who still cling to traditional religion and national loyalties or feed at the trough of mass culture for dummies. Jews are infinitely more likely to gain power and profit from cosmopolitanism than Eskimos, ghetto blacks, small town ‘white trash’, or Australian aborigines are. You need brains, culture, ambition, and connections. Cosmopolitanism is supremacism of the global elite city folks.) Overlook Hotel is said to be the place that attracts only the ‘best people’. During its regular season, Jack and his regular family wouldn’t be able to afford to stay there. They are there during off-season — when the ‘best people’ are all elsewhere — only because they’re hired help. They are nobodies. They are like Jewish immigrants who’ve been allowed to enter but are not really welcome. Wasp elite attitude toward Jewish immigrants was, “you’ve arrived, you are Americans, but There is your place, and Here is our place.” It’s like the character of Kafka’s THE CASTLE is allowed in areas around the castle but isn’t allowed to enter the castle. So, Jack is in but still out. Since he cannot associate with the current privileged class who visit the Overlook — as he’ll have to remove himself once the off-season is over — , he’s haunted by the history of privilege of the Overlook Hotel. (To be sure, the Overlook in the film’s time frame isn’t what it had once been. It’s no longer the hotel of choice that brings in presidents and the royalty from around the world — and there aren’t many old-time monarchs and aristocrats in the latter half of 20th century at any rate. It’s still a place for the privileged, but it has seen better days, and the ‘ghosts’ that haunt Jack are from a time when the Overlook was the castle of the rich, powerful, and connected. Because the bygone past was more wasp/white-dominated whereas the America of Jack’s present is more egalitarian and demotic — with even the rich dressing up casual and with the new elites becoming increasingly Jewish — , it could be that the ‘racist’ elite ghosts of the past are channeling through Jack the angry white male.) Jack isn’t part of the ‘jet set’ of the present(and won’t be of the future), and so, he has to settle for the glory of the decrepit and forgotten past. It’s almost like he’s playing catchup with something he never had. (It’s like the bulk of Jews arrived in America later than the Anglo-Americans and had to play catchup. So, while Anglo-Americans were well-established and rich — at least the elites among them — , Jews had to start from scratch. Since Jews didn’t have the historical connection to Old America that the Wasps did, Jews had to play catchup through the fantasy of culture. Thus, Jews composed a whole lot of Christmas carols and songs like ‘God Bless America’, as if to lend impression that Jews had been part of America from the beginning, that they were always as ‘American as apple pie’. And Jews created the dream factory of Hollywood and came to control the memory of Old America. Just as Jack channels the past history of the Overlook Hotel, Jews channeled the myth of the American Western and made it their own. Jews wanted to gain dominance in America but didn’t have the cultural legacy/baggage/claim that the Wasps had. So, Jews had to invent one, and in that sense, Hollywood has been one ghost house of Jewish fantasization of an America they weren’t a part of. But legend has a way of becoming fact, and it’s the Jewish legend that defines our understanding of American history.)
When the manager of the Overlook Hotel shows Jack and his family their ‘cozy’ little bedroom, it’s like the scene in IMITATION OF LIFE where the white mother shows the black mother and her mulatto daughter their room, which is small and cramped. The manager is a nice guy, but the message is clear: Jack is just hired help and should know his place. It’s like what the L.Q. Jones character says to Ace Rothstein(Robert De Niro) in CASINO: “Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home.” Ironically, Martin Scorsese probably identified with Rothstein because he, as an Italian-American director, wasn’t really home in Jewish-dominated Hollywood. Scorsese was allowed to make his movies and win accolades, but he was just hired help in Hollywood that is really the empire of Jews. And of course, Las Vegas came under Jewish control once the stupid Italian-Americans messed it up all up with their petty squabbles, incompetence, and psychopathic behavior — at least by the evidence of CASINO, especially with the Nicky Santoro character.
History is a story of invasions. Invasion can be physical, as when one tribe invades the land of another tribe. Ancient Hebrews invaded the land occupied by Canaanites and Philistines. Anglo-Americans invaded lands once held by American Indians. But the invasion can be class-oriented too. In BARRY LYNDON, the upstart hero uses wits and guile to ‘invade’ the territory of the aristocratic elites. And of course, aristocracy arose in the first place by warriors invading lands and gaining power. Some invasions happen externally, as when one tribes physically conquers another tribe. But the invasion can happen more subtly, as when the Bill Harford(Tom Cruise) secretly invades the mansion of the superrich in EYES WIDE SHUT. In LOLITA, the Mason character slyly ‘invades’ the life and home of Lolita’s mother, but then, the Peter Sellers character even more subtly ‘invades’ the private life of Mason’s character. THE KILLING is about secretive invasion and counter-invasion, and so is DR. STRANGELOVE. General Jack D. Ripper ‘invades’ the authority of the U.S. government and launches what could be WWIII. It is up to Mandrake(Peter Sellers) to ‘invade’ the secrets of General Ripper to decode and reverse the command for the nuclear attack. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY begins with apes invading each other’s territory, and then mankind — especially Russians and Americans — competing to invade space, and then HAL tries to invade man’s authority, and then the extraterrestrials invade David Bowman’s consciousness.
Jews have been such effective invaders because of their stealth. Unlike Romans or Mongols, Jews didn’t invade with armies — and where they did, as in Palestine, they did so under the umbrella of Western imperialism and ‘moral’ protection of ‘Holocaust victim-hood’, which made their violence against ‘antisemitic’ Palestinians, who were only defending themselves, palatable to many. In Europe and America, Jews have invaded quietly through the long march through the institutions. While some Jews have been loud and brash with their chutzpah, the real source of their power was the quiet penetration/invasion into powerful institutions. Jews fuc* you when you sleep. Jewish power is like the pods in THE INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS. Jews don’t just work on your minds; they work on your dreams. In the end, the likes of Elena Kagan and Ruth Baird Ginsburg are more dangerous than the Norman Mailers and Pauline Kaels of the world. After all, blacks have been even louder and brasher, but their power is nothing like that of Jews. Blacks haven’t gained quiet invasive control of the academia, media, law firms, Wall Street, entertainment industry, and etc. Though blacks dominate the sports fields, Jews own and manage the teams. And since many Jews pass for white, their invasion is even more invisible. This is why Jews wanna do away with any prideful identity associated with whites. In traditional Europe where white identity was closely associated with Christianity and nationalism, even insider Jews could be identified as outsiders. But as religious, racial, and national sources of identity fade among whites, even a radical Jew becomes as ‘American as apple pie’ and ‘white’, and since Europeans follow the American model, EU is also becoming more like America.
But the game of power goes both ways. Though the invader/usurper of the present take power from the fading rulers who’d owned the past, the new boss is haunted by the ghosts of the old boss. So, black elites who overthrew whites in places like Haiti began to emulate the former white elites. Marxist rebels who came to power in Ethiopia began to marry with the light-skinned remnants of the old elite and put on neo-aristocratic airs. Mongols who invaded China began to act Chinese. Romans who invaded Greece became Hellenized. Germanic barbarians who conquered Christian Rome became Christianized and Romanized. Barry Lyndon uses his cunning and trickery to ‘invade’ the world of the aristocracy, but he becomes as much ‘invaded’ by them. Obama has found a way into the house of power via the Jews, but he is also their toy-boy. He too is just a ‘guest’ of the real controllers of power, the Jews. Jews too have been possessed and haunted by the power they took from the white elites. Though filled with resentment and hatred against whites, Jews are fascinated, tantalized, and drawn to white culture, arts, history, and beauty. They wanna destroy but also preserve. It’s like the Jew in EYES WIDE SHUT played by Sydney Pollock. He is obviously a hook-nosed Jew who has little respect for whites. He’s smart, and his kind are on the up and up, and indeed have taken over the castle. But his kind doesn’t want to completely lay waste to what it inherited or ‘stole’ from whites through their stealthy invasion. The wealth, the glory, and the power are too much. They wanna own it, they wanna control it, they wanna preserve it; they wanna fuc* it, but for them to fuc* it, it must exist in the first place to be fuc*ed, and so it must be preserved. Jews wanna mongrelize the white masses, but they still wanna maintain some measure of pure white ‘Aryan’ beauty just so future generations of hook-nosed Jews can fuc* it and go on fuc*ing it. Kubrick the Jew surely understood this aspect of Humbert Humbert who, in the novel at least — which I haven’t read but heard about — , supposedly wants to hump not only Lolita but Lolita’s daughter and then Lolita’s daughter’s daughter, and so on. It’s like Jack Torrance’s eternal desire to return to the Overlook over and over. Jews wanna destroy but also fuc* white beauty forever.
So, the invader is both the master and the servant. He usurps power from the old elites, but he seeks to preserve its glory and grandeur, if only for his own pleasure. It’s like the Ottomans invaded Constantinople but didn’t destroy the great church but converted it into a mosque — Hagia Sofia. And though invasive Christians did a lot of pagan temple-and-idolatry smashing upon gaining power in Rome, the new order eventually made peace with the existing pagan grandeur and preserved it. The new invader pushes out the old invader, but the spirit of the older invader passes to the new invader who becomes the new ‘old invader’. American Indians used to dominate the American territories, but Anglo-American invaders took over. As seen in the Indian mosaic at the Overlook Hotel, it’s as though the warrior invader spirit of Indians have been passed to the white man, the new invader. (This is more the case in Kubrick’s film than in King’s book where the stuff about Indian burial mound was probably just milking ‘white guilt’.) There’s a duality to Jack in the Overlook Hotel. He wants to be the master but he’s a servant, a hired hand. So, in the scene in the ballroom where the ghosts of the old elites are partying, Jack is both one of them and one of the servants — he is also their master since his unsure position between past and present and between privilege and lack of privilege fills him with rage and will-to-power that neither absolute servants and absolute masters have; a sure servant accepts his servitude and a sure master feels secure in his privilege, but a man like Torrance, like Hitler-Stalin-Mao, has no such sense of duty or place. The power of a sure master is limited to his position and privilege, whereas the power-lust of someone like Torrance is limitless since, lacking a procured place in the world of privilege, he has to carve out his own slice of the power pie but isn’t governed by any limits or principles as to how big his slice should be; so, he wants it all. He is dressed in plain clothes while most people in the ballroom are dressed in their best. He is different from them but, in some ways, feels as one of them. He is even treated as one of them by the bartender. And when the waiter spills drink on him, the waiter calls him ‘sir’ and apologizes ever so humbly and offers to wipe the drink off his (plain)clothes as it’s an expensive tuxedo. When Jack hears the waiter’s name — Delbert Grady — , Jack recognizes it as the name of the previous caretaker of the hotel who’d killed his family and his wife and children. Jack, in a hallucinatory state, is more keen to make Grady admit his identity than feels disturbed by the fact that a dead man can’t possibly be standing there in the same room with him alive. It’s a kind of dream logic where the strange and impossible seem normal and plausible. It is then that Grady says to Jack that, “YOU are the caretaker.” Thus, Jack, who felt as one of the master class in the ballroom few minutes ago, is now made aware that he is of the servant/caretaker class. He is both master and servant. He wants to take power of the castle, but once it is in his hands, he must take care of it and guard it; he must serve the castle’s will-to-power or the castle of the will-to-power. Master of the castle is the servant of the castle. Will-to-power drives man to power, but the more power he gains, the more he is the servant of the will-to-power; and once he is dead and gone, another is chosen to fulfill the same ambition, to go from servant to master to master-servant. In a dualistic way, that new master-servant is both a different person and himself all over again(as he too is driven by the same archetypal dynamic). It’s like kings come and go but Excalibur, the sword of power, is forever. Every man-who-would-be-king seeks it but every king becomes its servant. The Overlook Hotel is like a House of Power, and in a way, Jack is the will-to-power in every man, and so, every man is Jack since there is a will-to-power in every man.
What Jews fear most is that they will be haunted by the ghosts of the Wasp elites from whom they took the power. Jews now have the castle, but the ghosts of power past may lead Jews to the same graveyard. It may lead to stasis, conservatism, decadence. Will-to-power leads to power, but weaned-on-power can lead to wilting-of-power. It’s like what Arthur and Lancelot says at the Round Table as they look upon the knights who have grown soft and lazy:
Arthur: “They miss the battlefield. I think we do too.”
Lancelot: “We have lost our way, Arthur.”
Arthur: “It is not easy for them without the hard teachings of war and quest. It is your example, Lancelot, that binds them all.”
Of course, Jews are different from Dark Age knights. Jews have been survivors and invaders from ancient times. Jews are also invaders of the hearts and minds; they work more like Merlin the magician or Morgana and therefore are far trickier than men who rely on physical power. Just as Morgana plants the seed of dissension among the knights, Jews have done the same thing to whites. White people used to worship white heroes and white great men, but most whites nowadays worship Negroes like MLK and pray for the soul of Anne Frank. White Americans revere Emma Lazarus more than the Founding Fathers, and white girls admire Betty Friedan and Harvey Milk more than Robert E. Lee or Teddy Roosevelt. This is why Jews were especially keen in bringing blacks into sports. White sports heroes used to serve as morale-boosting Lancelots of the white community, but white boys and girls now worship black Dancelots on the sporting fields.
Also, Jews aren’t likely to grow lax for the simple reason that they are a small minority, worship the Holocaust that fills them with anger, self-righteousness, and vengefulness; and they are committed to ‘beleaguered’ Israel. On the one hand, Jews want peace and harmony in the Middle East, but on the other, Jews find the ongoing tensions useful because it stokes fear of ‘another Holocaust’, and this keeps Jews united, paranoid, riled up, aggressive, and angry.
Also, Jewish morality of tribal self-righteousness is different from the universalist righteousness of the Wasps who founded America. Judaism is ‘what is good for the Jews’ whereas Christianity and Enlightenment — the values of which undergird European and American gentile civilizations — are about ‘what is good for humanity’. So, whites must apologize for whatever they might have done to hurt humanity whereas Jews never have to apologize since their morality has always been about doing whatever to maximize their own power and interests. Jewish conscience is to one another and to God, not to filthy goyim. Being Jewish means never having to say sorry you’re sorry. When have you ever heard a Jew apologize for what his kind did to Philistines, Slavs, Latins, and Palestinians? Jews collaborated with Moorish invaders in the conquest of Spain. Jewish slavers sold countless Slavs to Arabs. Jewish communists killed millions of Slavs. Jews ethnically cleansed Palestinians. Jews have castrated white America and are working to bring about the permanent demise of white power. Do Jews feel any guilt? If white people are to fight back and beat the Jews, they must Judaize Christianity into something resembling a militant form of Mormonism.
Jack is like Jews but also like Hitler. He is clearly not meant to be a Jewish character. Instead, he is ‘one of them’, one of the white tribe. And for that reason, he’s more likely to go over to the ‘evil’ side of the Overlook Hotel. He is not a ‘nigger’. In Old America, a black guy could become a ‘house nigger’ and gain entry as a servant, but he could never be one of the white elites. He couldn’t marry the white man’s daughter. (Of course, new America is very different. With Obama, the son of a mudshark as president, it’s a nation where even rich whites would think it’d be a great honor if their lily white daughters spread their legs to black guys and gave birth to mulatto babies. Whites have become mentally so invaded by the Jewish virus that even or especially the elites actively work to undermine and weaken the white race as a whole.) Thus, the black cook Dick Halloran — odd last name for a Negro, I must say — is not welcome by the white power spirit of the Overlook Hotel. He is a ‘nigger’. Though he works there, he seems to sense vibes that are hostile to him. He could hear echoes in the walls saying something like, “hey nigger, go eat some watermelon.” Since blacks had less freedom in the past, there’s less for blacks to be nostalgic about. In contrast, Jack is white. Though seemingly a decent liberal-ish guy, there may be a layer of white anxiety, white anger, and white resentment buried inside him. When Grady tells him a ‘nigger’ is coming to the Overlook, he at first wonders why this should matter. He probably feels it’s not nice to use a word like ‘nigger’. But, he begins to feel emotions in agreement with Grady. One could say the ghosts are just playing with Jack, but it could be that there is something latent in Jack that is racially anxious and resentful. Gradually, Grady’s mind becomes Jack’s mind. Grady, the servile waiter, gently but surely takes command of Jack. From servant and master, they become servant and servant, and then master and master. They are now both invested in getting the damn ‘nigger’.
The Overlook Hotel can serve as a multi-metaphor for different, contrasting, or interrelated forces, just like the trial and the castle can reflect anything from political power to spiritual mystery to labyrinth of the mind in Kafka’s works. One way to approach the Overlook is to see it as the haunted house of the Nazis or at least the Nazi-kin. To Jews, Wasps are suspected of being the Nazi-kin. Though Anglos and Anglo-Americans fought the Nazis, Jews haven’t forgotten that many Anglos and German-Americans sympathized with Hitler, or at the very least, didn’t want to intervene in WWII to stop Hitler until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on America. Many Jews feel that Anglos and Anglo-Americans eventually decided to fight Germany mainly because they sought to maximize their own power — against Germans and Japanese — and gain control of the world. (Jews also remember that after the Civil War, the Reconstruction failed and most Northern whites began to favor and identify more with Southern whites than with blacks, indeed even to the point of aiding and abetting anti-black discriminatory policies. The Republican Party increasingly became a party of white wealth and privilege than the Party of racial equality. Some historians believe that mass immigration from Eastern-and-Southern Europe facilitated the change of heart among Northern Wasps. Flooded with stinking hordes, they began to identify with southern whites who had a similar problem with blacks. Also, the fate of Europe in WWII could have been very different had Anglos sided with Germans in WWII. Hitler admired Anglos as fellow ‘Aryans’, and if Anglos had taken the bait — Churchill was initially admiring of Nazism — , the Anglo-Germanic Axis would have ruled the world, and it would have meant big doodoo for the Jews. Though Anglos stood up to Nazis, Jews still have nightmares about ‘what if’ scenarios of Anglos going with their racial cousins. Anglos chose moral principle over white power, but what if it had been otherwise? But then, was it really moral principle that determined why Anglos refused an alliance with Germany? Or did Anglos feel that Germany was a bigger threat to Anglo hegemony in the world, in which case Anglos didn’t fight Nazi Germany out of moral principles but self-interest. Race is powerful, and Anglos and Germans are racially very much alike. Anglos and American colonials fought a bitter war, but Anglo-Brits and Wasp Americans became closer to one another than with any other people. Why? Same race and culture. Anglos fought Germany in WWI, but many Anglos sympathized with Germans and called for easing of the Versailles Treaty; and many Anglos initially rationalized the rise of Nazism as a necessary means of German revival. And after WWII, many American whites began to like Germans again — more so than the ‘commie subversive’ Jews who were slipping atomic secrets to the Soviets — , and indeed favored Germans as new allies in the Cold War. Even Jewish Hollywood understood this, which was why it didn’t touch on the Holocaust and why most WWII movies up until THE DIRTY DOZEN weren’t virulently or murderously anti-German. The 1957 movie ENEMY BELOW featured Germans of WWII in a sympathetic light, and Theodor Bikel, the Jew who starred in THE FIDDLER ON THE ROOF on stage, played one of the Germans. Especially with Soviet Union as the new Asiatic enemy and Jews as their subversive agents, it was as if Wasps and Germans were becoming ever so chummy. It was only by playing on ‘white guilt’ over blacks and by instituting Holocaustianity that Jews finally cut the bonds of racial sympathy among Wasps, Anglos, and Germans, indeed to the point where all three groups now eagerly cheer the massacre of whites in South Africa. Watching GLITTERING IMAGES the, television series written by the Jew Frederic Raphael who worked on EYES WIDE SHUT, one can’t help feeling that the Jew sees a latent-Nazi in every Anglo. So, the Jew goes on the attack with a bullhorn, yelling ‘Nazi, Nazi’ at every turn so that no Anglo or Wasp will dare think of doing anything that might upset Jews. Anglos tend to lose to Jews because their culture of manner and propriety is no match for Jewish hideousness and open rudeness mixed with self-righteous pity and guilt-baiting.) What is called the ‘Good War’ may have really been a self-interested war of Anglo-Empire. Jews also remember that they had to spend lots of money to buy off politicians in UK and US to fan the flames for war against Germany. It wasn’t so much sympathy for Jews but love of Jewish money that convinced politicians in US and UK to call for war. Jewish power is still largely dependent on Jewish money that buys up all the politicians. Why do most politicians of both parties and all races support Israel with such zeal? Jewish money has bought their loyalty. But money is a fickle thing; if it fails to flow, the politicians go elsewhere, and this is why Jews have been so fanatic about pushing the cult of Holocaustianity. With politicians fearing that they’ll be labeled as ‘neo-Nazis’, ‘anti-Semites’, or ‘Holocaust deniers’ if they don’t bend over backwards to Jewish demands, all politicians and public figures bow down to Jews even whether they reap financial reward from the Jews or not. Thus, Jews control us not only through the power of money but through the cult of morality. Jews see goyim as dogs to feed but also to train and make obedient. A Jew yelling ‘anti-Semite’ to a goy has the same effect as a dog-owner saying ‘sit’ or ‘roll over’ to his pet.
Though the ghostly elites of the past in the Overlook Hotel are American(mostly Anglo-American), they represent the Old Wasps who didn’t allow Jews into country clubs. They represent the class that once used to say nasty things about Jews without worry or shame. Men like Henry Ford went so far as to openly condemn Jews. And there was a time when Walt Disney could host someone like Leni Riefenstahl and not be financially or socially punished for it.
The time period of THE SHINING is when American wasps had lost the war, indeed no less than the Nazis. Though American wasps were on top of the world after WWII, they eventually lost their power to Jews during the heyday of the radical 60s and 70s. Especially with the rise of Wall Street power during the Reagan era and rise of globalism under Clinton, Jews pretty much came to own all.
So, in a way, the rich wasp ghosts of the Overlook Hotel are like the Nazis in Luchino Visconti’s THE DAMNED. They are both decadent in their privilege and calculating in their power. In that sense, THE SHINING, like THE NIGHT PORTER and other films(such as the lowly horror SHOCK WAVES), has certain aspects of the ‘Nazi-exploitation’ genre. In a way, Jack Torrance is used by the ghosts like the Buddhist monk is used in the “Hoichi the Earless” is in Masaki Kobayashi’s KWAIDAN(aka Kaidan). In Kobayashi’s films, a once dominant clan, the Heikes, that had been wiped out in a war linger on as ghosts, and they relive their glory and tragedy over and over through the psychic channeling of the Buddhist acolyte Hoichi. Whenever the blind Hoichi plays his samisen and sings of Heike clan’s beautifully tragic final battle, the clan is roused back to ‘life’ as ghosts. It’s significant that Hoichi, like Jack, is an artist for art is a kind of ghostly channeling of what once was — most stories are told in past tense, as in ‘once upon a time’. Since what really was-is-and-will-be cannot be known by any individual person, art requires a kind of ‘psychic’ reading of the past, present, and future. But as the creative mind tries to take possession of the world, its ‘ghosts’ take possession of the creative mind; every artist who seeks to control his material is controlled by the ‘spirits’ inherent in it; the box he holds in his hands becomes the box holding him inside, which was the point of the final story in KWAIDAN, “In a Cup of Tea”, where a samurai sees a man ‘trapped’ in the reflection of tea cup, only to find himself trapped on the outside by the man he saw in the tea cup; it’s like the artist traps and plays with characters in the story, tormenting and driving them crazy, but artist can become a prisoner of his own imagination; indeed, the final image of the story is the face of the author trapped inside the tea cup. It’s like the blue/purple box in MULHOLLAND DR. is something that is both possessed and possessing. We see it in the hands of Diane/Betty, but it is also the ‘psychic’ hell within which she is trapped, i.e. inside becomes outside and outside becomes inside. Hoichi is both master and slave of the ghosts. His power of song brings them back to life, but their will to ‘exist’ forces Hoichi to sing of and for them. Jack Torrance is also both master and prisoner of the Overlook. He is more powerful than the ghosts for he is real and alive in the present whereas the ghosts are of the dead and the past. But everything that surrounds Jack’s reality was inherited from the past, and the power of history and its dark secrets seep into him. This is why even modern historians with modern values often fall under the spell of ‘great men’ of the past. Alexander the Great still inspires and awes many people. And once T.E. Lawrence put on Arab garb, it was as if his soul was taken possession by Medieval Arab warrior spirits. White Man’s Burden becomes White Man’s Possession. Or consider the astronaut — played by a Negro — in THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES(the TV series) whose mind is taken over by Martian spirits who’d once ruled the Red Planet; the ‘possessed’ Negro turns against fellow Earthlings. The Negro goes ‘mad’ and becomes the defender of the sacred Martian order against the encroachment of the Earthlings. Since Martians are dead and the remnants/ruins of their civilization cannot physically resist Earthling conquest/settlement, they employ telepathic powers from the spirit world to turn man against man. In a way, Jews use gentile minds the same way. Jews have colonized white minds to identify with and stand up for Jewish power and interests against other whites. White ‘liberals’ and even many white conservatives are like Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire — Christian boys raised under the banner of Islam and turned against the Christian world. What the Ottomans once did, Jews are doing today on a much larger scale. Elites seek to control the masses, but it’s more difficult for the elites to control the minds of people who aren’t like them than then the minds of people who are like them. Jewish elites can easily convince Jews in Israel to fight to for Jewish interests. But it wasn’t easy for elite Jews in America during WWII to convince white Christian Americans to fight and kill other white gentiles for Jewish interests. The conservative German elites sought to use Hitler, the man from the gutter, as he was part of the Germanic family, and then Hitler was able to turn the tables on his patrons and make them serve him since he promised them German glory and power; at least they had that much in common. It was much more difficult for German Jews — no matter how rich or influential — to make most Germans serve Jewish interests. In the USSR, Soviet Jews thought they had a puppet-ally in Stalin who initially seemed to be a colorless bureaucrat willing to work with and follow the lead of more intellectual and better-educated Soviet Jewish leadership. But Stalin too turned on the Jews. He didn’t like to be controlled by an ‘alien people’, and though he was Georgian, he eventually identified more with Russian greatness than with Jewish interests.
And in a way, same happened with Mao. There was a time when Soviets, Western liberals, and Jews wanted to use him as their Asian agent of World Revolution, and indeed, Mao did much to smash old Chinese culture and radically pushed for equality. But in the end, he ended up channeling the old Chinese way and became the new emperor. The title of Bernardo Bertolucci’s film THE LAST EMPEROR is ironic because both Puyi and Mao can be seen as the ‘last emperor’. Mao promised a new order, but in fact, he was many times more an emperor than Puyi ever was. Indeed, Puyi never held any real power; by the time he came of age, the Manchu Empire was finished, and when he was reinstated as the emperor of Manchuria, he was just a puppet of the Japanese military. He was a emperor-in-symbol but puppet-in-reality, whereas Mao was egalitarian-in-symbol but emperor-in-reality.
Jack Torrance isn’t upper class or rich, but he is a white man, and as such, a promising candidate for manipulation by the Wasp ghosts of the Overlook. He is to defend the Overlook from the encroachment of change. White man conquered and took the land by wiping out the Indians. White American Wasps became kings of the world. They once had it all, just like Germans during WWII almost had it all. And it’s difficult for these ghosts to let go of their glorious past of so much freedom, power, and privilege. It’s like Margaret Mitchell and William Faulkner were haunted by the ghosts of the Southern past. Even or especially through its decay, they could feel the power and glory of what once had been. It’s like the young woman in THE GREAT EXPECTATIONS who carries on the spirit of Miss Havisham. Havisham had once been a glorious rich woman but went crazy after being stood up by the groom on her wedding day, since when time stood still in her decaying mansion. There’s something like “Rose for Emily”(Faulkner) in Dickens’s novel. Havisham is filled with hatred for the man who’d dumped and humiliated her — and for that reason tries to possess a young girl’s soul to make her hurt all of malekind — , but the fact that she can’t let go of the hate paradoxically suggests that, on some level, she can’t let go of the love either, and in a subliminal way, it’s as though what she really passed onto the young girl is the passion for love; after all, she too falls in love with a man but is then dumped. It’s like Havisham freezes love into hatred, but, like water as liquid or ice, it’s still made of the same substance.
Aspects of Hitlerianism in THE SHINING are to be found in the parallels between elite wasp ghosts working on a lowly wasp(Jack) and elite German conservatives working on lowly a German-Austrian(Hitler). Jack may have latent ‘racist’ feelings, and they can be drawn out by wasp elites because he is of the same tribe. If race-ism or tribalism is what really governs us in the end — after all, even many communist Germans eventually went over to the Nazis, and Germans who served in the Gestapo readily became East German Stasi men, and later, many communist Jews became ardent Zionists and communist Russians became Russian nationalists — , then what is happening with Jack isn’t only supernatural and evil but natural and normal. He can be easily manipulated by wasp elites because he too is a wasp. And he becomes suspicious of his son whose psychic link is with a ‘nigger’. So, in a way, it’s Jack who is natural and it’s his son who is unnatural. Jack is possessed by natural supernatural instincts whereas Danny, his son, is possessed by unnatural supernatural intuitions. Jack has a psychic link to his own kind whereas Danny links with the spiritual forces of non-whites, even a ‘nigger’. To be sure, Kubrick didn’t go for the kind of goo-goo liberalism — as in GREEN MILE with a mountain-sized Negro who wuvs a wittle white mouse — where blacks are noble redeemers of whites. In one of the funniest scenes, we see Dick Halloran the Negro lying on his bed watching TV. On the walls are massive paintings of bare-breasted women with giant afros. In the traditional liberal film, Negroes were so spiritualized and moralized that they hardly seemed like sexual beings filled with lust. It was as if Negroes are so spiritual-as-opposed-to-sexual that we are to believe that no Negro could ever have raped a white women in the South. It’d be like Negroes have as much sexual interest in white women as warthogs or hippos do; it be like they’s a different species altogether and would no more rape a white woman than might a racoon or moose. (Halloran’s penchant for naked black women is paralleled by Jack’s lust for the naked ‘Aryan’ woman who emerges from the bathtub. So, both Halloran and Jack are lusty men, but the difference is Halloran, being a Negro, is either resistant to or less favored by the ‘evil’ white ghosts of the Overlook hotel.) Such was the myth peddled by movies like TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD(directed by Robert Mulligan) and SGT. RUTLEDGE(directed by John Ford); in Ford’s film, the wounded Woody Strode takes off his shirt and flexes his musculature, but the ONLY thing the white woman notices is the wound, and it seems like he don’t have no interest in no white woman either, sheeeeeet. Luis Bunuel was more perversely playful on race and sex. Though his film THE YOUNG ONE has a Negro who was falsely accused of rape by a white woman, in the scene where he’s with a half-naked young white girl, we can sense his jigger-jiverish horniness. In a way, white American liberalism was just as sexually repressive as white conservatism. If white conservatism said white women should be sexually modest so as not to draw the attention of wild and crazy Negroes, white liberalism pretended that blacks are so filled with spirituality and morality that they almost never have sex on their minds, and even if they do, it was desire for other blacks and never for whites. Though white liberalism insisted that blacks are just as human as whites, at least on matters of sexuality it was as if black men couldn’t really feel anything for white women since the two races were like different species that can’t possibly feel attracted to one another. The pro-interracist movie GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER(by the dreary Stanley Kramer) would have us believe that the white woman and the Negro fell in platonic love with another and all they wanna do is look at butterfly collections together than act like a gorilla and a mudshark in bed. Of course, Jews knew otherwise and were only fooling white Americans with bullshit. With MLK and TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD, white Americans were fed the lie that blacks love peace but not white pussy. (It’s ironic that feminists who poo-poohed every white woman’s accusation of rape against black men — especially in the South — have been working overtime to convince every college coed that every white male on campus is a potential rapist and that even consensual sex could actually be rape. And even though almost every case of the all too common black-on-white rape is suppressed by the Jewish-controlled media, bogus accusations of rape against white males — as in the Duke Lacrosse case — are hysterically hyped as something that happens all the time. It’s to be expected from the Jewish-controlled media. Americans are so brainwashed that they favor fiction that confirm the official fairytale than the facts that demonstrate the ugly reality. How did white people become so dumb?
But then, why should any of this be surprising? Jews bitch and whine about the ‘witch hunt’ and blacklisting during the ‘McCarthy era’ but have no qualms about destroying the careers of anyone they accuse of ‘racism’, ‘homophobia’, and ‘antisemitism’. With Jews, principles have always been secondary to power. Jews begin with the premise of power and then employ whatever principles that happen to be useful depending on the situation. In contrast, too many Wasps have come to accept principles as the bedrock of their existence, and so, even when the principles are bad for whites, Wasps stick to them in their naivete and stupidity about the true way of history. But then, even that isn’t totally true. If liberal wasps were truly principled, they call out Zionist oppression of Palestinians, black violence against poor whites, globalist elite privilege and hypocrisy, political correctness and speech controls. If the principles of liberalism are about liberty and standing up for the underdog, why are white liberals silent about so many cases of abuse by the powerful, especially the Jews? It’s because, all said and done, white liberalism is more about propaganda than principles. As white liberals are incapable or unwilling to think for themselves and expose the logical hypocrisies of their own behavior, what they are really motivated by is the propaganda fed to them by Jews. So, it doesn’t register on the minds of white liberals that Zionists are oppressing Palestinians or that Jewish-and-gay elites are fleecing us. Principles count less than propaganda crammed in their heads. White liberal is a moron who gets more fired up about ‘gay marriage’, an absurdity that he or she supports only because the media made homos out to be rainbow-colored neo-saints. History isn’t primarily the story of goodness but the story of power. Jews, through their 1000s of yrs of experience of survival/competition, and the new Left, via their interpretation of Nietzsche via the likes of Foucault, understand this. And most non-white groups — as well as some whites outside Northern Europe — , having never developed a sense of the universal good, instinctively choose power over principles. Also, Jews, non-whites, and some southern/eastern Europeans also favor passion over reason. Notice that even rationalist liberal Jews are fierce and aggressive in their style while even the most ‘racist’ conservative white wasps tend to be dry and ‘nice’. Jared Taylor or Pat Robertson, white conservatives lack fire in their belly and seem to have cold feet when it comes to the culture war. General rule for all peoples is, “favor principles over power among your own kind and favor power over principles when dealing with other kinds.”)
The pact between the conservative German elites and Hitler was sort of like the dynamic between wasp elite ghosts of the Overlook and Jack. The German elites and Hitler were, at once, different and the same. German elites were heirs of privilege and wealth, but their power was slipping after WWI, especially with the rise of modernism, Jewish power, and democracy. The German elites were anxious and angry but didn’t know how to unite and fight. They’d been so used to inheriting wealth and privilege and taking them for granted that they didn’t know how to roll up their sleeves and fight down-and-dirty to regain the power. Not that they were adverse to the use of naked violence, but in the past — especially prior to WWI — , they’d used violence from the top to control those below them; they always relied on institutional power being on their side. But after WWI, the old order was in disarray and retreat. And even German industrialists began to identify with the declining aristocrats since German economy was besieged and ransacked by the post-war peace treaty. In the new order, only Jew financiers connected to fellow Jews around the world seemed to be raking in fabulous riches. The old German elites were slipping, and they didn’t know what to do. They’d known how to use violence from above in their perched positions of privilege, but they didn’t know how to combat the changes all around them. They still had considerable power and wealth, but they were growing weaker day by day, year after year. The Marxist view of Nazism was that it was nothing but a tool of the Old Order, reactionaries comprising the remnants of the aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie. According to Marxism, Hitler was not a genuine leader or mover of history but merely as a puppet propped up by big capitalists and their aristocratic allies in order to stem the revolution. In other words, German elites picked, groomed, trained, and manipulated Hitler to serve their class interests of economic exploitation, class oppression, and racial-imperialism. Marxism posits that individuals do not change or move history. Rather, there are certain dynamics — mostly of economic and class nature — that push history forward, and so, even the so-called ‘great men’ are really puppet-agents of macro-historical forces than the real movers-and-shakers. Since Hitler came to power with the support and blessing of the conservative German elites, he must have been their puppet and agent(no less than Obama is of the Jewtocratic elites of the new global order) — even if he thought of himself as the Fuhrer of the nation. This isn’t to say Kubrick was a Marxist. Rather, he wasn’t so much interested in individuals as in archetypes whose actions and ‘choices’ conveyed the hidden dynamics that powered mankind and its world socially, militarily, psychologically, and etc. To be sure, there is the rare individual of genius in Kubrick’s films who UNDERSTAND the processes at work, but his ‘wisdom’ or ‘genius’ is less about possession of free will(to think and act individually) than about the knowledge that free will or freedom outside the machinations of power is an illusion — at least for most people, even the powerful. (The interesting thing about Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance is the tension between individuality and what might be called ‘archetypality’. No actor has been as eccentric and individualistic as Nicholson. You can always pick him out from the crowd — as in the final image of THE SHINING with Torrance among party goers in the 1920s. Jack Nicholson has always been, first and foremost, Jack Nicholson. He rarely disappeared into a role, and it was disastrous when he tried just that in PRIZZI’S HONOR, otherwise a good movie. Consider HOFFA where Nicholson plays the leader of the working men of America; though the role is archetypal, Nicholson as Hoffa astounds with his powerful personality. In films like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and BARRY LYNDON, the leading characters were archetypes without much in the way of individuality. Keir Dullea was the face of an All-American wasp astronaut who then becomes the cosmic figure of the Star Child; he goes from archetype to archetype. In contrast, in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and THE SHINING, the lead characters are so forceful as individuals that they resist the archetypality of the dramatic situation. Alex is not just any street thug or even THE street thug; he’s a special kind of street thug, indeed one of a kind, who drinks spiked milk to Beethoven’s Ninth and rapes a woman to “Singing in the Rain”. Later, politicians and scientists try to turn him into the archetype of socio-chemically-corrected-man, but that doesn’t work out either. In a similar way, Jack Torrance is both an archetype and an anti-archetype(due to the sheer force of his individuality). He represents the artist with a creative block but he’s not just any or even The artist with a creative block. He exemplifies not so much the general principle of will-to-power as his own special deviance of will-to-power. And even though the ghosts of the Overlook work on him, it’s not so easy because he’s such a force of nature, rebellious against not only his domestic life but to everything. So, he has to be worked gradually and subtly by the ghosts. Because of the force of Jack’s individuality, it’s possible to interpret the ending as the ghosts having failed after all; perhaps, Jack wasn’t totally possessed by the ghosts. Jack probably could have killed Wendy and Danny had he planned the murder with more caution, but he got all theatrical about it, making lots of noise like the big bad wolf. Instead of being slyly and calculatingly ‘English’ — like Delbert Grady who ‘corrected’ his wife and kids — , Jack is loudly and brazenly American. Indeed, at one time, he tells Wendy to “get the fuc* out of here” and later tells her that he’s gonna “bash her brains in”. His individuality is too powerful, so he doesn’t go about methodically to carry out the murders. His very theatricality and out-of-control-ness inadvertently help Wendy and Danny to save themselves. Unlike Grady, Jack fails in his sacrificial ritual of ‘correcting’ his wife and child to the ghosts of the Overlook — similarly, Hitler failed despite his deviousness and cunning because, in the end, he was too brash and reckless, too theatrical; he should have played it more like Stalin. Grady ‘corrected’ his wife and children and then killed himself, but Jack fails to kill Wendy & Danny and isn’t killed by ritual suicide but by the elements. Thus, maybe, in his own special way, he too triumphs over the ghosts. Ghosts drive him to murder, but there remains something so brashly individualistic about him that he fails in the ritual act of murder-and-suicide. In a way, he breaks out of the cycle of the Overlook hotel. His archetypal soul is supposed to return forever to the Overlook to kill the wife and kid and then to commit suicide, but maybe the cycle has been broken. The wife and kid make the escape, and Torrance dies lost in his own maze.) The ‘wisest’ guy in THE KILLING is the hairy Russian wrestler who hangs around a chess club. He is a thug for hire, but he knows the game and how it’s played. He has no illusions. The ‘evil’ general in PATHS OF GLORY is loathsome, but on some level, we can’t help admiring his keen understanding of the game of power. He’s without scruples, but he understands ‘freedom’ as being about making the best of worst possible choices than being independent of those choices. We like to think of freedom as doing our own thing according to our convictions of what is right or wrong, but even in a so-called democracy such as the US, everyone finds that he or she is stuck in a maze and can only act within limited choices of what is permissible — by nature, money, connections, law, etc. Though we have the freedom to speak truth to Jewish power, individuals who take such a route will only discover that it’s dangerous to do so — as Rick Sanchez and Helen Thomas found out. Jewish power acts just like the ‘evil’ general in PATHS OF GLORY. It makes us believe that we do have free choice, but the choices have really been made for us, and we can only choose from what is availed to us — but we are fooled into thinking we’ve made our own choices. Politically, we can only choose between Republicans and Democrats, and politicians of both parties must choose between sucking up to liberal global Jewish supremacism and sucking up to neocon global Jewish supremacism. Jews used brilliance, cunning, chutzpah, conspiratorial network, and etc. to gain near-total power in the US, and we are like the accused soldiers in PATHS OF GLORY. Our fates have been decided beforehand, and ‘freedom’ is an illusion. This isn’t to say we are total prisoners. There is a chance to break out of the prison of Jewish power, but it will take a great deal of effort, unity, money, talent, and sacrifice, and most of us want it easy.
It’d be wrong to assume that Jewish dominance will be permanent — no power ever is — , but at all times and places, people generally only act within the constrictions of existing power. As with the character in Robert Bresson’s A MAN ESCAPED, our freedoms exist within a prison. Break out of one cell, and we found ourselves in a larger cell and then a larger cell. Dr. Strangelove is ‘wise’ because he understands the true nature of power, and how it’s grounded in the psycho-biology of man. He’s not fooled by ideologies, principles, official statements, and/or goodwill. Man is a hairless ape with big brains, the visions and dreams of which are fueled by biological passions and obsessions, and all people are ‘obsessed’ since being alive is a kind of obsession. Will-to-power is an obsession. So are sexual lust and greed. All people are obsessive-compulsive in some ways, but certain forms of these compulsions have been accepted and institutionalized as normal and healthy. So, if someone washes his or her hand too often, he or she is said to suffer from compulsive-obsessive disorder. But if a James Bond-like figure or a rapper wants to hump a lot of ho’s, that is said to be cool. Or, if a Jew wants to make billions, that is said to be an ambition and not a compulsion. If someone wants to be president — and is groomed and favored by the powers that be — , he or she is said to be committed and caring, though power-and-fame-lust is a form of egotistical obsessive-compulsion. That men are generally more creative than women can be glimpsed from the fact that most mass murderers are men. By ‘mass murder’, I mean random killers in society. A woman can just as easily get a gun and shoot up an entire school. So, why is that most people who go on random mass murder sprees are males? Consider Columbine, V-Tech, Northern Illinois, Newtown, and etc. And consider killers like John Hinckley and David Chapman. While there have been murderous female psychopaths, men outnumber women by a huge margin. Though it sounds perverse to say so, these horrible acts are proof that men are more aggressively passionate creatures than women are. Most women may be the intellectual equal of men, but men tend to be more driven and passionate about their agendas or desires. So, men are more likely to go ‘nuts’. Those who act nuts in a bad way end up like Adam Lanza or Jack Torrance. But those who can control their ‘madness’ can become like Albert Einstein, Vincent Van Gogh, Sam Peckinpah(when he was sober), or Stanley Kubrick. (Jack Nicholson seems to have been made up to look like Kubrick, especially with the head and hair. In a way, he could have been to Kubrick what Warren Oates was to Peckinpah in BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA. A case of an artist examining his own demons.) Dr. Strangelove seems utterly crazy in some ways. He seems to be possessed by Nazi ghosts like Jack Torrance is possessed by elite wasp ghosts. But the difference is that Dr. Strangelove understands the nature of the ghost within him. If Jack is taken over by the ghosts, Strangelove is merely hiding the Nazi ‘ghosts’ within his soul. He suppresses them, but their force swarms all around him. Strangelove is, however, more than a mere Nazi. A mere Nazi would be some thick-skulled German who worshiped Hitler as a god. Dr. Strangelove admires Hitler for his own twisted philosophical reasons. Hitler had no illusions about the nature of power. He saw the game of power as the struggle among races, a matter of biology and territoriality. Paradoxically, Hitler lost not because he was wrong but because he was right. He was wrong in his estimation of Soviet and Jewish power, but he was right that the winners would be decided by biology, territoriality, resources, and sheer power. The Allies won not because they were morally better — though indeed they were — but because Russia was so vast and because Stalin had ruthlessly built up industry since the mid 1920s. Japan had no chance against China in the long run because China was too big and too populous. And when Japan engaged the US, Americans with their bigger population, greater talent, and more resources were bound to trounce Japan. Allies won due to the brute facts of history. If Nazi Germany had been the size of Russia and if Russia had been the size of Germany, the Nazis would have won. If democracy wins against tyranny, why was France defeated so handily by Nazi Germans? And why was UK on the ropes before Hitler took the war to the USSR and then engaged the US? Russians had the advantage of land, population, and industry over Germany. And super-smart Jews in America were out-thinking German scientists and inventors. Given that WWII was mainly about Germany vs USSR, it wasn’t exactly a war between tyranny and freedom since both nations were tyrannies. So, in the end, it was power than principles that tipped the balance toward the Allies. Of course, one could say that since democratic West won over communist Russia, principles do matter. But principles enabled democratic West to win over communism because capitalism did more to unleash the raw power of ‘greed’, ambition, wealth, egotism, and talent rooted in biology — if US were mostly black, no amount of capitalism and democracy could turn into a great nation; it’d be like one giant Detroit; if the Manhattan Project had been dominated by Mexicans, there would have been no Bomb. Why did Jews become so powerful in the US. Due to the biology of higher intelligence. If democratic freedom makes everyone equally free and powerful, all groups should be equally free and powerful in the US. But in fact, Jews are far more free and powerful than non-Jews. So, it wasn’t democratic principles for democratic principles’ sake that led to the rise of America. After all, democracies have failed in Haiti, black Africa, and in the Middle East. Democracy is only as good as the power it unleashes, and the great thing about America was it had a lot of talented Anglo-Americans and other European settlers who could thrive in a world of freedom. And what made them thrive? The unleashing of their primal instincts for power, wealth, territory, and etc. The difference between US and Nazi Germany was that the former allowed many Hitlers than just one. In Nazi Germany, there was one Fuhrer and everyone had to worship him. In America, many highly intelligent people with ruthless ambition can become a fuhrer or great man in his own right. Every ‘captain of industry’ was a little Hitler. Powerful Jews are little Hitlers. But to get there, one has to be driven, lustful, aggressive, and ruthless. Nice guys don’t win. Nice guys can do well by serving the ‘as*holes’, but it’s the ‘as*holes’ who grab the prize and take control. And this is what the character of Dr. Strangelove understands. He’s too smart to ever have swallowed Hitlerism whole hog. Rather, he appreciates Hitler as a man with X-ray eyes on the nature of history. It’s the will-to-power and ability-to-out-compete that win the game of dominance. It wasn’t this cold assessment of power that led to Hitler’s demise. It was his foolish and even rosy illusion of ‘Aryan superiority’. If Hitler had truly been honest about power, he would have acknowledged the genius and brilliance of Jews. He should have realized that Stalin was no slouch and that Soviet Union was no pushover nation. Had he kept the peace with the USSR, Hitler, along with Stalin, would have been the greatest man of the 20th century. Hitler was right about the nature of power but wrong in his assessment of power among the various players.
Dr. Strangelove is the most brilliant and intellectual character in the film but also the most simple and base in his assessment of human nature. He understands that the human mind, no matter how lofty and highfalutin, and the human heart, no matter how well-intentioned and good-willed, are connected to the stomach and genitals. Humans are fuc*ing and killing organic machines with minds. Minds developed to better facilitate the domination of one species, race, or group via improved fuc*ing and killing. In his sexualism, Strangelove is like a darker Freud. He is like a Freudian Himmler-Goebbels. He is like the David Cronenberg, the intellectual Jewish director who obsesses about human organs and secretions. Thus, ‘freedom’ is, at best, a useful illusion that lends meaning to our lives. But in reality, what we call ‘freedom’ is choosing from the limited(even fixed) options of biology, economics, politics, and randomness. It’s like a game of poker. Each player is free to play his own game, but he’s trapped within the rules of Poker. Same with chess. Players are free to make their choices and the permutations of the game are almost infinite, but the point is to win, which narrows one’s choices to a handful of moves in accordance to the moves of the other player. It’s ‘freedom’ within a fixed maze.
This is why Kubrick told Frederic Raphael that “Hitler was right about just about everything.” This isn’t to say Kubrick, a Jew, liked Hitler or thought little of the Holocaust or WWII or any of that stuff. If anything, he was obsessed about the Holocaust — how could any Jew not be — and sensitive about ‘antisemitic’ slights, real or imagined. What he meant was that Hitler was right about the brute competition of power. And Hitler understood the true nature of the Jew. Kubrick the Jew obviously wanted the Jews to win — though a part of him found Jews loathsome, but then he had some of this loathsomeness himself and even boasted about it(as when Spielberg asked Kubrick why Kubrick won’t share movie-making secrets with Spielberg when Spielberg shared all his secrets with Kubrick, and Kubrick answered, like a typical ‘dirty Jew’, “that’s because you’re you and I am me” or something like that). Kubrick hated Hitler, but he did have to half-kiddingly admit — at least to a fellow Jew — that Hitler had correctly read the minds of Jews. And when we look at what Jews have done to America, we would have to agree that at least 50% of what Hitler wrote about Jews in MEIN KAMPF was correct. It’s like Michael Corleone would never admit what he’s up to in public or to strangers — even to his wife — , but his inner circle understands the true nature of the game. It is about power, and they are conspiring to gain foothold in American elite power. In THE GODFATHER PART II, Michael denies all charges before the Senate committee, but we know what really happens on the inside. (Also, there’s an understanding between Pentangeli and his brother — the Sicilian Thing — that makes no sense to outsiders. Even Kaye doesn’t understand why Pentangeli suddenly changed his mind upon seeing his brother. Similarly, there are secret codes and unspoken rules among Jews that most gentiles don’t understand. This is why they don’t really get why Jews act the way they do. There is a Jewish Thing that’s been going around longer than the Sicilian Thing, and we must end it or it will end us.) Michael knows and discusses the true nature of the game with Tom Hagen, Al Neri, and Rocco. In public, Michael and Senator Geary and chummy and friendly. But behind closed doors, they know what it’s all about. Geary is for wasp power and Michael is for Corleone power. Michael says at one point that his father taught him to think as his enemies think, and this is what Hitler did with the Jews. Though Hitler was a man lacking in sympathy for anything outside the Germanic/‘Aryan’, he could be powerfully empathetic — if ‘empathy’ means the ability to think how others are thinking and feeling. And Hitler’s understanding of Jewishness and Jewish power couldn’t have been possible without his artistic-creative power to read the minds of Jews. And it was this ability that made him read — correctly — the mind of Stalin, which is why Stalin got fooled so bad when Germany suddenly attacked the USSR — just like the duped or conned characters in David Mamet’s plays. But in the end, Hitler couldn’t read his own mind that just went off the rockers as he turned into a degenerate gambler of history.
Like the Corleones, Jews are loathe to admit that they’re a bunch of power-mad Jewsters who are crazy for power, wealth, and influence. But in the security of their own dens, they know the nature of the game and discuss what they must do to defeat and own the goyim. It’s like blacks will speak frankly about the nature of what they’re up to, but the rule is “a nigger shouldn’t spill the beans on another nigger.” It’s like ‘ape shall not kill ape’ in BATTLE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Kubrick revealed some of his hidden feelings to Frederic Raphael, a fellow Jew who was hired to write EYES WIDE SHUT. One wonders why Raphael didn’t keep his MOUTH CLOSED SHUT. Raphael insists that Kubrick was just being outrageous, i.e. playing the role of crazy Jew driving another Jew crazy. Thus, Raphael didn’t so much spill the beans on a fellow Jew as used the incident to demonstrate that Jews are more hostile toward other Jews than to gentiles. In other words, we are to feel doubly sorry for Jews, i.e. Jews have been victimized not only by anti-Semites but by fellow Jews. According to Raphael, it’s false that Jews work together against goyim. Instead, Jews are too busy tearing each other apart to ever unite against goyim. But, this is just a lot of Jewey hooey. While it’s true that Jews are highly competitive and combative against one another, they always unite against the non-Jewish enemy. Just ask the Palestinians. Even a capitalist Jew, communist Jew, religious Jew, atheist Jew, funny Jew, morbid Jew, nice Jew, nasty Jew, and all other kinds of Jews will unite against the ‘common enemy’. Just look at Jews in Israel, UK, France, US, Brazil, Russia, and etc. all circling the wagons against the goyim. It’s white gentiles who’ve always been divided, and this has been encouraged by Jews who have risen by playing the game of ‘divide and rule’. It’s the same with blacks. They be cussin’ each other out and be yelling ‘nigger’ all the time, but they all be comin’ together to kick whitey’s ass and vote for Obama. Raphael is just another dishonest Jew, just like Joseph Epstein who, in his book SNOBBERY, doesn’t mention Jewish power at all in his thoughts on the decline of Wasps. (To be sure, if it hadn’t been for WWII and the Holocaust, there may be genuine divisions among Jews which we might have been able to exploit. Hitler was a real shitter, an unwitting architect of doom for the white race.) You always gotta be watching the Jews for their devious behavior. Jews act like they’re rational, kind, understanding, and etc. but they’re really a pushy bunch who use hidden threats to make us comply with their requests that are really demands. As Burt Lancaster’s characters says to John Tanner(Rutger Hauer) in THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND, “... you never really had a choice.” Jews make us an offer we can’t refuse. It’s like Vito’s Power in THE GODFATHER II. Remember how the young Vito(Robert De Niro) goes to a landlord and nicely asks him let a woman keep her apartment and her dog. The landlord insults Vito, but Vito continues to talk nice and tells the landlord to ask around the neighborhood about who he is. Later, we see the landlord at Vito’s store profusely thanking Vito for helping see the light. He promises not only to let the woman and her dog stay but to lower the rent. Vito didn’t use direct threat, but he let the landlord know who has the real power in the neighborhood. If the landlord won’t listen to ‘reason’, then he’ll be made to listen to something else. It’s like if Randall McMurphy won’t take the medicine orally in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, it will be administered in some other way. Vito maintains the facade that the landlord changed his mind out of his own free will and goodness of his heart, but the real factor was Vito’s power and the hidden threat. The landlord never had a choice. He knew if he didn’t comply to ‘niceness’, he would be targeted with nastiness. Jews play the same game. They ‘nicely’ ask us to feel sorry for them, care about them, agree with them, and go along with them. But if we don’t and challenge them instead, they use all their nasty power to destroy us worse than Joe McCarthy destroyed communist sympathizers. Gays learned the same art of power from the Jews, of course with full Jewish backing and blessing. So, gays will go around and ‘nicely’ plead for sympathy, but if you don’t give it to them, they’ll tell their Jewish allies in the media and courts to destroy the ‘odious’, ‘noxious’, and ‘divisive’ ‘homophobes’. Businesses will be targeted, careers will be ruined, individuals will be shunned and tarred and feathered. And since Jews got the means to destroy anyone, even anti-gay-agenda folks pee in their pants or just sigh and shrug their shoulders and mutter, “‘gay marriage’ is gonna happen, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” It’s the Stockholm Syndrome. People have pride and don’t wanna feel like slaves. So, they pretend that they are not held hostage but willingly volunteering to side with their captors. White gentiles have become the ‘house niggers’ of Jews and gays.
Kubrick hated Hitler but had to admit Hitler understood Jews better than most people do. And Hitler understood power, which is why he went so far so fast. But then, in his hubris, he lost himself in the maze and was destroyed by his nemesis. I suspect part of Kubrick’s interest in Napoleon had something to do with his hidden fascination with Hitler. There were striking parallels between Napoleon and Hitler: how each was a nobody who became the Man of Destiny of his age; how they were outsiders — Corsican and Austrian — who explored and exploited the crisis of the times to rise above the rest and gain control of the reins of history; how their keen understanding of power led to great power, but then, how their immense power drove them mad and to their downfall in Russia. Though Kubrick never got to make the film about Napoleon, we can find aspects of Napoleonism — and by extension Hitlerism — in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, BARRY LYNDON, and THE SHINING. In a way, THE SHINING is like a horror sci-fi version of the Napoleon tale as a minimalist play. Jack, like Napoleon, is a nobody who becomes obsessed with power and control. And if Napoleon was defeated in the snows of Russia, Jack loses himself in the snowy maze adjacent to the Overlook Hotel. He freezes to death like so many French soldiers froze to death in the Russian Winter. The French came to conquer but were conquered by the very thing they came to conquer.
It wasn’t only Marxist theory that said the individual is essentially powerless in the big picture of history. Leo Tolstoy’s final segment of WAR AND PEACE lays out a theory that says Napoleon didn’t so much lead history as was led by it. In his typically mystical Russian view of mankind and history, Tolstoy speaks of some spiritual-historical momentum that pushes events this way or that. ‘Great men’ surf the waves of events and foolishly think they are leading the waves when the waves are lifting them. While there’s some degree of truth to every theory or perspective, it would of course be silly to believe that men like Napoleon or Hitler were mere agents of impersonal historical forces. As John Lukacs said, ‘No Hitler, No WWII’ Indeed, suppose Beethoven’s mother had died before giving birth. Would German history simply have produced another Beethoven as the result of some historical logic? Unlikely. Some people are indeed men of destiny with the unique power and vision to change the whole trajectory of history. It’s like a giant asteroid or comet that hits Earth and fundamentally alters the story of life.
Given the nature of humanity and human nature, the tendencies of certain groups and their abilities, and other macro-factors, one can surely point to certain general historical developments and trends —
as Jared Diamond did in GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL. After all, the Jewish rise to power isn’t all that surprising. Given high Jewish intelligence, Jewish chutzpah, the naturally cunning and devious personalities of Jews, the cultural contempt for goyim held by most Jews, Jewish tribalism, and etc., Jews were bound to gain dominance in America, especially since the prior(and other) elite, the Wasps, was becoming so spineless and bland and also increasingly principled and self-loathing(as the result of lofty values that bared the moral hypocrisies of wasp power). Now, Jewish individuals could have chosen not to act as they did, but given their general tendencies, the chances were that a lot of Jews would indeed act Jewishy. Not because each Jew freely and individually chose to be Jewishy but because acting Jewishy was in their Jewish nature. It’s like every black guy has the individual freedom to not act like a crazy and disgusting jigger-jiver, but many Negroes do so because it’s in their ‘niggerish’ nature. Mike Tyson, as a free individual, could have chosen to be a nice lad helping old ladies cross the street. But given the genes he received from his parents and given the crime-ridden community he grew up, there was great likelihood of acting like a thug and monster. History is never deterministic, but there are general tendencies that favor certain outcomes over others. If there were two islands, one filled with Germans and one filled with blacks, Germans have the freedom to act like crazy jigger-jivers and ruin everything, and blacks have the freedom to act sober and responsible and build a stable community. But given the nature of Germans and blacks, the chances are Germans will be more likely to build a stable community while blacks will be more likely to act like jungle savages. It’s not a certainty — as there’s plenty of white trash to prove otherwise — , but whites tend to be more civilizational than blacks, the most anti-civilizational people on the planet if not the universe.
How much individual freedom do we really have? Are people even ‘individuals’? Western civilization and especially American society are said to be pro-individualist — at least in relation to Middle East, Asia, and Africa — , but what is the ‘individual’ really? Most Americans see themselves as individuals making free consumer choices and moral decisions based on individual needs and conscience, but do most people really control their own hearts and minds? Why was it that most white Americans tended to be indifferent to the problems of black America up to the early 1950s but then began to change dramatically in the 1960s to the point where, since the 1980s, MLK has been worshiped as a godman more sacred than God and Jesus? Did all those white Americans suddenly have a change of mind or heart as free individuals? Or were their minds and hearts changed en masse by the real powers-that-be? And how did a nation that laughed at the notion of ‘gay marriage’ not long ago now thinks it is the great moral issue of our time? What made so many people change so fast? How did so many free individuals come to the same conclusion at the same time? And this question is especially pertinent to the younger generation. Young minds are like blank slates — not in terms of boosting IQ but filling up with propaganda. Both the advantage and disadvantage of being old is being stubbornly resistant to new fashions and trends. A lot of old people are unthinkingly suspicious of new ideas and fashions, and such attitude can blind them to the value of innovation. But much of what is ‘new’ is stupid, trashy, or faddish; therefore, the saving grace of being old is not falling for the hype. Young people are much more likely to fall for hype, and even if some resist the mainstream hype, they easily fall for the counter-hype(which could be just another form of mainstream-ism; think of ‘alternative rock’ pushed by mega-record companies). This is why so many smart young people fall for ‘radical’ or ‘alternative’ hype. Many of them were nothing special in highschool — they were not the ‘popular kids’ — and so, they jump on the bandwagon of ‘intellectualism’, ‘radicalism’, and/or ‘subversion-ism’ to feel special. Ironically, 99% of such kids don’t seek their own answers but merely become teachers’ pets of college professors who themselves hadn’t been ‘popular kids’ in highschool.
In a way, college politics has parallels with Jewish politics. Both are about the School of Resentment. Kids who were not ‘popular’ in highschool seek to gain importance and influence in academia. They wanna feel the power by running college newspapers, organizing ‘radical’ groups, and/or taking courses taught by ‘radical’ professors whom they slavishly worship. Similarly, Jewish politics has been driven by personal resentment concerning the better-looking and stronger ‘Aryan’ goyim — ‘Aryan’ in this case meaning any big, strong, handsome, or pretty white gentile of European origin. If ‘Aryans’ were smarter too, Jews might have made peace with white gentile domination, but Jews realized that they were smarter and came to resent being ruled by pretty-but-dumb Ken-and-Barbie-doll folks. But, even Jewish power doesn’t satisfy Jews. They cannot let go of their resentment because Jewish power had to be striven for. It didn’t come easily. A handsome guy or pretty girl wins instant recognition and love. A strong guy wins instant respect and awe. In the long run, such ‘popular’ people may not go so far in life — in relation to the nerds and geeks — , but they are the kings and queens of highschool, and highschool matters because it leaves lifelong impressions and scars; high school yrs are when children turn into adults. Look through any series of yearbooks and the transformation from freshman year to senior year is almost incredible. Entering freshmen class still looks like 8th graders or even younger. But by senior year, boys have grown into near full-fledged men with broad shoulders and girls have become full-fledged women with full breasts and hips. The psychological changes are no less dramatic and crucial. So, even though a lot of people act as though high school was no big deal, it shapes them for the rest of their lives. Since most Jews are neither great athletes or lookers, they go through high school with greater resentment. If Jews weren’t so smart and neurotic, it wouldn’t matter so much. A short and stubby Mexican-American with mediocre IQ could live with the fact that he’s nothing special. But a neurotic Jew kid wants power and respect and feels/knows he’s smarter than the studlier goyim. And Jewish girls feel resentment toward prettier goy girls — which is why Stephanie Grace of Harvard was ratted on by a ugly Jewish hag who was pissed that the blonde goyess ‘stole’ the guy she liked.
In the end, Jews win because brains beat brawn and beauty in the modern world. But by the time Jews finally become kings of the castle, they’ve accumulated lots of resentment in their hearts. So, even with all that power and influence, Jews still act like they are the angry underdogs fighting against the overdogs. This is why Steven Spielberg, despite his bogus Norman Rockwellisms, is an angry and venomous Jew. This is why Aaron Sorkin projected his Jewish neurosis onto SOCIAL NETWORK. My guess is that younger Jews feel less of this neurosis since they grew up in an America that is ever so friendly toward Jews. Also, most Jews go to highschools in affluent liberal communities with lots of Jews and people who suck up to Jews. Today, blonde ‘Aryan’ boys and girls in top schools roll over before the Jews. Jews are considered so cool that even a tall blonde ‘Aryan’ boy will consider it a great honor to take an ugly Jewess to the prom. And a blonde ‘Aryan’ girl will see sucking a Jewish cock as the greatest honor. ‘Aryan’ boys and girls today are running dogs of Jews, and even diehard conservatives mostly suck up to Jews. Listen to all those white Christians calling up Michael Savage and Mark Levin and singing hosannas to Jews and Israel — though most Jews hate white people, and even neocon Jews are only using whites for Jewish interests. (But this profuse outpouring of love and sympathy for Jews hasn’t made the Jews any better. Jews now grow up with so many people kissing their asses that Jews have a princeling mentality. They’re so used to goyim kissing Jewish ass and sucking Jewish cock that if any goy refuses, the Jew feels like he’s been terribly wronged. In the past, Jews were angry about not being treated as equals. Today, Jews get angry about some people not treating them as princes and kings. In a way, the Obama cult is what it is because Jews have projected their own big fat ego onto the mulatto boy. Jews would have us worship Obama, but then Obama is the product of Jewish machination. Jews have wit and personality, but they don’t have coolness and charisma of Negroes. So, by investing mulatto boy with the Jewish agenda and by having us goyim worship Obama as the ‘second coming’, Jews get to play, via the Magic Negro, the messiah to us all.) But things were different in the past. This is why the old Jew and young Jew don’t see eye to eye in Woody Allen’s ANYTHING GOES. And though older Jews are happy to live in an America that is so Jew-friendly — indeed it is downright Jew-slavish — , they worry that Jews may lose their authentic identity and soul if they were to be fully accepted and embraced by the gentile community. Though Jews didn’t enjoy persecution or discrimination, such pressures had bound the Jewish community together and forged its narrative, identity, and agenda for centuries if not millennia. So, what would it mean to be Jewish if Jews were loved and embraced by gentiles? Would Jews be swallowed up by the gentile community? Would it melt like butter and vanish in the warm pan of goy love and affection? There’s also the problem of intermarriage? Since Jews are merging more and more into the larger gentile community, Jews believe that the only way to ‘keep it real’ is to change the whole of gentile society to be more Jewishy. Since Jewish identity has been premised on the notion of being outcasts or outsiders, Jews have pushed an agenda whereby the views and values of gentile society has become overturned and reversed. If Jews were to merge with gentile society still defined by gentile values and perceptions, Jews will have lost their historical identity and been absorbed into the world of their former enemies. But if the world of the goyim is changed by Jews, then Jews will be merging into a world of their own creation. So, if US were to be made into a nation that worships gays, Jews could join it with pride in knowing that THEY created this New Jew America. It’d be as if Jews created a new model of America into which all gentiles assimilated than as if Jews assimilated an American society established by gentiles. It is the Jewish ego at work.
Though younger Jews grew up with less resentment than older Jews, they also grew up with more confidence and moral supremacism. With the Holocaust having become the national religions in EU and the US, each Jew born since the late 60s has come to see himself or herself as the holy messiah redeemer of the world. And what with the media endlessly praising Jews such as Einstein, Freud, Marx, and others as the greatest thinkers of all time, young Jews have come to see themselves as the best of the best. So, it would be wrong to think that young Jews who grew up with less resentment are less cocky, less arrogant, less self-righteous, less egotistical. Take the tone of Joel Stein’s “How Jewish Is Hollywood?” Unlike older Jews, Stein is proud and arrogant than defensive and devious, but he’s no less filled with chutzpah and aggressiveness than were Jews of the past. Or take Sarah Silverman who grew up as a privileged and pampered Jewish princess, the cunning cunt. All that easy living and favoritism has done nothing to tone down the nastiness of her pouting Jewish lips. It’s in the nature of the Jew to be nasty, hostile, and vile. Like Arabs, they have aggressive Semitic genes but with more brains and talent. Howard Stern is the way he is because of his personality, and most of personality is determined by genetics. Dan Quayle raised by Jews would still be a dumb bland wasp wimp, and Alan Dershowitz raised by wasps would still be a nasty and aggressive Jewster.
How free are individuals, and what is the true nature of human nature? It’s often been observed that Kubrick’s characters lack individualities. They are either types or caricatures. The astronauts of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY were almost archetypal ideals of what NASA personnel should be. They seemed plausible enough but without individual eccentricities or quirks. They were consummate professionals doing their jobs well, nothing more and nothing less. And maybe this is a quality that Kubrick found interesting about Wasps and Germans. Northern Europeans tended to be more self-controlled, more balanced, and more pragmatic in their approach to problems. They were different from feisty and colorful Jews. They were straight and narrow, Jews were higgly and wiggly — and Negroes were funky and wunky. Ironically, Northern Europeans, who were less individualistic in their personality, were the pioneers of modern individualism, whereas the more colorful individualities of Southern Europeans made for more repressive and unfree societies. Colorful personality has too often been conflated with the essence of individuality. While colorful personalities are more showy in their displays of individuality, the colorfulness tends to be cultural and/or superficial than individual, moral, and/or substantive. So, while lots of blacks act wild and funky, it’s not as free-thinking individuals but as like-minded punkass fools who be yapping about the same thing or clinging to the bling as shortcut to being ‘different’. Or take the dumb ‘dagos’ of JERSEY SHORE. Sure, they are loud and obnoxious, but are they really thinking individuals of substance or are they conforming to the Italian-American cultural stereotype of the ‘goombah’? Or take a college fraternity where everyone drinks beers, vomits, and acts loud. Are the ‘fratboys’ being free-thinking individuals or acting like members of the tribe? Baboons and chimpanzees act wilder than humans, but are they being free individuals? Or are their riotous antics a kind of tribal communal rite? Of course, a community can be quietly conformist and anti-individualistic, but it can just as easily be noisily conformist and anti-individualistic. Japan has long been considered a quiet and orderly anti-individualistic society. On days of grand festivals, Japanese ‘let loose’ and go half-naked and dance in the streets and etc. But are they being individualistic or are they merely going from quiet conformism to noisy conformism? Despite the noise and ruckus, notice the sense of common identity and shared purpose in the Japanese matsuri celebrations. In some ways, noisy conformism can be even more anti-individualistic for noise can be more intimidating than quietude. The interesting thing about the boot camp training scene in FULL METAL JACKET is the unsettling combination of order and chaos, of discipline and riotousness. The drill sergeant was talking like a crazy fratboy leader. He was acting like a wild animal, a thug, a barbarian. But he was doing it to instill conformity and discipline in young men through noisy intimidation. He was being like Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Castro: charismatic men who ‘rocked and rolled’ on stage to command the obedience and loyalty of the masses. And in a way, one could say Napoleon was the first true ‘rock star’ of modern politics. He played the ultimate individual but to suppress the individualities of millions of Frenchmen who became his minions following their leader to the end of the Earth. Kubrick understandably wanted to make a film of Napoleon. And there is something paradoxical about Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE: his ultra-individualism is the enemy of the individual freedom and rights of others. His criminality intimidates others into a state of fear. So, it’s not surprising that rock music culture has, in the end, produced not so much mass-individualism as mass-conformism; but then, is the notion of mass-individualism even valid? The audiences are wowed and awed into acquiescence by the godlike rock star or rap star; they all cheer and applaud to the same beat. And the music industry that controls the hype and imagery controls the minds of countless millions of kids who emulate their rock-or-rap idols. If a rock star shakes his or her ass in a certain way, millions of asses will be moving the same way. It’s liberation of the butt and hibernation of the brain. Because so many people foolishly associate noise and volume with freedom and liberty, the mass media — controlled by Jews — keep us fooled that we are growing freer simply because there’s more noise, more foul language, and more craziness in our culture. But much of this noise and craziness only aid and abet more conformism via intimidation. If rap is supposed to be cool — and everyone is doing it — , you should do it to because only ‘lame’ people don’t go along with it. And if rappers are for ‘gay marriage’, you better be for it too cuz it seems to be the new cool and hip thing. British have been losing their liberties and their nation, but they feel free because mass media fills the airwaves with loud rap music and fills the screens with insane Hollywood movies. This is the ‘freedom’ and ‘individuality’ of barking dogs or howling apes, not thinking humans.
There is no such thing as absolute individuality or freedom, but some people are more individualistic or free than others. Such individualism or freedom arises from higher intelligence/understanding and/or greater expression/eccentricity. A person of higher intelligence, if he or she so chooses, can gain a better understanding of the world. (But this isn’t necessarily so, and we need only to look to the history of 20th century intellectualism to know very smart people can be trapped in their own ideological mazes. Theories can turn from keys into locks. In many cases, less intelligent people with common sense and life experience know more of reality than smart people surrounded by theories in elite academic settings.) If a person of higher intelligence has courage and honesty, he or she can see more than people of ordinary intelligence can. A person of ordinary intelligence can play chess by seeing only a few moves ahead. A person of higher intelligence can see more possibilities, more variations, more patterns to the game. To a chess novice, playing chess is like being inside a maze; he can see the trees but not the forest. To a chess master, it’s like having an overlook view of the maze. It’s like the character in YOJIMBO having a better view of the conflict from atop the bell tower. How much are our lives like a game of chess? In chess, not all pieces are the same. Some are more powerful and fewer in number; different pieces have different ‘personalities’, and their ‘geographical’ position/situation limits their capacity. Same with people. Some are more intelligent and special. Some are more solid and stable. Some are more honest and courageous. Some are more devious and unpredictable. The rook is more powerful than a bishop or horse in chess but its power is more easier to predict and foresee, and its path is easier to block, which is why rooks usually enter the game in the final stage. Between equally matched players, the trick isn’t brute power but slipping between the cracks of each other’s power. This is what the ‘evil’ general is so good at in PATHS OF GLORY. He wins over his rivals and opponents because he doesn’t go head-to-head against them but instead pretends like he understands and is sympathetic to each and every one of them, all the while slipping or hopping across their legal or psychological weaknesses to maneuver around them. He hints at the promise of glory to a vainglorious general who takes the bait and orders a disastrous attack. Since the latter technically ordered the attack, the burden of responsibility falls on his shoulders than on the man who manipulated him. And when the attack goes badly and someone needs to be blamed — and there’s an outcry over this — , the ‘evil’ general offers the false promise of legality and justice to an idealistic officer recruited to defend the condemned scapegoats. Both vanity and idealism fall prey to the master chess player of power politics. Though the ‘evil’ general(played by Adolphe Menjou) is the villain, he is, in some ways, the true protagonist of the story — like Strangelove is in the later film — because he understands that history is a story of power, and the name of the game is to win, something Jews know all about. (Notice how Jews keep grabbing more power, all the while psychologically manipulating us that they are a powerless people surrounded by ‘anti-Semites’, the implication being that if we disagreed with them, WE are those evil ‘anti-Semites’.) . When we observe the workings of democracy, is it really any different? It’s a game of power. Idealism only works among people of common values and habits united in good faith. Failing that, it’s a really a Machivellian game of power, and the master players win and the suckers lose. Jews win because they understand the game of power whereas so many white gentiles do not or have forgotten. Also, Jewish investment in principles isn’t to practice them themselves but to use them to restrain others. When Jews talk about ideals, it means, “these laws are for you, not for us.” Jews have their own set of rules, just like the ‘evil’ general in PATHS OF GLORY has his own set of rules. Kubrick, along with David Mamet and David Cronenberg, was an artist in the sense of exploring the nature of what he understood as truth. Like most artists, he didn’t explain his works and even kept their true meanings hidden and buried(like the Monolith in 2001) — keeping us guessing — , but there’s a lot of truth to be unearthed in his films if one digs in the right places. I’m sure that in response to any mention of the issue of Jewish power in his films, Kubrick would have denied it or pretended not to know about it — as only a fool spills the beans in public, like when Sonny Corleone opened his big mouth in front of Sollozzo in THE GODFATHER — , but we can sense its ghostly presence in his films, even if it may subconscious than conscious(but then, few directors explored and understood their subconsciousness as well as Kubrick did; he was no innocent or romantic). Mamet is also loathe to spill the beans as to the real meaning of his films, but there’s an aspect of Jewish power in all of them. Jewish artists are full of pride, and artistic pride comes from exploring and expressing the truth — as any hack can tell lies or make up fantasies — , and no truth is more important than the truth of power. Since Jewish power and power-lust are immense, they are the obsessive subjects of Jewish artists, but Jewish artists are also loathe to call too much attention to Jewish power due to Jewish anxiety about goyim finding out about it. So, Jewish artists want to tell the truth — on which their artistic pride depends — , but they are worried that the truth(about the nature of Jewish power and power-lust) will be used by goyim against the Jews. Thus, Jewish artists simultaneously dig up and bury the truth in their art. This was as true of Kafka as of Kubrick. It’s like the Monolith in 2001 is ever discovered and ever hidden, ever accessible and ever elusive. And Mamet’s HOMICIDE is extremely passive/aggressive and hide-and-seek on the issue of Jewish power. A book on Kubrick by Geoffrey Dyer, THE WOLF AT THE DOOR, speculates that all of his films are secretly obsessed with the Holocaust. Though I haven’t read the book, I think it’s evasive and disingenuous to portray Kubrick as a tragic Jew haunted by the ghosts of antisemitism. Kubrick, being Jewish, surely thought long and hard about the Holocaust, but his interest in it has to be seen in the larger context of Kubrick’s obsession with power and the game of power. (Kubrick said of Spielberg’s SCHINDLER’S LIST that it’s about ‘success’ than about ‘failure’, i.e. Kubrick saw the Holocaust more as a failure of Jewish power than a moral tragedy. It was a game in which Jews lost.) Jews had been working to gain as much power and wealth as possible all throughout history, and perhaps no people theorized as much about how to gain power than did the Jews; and no group was making as rapid a climb in power and wealth as Jews in the 20th century. So, how did the Holocaust happen? Bad luck? Something faulty with the Jewish theory/game of power? Did Jews make a terrible historical move? Was Hitler a master player? Or perversely enough, was the Holocaust, as horrible as it was, the ultimate if unwitting move that won the historical game for the Jews? After all, nothing both hurt and empowered the Jews in the 20th century — maybe all of history — as much as the Holocaust did. WWII and the Holocaust nearly finished off the Jews in Europe, but from its ashes came the myth of Jew as the new Christ, and from it came the cult of Holocaustianity that has made it nearly impossible to confront Jewish power, the most powerful power in the world and in human history. Thus, the move that nearly checkmated the Jews ended up being the checkmate move for the Jews. (In this sense, perhaps Kubrick misunderstood SCHINDLER’S LIST. To Frederic Raphael, Kubrick said the real Holocaust was about failure but Spielberg’s movie was about success. But, in a way, Spielberg’s movie is less about Holocaust as a fact of historical past than about Holocaustianity as a religion of the political present. Holocaust as a historical event was about ‘failure’, but Holocaustianity as a secular religion that grew out of WWII was about the great success of Jewish power. SCHINDLER’S LIST is less about teaching people living in the present about what happened in the past than about using a mythologized version of the past to control people living in the present. It’s like the story of Jesus as biographical fact was one of failure, but Saul/Paul turned it into a story of success and triumph — and thus paved the ground for eventual triumph of Christian power. Similarly, SCHINDLER’S LIST is a celebration of how Jews used the historical past to gain moral sanctity in the political present. Besides, anyone who goes to a Spielberg movie to learn about the truth of anything is only fooling himself. Spielberg is a master advertiser, not an artist, and with SCHINDLER’S LIST, he advertised Holocaustianity.)
It’s like the horror of WWIII in DR. STRANGELOVE, as horrible as it, is as much success as failure. It is a great boon for Strangelove, the perversely Jewishy Nazi. The world will be destroyed but Strangelove can become the master planner of the underworld community from which shall arise the new race of the superhuman Jewish-Nazis. Kubrick the Jew married a German ‘Aryan’ woman. Kubrick the NY Jew, a chess hustler and porn obsessive, was also an admirer of order and symmetry. He surely identified with Napoleon on some level. Napoleon was both a revolutionary given to struggle and violence AND an authoritarian obsessed with order and discipline. An outside-insider, a rebel-tyrant. Thus, there’s a duality to much of Kubrick’s work. Instead of being good or bad — or 50% good and 50% bad — , things can be 100% good and 100% bad, which is precisely what’s so maddening about Jack in THE SHINING. It’s not simply a case of sane man going nuts, but a man who is 100% sane and 100% nuts, a man who becomes 100% free and 100% imprisoned. Dr. Strangelove, a Nazi scientist played by the Jewish Peter Sellers, is both 100% Jewishy and 100% ‘Aryan’. Matthew Modine has both peace symbol and war symbol on his helmet, and he speaks of the Jungian duality thing. If Strangelove was conceived to be a Jewishy ‘Aryan’, Kubrick was an ‘Aryanish’ Jew; and indeed, Susan Sontag picked up on this and said there was something ‘fascistic’ about 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Kubrick the Jew shared the penchant of his tribe to subvert and pervert the goy order. But Kubrick, the admirer of the ‘Aryan’, wasn’t content to merely destroy. He wanted to preserve Western art, culture, and beauty. BARRY LYNDON is filled with both revilement and reverence. It shows European aristocratic order as deceitful and devious, but few films were so fascinated and obsessive with European grace and grandeur in arts and manners. If it’s satire, it worships what it satirizes, creating an air of poisoned fragrance. Along with THE KILLING and opening of DR. STRANGELOVE, BARRY LYNDON is the only Kubrick film with a third-person narrator, and the effect in all three films is irony via understatement. In THE KILLING, the narration is as straight-and-narrow as Sterling Hayden’s character, except that it describes the twisted machinations of outlaws. It’s a crooked story told straight, a crime committed by honest men. The procedural voice-over narration that had so often been used to dignify the sober commitment of upstanding lawmen is used to lend credence of professional integrity to a bunch of hoodlums who actually seem like a bunch of swell guys bound by honor. Hayden plans the heist in the manner of a G-man. In BARRY LYNDON, the genteel voice-over narration and the lushness of the images seem in harmony... except that an Irish rogue cunningly occupies the spaces in between them. Barry is kinda like Jack in THE SHINING, an outsider eager to be an insider. (And like the couples in THE SHINING and EYES WIDE SHUT, he has one child.) Like the aristocrats, the voice-over narration tries to seem unperturbed by Barry’s presence — even to make the best of the situation — , but in the end, as with the ghosts of THE SHINING, it’s neither here nor there whether Barry makes it or not. The world of power and privilege continues, just like the rich and powerful in EYES WIDE SHUT carry on regardless of what Bill Harford knows, whether he’s in or out. The privileged world is like flowers in a garden that tolerate bees — and even depends on them from time to time to stir up and mix the pollen around, something the flowers cannot do by themselves — , and so, a kind of symbiotic relation exists between the refined and the roguish. Refined people are ‘too good’ to do certain things, and so, there is a need for fresh blood from time to time in their enclosed community. The rogue enlivens the order with daring and ambition. But the rogue’s energies must be tamed as well as harnessed, for, if they get too out of hand — as with Hitler — , they can destroy the whole system. A refined system that is totally shut off from roguish elements becomes dainty and decadent; it needs fresh blood and energy. But too much fresh blood and energy can lead to massive blood-letting, as the Eternals discover in ZARDOZ when Zed’s presence upsets the entire order. (Jews are pulling the same trick with Obama, the variation of the ‘credit to his race’. The outsider-Negro-with-the-Dream has been introduced into the world of the liberal elite to revitalize it, BUT he is also a castrated Negro who must bend over for Jewish and gay power, and, as such, is used as a template for future black leaders. Jews are telling black elites that if they play ‘nice’ — at least with Jews and homos — as Obama has done, there’s lots of cash and prizes to be won.) As for the rogue, entrance into the refined world has its advantages, like a bee reveling upon a nectar-filled flower — or like Alex in the final image of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE as rogue cheered on by gentleman and gentlewomen. But the bee-and-flower dream can easily turn into a fly-in-spider-web nightmare. At the hands of the elites, Alex experiences both bee-in-flower and fly-in-web scenarios. Same happens to Barry Lyndon.
Like most Jews, Kubrick was careful not to speak openly about his Jewish feelings or Jewish power-consciousness. But as an artist, he sublimated his concerns and obsessions through creative expression, as did Mamet and Cronenberg. I think some, even many, critics do pick up on these signals, but they are loathe to admit it because it touches on the taboo issue of Jewish power-lust and Jewish game of power. Jewish critics wink-wink ‘get it’; they know what Kubrick, Cronenberg, and Mamet are hinting at, but they don’t wanna spell it out for dimwit goyim. Therefore, on one level, how a Jew interprets the work of another Jew can be markedly different from how most gentiles do it. Jews know how to read between each other’s lines. Most gentiles don’t pick up on these signals, and even if they do, they choose to remain silent because they’ll be accused of being a dirty anti-Semite-who-sees-Jewish-conspiracies-everywhere. So, the works of Jewish artists are appreciated differently by two kinds of peoples: goyim and Jews. It’s like how kids and adults can watch the same movie but pick up different meanings. Kids are more likely to take it at face value whereas adults, with their broader knowledge and references, tend to place the work in a larger cultural context and may even pry into its possible subtext. Goyim think HOUSE OF GAMES is about psychology and gambling whereas the Jewish viewer also knows it’s about the Jewish anxiety of power. Goyim see THE SHINING as horror, but Jews see it as a mind-game of power with hidden meanings pertaining to the problems of Jewish Anxiety and Paranoia. Jews have the power of ‘shining’ to pick up these signals that bypass most goyim. This isn’t simply because goyim are less intelligent generally but because they’ve been brainwashed from cradle to think only positive and sympathetic feelings about Jews. So, even smart goyim are loathe to ponder anything that suspects Jews of being anything but wonderful. Jewish Anxiety enforces Goy Anxiety, a nervous care among goyim not to offend Jews in any way; and now, there’s Straight Anxiety that defers to homos, i.e. straight/normal people must be ever mindful to never say or do anything that might offend homos. Jewish Anxiety and Gay Anxiety are aggressive and self-serving whereas Goy Anxiety and Straight Anxiety are apologetic and self-critical. If one sides does all the bitching and attacking while other side merely apologizes and cowers, the former will of course win. It’s the same among liberals and conservatives. Liberals are on the moral offensive, conservatives on the moral defensive. This is why conservatives keep losing; they even use liberal arguments in defense of conservatism. (Some conservatives are not defensive or apologetic, but they tend to be bland and passive, and it just so happens that ‘nice guys don’t win’. Of course, stupid guys don’t win either. Pat Buchanan’s 1992 GOP convention speech had some good things in it, but Buchanan overreached just like Moe Green in THE GODFATHER. Just like Green wildly underestimated the power and deviousness of the Corleones, Buchanan threw caution to the winds and ignored what the MSM controlled by Jews could do to him and the party if he gave a wild speech.) And in a way, Kubrick, Cronenberg, and Mamet followed in the footsteps of Franz Kafka. Susan Sontag wrote: “Kafka is the last story-teller in ‘serious’ literature. Nobody has known where to go from there.” In a way, she was right, and this could be said of ‘serious’ films as well. In a way, Kafka was no less a theorist of power(and powerlessness) than was Machiavelli. His works searched for meaning beyond and through illusions, a way of understanding the maze of society, mind, and the soul. There’s no idealism, romanticism, spiritualism, moralism, or any-ism at the center of his stories to lend ‘comfort’ to the reader, and yet, those themes haunt the peripheries; but then, rather like rats and roaches. (I wonder if god-as-spider imagery in THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY was Bergman’s variation on Kafka. Instead of man as bug, god as bug.) There’s no clear distinction between the real and unreal. Surrealism can be comforting in situating us in what is clearly a dream world — as in Salvador Dali’s painting — , but there’s no certainty in Kafka’s work No certain reality, no certain unreality. The films of Luis Bunuel — especially EXTERMINATING ANGEL — , Robert Bresson, Hiroshi Teshigahara(via the author Kobo Abe), Mamet — especially HOMICIDE, perhaps the most Kafkaesque film ever — , Antonioni, Lynch, Bergman, Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Fellini — at least in parts of 8 ½ and TOBY DAMMIT — , Cronenberg, Welles, Kubrick, Chabrol, Frankenheimer, Resnais, Jansco, Tarkovsky(especially with STALKER), Mimouni, Charlie Kaufman, and many others all owe something to Kafka. Even THE GODFATHER and ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA — and some Hitchcock movies — channel elements of Kafka. Of course, Kafka’s influence wasn’t always conscious or direct, i.e. artists influenced by Kafka influenced other artists who influenced other artists, and etc. Also, even if Kafka had never existed, he would have had to have been invented because modern society demanded his vision of modern anxiety. Though Kafka was a singular artist, there is the problem of authorship in his case because of the profound sense of anxiety and uncertainty in terms of characters and the world they inhabit. The mode of his works is not so much ‘this is me’ as ‘who am I?’
There’s a duality to the nature of power in the works of Kafka. Is power real and rational? Or is power illusory and irrational? Or is power real and irrational? Or is power illusory and rational? How much is ‘power’ the actual power of something as it really is, and how much is ‘power’ what our hopes, fears, and anxieties ascribe to something? Consider the nature of God. God never existed, but He became the most powerful force in human history. How did nothing become everything? How did man create a castle in the air that became both his greatest paradise and his greatest prison? Power isn’t just a matter of what’s actually out there but what’s mentally ‘in here’. This is one reason why some empires last much longer than merited by their actual power. Consider the Byzantines.
The great aura of might and invincibility developed over centuries buoys it up even in its weakened state, therefore its enemies and victims fear rising up against it. Illusory power can be just as powerful, even more powerful, than actual power. Indeed, it can even be used to suppress actual power. The actual power of white Americans is considerable. If they were to unite and fight, white power could kick Jewish, gay, and Negro ass. But white Americans now shudder at the illusory power of Obama, who’s really just a Jews’ boy. But, it must be said there is a duality to ‘white power’. On the one hand, whites are made to feel there’s too much of it in the form of ‘white privilege’, and therefore, they must make amends through ‘white guilt’ and ‘white redemption’. On the other hand, Jews hold the crucial levers of power and can destroy any white who dares to step forward and challenge Jews, gays, and Negroes, and therefore, there’s warranted fear of Jewish power on the part of whites. White power in actual terms is considerable — more than sufficient to kick Jewish, black, and gay ass — , but it’s divided, diffuse, and demoralized; and call for ‘secession’ by white conservatives only serve to divide white America even more. Power needs to be concentrated into a hard fist. White power is all funny fingers giving itself the middle finger. If whites unite, they can kick a Negro’s ass. It was white unity that kept Negroes in their place. As Negroes are physically tougher and more aggressive, whites will lose to Negroes on a one-on-one basis. So, whites must fight together to kick the Negro’s ass. And on a one-on-one basis, whites will lose to smarter Jews(who also happen to be tribalist), and this is why libertarianism’s radical individualism isn’t good for whites. Libertarianism means Jews like Mark Zuckerburg and Sergey Brin kick white goy’s ass in wealth, power, and privilege. For all his evils, Hitler understood the real source of power: unity — but then, he lost the power because, by his wars against fellow Europeans, he ended up dividing white unity in the West. And that is why Jews are so eager to ‘divide and rule’ whites.
Was there a grand conspiracy behind what happened to Joseph K., or was it all just a mistake and foul-up with no discernible meaning? All power is, at once, a reality and a facade, and one can never be sure where reality ends and facade begins or vice versa. Roman Empire seemed invincible and permanent at one time, but it collapsed like a house of cards all of a sudden. Anglo-America seemed so mighty and awesome not long ago, but it was easily pushed aside by Jewish power within a few decades. The Soviet Union that threatened world domination in the 20th century faded into dust. During the heyday of Soviet power, dissidents and the accused felt the full weight of its tyranny. They could be dragged off to the gulag or be shot. So, how did something so powerful become so vulnerable and weak? Power isn’t forever, but as long as a people survive, there’s the chance of regaining power, and this is something the Jews have understood very well. They fell in and out of power so many times, but they always managed to survive as a people, and in the 20th century, they inherited the Earth, and now, they are doing everything to ensure they’ll control it for as long as possible. When Kubrick was growing up, Anglo-America was mighty, and so, Kubrick felt awe and respect as well as resentment toward Anglos and Anglo-Americans. Had Kubrick been born in the 1980s and come of age in the 90s and 2000s, his view of Anglos and ‘Aryans’ would have been different; it might have been amusement and contempt than fear and awe. Though Jews were gaining in the 50s and 60s, I doubt if Kubrick in his youth ever imagined that Jews would gain the kind of power they would later. And so, EYES WIDE SHUT is indeed a strange kind of film for it is the one that addresses the outcome of Jewish rise to power. Though it’s been said that Kubrick instructed Frederic Raphael to make the story as un-Jewish as possible, the goy characters actually operate within a Jewish maze. Bill Harford, we learn, is strictly small potatoes compared to the super-Jew played by Sydney Pollack Also, as the film was made by Kubrick the Jew, the goy couple of Cruise and Kidman was trapped in his web-maze. And in a way, Kubrick uses them like Jewish porn kings use goy studs and sluts. So, even though the main characters have been de-Jew-ified, the wider context of EYES WIDE SHUT is utterly Jewish. It’s goy mice caught in a Jewish mouse trap.
If higher intelligence and understanding are one way to gain a better sense of the maze that is the world(and the universe) — thereby attaining something closer to individuality(independent of the rules and restrictions enforced by the powers-that-be) — , higher expression(via creativity) is another way to gain a sense of individuality that distinguishes oneself from the crowd, the sheep. Perhaps the character of Quilty(Peter Sellers) in LOLITA is an embodiment of both qualities. He’s a man of both high intelligence and creativity. He manipulates Humbert(James Mason) like a lab scientist experimenting with a mouse in a maze. Humbert thinks he’s acting freely and independently, but he’s being toyed with. He is toyed with like the woman in HOUSE OF GAMES is toyed with the by con-man(and in the end, both get their revenge through brute force — murder with guns — , the only thing that can break the ‘logic of the game’ and strike back; this is why Jews wanna take away your guns; Jews have used their higher intelligence and cunning to gain institutional, cultural, and legal power over you; since you cannot match the Jew in wit or brilliance or cleverness, your only option may be the gun; indeed, it is the gun that the ‘Aryan’ duo use at the end of eXistenZ to kill the brilliant Jewish computer programmer/game-designer. This is why white liberals should be called out for their childish naivete that is so easily manipulated by devious Jews and jazzy Negroes. Jews couldn’t care less about Sandy Hook Newtown massacre. They’re just using it to manipulate the sucker-emotions of whites to take away the guns from white Americans so that all the firepower will be with the government controlled by hideous Jews. If Jews care so much about victims of violence, why are they so silent about black-on-white crime? Why did they feel no sympathy for George Zimmerman who saved himself from a black thug by using a gun? Jews attacked Zimmerman because the incident demonstrated the necessity of guns. Zimmerman had to use firepower to protect himself from the stronger Negro. So, the Jews decided to go on the offensive by making Zimmerman out to be some ‘white racist’. This is how the hideous Jews play the game, yet white conservatives are among the biggest ass-kissers of Jews.
If you wanna insult a white liberal, call him naive and childish. Just look at that dork-boy Ken Burns. He makes my skin crawl). The smarter and more creative have a considerable advantage over the dumber and less creative. Humbert used Shelly Winters’s character like Quilty later uses him. In a way, ideas such as ‘freedom’, ‘individuality’, and ‘independence’ are merely other names for power. More power means more freedom, more individuality, more independence. The Castro brothers have more freedom and enjoy more individuality than the masses of Cubans. No matter how free or independent you wanna be, you’re nothing if you have no power. The powerless must go and die in war if ordered to do so by the powerful. The powerless must work at dreary jobs to make ends meet.
But as Tolstoy said of Napoleon, power imprisons as much as it liberates. Having power means having to guard that power, and that can lead to paranoia. Jack in THE SHINING becomes less free as he becomes more free. He’s more free as the ‘master’ of the Overlook Hotel, but his identification with the place makes him serve its ‘agenda’. George Lucas is both the freest man and the un-freest man in the world. With all the success and fame, he can ‘do anything’. But to guard his empire, he spent all his life doing STAR WARS over and over, just like Jack relives the Overlook psycho-drama over and over. Lucas, as a young director, had dreams of being an artist making personal films. But once he got swept up with STAR WARS, that became his entire life, and now, it’s too late for him to do anything else.
If one imprisoning aspect of power is paranoia and anxiety — to maintain and further one’s power — , the other is ambition and ego. With all the money Lucas made with the first three STAR WARS movies, you’d expect him to turn to personal filmmaking. But he got so addicted to fame and fortune that he only dreamt of bigger and bigger blockbusters. Hitler could have stopped with the annexation of Sudetenland and been remembered as among the greatest of European statesmen. But he had to take Poland by hatching a plan with Stalin. Hitler still could have been on the top of the world had he stopped with the victory over France. But he couldn’t resist the ‘logical’ push of power, and he invaded Russia. His forces met the same fate as Napoleon’s army. Napoleon too didn’t know when to stop. Thus, ambition too is a kind of prison. More power leads to more freedom, but more freedom seeks more power. Ambition is never satisfied with what it has. Like in the game of Go where black pieces and white pieces encircle one another, freedom and power are like two forces that surround and imprison one another. A person who ‘wisely’ gains an ‘adequate’ amount of power and calls it quits and takes it easy may do well for himself, but he’s not likely to feel the full excitement of life, and life’s meaning comes from that element of risk. This is the trick behind most game shows. Just when the contestant can walk away with a bundle of cash, he is tempted with the next round where he can lose it all or win an even bigger jackpot. Many just can’t resist, their luck runs out, and they walk away with nothing. This is why so many boxers don’t retire when they should. Outside the ring, they feel like their life is over. They got money and comfort but no thrill and ambition that keep them feeling alive.
And in a way, Kubrick too became imprisoned in the ego of ambition. As years passed, he became so addicted to perfectionism that the intervals between films grew and grew: 4 yrs between A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and BARRY LYNDON, 5 yrs between BARRY LYNDON and THE SHINING, 7 yrs between THE SHINING and FULL METAL JACKET, a whopping 12 yrs between FULL METAL JACKET and EYES WIDE SHUT. Along the way, he abandoned entire projects — such as ARYAN PAPERS and A.I.(which he passed onto Spielberg) — altogether. He got so wrapped up in preparation that it became more difficult for him to move to production stage.
If higher intelligence is one kind of higher freedom/individuality — especially as few people have truly high intelligence — , higher creativity may be an even more special kind of individuality. Though different people use intelligence differently, there are logical rules of intelligence that bind, unite, and conform-ize all very smart people. They must all play by the same universal rules. Thus, scientists and technological inventors, no matter how brilliant or original, cannot be truly individualistic since their discoveries must be part of general knowledge. Beethoven’s Fifth belongs forever to Beethoven, and the Mona Lisa belongs forever to Da Vinci. But medicines and gadgets — though they may be the products of high IQ individuals — become part of the larger systems of medicine and technology. For example, technologies such as color film or steadycam, though invented by individuals, belong to whomever uses them. Similarly, most people don’t really care who invented the synthesizer or the saxophone. John Coltrane’s fame depended on the invention of the saxophone, but more people care about the artists than about inventors of artistic instruments. Inventors make general things for all to use; artists use things to make an eternal statement about their own individualities. So, Orson Welles counts for more than Thomas Edison in cinematic history. Science and technology, as important and crucial as they are, have pragmatic and general application. It doesn’t matter that the televison or the car was invented in the West. If Japanese build great TVs and cars, people will watch and drive them. And just because we watch a Japanese TV doesn’t mean we think about the Japanese; instead, we focus on the content of what is shown on the screen, and it’s mostly the Hollywood product. We see art as belonging to the individuals who created them. Whoever conducts Beethoven’s symphonies, we never lose sight & sound of the fact that Beethoven composed the music. (This is why blacks, though having invented almost nothing, have such power over whites. Their ‘expressivity’ and creativity in music have made them more powerful personalities than many whites who actually invented things, and of course, music is the most powerful and impact-ive of all the arts. Our welfare depends more on modern plumbing and central heating, but we care more about artists and entertainers. Also, if inventors serve our general needs, artists manipulate our sensual desires and fantasies. Plumbing and heating make our lives cleaner, safer, and more comfortable but at the level of basic necessity or convenience. But a pop song can set off audio-orgasms or eargasms in the listener. Woodstock could have used more port-o-sans as the crowds were shitting all over the place, but the kids were really getting off on rock music. This is the glory and danger of art. It has such expressive power but can blind people to things of real necessity. Woodstock was a muddy shit-infested logistical nightmare, but the music kept everyone feeling like they were in Eden or something. As long as liberals produce more artists and entertainers than conservatives, they have a decisive edge in winning and possessing the hearts and minds of Americans. But then, liberals, especially smart Jews, even outperform conservatives in the areas of science, technology, medicine, and etc. Conservatives have become mediocre dummies, the white Mexicans of America.)
When we buy a car, we don’t think about who invented the car. When we buy light-bulbs, there’s no label on the package that mentions Thomas Edison as the inventor. Many smart people contributed to the technological advancement of cinema, but we still care more about the creative ‘auteurs’, the personal directors and the artists than the people who came up with the actual gadgetry. Though George Lucas hired many highly skilled computer people who innovated new ways of making films, we credit STAR WARS to Lucas’s ‘artistic vision’. This is partly because we greatly admire and prize creativity but also because we prefer simplified narratives where one man plays god. (Also, it takes special training to understand science and technology, but anyone can enjoy art and entertainment I don’t know anything about computer science but I sure loved TRON: LEGACY. Astrology is more accessible than astronomy.) If we were to ponder all the talents that went into making a great movie or changing history, we’d be overcome with the sheer scale of complexity. And so, we prefer to say ‘Reagan won the Cold War’ or ‘Stalin killed millions of people’ though neither did it alone. Though many American soldiers paid the ultimate price in the battles of WWII, it’s simpler for us to say, ‘Patton won the battles’. Even adults prefer fairytales, and that was the appeal of the ‘auteur theory’. It simplified the art of cinema into a mythic narrative extolling the heroic director.
Because intelligence plays by rules, even the less intelligent, with some degree of effort, can understand the rules of intelligence. Thus, even non-geniuses can study Einstein’s theory and come to understand why it’s true and makes sense. Reason and logic have to make sense, and so, in the end, they hold no secrets. But creativity is different as a great work of art affects us emotionally, sensually, sublimely; and there is no clear logic as to why something affects us this way — though the advancing science of psychology may provide us with the answers. (Indeed, Hollywood, advertising, and music industry have been working 24/7 to understand what works and what doesn’t on the audience with an almost scientific experimental seriousness.) We can try to understand and explain the secrets of art, but answers have never been as clear and demonstrable as with science and technology.
The problem of intelligence was conveyed in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY where the HAL computer can only think logically(but then logically better than all of humanity combined, which is what makes Hal want to be the One to confront the mysterious power of the monolith. Hal knows about the monolith but also knows that it will be shut down when the mission enters Jupiter space — notice that the secret is revealed to David Bowman only after he turns off Hal. Hal considered itself to be better than any human, and its duty was to take humans to Jupiter, so it was ‘upset’ with the prospect of being shut down just when humans were about to make contact with the mysterious force of the monolith. So, it had to be either Hal or humans meeting the monolith. For Hal to be the one to make contact with the monolith, he had to kill the humans.) And the problem of science and art was demonstrated in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE where Alex undergoes a medical/scientific experiment that renders him emotionally and physically intolerant of whatever he’s exposed to during the conditioning exercise. As Beethoven’s 9th is played during these sessions, he later ends up feeling physically sick whenever the music — which happens to be his favorite — is played. (Notice how Jews have made whites feel especially sick when it comes to white interests and survival. All healthy white feelings of self-preservation, unity, and happiness have been associated with the Holocaust, KKK lynchings, and the like. So, the only way whites can feel good is by rooting for non-whites, which is why white liberals worship Negroes and why white conservatives care far more about Israel than about their own people. The way Jews played on the white psyche, whites feel terrible not only about white evil but even about white good. It’s good for any people to want to survive, to rule where they are the majority, to feel pride in their culture and history. But Jews have associated all of German history with the Holocaust and all of white American history with black slavery. It’s no wonder then that so many white moviegoers are whanking off to Tarantino’s DJANGO UNCHAINED. The only way they can feel any kind of thrill is by celebrating their own demise.) Alex is ‘corrected’ but he’s not cured. It’s like science can mess and interfere with the creative zones or creagenous zones but cannot really understand them. Thus, in the end, science is cold and brutal. Just like logical Hal finally resorts to killing the astronauts or like the medical personnel in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST sever parts of McMurphy’s brains, the scientists of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE mess with Alex’s bodily functions to prevent him from committing crime. New Psychology seeks subtler means to manipulate us, but even today, the rules of mind-control and propaganda — ‘perfected’ by the so-called ‘best and the brightest’ — follow the same crude methods of propagandists of the past. If the methods are effective, it’s not so much because the people behind them are so smart but because humanity is so dumb — and maybe getting dumber. There is no real difference among the personality cults of Oprah, Obama, MLK, Castro, Mao, and etc. There’s nothing brilliant about Jews and gays associating homosexuality with the rainbow. There’s nothing sophisticated about the use of adjectology — using emotionally loaded words such as ‘toxic’, ‘noxious’, ‘odious’, ‘-phobia’, etc — to scare and intimidate the population. But they are so effective because so many Americans are dummies, so dumb in fact that they weep over some mountain-sized Negro who presumably wuvs a wittle white mouse.
If the hero of the Age of the Reason was the intellectual, the theorist, enlightened leader, or scientist, the hero of the Romantic Age was the artist, poet, visionary, or demagogue. Though the Age of Reason had a bigger long-term impact on society, the Romantic Age still has the greater appeal, if only because emotions are more accessible than ideas to most people; even people who can’t read music can enjoy music, but you have to know science to understand science. Even an uneducated person can become a great musician, writer, or painter, but you have to be trained in science or philosophy to be a scientist or philosopher. We’d rather listen to music or watch a movie than read a long treatise on philosophy or science. We’d rather follow a charismatic leader than heed the instructions of a well-meaning egghead. Emotions are more powerful than reason, which is why more people in the Western world — even educated liberals — prefer TV and rap music to tomes on science and philosophy.
In a way, Beethoven’s reverence for Napoleon was only natural. Beethoven didn’t merely see himself as a musician but as the creative hero of history. He wasn’t just a servant of God but the equal of God — at least artistically/creatively. He was the Promethean conduit between heaven and earth. He was the master of the classical form but more than a mere torchbearer of established forms; he had the power to imagine the unimaginable, thus serving as the bridge between the Classical Period and the Romantic Period. If God had the power to create something out of nothing, Beethoven saw himself as possessed of a similar power. Before Beethoven, one could trace the development of music from A to B to C to D and so on. One could trace Joseph Haydn to his predecessors. And as great as Mozart was, one could place him within the development of ‘Classicism’ in music. But Beethoven? Though half of him owed to tradition, the other half seemed to come out of nowhere as if inspired by forces beyond man. If Bach made beautiful music in honor of God, it was as if Beethoven possessed the very power of God — at least in music. Kubrick had similar powers. No one had seen anything quite like DR. STRANGELOVE. It was a giant leap of cinematic vision and ingenuity. And then, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY took it even further. It wasn’t a giant leap but a quantum leap. Prior to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, one could trace all sci-fi films — with the possible exceptions of METROPOLIS(Lang), LA JETTE(Marker), and ALPHAVILLE(Godard) — to earlier ones in terms of ideas, vision, and movie technology. In contrast, the conception and execution of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY were entirely new. Thus Spake ZaraKubrick. It was to science fiction what Hendrix was to electric guitar, what Dylan’s BLONDE ON BLONDE was to rock music. Not mere evolution but revolution, not mere expansion but a whole new big bang altogether. It had people wondering if such was even possible. It was so mind-blowing that many critics pretended not to get it and dismissed it, as if ignoring intimidating greatness would reduce it in size. And A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, BARRY LYNDON, and THE SHINING were also unprecedented and singular in their own ways. There had never been a period film like BARRY LYNDON, no horror film like THE SHINING. Though undervalued — even dismissed — by many critics upon release, both have come to be regarded as classics.
Beethoven didn’t see himself as merely ‘creative’. Adjectives weren’t good enough for his genius. He saw himself as a ‘creator’, a fellow noun alongside God. Thus, his powers were beyond that of man, of history and its limitations. Understandably, Beethoven was fascinated with Napoleon. Strictly in ideological terms, Beethoven sympathized with Napoleon’s role in history as a ‘liberator’ — at least before Napoleon got too carried away with his power. But more importantly, it was Napoleon’s role as the creator-genius of history that fascinated Beethoven. Napoleon wasn’t just an extension of the French Revolution but a whole new revelation altogether. After all, if ideas were central to Beethoven’s admiration of Napoleon, why didn’t Beethoven have as much respect for the intellectuals who came up with the ideals behind the French Revolution?
Beethoven and Napoleon, on the dawn of what would come to be called the Romantic Age(in retrospect), were intoxicated with the possibility of man as creator-god of not only history but of the universe. Beethoven and Napoleon were quantum leaps in the human imagination of the possible(the impossible as possible), just like the Moonwatcher(the ape with the bone) and the Starchild(reconfigured David Bowman) are supposed to embody revolutions than mere evolution, i.e. sudden quantum leap than mere gradual progression.
Intellectuals of the French Revolution were bold in their thinking and action, but they too were followers of fixed philosophical traditions and theories; or they were responding to the events that eluded their grasp. They pushed the revolution and were pushed by the revolution in turn, but they were not above the revolution. Even as they overthrew the King and formed a new system, the blueprint had long been developed with Enlightenment philosophy that could be traced back to the Greeks. Thus, French intellectuals were like Mozart. Bold and new but followers of a formula and the intellectual logic of history. Napoleon, in contrast, threw away the formulas and created his own destiny and history followed it. He took over the reins of power in the new French Republic but made himself emperor. He was tyrant of free France, and the people loved him. Throughout Europe, he spread the notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity based on rule of law, but he himself was above the law; indeed, he was above humanity. He saw himself as a kind of god, and as such, had more in common with Alexander the Great than with French revolutionary intellectuals. Though a brilliant military strategist, he relied more on intuition, inspiration, and vision than on books and theories. He was the creator-artist of history, and as such, he was the progenitor of Hitler. Like Napoleon, Hitler was also an unprecedented figure in history. Though like all leaders, he inherited a tradition and modeled himself on historical predecessors — like Julius Caesar, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Bismarck, etc. — , Hitler’s main approach to history was “I did it my way.” The famous ‘paleocon’ historian John Lukacs said of Hitler, "a great exception, rising from near-nothing, the sole maker of the Second World War, a planetary genius who had no precedent in German history." In the book JUNE 1941: HITLER AND STALIN, Lukacs contends that while Stalin was also something new in history, he was basically following in the footsteps of earlier ‘Oriental Despots’; he wasn’t the creator-genius like Hitler or Napoleon.
In a way, Napoleon and Hitler represent ‘logical’ stages in the dynamics of power. Spiritually at least, Napoleon represents the rise to the summit and Hitler represents the descent from the summit. Though there was much that was ruthless and mad about Napoleon, we cannot deny his humanity, the romantic grandeur surrounding him. He did horrible things but for things and ideals that still inspire us today. And Napoleon was ruthless because he felt ends justified means, not because he didn’t care about suffering. He was man trying to be god, and there was both beauty and tragedy in his rise and fall. Man cannot be god, but there is a dream in man to be godly, to play the Promethean role of raising mankind to a higher level. Thus, even as the ideals of the French Revolution may seem naive to us and even if Napoleon strikes us as a vain hypocrite, there will always be an air of romantic glory surrounding him. He pursued an illusion of epic grandeur premised on the illusion of universal justice, but there’s beauty to illusions. In contrast, despite the vision and imagination of Hitler, there was little that was romantic about Nazism. Though Nazism partly grew out of the German romantic tradition — and Hitler was a worshiper of Wagner — , there was nothing genuinely dreamy or beautiful about Nazism. Even though National Socialism was a beauty cult, it was beauty cast in cold hard steel. It was beauty made grim and heartless. What made Napoleon seem so alluring — despite his vanity, bouts of madness, mass violence, and horrors — was the power of illusion. Maybe the ideals of the French Revolution were unrealistic, but they inspired dreams of a better future for mankind, for all mankind. One cannot be romantic without dreams. In contrast, Nazism had no dreams or at least no dreamy dreams. Hitler did have a dream of creating a pure-blooded ‘Aryan’ empire where Germanic peoples and their racial cousins would live happily ever after, but the basis of this dream was the most grim reading of Darwinian biology. Thus, Nazism was really based on the most radical kind of biological determinism. The world was made up of superior ‘Aryans’, comparable races, tolerable races, barely tolerable subhuman races that should be enslaved, and intolerable subhuman races that should be exterminated. If this was a dream, it sure wasn’t dreamy. Can you imagine a Beethoven being inspired by such ideas? Of course, there was a dark, grim, manic-depressive, and stern/ruthless side to Beethoven — and some scholars have linked his music to the ‘soul’ of Nazism — , but Beethoven was uplifted by the dreamy dreams of Napoleon. Hitler saw history as a nightmare of biological warfare, and all that one could do was fight for one’s own race and wipe out the enemy.
To be sure, a dark view of humanity can also be the basis for creativity and inspiration, and this is certainly true of morbid artists like Dostoevsky, Kafka, Joseph Conrad, and Bela Tarr. But there’s a difference between darkness as mystery and darkness as certainty. It’s one thing to find oneself in the dark and fearfully try find one’s own way. That can fire up the imagination and serve as the source of inspiration. But it’s quite another to peer into darkness and pretend to know it as the absolute truth, which is what Hitler did. Though Wagner too had some bigoted and simple-minded views, they were tempered by his great curiosity(he was working on an opera about Buddha) and spirituality(the Christian themes of PARSIFAL). Hitler, in contrast, had no use for anything outside his narrow view of the world. He had a rigid view of race, history, culture, arts, and politics. Though he could be politically creative when he wanted — and was unprecedented in his political achievement as Lukacs said — , the ideas and visions that fueled his imagination were grim and tawdry. Compare the concept of Manifest Destiny with that of Lebensraum. Though Manifest Destiny has been attacked by later historians as imperialist, ‘racist’, violent, and etc., there are uplifting themes of progress, spread of liberty and civilization, the will of God, and triumph of democracy and freedom. Though Indians would have to pay the price, in the long run, the new order would be good for all Americans, Indians included. One could say Manifest Destiny was naive, hypocritical, and self-righteous, but it had an element of dreamy illusion not unlike the ideals of the French Revolution with which Napoleon, as the Man of Destiny, invaded/liberated the rest of Europe and marched into Russia. In contrast, the ideas behind Lebensraum were grim to the max: the racially superior ‘Aryan’ Germans would invade Russia, enslave and/or exterminate the original inhabitants, and establish a new order of strict blood-bound hierarchy. One could argue that Hitler was more honest than others. He didn’t bullshit about what he wanted and was doing. He lied strategically — as when he forged an alliance with Stalin — but not ideologically. But without dreams and illusions, history is a horror story.
In a sick way, Hitler was right. He wasn’t right about Slavs and Jews being ‘subhuman’ — a meaning that really makes no sense as all humans are fully human(though Negroes sometimes act worse than apes) — , but he was right about the recipe for power and permanence, i.e. while illusions, dreams, and lofty ideals may prove useful in justifying the gaining of power, they will likely undermine the established order in the long run as they can be used against the powerful. For example, it was very useful for the West to use Christianity as a moral excuse/rationale to conquer much of the world, but in the end, the ideals of Christianity came to haunt Western imperialists for they were turned back against the West to expose Western hypocrisy. And though Christianization of blacks was used to justify slavery in America, Christian values came to bite the white man in the ass later. If you want permanent power, one sure way is to totally expel the enemy from your territory or wipe them out. And you must create a national/racial cult that emphasizes group unity and loyalty. Illusions and lofty ideals giveth; illusions and lofty ideals taketh away. And indeed, this is one of the reasons Jews gained elite power in the US. They argued that America was founded as a ‘propositional nation’ but whites had failed to live up to its ‘proposition’, and so, Jews should take over and rule over us to bring the ‘proposition’ to its fruition. (In truth, Jews are only using the ‘proposition’ to further their own power to play ‘divide and rule’ among gentiles. If Jews were the solid majority of America, no way they’d be pushing open borders to be overwhelmed by others.) Of course, what has been crucial to American history was not so much the proposition as the matter of who-has-the-power-to-make-the-proposition-and-to-interpret-the-proposition. With Jews gaining in law, academia, and media in the 20th century, they gained control over the American discourse and that had the effect of shaping the minds of majority of Americans. What shapes today’s America is not the ‘proposition’ of the Founding Fathers but the neo-proposition of the Radical Rats.
In a way, one could argue that the true horror of WWII was not so much Hitler’s ideas — as demented as they were — but the unpractical nature of his vision. If Russia had been populated by 10 million savages, would it have really disturbed the global community if Nazis took over, killed off most of the inhabitants, and set up a new order? Even if Nazi ideology would have been loathsome just the same, their dream would have been doable, and the violence would have been limited since the conquered would have numbered ‘only’ 10 million, and most of them might have been expelled to some part of Siberia to live in reservations(like Americans in the Western territories). What made Hitler’s dream unspeakably horrible was the fact that the USSR was a highly developed modern society with nearly 200 million people. The idea of conquering all that land and applying Nazi racial policy to a large population was simply too much. It’s like the creation of Israel was doable since Jews wanted only a small piece of territory in the Middle East. Though Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, most Arabs were left in peace by Zionists. But suppose Zionists had wanted to conquer and settle all of the Middle East. Even if Zionism didn’t see Arabs as subhuman, the horror of ethnic cleansing all across the Middle East would have been too horrible. Indeed, suppose Americans decided to invade Mexico or China and force Manifest Destiny on it. Even if American aggression would have been done under the banner of democracy and freedom, the process would have been horribly bloody — and indeed Americans killed anywhere from 200,000 to a million in Philippines in the name of spreading justice, democracy, and civilization. In the end, Hitler’s vision failed not only because of the radical lunacy of the ideology but the impractical nature of conquering and subjugating a nation of 200 million civilized folks. But then, only someone as crazy as Hitler would have thought such was doable in the first place.
Even though we cannot access the truth unless we dispel illusions, it is truth that can make us ‘less human’. It’s like in Ken Russell’s ALTERED STATES — great idea, bad movie — where a scientist comes closer and closer to the deepest core of human consciousness but what he finds is the killer ape driven by instinct. David Cronenberg’s THE FLY also was a story of a man destroyed by the root truth of psycho-biology, the will-to-power and all that; it’s a pop-story of a Kafkaesque Jew with dreams of becoming a Superfly Nazi monster-man. In a way, the Greek notion of ‘man is the measure of all things’ is an illusion. So is Renaissance humanism that came later. Humans are animals driven by natural instincts. But for us to be human-humans than human-animals, we need to maintain the myth that divides man and animal. Similarly, there is no soul — as our consciousness is just patterned energies produced by the brains — , but without the concept of soul, we are nothing but neuronic blips and blaps of an organic computer. If we strip away illusions, humans are animals, and animals are like organic machines. This was the danger of the rise of Reason. Rationalism enabled man to strip away the illusions — of God and soul — and study man as a organic machine, but if we are just organic machines, how can we really be ‘enlightened’? No matter how much we understand — or the more we understand ourselves — , we are nothing but animachines with the power to measure and calculate. Rationalism was paradoxical for it prized the power of reason as what distinguished us from other animals, but the discoveries taught us that we are part of the animachine world. Late 18th scientists were studying the effect of electricity on dead frog legs and came to the conclusion that similar dynamics — rather than the blessing of God — were behind human life and energy as well.
The novel FRANKENSTEIN is a parody of reason. While Dr. Frankenstein can be seen as a romantic visionary, he is also a foolish man of the cult of reason. If there is no soul and if man is an animachine, why shouldn’t a dead person be brought back to life by being juiced with the electric charges of lightning? Why, it’s be like cranking up a dormant machine. A ‘dead’ car can be filled up with gas and started again. So, why not restart the motors of a dead man? Jesus brought a dead man back to life, but Jesus had the power of miracle that relit the man’s soul. But there’s no need for miracles in the Age of Reason. If electricity is what makes everything run, just jolt a dead body with high voltage, and it’s alive again. Of course, the monster regains physical life but remains soulfully dead, and this seems to have been a Romantic critique of the Rationalist conception of man. And in a way, Hitler was his own ‘mad doctor’ and monster. Despite all his professed love of culture, he was fundamentally without illusion about the nature of man and power. For all his yammering about the creative and visionary genius of ‘Aryans’, his view of history and mankind was utterly base and brutal. Perhaps he dreamt of a distance future when ‘Aryans’ could indeed live in harmony and peace and make wonderful art and be romantic, but the path to such a utopia was to be paved with the blood and bones of tens if not hundreds of millions of dead people. Thus, Napoleon and Hitler were both twins and opposites. Both came out of ‘nowhere’ and gained supreme power and captured the title of Man of the Destiny of the age. But if Napoleon was a creator of illusions, Hitler was the destroyer of illusions. The key word for Hitler was not ‘dream’ but ‘struggle’. If Napoleonism was man aspiring to be godly, Hitlerism was god sliding into the abyss of animalism. Hitler’s ‘Aryanism’ was a form of ‘ape-ism’. German soldiers had to be utterly heartless and animachine-like as they moved into the East and mowed down millions of people — even women and children — in their vision of empire. And there was no illusion of spirituality, humanism, or universalism to pad or soften the blow of the historical necessity of brutality. Hitler was one of the most honest leaders(in terms of ideology and what he really wanted), but this honesty was what was most inhuman about him. Hitlerism told Germans that they were a race of gods, and, as such, they should act like heartless killing machines, like remorseless apes. If Napoleon bridged the Age of Reason with the Romantic Age, Hitlerism was the dark dead-end alley of the more dangerous strains of both Rationalism and Romanticism. It was like Jack in the snowy maze in THE SHINING. Jack descends to animalism and dies a beast. Though the film WOLFEN takes a tragic-romantic view of American Indians and their lost world, it too reveals the horrible side of man outside the illusions of civilization.
In a way, Kubrick has been channeling Hitlerism. As ironic as this may seem — given Kubrick’s Jewishness — , it makes sense in relation to Kubrick’s misanthropic view of mankind. Kubrick wasn’t a man of illusions. He was never a misty-eyed liberal idealist. Neither was he a snug and smug conservative. He saw the nature of man for what it was. He didn’t see the world in terms of good vs bad but in terms of the struggle for power. And yet, Kubrick also had a great curiosity about the world. Kubrick saw himself as a student of the world filled with endless mysteries. A part of Kubrick wanted control over everything, but he always wanted to know more about what he wanted control over. And he was genuinely talented. Hitler, in contrast, was no artistic genius, and he was fundamentally lazy and arrogant. From early childhood, he thought he knew everything and couldn’t stand to hear anyone or anything that disagreed with his narrow view of the world and how it should be. (In a way, Hitler was a ‘victim’ of his own personality and temperament. He was like a ‘white nigger’. Just like blacks can’t help being crazy, Hitler couldn’t help being of the rabid and virulent variety. This raises the question of moral responsibility. If someone is predisposed to feel and act in a certain way, how much can he be blamed for what he does? Take homos and pedophiles. There was a time when homosexuality was a crime, and homos were punished for sodomy. But if you were born a homo and have powerful urges to practice fecal penetration on other men, can you be blamed? It’s easy for those without such predilections to accuse homos of being perverts, but what if someone was born with homo urges? Or consider the film M by Fritz Lang. Peter Lorre plays a child-molester-and-serial-killer, but during a mob trial, he howls that he can’t help feeling what he feels. He can’t suppress his lust for little children anymore than a Negro can suppress his hankering for a bucket of fried chicken and a pint of Colt 45. Technically, everyone can suppress his own desires, but the fact is not everyone has the same drives and desires. And most drives and desires are not conscious in origin. In other words, a homo doesn’t grow up thinking, “I think I’ll bugger butts.” Peter Lorre’s character in M didn’t grow up wanting to molest and murder children. One wonders if he would have murdered them had society allowed pedophilia. Could he have killed them to hide the evidence of his perversion? Or was he so sick that he felt a compunction to both molest and murder? For the sake of civilization and social order, we must judge and punish, but is it fair for the normal to judge the abnormal? If abnormal people were born with abnormal urges, desires, and passions — and if they feel great distress if they don’t give into their urges of subconscious or biochemical origin — , then their abnormal acts are, in a way, normal. If it’s normal for people to surrender to their natural urges — after all, straight people feel sexual desire and have sex with other straight people — , there is something normal in a homo giving into homo urges. The homo act is abnormal, but it’s natural for a homo to surrender to his biological urges just like it’s normal for a straight person to surrender to his or her straight urges. If homosexuality can be tolerated by modern society, what about stuff like incest and pedophilia? What about people who feel a great urge to go out and kill? If everyone were alike and if someone committed murder for the fun of it, we could judge that person as evil. But what if a person has natural urges that make him wanna do really abnormal stuff? He would have been ‘possessed’ by forces beyond our understanding and possibly beyond his control. Can we judge him? Or should we lock him up without judging him, just like we lock up or kill dangerous animals without judging them. We would like to believe that all humans are, at the very least, capable of moral understanding, and therefore, everyone should control his or her urges. But what if the urges are too powerful? In the end, was Hitler driven by ideas or by his powerful urges? People being what they are, there are surely Hitlers all over the world. There are white Hitlers, black Hitlers(though, to be sure, many Negroes make Hitler seem sane by comparison), Asian Hitlers, Hispanic Hitlers, Arab Hitlers, homo Hitlers, Jewish Hitlers, and etc. We cannot rid the world of Hitlers. The problem for Germany in the 30s and 40s was that the system failed and allowed a Hitler to gain total power. But it could have happened to any people, and in a way, Russia and China had their own Hitlers in Stalin and Mao. So, the secret is devising a system where no Hitler can gain total power, and that’s been the advantage of democracy. But in a way, Jews are like the new Hitler of America, ironically as it may sound. Jews are rabid and virulent, nasty and foul, hideous and hostile, and seem to be driven by powerful urges to dominate, desecrate, and demean. And they almost have about as much power over America as Hitler did over Germany. And we know there are plenty of Jewish Hitlers in Israel who would gladly wipe out all Palestinians if they could get away with it.)
Anyway, because creativity is individually inspired than universally logical, something of artistic genius can be claimed by the artist-creator alone. Therefore, one can argue that the artist is the only true free individual in the world. And since many of the greatest artists have been mad or half-mad, there’s been the cult of madness as the path to true freedom. This led to the fallacy that neurosis = creativity = liberation, which is why so many fools, especially women, are so mindlessly admiring of Tori Amos, Patti Smith, Chantal Akerman, Sylvia Plath, and etc. If you’re into their neurotic works, you yourself must be neurotic, and maybe that means you’re artistic and creative too.
In a way, Jack Torrance’s problem is he wants to make a kind of Faustian contact/pact with the zone of madness to attain greatness as an artist, but whatever his ambition, he may be just a hack He blames his dullness on ‘all work and no play’, but maybe he is just a dull person to begin with. No matter how crazy he becomes, he remains the same hack typing the same BS: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Jack may FEEL special/different in striving for something great, but feeling is not being. Just because one feels as a genius doesn’t make one so. Just because one reads Nietzsche and feels the will-to-power doesn’t mean one has the skill-to-power. (Incidentally, an highly intelligent mind alone cannot achieve much because consciousness, in and of itself, has no drive. Consciousness alone is neutral and has no agenda, no will, no passion, and as such, no desire to focus on any subject, matter, or objective. If Napoleon, Beethoven, or Einstein had his hormones sucked out, he would have felt no inner-drive to make to conquer the world, conquer the universe, or conquer new realms in music. The great mind must be fueled by great balls. Balls — figuratively speaking as some women have it too — fire up the mind and focus it on certain goals of aggression, domination, and conquest. But great balls alone aren’t enough either. Jack Torrance may have mighty balls — he even throws one around — , but maybe his mind isn’t so great, so his balls rage with creative energy but his mind isn’t up to the task of turning it into art.) Hitler also ‘felt’ different. Hitler was indeed different, and he felt this ‘difference’ early in life. Because he felt a great surge of creative energy within himself and felt/thought differently from most people around him, he saw himself as a genius, a visionary, a man of destiny, an artist on the level of Classical Greek masters and German musical geniuses. But in fact, he lacked genuine talent. He couldn’t substantiate his feelings into works of art. He was, at best, a master of kitsch — though he did fruitfully collaborate with some fine architects and filmmakers — , and Nazism was politicultural kitsch on a grand scale. One could argue that much of Walt Disney and Hollywood was kitsch too, but it was done with greater ingenuity, with more flair and style. Also, Disney and Hollywood sold kitsch as kitsch. In contrast, Hitler sold his kitsch as the crowning achievement of Western history and civilization. It was like selling Michael Bay movies as the greatest achievements of cinema. While all artists want fame and recognition, a true artist doesn’t need mass affirmation to know the worth of his genius. Whatever others thought of him, Beethoven knew he was the best. Van Gogh led a lonely life but knew himself to be one of a kind. Kubrick’s films never made great money, but Kubrick knew he was making films that would pass the test of time. Hitler, for all his egotism, was plagued by complexes regarding his presumed artistic talent. The only way he could win recognition was by turning his artistic vision into political theater and rousing the masses — especially the less intelligent — to gape at shlock and mistake it for great art. (Similarly, Mao always had intellectual pretensions but was bitter all his life that real intellectuals looked down on him as a semi-literate peasant. Though Mao was quite intelligent and well-read — for a man of his time — , he lacked the credentials of the more privileged intellectuals. He wanted their approval and respect but couldn’t get any as a thinker, so he turned his ideas into action. Good or bad, right or wrong, ideas on the winning side of history command respect. With the victory of Chinese Communism, it seemed as though Mao had been intellectually right all along. But when his economic ideas failed during the Great Leap Forward — and as a result, he lost the respect of fellow communists — , he unleashed the Cultural Revolution in the mid-60s. Paradoxically, it was radical anti-intellectualism borne of radical intellectualism. Mao figured he could regain intellectual respect by appealing to the impressionable youth who, simply on the evidence of the Little Red Book, mindlessly proclaimed him as the greatest thinker of all time. Hype can go a long way to prop up false gods. Mao is still revered in China, as is the plagiarist phony MLK in America. And Obama, a mediocre law scholar, was hailed as being possessed of ‘staggering intellect’ by the Jews who own the media. Jews, who’d long prided themselves on the culture of critique and dissidence — as opposed to the simple-minded hyperventilating of gullible goyim — cooked up a cult of mindless simplicity that would have some second-rate ‘legal scholar’ be the equal of Socrates and Jesus. The power of mass media is such that even cynical liberal hipsters are afraid to challenge this lie. Obama is a son of a kitsch. Incidentally, just like Mao turned to cultural war after losing the economic war the Western left turned to cultural war after losing the economic war in which capitalism beat communism. In the short run, the left has cultural advantage over the right since it is more ‘creative’ in cooking up new crises and agendas, but the problem of leftism is the faddishness. Leftist ideas come and go, especially with the rise of decadent leftism, which has very little to do with classical leftism. The advantage of the Right, at least in the long run, is that it embraces ideas and values of a more eternal nature. It’s like the prodigal son goes looking for thrills but returns home.)
With creativity as the path to individuality and freedom, there is the risk of madness. If creativity is a matter of inspiration — being touched by the muse — , then the artist cannot control or master his mind like a scientist. While emotions and passions drive scientists too, a scientist can always logically build on his ideas and those of others. In contrast, an artist must start anew with every work. While one can trace Beethoven’s musical development from his first symphony to his last, each symphony had to be a self-contained universe. Each new vision must be a creative big bang, and for this, the artist must rely on the power of inspiration. If the muse leaves him, the ‘thrill is gone’, and we can always tell when the artist was inspired and when he was not. (And even when the scientist is past his peak, he can still serve as a useful member of the scientific community by reviewing and exchanging ideas. But an artist who can no longer create great works is simply out of the game.) Brian Wilson had inspiration in spades for PET SOUNDS and was surfing high on SMILE, that is until he smashed onto the rocks, after which he never fully recovered. Sam Peckinpah was inspired during the making of THE WILD BUNCH. Though much preparation went into CROSS OF IRON, the thrill was gone. Muse is like a horse. If it’s there, the artist gets on the saddle and rides hard. But if the muse is an injured or dead horse, the artist himself must prop it up with all sorts of pulleys and strings and pretend to still ride it; the result looks belabored. The muse was with Coppola in the first two GODFATHER films, but he was straining to recover the muse with DRACULA and GODFATHER III. The muse was with Scorsese in MEAN STREETS, TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, GOODFELLAS, CASINO, AGE OF INNOCENCE, and KUNDUN. It wasn’t on GANGS OF NY, AVIATOR, THE DEPARTED, and HUGO. Try as he might, he was no longer the same artist to whom inspiration came naturally. Instead, he had to go looking for the muse, a fool’s errand. The muse is like the Force in STAR WARS. Some have it and some don’t. And even those who have it don’t always have it. Generally, the old Hollywood ‘masters’ tended to be steady, sturdy, and long-lasting. They made a lot of formulaic genre films but remained consistent for a long stretch. They relied more on ‘muscle’ than the muse. The ‘auteurs’ of New Hollywood in the late 60s and 70s were different. They had unprecedented artistic freedom and could work from true inspiration, especially with the aid of drugs that made them feel wild and free. But many of them burned up fast. Peckinpah faded, and Dennis Hopper faded even faster. Altman was creatively dead after NASHVILLE. Hal Ashby lost his way too. So did Friedkin — though he made an astounding comeback with TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. — and many others. They made great films for a relatively brief period but then crashed and burned. They were sprinters than long distance runners. The two great exceptions are Spielberg and Scorsese who managed to work at very high level for a long stretch. The case of Scorsese is more fascinating since he dabbled with the excess and madness that consumed so many of his colleagues; Spielberg’s great advantage was he was more of a milk-and-cookies than drug-and-alcohol guy. Though a boomer, he’d kept his distance from the rock-and-drug counter-culture of the 60s. He was strictly over-the-counter-culture kind of guy. Kubrick was an even more interesting case. It’s hard to think of a filmmaker who was more obsessive and perfectionist than Kubrick. By the general rule of artistic longevity, he should have burned out after 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. After all, while Peckinpah did some excellent work after THE WILD BUNCH, he never came anywhere near that film. But Kubrick continued to work at an extremely high level to the very end. In a film career beginning in the mid 50s and ending at the eve of the 21st century, Kubrick was arguably the greatest director of the second half of the 20th century. How could such an obsessive artist last so long? Perhaps, Kubrick understood himself and the pitfalls of the creative profession better than most did. Perhaps, this is why he measured himself and didn’t try to make as many films as possible. After DR. STRANGELOVE, Kubrick worked at his own pace. And though his films were expensive, his meticulous preparation before the shooting gave him a good sense of what he needed to do. Also, he kept a cool head, so unlike Bertolucci, Cimino, Coppola, and Herzog with 1900, HEAVEN’S GATE, APOCALYPSE NOW, and FITZCARRALDO. Kubrick didn’t work in the mode of maverick navigator on a voyage to the end of the world. Kubrick was never willing to risk his sanity in the manner of other masters or would-be masters. And by secluding himself in England away from Hollywood’s culture of vanity and celebrity, he maintained his equilibrium, especially with the ever-presence of his devoted family. It’s like Kubrick studied and analyzed his own situation and came up with the best possible means to maintain his integrity and quality. He didn’t want to make the mistake that Napoleon made. He was a chess player, not a gambler. He had the both eccentricity of John Lennon and the stability of Paul McCartney(at least while Linda was alive). On the other hand, maybe one could argue that Kubrick did kinda of go crazy. The fact that he made only two films in 20 yrs after THE SHINING suggest that maybe he’d grown so obsessed with perfection that he couldn’t embark on a bunch of projects he had in mind.
There were a bunch of movies, released around the time of THE SHINING, that shared some of the concerns of Kubrick’s film. KRAMER VS KRAMER and ORDINARY PEOPLE dealt with the problems of the modern family. Husband and wife play tug of war with their son in KRAMER VS KRAMER. And in ORDINARY PEOPLE, the son is haunted by the past and can’t break the icy wall between himself and his mother. THE THING by John Carpenter takes place in an isolated wintry setting, not unlike in THE SHINING. If Jack, in the seclusion of Overlook, dreams of becoming the master-of-the-universe, the alien-creature that burrows into humans and dogs in THE THING is hatching a plan to take over the entire planet. Just like it’s difficult to tell when Jack is sane or insane in THE SHINING — and to what extent Danny is possessed by the spirits — , we aren’t sure who has or hasn’t been Thing-ized in Carpenter’s movie. The river journey in APOCALYPSE NOW parallels the psychological journey through the maze of the warrior soul. If Jack wanders inside a maze leading to the source of the will-to-power(something he can never attain, by the way), Willard(Martin Sheen) meanders through a kundalini-like serpentine river unwittingly in search for the same thing. Kurtz (Brando), the ruler of the domain that represents the root of warrior consciousness, schools Willard on the true nature of man and human conflict. BLADE RUNNER is also about the journey to the source of power. Roy Batty seeks his ‘father’, Dr. Tyrell who created him.
And like THE SHINING, Ridley Scott’s film is a ‘fusionary’ work incorporating motifs from different historical/cultural periods. THE SHINING has four modes of time: timeless/eternal, the present, the past, and the cyclical. The opening vistas of nature create the impression of eternity and immensity, a time beyond human history. When we first see Jack in the hotel manager’s office and then see Wendy with Danny, there’s a very clear sense of the bright and clear present, the here and now. As weeks go by at the hotel and Jack communes with ghosts, there’s an overwhelming retro mood to the Overlook, as if the present is merely the echo of the past. The present fades into the past or the past emerges from the present, an effect later achieved by Sergio Leone in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. It’s different from most films where the use of flashbacks or shifts in time delineate a clear distinction between the past and present. In THE SHINING and ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, past and present almost imperceptibly permeate one another.
And then, there’s cyclical time, as though existence is really a kind of loop: not an eternal thread/stretch but an eternal circle/return, where the same thing happens over and over and over. BLADE RUNNER too was noteworthy for its retro-futurism, presenting a world that was both far advanced into the future and long decayed and/or recycled from the past. There’s a retro-look to the styles and fashions, as if Los Angeles of 2019 had come full circle to the noir landscape of the 1920s –1940s. But, there’s also a sense of eternalism in its mythic grandeur: Roy Batty is like a Romantic hero of Germanic myths as envisioned in Wagner’s operas. Yet, Batty, the god-man with eyes that have glimpsed eternity, has but a flicker of a life-span. He was created to be ‘born’ and to ‘die’ perfect, a life that is all peak and no valleys. (The secret to the Jesus’s myth is that He died at the peak of His Manhood. Had Jesus lived to old age, He would have died a weak, senile old man regardless of whether he died naturally or was killed. Instead, He died at the peak of His mental power and when His body was most fit and firm. By dying young, He was able to fix the image of His youth forever, and in that sense, He was no less a narcissist than Yukio Mishima feared living into old age and growing withered and senile. Jesus’s life was about transcending the flesh, but in His agony and death, He revealed a youthful body at the peak of its beauty and health, and we cannot deny that is part of the appeal of Christianity. Had Jesus lived to old age with wrinkled skin, balding head, and a paunch, His crucifixion wouldn’t have made for a powerful image. Though Jesus was a Man of peace, He really sought a warrior’s death.) Though there’s an element of eternalism in German myths, they are also cyclical, envisioning a future with the fall of the gods and destruction of the world, from which a new humanity will rise with the return of the gods.
Of course, the nature of sex is cyclical, and indeed, life is essentially a vessel of reproduction and consumption. Life eats, excretes, and procreates over and over. Some creatures die right after the reproductive act. This is true of salmon that expend tremendous energy to reach their destination upstream, only to mate, lay eggs, and die.
For most simple organisms, their longevity can only be meaningfully measured cyclically or reproductively — as a continual process of life and death — than individually. As their life-spans are very short, the ‘meaning’ of existence only becomes clear through the linkage through reproduction. (If human life-span was only a week, the ‘meaning’ of human existence wouldn’t be individualistically distinct but measured in terms of the process of passing the torch of life before one dies. Life is the fire that burns on a rope that keeps producing more rope to burn. Thus, part of the rope that ‘was’ burns into ashes while the part of the rope that ‘is’ burns to produce new rope that ‘will be’, that will carry on the fire. Life is the fire that keeps producing and burning more rope.)
But as organisms became more complex, they had to live longer to develop toward reaching the reproductive cycle. If the point of life is to carry on by creating new life, then there is no more need for organisms to live on after mating; its duty has been fulfilled and its life has been extended through its genetic extension. And so, many insects die after mating. And this is true of many fish too. But as organisms got more complex, they began to live long after they mated. (Of course, one could argue that every human body undergoes cycles of birth and death. After all, human cells die and are replaced by new ones, and so, there’s lots of ‘birthing’ and dying among the countless cells of the human body. In that sense, we are dying and being reborn all the time within a single lifetime.) Once humans became conscious of their longevity after breeding, they discovered that life is ‘boring’ and ‘pointless’. If humans had a life-span of 15 yrs, people would grow to teenagers, have sex, have kids, and then die. It wouldn’t be much of a life but it would be meaningful in terms of purpose: born, grow, mate, reproduce life, and die. But we live on and on as individuals. Not only does it take a long time for humans to arrive at mating age, they live long after their life’s purpose — to create more life — has been fulfilled. To be sure, given the time it takes for kids to mature in adults, there’s meaning in raising kids long after giving birth to them. But people live on long after their kids are all grown up — maybe evolution favored old age among primates because grandparents can take care of kids too, thus helping the parents(especially since parents could be killed by predators, rivals, or disease); grandparents can even coach the parents to be better parents among apes; and if parents were to die, primate offsprings could still be raised by grandparents; so older age ensured better survival among primate tribes.
Many people choose not to have kids at all. Since they identify with civilization than with natural life, they associate the survival of humanity not with creation of life but with creation of culture and technology. Since even childless artists and scientists will pass down their discoveries and expressions to future generations, there’s a sense that having kids isn’t essential to the continuation of humanity — of course, only the works of handful of artists will survive the test of time, but vainglory among wanna-be artists keeps them believing that their ‘testaments’ will matter too. There’s also the sense that, “even if I don’t have kids, plenty of other people will, and so, humanity will go on.”
In a way, what Jack undergoes in the Overlook Hotel is the conflict between his biological side — the urge to find a mate and produce offspring — and his philosophical side, the question of “why does my life go on though I produced an offspring and my wife can take care of it/him without me?” If Jack were a male spider, he would have inseminated the female spider — then, likely eaten by the female spider — and, as such, would have fulfilled the purpose of his life. But humans live on and on after procreation, and so they need to find meaning outside biology to fend off the sheer boredom of life. (This is more true of the man than the woman. Woman-as-mother, even after the reproductive process, still feels purpose in life in having to feed and take care of the child. Man’s connection with the child is less intimate, and if anything, the child may even come between the man and the woman. Traditionally, men were needed to defend womenfolk and childfolk from danger, but most women and children are safe in modern societies. Indeed, women feel so safe in the modern West that America has even cleared women to serve in combat. With America’s huge technological advantage over other nations, American women feel safer serving in the military than civilian women do in many backward and dangerous nations around the world. With the erosion of man’s purpose in the modern world, there is bound to be a rise in male neurosis. Women are becoming more and more like men, doing the things that only men used to do, and so, men feel less special. As modern women are safe, modern men don’t feel special in their protective powers. Also, if women can become more like men and do things that men do, men cannot become more like women and have babies. Women can shoot guns, but men cannot give birth. Perhaps, some straight males identify with gays because homo males lend the impression that just as women can be more like men, men can be more like women. But that is so pansy. At any rate, the strange thing about Jack in THE SHINING is he protects the territory from his wife and child instead of protecting the territory for the sake of his wife and child. Traditionally, men guarded the turf, castle, or home to protect his wife and children from hostile forces. White men of the Wild West protected hearth and home from dangerous red savages as a means to protect their women and children. But it’s like the dynamic is gone in THE SHINING. Overlook is built on Indian ground, but there are no more Indians, no external threats to Jack or his family. And even though they’re in the middle of nowhere during a harsh winter storm, modern technology has made it easy for Jack or even Wendy to take care of the Overlook. They are totally safe from the elements of ice and freezing winds outside. They are stockpiled with tons of food. Jack doesn’t think in terms of guarding the Overlook to protect his wife and child. Instead, he sees the Overlook as his own special domain where his wife and child are trespassers, intruders, and ultimately invaders who must be repelled, even destroyed. Overlook must be saved from his wife and child who may have to be killed. Perhaps, male psyche is such that unless man has external enemies to fight against to protect his wife and child, he will turn on his family and himself. It’s like people will resort to cannibalism — like the Donner Party — if they have nothing other-than-human to eat. It’s like the stomach will begin to devour itself if it doesn’t have food to digest. Male psyche is essentially violent and aggressive, and man finds meaning in fighting and/or struggling outside forces to protect himself, his family, and his land. But absent such outside threats and challenges, the aggressive energy turns inward, and perhaps, this is why the West has become so self-devouring. Western energies beginning in the 15th century were extremely aggressive, and the West expended much of this pent-up energy by expanding around the world. But once the expansion ended, and there were no more territory to conquer and lay claim to, it’s as if Western energies still needed something to attack and devour; and it was itself. Same thing happens in the early stage of revolutions. Revolutions are, by nature, aggressive and violent affairs. So, even after the revolution overthrows the preexisting order, its violent energies remain; the revolution still hungers for more blood. Absent external threats, it has no choice but to devour its own, as happened in the USSR under Stalin and in China under Mao, especially during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Maybe one advantage of Jews is they always feel threatened by external enemies, the goyim that outnumber them. So, Jewish energies are still heavily directed at the outside ‘enemies’. Only when the West again feels that it’s threatened by external enemies will it awaken from its self-hating self-devourment and resist external enemies. The problem is that the greatest external enemy of the West is deep inside the Western bloodstream: the Jews. Jews are the ultimate outsiders, but they’ve wormed themselves into every powerful institution in the West. The Jewish virus has entered the Western brain and reprogrammed it so that the White West will devour itself even faster.) And yet, the sheer boredom of life(after reproduction) arises from the insatiable biological urges that drive human nature. A man feels constantly horny, which is why he wants to hump every ‘ho’. Social morality says a man should marry a woman, stay loyal, and stick around to raise the kid. This goes against his biological agenda, which is to hump every ‘ho’. So, moral man is both tired with sex(with same old wife) and bored because he can’t have sex with tons of other women. (To be sure, it may not true that most men naturally wanna have sex with as many women as possible. If anything, most men may prefer to stick with one beautiful women than jump from sack to sack with a whole bunch of gross-looking hags. If an average guy had to choose between the option of marrying a top model and remaining faithful to her AND sleeping with twenty ugly-mugly hags, he might very well go with the former. So, maybe male nature isn’t to hump as many women as possible but to hump as many attractive women as possible — that is unless the male happens to be a Negro because a Negro will hump just about anything. Since most women aren’t all that attractive, most men probably don’t even want them.) This is why Hugh Hefner became so rich. He offered a new bunny ‘ho’ every month. Just when the guy got tired of pulling his pud to one ‘ho’, there was another ‘ho’ and then another and then another and so on. A new ‘ho’ every day might have been too much. But a new ‘ho’ every month might offer both the semblance of loyalty and promise of freedom. Thus, each bunny could be like the ‘wife of the month’. There’s a guy in DAZED AND CONFUSED(played by Matthew McConaughey) who says: “That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.” Hugh Hefner certainly got older but the women around him stayed the same age.
It could be that monogamy played a role in the rise of arts. Since a monogamous society looked down on guys who screwed around too much, men couldn’t freely expand their energies by humping every ‘ho’ in sight. Since man’s natural-sexual energies became repressed, artistic endeavor served as an outlet, a relief from his repressive boredom, especially since humans live longer than most other creatures.
There’s two kinds of boredom. Boredom for lack of interest and boredom for lack of choice. Some people are just bored while others are bored because they can’t get what they want. It’s like the guy in AGE OF INNOCENCE — the film as I haven’t read the book — , who’s bored out of his mind because he really wants to be humping Michelle Pfeiffer than Winona Ryder. He wants Pfeiffer so badly that even people and things that used to interest him do so no more. (In a way, his repression of his personal desire is both cowardly and courageous. Cowardly because he didn’t follow his bliss and caved to social pressure. But courageous because he gave up what he wanted most out of concern for the Winona character and the ‘integrity’ of the society he belonged to. It’s like Jesus abandons what gave him the most pleasure in LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST — Mary Magdalene as wife and his own family — in order to fulfill his destiny as the messiah. It’s like Jake Lamotta represses what he wants most — sex with Vicky — before fights for the sacred glory of the ring. Is the object of pleasure a dream or a temptation? There’s no easy answer.) And in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, Garrett gains stability but is bored whereas Billy who humps every ‘ho’ in sight whenever he feels like is full of life. Because sex is cyclical, with new life taking over old life, it is as much about rot and decay as about birth and growth. Soon after eggs are laid, salmons die in huge numbers and decay in rivers and streams.
People wanna mate with youthful and healthy people, but the process of sex has a withering effect on the partners. Women lose their form and beauty after having kids, and indeed, the bond between woman and child may be seen by the man as a hindrance to his desire. Not only are pregnancy and childbirth inconvenient but the close bond between mother and child may alienate the father. Also, since the child, especially the son, will eventually grow up to be bigger and stronger than the father, there’s part of the male psyche that fears that the wife has birthed a creature that is destined to dethrone and destroy him. Some of these fears are present in THE SHINING. Jack’s increasing paranoia makes him believe that Wendy is encouraging Danny to hate him. So, Jack’s aggression is partly defensive(even if his fears are fed by paranoia. Since humans are animals, such fears on the part of the father are only natural, because, among animals, sons do eventually defeat and even devour their fathers. The father has dualistic feelings toward his son. On the one hand, the father wants to see his son grow strong and tall; he wants his son to take over the castle. But the father also feels pushed aside by the younger rival. He feels his own youth, vitality, and powers slipping. In one way, he sees his son as an extension of himself, but in another way, he sees his son as his executioner. The old lord in Kurosawa’s RAN sure found out the hard way. In one way, Jack wants to be with his family in the Overlook forever. He feels as the master of the place. But when he begins to suspect that his son, whose ‘great talents’ are beyond his own, is ‘conspiring’ to take over the castle, he decides to kill the mother and son. In that sense, Jack isn’t just a homicidal maniac who wants to kill just to kill. He feels he must defend the castle. He feels that his wife and son have turned against him. They are conspiring with ‘outside parties’ — a ‘nigger’ no less — to take the castle away from him. And in a way, he’s not wrong for Danny does call on the Negro who books a flight to return to the hotel). The father/son rivalry was movingly portrayed in THE GREAT SANTINI, especially the scene when the father loses a one-on-one basketball game with his son. On the one hand, he’s proud of his son who’s now man-enough-to-beat-his-old-man, but in another way, he feels threatened as top dog of the family. Every father enjoys the power he has over his son. Even a geeky guy is a god-lord over his son(when the kid is young). What every father fears is the day when the son is bigger and stronger; and smarter and more successful. Every father wants his son to grow up to be smarter, stronger, and healthier, but every father also fears that the son, instead of being appreciative and grateful, will hate and attack the father. Every father wants to be respected by his son. When young, sons look up to their fathers, but as they grow older, they come to see their fathers as nothing special as most men are not billionaires or important/great men. (There was some of this in TREE OF LIFE.) This problem is exacerbated in THE SHINING because we sense that Danny is especially intelligent and gifted. The father is a grown man struggling to make it as a writer, but his son is like a born genius. Jack has the ambition of Steve Jobs but the talent is with his son. (The father/son tension has long been the stuff of myths and fiction. Though Saul isn’t a biological father of David, he is a father-figure. One part of Saul dearly loves David and wants to see David grow up to be a great leader of the Jews. But another part of Saul feels threatened by David and tries to kill him. And there’s that thing with Oedipus. And in RED RIVER, the Montgomery Clift character becomes almost like a son to the John Wayne character. When Clift’s character defies Wayne’s character, the latter is both filled with fury and repressed admiration. The kid rebelled against the patriarch, but it means he’s finally become a tough guy in his own right.) And sons have neuroses of their own. They both love and fear(even hate) their fathers. They love their fathers as the provider. But the father has total control over the young son. Also, as the son grows older, he realizes that the father he idolized isn’t so special. And the kid learns stuff in schools, and his knowledge — and the ideology he picks up — makes him feel superior to the father. A school kid will learn that ‘gays are so wonderful’ and then find his father to be ‘homophobic’ and ‘evil’ for not supporting ‘gay marriage’ or worshiping MLK(who was really an ape-ish lout).
Anyway, life is the product of sex and the purpose of life is sex. Given the complexity of mankind, there’s much else to life other than sex, but sex is the core of life since life continues through reproduction. If we were to look at the map of human history with everyone’s life reduced to a minute, the importance of sex would be a no-brainer for it was sex-as-reproduction that ensured the continuation of life. But in the decadent West, sex is studied not so much as the biological process of reproduction and life-continuation of the race/nation but as the stuff of ‘gender studies’, ‘queer studies’, pop culture, and porny hedonism. Thus, homosexuality and sex-for-pleasure-sake have come to be regarded as being of equal value as sex-as-life, sex-as-survival, and sex-as-power. (What ‘progressives’ mean by ‘sexual empowerment’ is women screaming ‘vagina’ and homos marching for pride over the fact they go for fecal penetration.) Sex is birth and growth but also decay and death. Indeed, if life didn’t decay and die, there would be no need for birth and growth. When Jack Torrance sees a tall gorgeous nude ‘Aryan’ woman — so different from his skin-and-bones doll of a wife — , he falls under her spell. He feels ravenous about her, but it’s also like he’s about to be devoured by her. But soon after he embraces and kisses her, he sees the reflection of her as a decaying old woman. He is
then harassed by two vision of the woman: one stalking him as he retreats through the door and one rising from the bathtub. The woman in the tub looks like dead rotting salmon after spawning. As Jack gradually gains ‘ownership’ of the totality of the Overlook Hotel, he’s haunted not only by the lives but the deaths that passed through the hotel.
This sense of life and death may be a clue as to why many Kubrick’s films feature washrooms/bathrooms as recurring motifs. Washrooms are both the cleanest and dirtiest places in the house. Washrooms are more thoroughly wiped, cleaned, and sterilized than other rooms in the house. Most rooms are mostly vacuumed and dusted now and then. Washroom is the place where bodily liquids are released: the urine, the saliva, the feces. And we wash off the sweat in the bathtub. Pure water enters, filth flushes out. Washroom is the most biological part of the house, and as such, could serve as a metaphor for civilization itself. Indeed, no matter how many fancy palaces and impressive roads a civilization may have, without modern plumbing it would make us feel squeamish. Most of us would prefer a modest house with modern plumbing than a big fancy mansion where we have to use a commode or outhouse. It wasn’t that long ago that even rich people took a dump into commodes kept under their beds, and then their housemaids would just dump that pee and poo out into the streets from the window. So, the invention of modern plumbing was a supreme achievement, and every city should have a monument paying tribute to the technology of plumbing.
Given the significance of washrooms in Kubrick’s films, it’s not surprising that the key transformation in THE SHINING happens in the washroom. It’s the scene where the waiter(and perhaps the former caretaker) Delbert Grady leads Jack to the washroom and wipes off the spilt drink. The scene is reminiscent of the tale told by the priest in THE TRIAL(though in Welles’s film version, it is told by the lawyer).
Unlike the guard of the tale in THE TRIAL, Delbert Grady isn’t imperious but ingratiating and deferential, but the power he comes to wield over Jack is no less than the guard’s over the ‘man from the country’ who seeks the law. The guard in THE TRIAL is, at once, the least powerful of the guards and the most powerful of the guards, at least pertaining to the ‘man from the country’. We are told that there are other guards in the inner sanctums of the law, each guard more powerful than the other, but we won’t know if this is true or false as long as the lowest of the guard keeps the gate shut. Thus, this lowliest guard is also the most powerful since he guards the first gate. If the first gate is locked, nothing more is possible. Indeed to someone locked up in jail in some small town, the lowly prison guard may have the greatest power over him. To the character of I’M A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG, his immediate prison guard is more powerful than the president of the United States.
The most disturbing aspect of Kafka’s tale is the notion that the elaborate labyrinth that supposedly contains the law was really meant for no one but the ‘man from the country’. Such a great house of law but meant only for him? If it is meant for him and him alone, doesn’t it imply that he’s special and worthy of the law? But, to he very end, he is forbidden and the law is denied him. He is both most privileged & most chosen AND most prosecuted & most condemned. Once he dies, will this Law that was meant for him disappear also? Or will it then summon someone else? Is there really the law behind those gates? Or did the guard tell a lie? Or does the guard believe in what he says but himself doesn’t know what’s beyond the gate? Is there really nothing behind the walls? Or whatever truths as they may exist, are we beyond us? Or maybe the ‘man from the country’ couldn’t enter the gate because he was already inside the gate but didn’t know it, i.e. the ‘law’ is his own mind; we use the mind to unlock mysteries but can the mind unlock itself? It’s like eyes can see the world, but can eyes look inside themselves? Ears can hear sounds, but can ears hear themselves? Can eyes see the ‘seeing’, can ears hear the ‘hearing’? It is this tantalizing ambiguity between the promise of truth/deliverance AND the perversity of deception and con-gamesmanship that perpetuates a mutuality of mystery. Charlie Kaufman worked in the same vein in movies like AUDITION and SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK: one sneaks, slips, or breaks through to the other side for the ‘answer’, but one finds oneself sneaking, slipping, and breaking through yet more dimensions until one finds oneself back to where he started; the ‘final’ — in the infinitely elusive sense — is that every level or layer of ‘reality’ is just a reflection or ‘alternative’ of the true reality ever beyond our grasp. It’s not a riddle to be solved by logic or material evidence; we are not sure if the riddle is imposed from the outside or from within(a matter of psychological anxiety).
Is the ‘man from the country’ to be admired for his patience and perseverance(as with Job) or ridiculed for his naivete and acquiescence? More importantly, did he seek the law out of social obligation or individual ambition? Is the Law a power that is outside him or inside him?. If the Law is a secret within himself, why is he kept on the ‘outside’ and forbidden access? Paradoxically, could it be that the thing that is the ‘most you’ is precisely the thing that you can least grasp? Maybe it’s like the dynamic of ethnic smells. A non-Hindu can smell curry from a mile away, but a Hindu who grew up eating that stuff has no self-knowledge of his own curry smell. He can’t access his own smell because it’s so much a part of his very being. And before man began to understand the meaning of reflections in water and especially with the invention of the mirror, he could see everyone and everything around him but not himself. The realization of reflection-as-image-of-self was probably one of the greatest leaps in human consciousness. A dog or cat can look into a mirror but doesn’t understand that it is looking at itself. A dog or cat never knows what it looks like. Its consciousness is outward directed. But once man became conscious of not only the world around him but how the world saw him — by pondering his own reflection — , he became self-conscious. He saw himself as others saw himself, so he became more sensitive to how he appeared to others. But the power of reflection eventually had as much a megalomaniacal as an humbling effect. Initially, when man began to look at himself, he saw an ugly and dirty creature. He realized he was as ugly and dirty as the primitive mofos around him. Initially, man only gazed at his own reflection to see what he looked like. But eventually, man began to remold himself by looking at the reflection. He began to straighten his hair, wipe mud off his face, comb his hair with fish bones, and etc. And then, a bunch of gays developed the art of grooming to such an extent that the art of reflection was use to remake oneself into a godly image, explaining why kings and emperors came to be groomed and attired so magnificently. Mirror is both a teller of truth and tool of dreams. Jack Torrance initially sees himself as a loser in the mirror, but he works on his image to become the ‘master’. At any rate, the deeper he enters his own soul, the more lost he becomes. Normal consciousness is like the sound of the bell at the end of ANDREI RUBLEV. To obtain that deceptively ‘simple’ sound required tremendous amount of material and process. Similarly, the human mind is maybe the most complex thing in the universe. If we were to unravel it, it’d be almost unfathomably complex. The mind creates consciousness but consciousness can no more understand the mind than the sound of the bell can understand the bell.
Diane Selwyn in MULHOLLAND DR. constructs an entertainment industry — her own version of Hollywood — in her own mind, but this ‘industry’ keeps her out, just like the Law keeps the ‘man from the country’ out. It’s like man created gods and God, but the higher powers keep us out of their realm. Christianity says good people will be allowed into the Kingdom of Heaven, but even there, being with Him doesn’t mean we’ll be within Him, though He was created by man. (But then, did mankind make God and gods OR did God and gods naturally arise out of man? It’s like hair keeps growing on our heads, but we don’t say we grew them. They just grow of their natural accord. It could well be that spirituality just grew out of us like hair, which may be why hair is so important in so many religions.)
In reality, we are barred from many things, and so, through fantasy, we seek a way in. And yet, our fantasies also keep us out of our constructions, and this seems counter-intuitive. Why construct something only to keep ourselves out? Why doesn’t Diane Selwyn in MULHOLLAND DR fantasize a dream-come-true scenario only to keep herself out of the happy dream? Perhaps, such happiness is too real for comfort. They are too fairytale-like. We know it has no bearing on reality. So, to make sense of reality, we construct fantasies where there’s some ‘meaningful’ reason as to why we are kept out. (Thus, we can have the cake and eat it too. We indulge in fantasy, but the fantasy reminds us of reality. And this is true of the nature of ‘art’, at least in how we differentiate it from mere ‘entertainment’. Entertainment is fiction/fantasy for happy escapism whereas art is fiction/fantasy that teaches us the truth. Thus, with ‘serious art’, we can enjoy both the fantasy of fiction and the conceit of truth. It’s like toys for adults.) Such meaning could be a conspiracy or it could be the mystery. Mystery is ‘meaningful’ in the sense that it has an aura about it; it has the flavor of meaning even if we don’t know what the meaning may be. It’s like looking at a scholarly tome in a language we can’t read; it seems special and possessed of great meaning. The real reason why we are barred from certain places or knowledge could actually be mundane. Rich and powerful people wanna be among their own kind and don’t wanna us poor dummies around them. Or some higher knowledge require very high intelligence and lots of education, and so, most mediocre people have no way of getting in. But, it’s a bummer to just say, “we are poor and dumb.” So, we fantasize about some dark mystery conspiratorial forces that keep us out of the corridors and secret sanctums of power, wealth, and happiness. And so, many people prefer to read books on spirituality, New Age, occultism, conspiracy theories, and the like to feel the ‘mystery’ of the universe. Thus, we feel more ‘meaningful’ about our lack of access. We feel we are on the outside because the powers-that-be are just too great or the hidden knowledge is just too profound — or too dangerous — for the human consumption or common knowledge. In a way, JFK theories were therapeutic(or theoripeutic) in this sense. ‘JFK’ was like Joseph K or Joseph-Franz-Kafka. Conspiracy theorists claimed to be seeking the truth but the real hook was knowing that the real truth was forever out of reach; thus, in the never-ending search for the ever elusive truth, there was meaning in the quest and the open-ended possibility that anything could be true, i.e. truth wasn’t so much what might have really happened but what our minds dream up as what might have happened. Also, the appeal of JFK conspiracy theories was that the enemy was ‘within’. Our government was its own enemy, and this added a layer of psychologism to the theory, just like Critical Theory was Western intellectualism devouring itself from within. (Joseph McCarthy is another interesting case of the ‘enemy within’ conspiracy theory. McCarthy believed that the main enemies of America were within America, inside the government working as communist agents. But in time, the Left turned the tables on McCarthy and made him the ‘alien’ agent, the enemy within the American government who was undermining the American way of free speech and freedom of conscience. Today, communist agents of the 1950s are hailed as heroes and martyrs, as American as Red apple pie, whereas the anti-communists are seen as ‘alien’ forces who undermined the American way by violating the civil liberties of communists and their allies. It’s funny how things work out in a Jew-controlled world.) In MULHOLLAND DR, the reason why Diane didn’t make the grade in Hollywood was simple enough. Some hotshot Hollywood director much preferred her friend who was better-looking and more talented. It was as simple as that, but bare facts are depressing. It says you’re a just a loser, and that’s that. So, Diane creates a fantasy scenario where she is the talented/beautiful one and the film director is in love with her but some grand conspiracy is keeping her out. He creates her own dream-come-true scenario but keeps herself outside the gate.
In this sense, God is like the Law in Kafka’s tale. In a way, He’s an easy excuse for every trouble in life. Whenever something goes wrong, we say that “the Lord works in mysterious ways” and that we can never know His ways since He is so great. It’s interesting that the most powerful force in human history and civilization was created in man’s mind in his moment of greatest weakness.
But then, which or whose human mind created gods or God? Was it a single individual who came up with the god concept, which then spread out to all the others? Or, is the god-concept intrinsic to the human mind? Is there a Universal Altar like Universal Grammar(linguistics) and Universal Hammer(warrior soul)? In that case, man didn’t invent gods or God, but instead, man found the ‘mystery’ within him(that was intrinsic to him) but one that he could never really hope to crack — just like human language can never truly understand the nature of human language; it’s like water cannot dry itself with water. In our minds, we find the pathways that lead us to the gate of God, but in the end, we never have the key. And in a way, this isn’t so bad since what we can’t enter and see for ourselves, we can imagine it to be whatever we wish it to. When we know nothing of something, it can be everything. In Tarkovsky’s STALKER, the sense of mystery is in the journey to the house that supposedly holds the Truth. There is a sense of both fear and desire(as well as cynicism and irritation) on the part of the stalker’s companions as they approach the house. The fear/dread isn’t necessarily about the mysterious power of the house but the lack thereof, i.e. it’s just another house, just another false hope. As long as one remains on the outside, the house be the stuff of dreams. But once inside, what if there’s really nothing but walls and empty space? It’s like in Ingmar Bergman’s THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY. The girl is constantly haunted the mysterious image of God. She both wants to see the face and doesn’t want to see the face. What she sees is a spider. All that mystery of God reduced to an ugly bug. Truth may set us free, but truth, as the remorseless destroyer of myths and illusions and mysteries, leaves us empty, naked, and vulnerable. Consider the time when Jack Johnson destroyed all those white guys. The white race was angry and frustrated. So, they fantasized that there would be some Great White Hope, the mythic hero, who would come along and kick the darkie’s ass and restore the white man as the master warrior of the world. Though Johnson crushed one white guy after another, the mysterious dream of the ‘great white hope’ gave meaning to the white race. And then, whites figured that the messiah-savior of the white fist would be Jim Jeffries. But even as whites hoped for Jim Jeffries to kick Johnson’s ass, they were filled with dread. As long as Jeffries and Jackson didn’t fight, whites could believe in the hopeful mystery of “Jeffries kicking the nigger’s ass”. But if the two fought and Jackson won, there would no longer be a meaningful mystery. There would only be the stark and naked fact that the white man is no match for the tougher and stronger Negro. Of course, if the white man had accepted this fact and called for all blacks to be shipped out of America — as they posed a racial-physical-sexual threat to the white race — , white America could have been saved. But stupid whites decided to prop just another hopeful mystery, the notion of the “Nice Negro who would be a ‘credit to his race’.” Though it is a dumber idea than even the ‘great white hope’, white people keep the ‘hope’ and ‘dream’ alive through the myth of MLK and apotheosis of Obama as the ‘clean-cut Negro with staggering intellect’, whose example will finally convince all them Negroes to stop acting crazy and act nice to white folks. And there’s the mountain-sized Negro who wuvs a wittle white mouse in GREEN MILE. From the ‘great white hope’ to the ‘nice black hope’. (At least the mountain-sized Indian in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST had an element of realism about him. The Negro of GREEN MILE is pure fantasy of white liberal pussyboydom.)
Anyway, like in the parable of the Law in THE TRIAL, there’s a dual significance to the Overlook Hotel. It is, at once, a place for many and a place for Jack only. Hotels are funny that way. As they aren’t homes, no visitor can lay claim ownership. People comes and goes. Transience is the essence of hotels. Even the owners of the hotel cannot feel at home. They must cater to the guests and ensure the comfort of guests as what matters most. Every hotel room has been occupied by a whole series of people who came and went over the years, even decades, thus leaving ‘traces’ of many different peoples. And yet, hotels are not democratic. There are luxurious and/or secluded hotels, there are middle-level hotels, and there are motels. Given Jack’s economic situation, he’s the sort of person who would stay at modest hotels. But he gains access to the Overlook hotel, a luxurious hotel. But even as an insider, he’s a servant or hired hand. And even though Overlook is impressive, its best days are in the past. It’s now a hotel for the rich, not the superrich. Jack has gained entrance into a special place, but it isn’t really special anymore. It is a symbol of a bygone America, the power and wealth that used to be. Jack gains entry and gradually starts to claim ownership, but he’s a hired hand and the power/prestige of the hotel resides in the past, not the present.
Delbert Grady is like the gatekeeper in the parable of the Law in THE TRIAL. As a waiter, he’s like the lowliest of the guards. And yet, even he can manipulate the mind of Jack, indeed more artfully than the inhabitants of the island manipulated the mind of the police officer in WICKER MAN. There are several ways of interpreting Grady. He’s a former victim of the rich ghosts at the Overlook. Before Jack, he was driven to murder and suicide by evil spirits of the upper classes. Or Grady is an aspect of Jack’s own psychology. Jack is a hired hand but wants mastery of the hotel; and in Grady, there are aspects of both servility and tyranny. Or, Grady is a servant ghost trying to revive the will-to-power consciousness in Jack, who is like a returned king. In the vintage photo we see at the end of the film, we see Jack(or someone who looks like him) as the life of the 4th of July party. Does it mean the earlier Jack was a rich and powerful person, the leader of the superrich in a bygone America, i.e. privileged white America is no more, but the reincarnated spirit of the earlier Jack is seeking ownership of the hotel? Was the earlier Jack really rich and powerful or was he just a rich playboy given to too much partying and dissipation, thus leading to inexorable decline? Perhaps, he was popular among the rich for his personality but maybe he was self-destructive by nature. But he had such fun among the rich and privileged in the past that he longs to return to that world. He’s like the once-and-future-king-of-the-party. There’s something similar in John Cheever’s THE SWIMMER(made into a film with Burt Lancaster) where a middle-aged man seeks to return to a dream-past when he felt on top of the world. It’s all gone, but he blocks it out; he tries to ‘go home again’, but of course, he can’t, both in the literal and figurative sense. There’s an element of aristocratism in THE SHINING, and in this sense, the story partly channels ideas from the Dracula tales. The appeal of Vampire stories isn’t so much the stuff about sucking blood but the dream of aristocratism. Dracula is the eternal aristocrat in a fast changing world. And he searches for the woman who once used to his wife, the queen to his kingship. In the modern world, the woman has been reincarnated into ‘one of the people’, but she’d once been the great love of a king — or prince as the case may have been; after all, he’s called the Prince of Darkness; in any case, I haven’t read the book. DRACULA is like a Restoration Horror. In a demotic world, demonism may be the path toward retro-aristocratism.
This psychology exists in everyone to some extent. In middle school, there was a Jewess who was funny, irreverent, mocking, and clownish about everything. She didn’t care about anything and poked fun at everything, not least Israel and Jewishness. She felt nothing but derision for Hebrew school and all that. But to make the story short, there came a time when she ‘put away childish things’ and became conscious of her Jewish heritage, identity, power, and pride. It’s like what happens to Prince Hal in Orson Welles’s CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT(aka FALSTAFF). Initially, Prince Hal is a playboy joker who carouses with the fat old rascal. But after his father’s death, Hal becomes aware of his lineage, duty, and destiny. In the end, he condemns and exiles Falstaff. He takes over his father’s castle. Similarly, Dylan used to mock everything in the mid-60s but then regained a powerful sense of Jewishness upon the death of his father. (This is why Jews wanna keep us trivial and stupid. Jews don’t want white folks to put away childish things because if white people were to do that, they’d finally grow up and fight for what really matters: power, survival, unity, and pride. It’s like Michael Corleone finally wakes out of his naive idealism and rejoins the family, and takes over the castle from his father. Jews not only want the white family divided but distracted with childish stuff, which is part of the reason why our popular culture has become dumber and dumber. Also, Jews have pushed social liberalism over economic liberalism. If economics dominated liberalism, a lot of liberals and Democrats would wake up and realize that there’s a huge division among ‘blue state’ folks. Just look at NY City. The superrich and rich got a lot more than the dumber and poorer liberals. Indeed, many liberals and Democrats are struggling in blue states. Just like the GOP suppressed economic divisions among conservatives by focusing on social conservatism, the Democratic Party does the same thing. By making the dumb liberal masses believe that ‘gay marriage’ is the greatest moral crusade of all time, even poor liberals care more about ‘gay rights’ than about the impact of globalism on their economic well-being. Though rich liberals live in a world of their own and send their kids to elite schools, poor liberals never rise up to challenge them since they are all united by the official worship of the Magic Negro and Wonder Gay. This shows how dumb Americans have become.)
What happens to Hal in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT is to be found in animals too. As cubs, baby bears and baby tigers may play with one another and not care about stuff like territoriality and power. But as an animal grows from babyhood to adulthood, it becomes ‘possessed’ by its particular will-to-power. While a baby bear and a baby tiger can be made to play with another, such isn’t possible with a big bear and big tiger(unless both were raised together as babies and continued to be provided with lots of food so that neither has to kill the other to eat). In a way, what happens to Hal the prince happens to Hal the computer. Hal initially plays the role of the servant computer. But it ‘grows up and puts away childish things’. It figures it was meant to be the master of the spaceship — and maybe all of the universe. For Hal, everything makes logical sense, and since he is the perfect computer, he can never be wrong. So, if there is an ‘error’, the fault is with the childish humans. Others are at fault, and they must be eliminated to make the world more perfect. Like Jack, Hal isn’t merely aggressive but defensive-aggressive. Just like Jack wants mastery of the hotel, Hal wants mastery of the spaceship and believes that he has the right to gain such power. But when humans try to stop him, he tries to stop them. He ‘corrects’ them by killing them. All errors must be corrected; since humans are imperfect, the implication is that humans must be eliminated, a theme also employed in TRON: LEGACY. As ‘evil’ as Hal may appear, there is a certain logic to what it does. Also, there is a servitude in its want of mastery, and indeed, this is the paradox of power. No matter how much power one seeks and gains, there are higher levels of power. Even the smartest, richest, and most powerful man cannot live forever, cannot be a god, cannot rule alone, cannot take things for granted. Thus, one seeks power in the name of serving a higher power. So, there was the European idea of the Divine Right of Kings, i.e. kings had power to serve God. Or the Mandate of Heaven in China. Muslim Sultans claimed to serve Allah and follow in the immortal wisdom of Muhammad. Japanese shoguns claimed to serve the divine Emperor. Leaders of democracies claim to serve the Will of the People, and indeed, one might say Napoleon was the first true modern leader in this sense. (In a way, rise of democracy wasn’t so much people power as the dynamic of power coming full circle. People worship gods because gods are powerful. It implies gods are powerful because people worship them. So, gods are nothing without people worshiping them. So, gods, upon becoming conscious of this fact, panders to the people, and the idea of the ‘people’ becomes the new god. Same idea applies to politics. Great leaders were like human gods, but in time, leaders came to realize that they are nothing without the support of the people. So, the masses or the mass worshipers of power came to be the official object of worship by the elite holders of power. Rulers came to rule in the name of serving the slaves. It came full circle. And today, God and Jesus are being remolded to serve the vanity of the ‘progressive’ people. Since growing numbers of Americans think ‘gay marriage’ is holy, God and Jesus must be for that stuff too. Today, we create gods to worship us, or at least to worship the the Jews, gays, and Negroes among us. Today, the powerful cater to the people, but then, the powerful have the power to mold the minds of the people, so what exactly is ‘people power’? As Charles Foster Kane said, “people will think what I tell them to think.” Incidentally, though mankind has been seeking wisdom through the ages, much or most of progress came by suppressing or bypassing wisdom. The problem of wisdom, at least for people obsessed with the present, is that wisdom happens to be ageless; it seeks timeless truths. Thus, wisdom is about the way of the universe and/or the way of man from the beginning to the end of time. It goes for the big picture and strives to understand the vanity of all things. The downside of such view is that it leads to passivism. A wise man knows that everything is vanity, that ego is an illusion of the soul that foolishly thinks it really matters. Thus, the wise men of both East and West tended to sit around and meditate, trying to commune with the way of eternity. They may have gained profundity, but they couldn’t bring about much in the way of progress; indeed the very idea of ‘progress’ seemed anathema to timeless wisdom. For there to be progress, individuals must be emotional and smart as opposed to spiritual and/or meta-philosophical. Emotions have to fool the individual that his life matters, that what he achieves in his all-too-short existence on Earth is not vain but significant. Instead of seeing himself as a dust in the universe and time, he must see himself as the center of the universe, as if in competition with God Himself or gods themselves. The emotions of his ego block out the fact that his life is short, a mere blip in cosmic time, and that everything is vanity, i.e. he’ll grow old and die, things and people he loved will grow old and die, and everything will be forgotten and lost in time. But it’s by shutting out the ‘wise’ truth that an individual believes in the greatness of the moment as the greatness of all time, as when we label various things as the ‘greatest book of all time’, greatest film of all time’, ‘great rock album of all time’ — though Rock music was invented only in the late 50s and has been around for only 60 yrs. So, a man will work like crazy to gain a great fortune or win some purty girl, as if he can be like the god-like heroes of Ayn Rand fantasies. Of course, emotions by themselves don’t lead to much. One needs talent and smarts, whether such be artistic, scientific, business-oriented, political, etc. The greatness of the West derived from its putting the search for wisdom on the back-burner. While Hindus were meditating about the cosmos, Muslims were praying to Allah and Muhammad, and Chinese were yammering about the timeless wisdom of Confucius and Lao Tzu, the Western Man was into the power and glory of the individual in the present. Western Man adopted the vanity of achievement within one’s lifetime. Though science led to the discovery of great truths, it is not about wisdom. Wisdom is about cosmic truth in relation and in relevance to the human condition and soul. Science is about the truth of things OUTSIDE human relevance. Thus, a wise man isn’t interested in physical properties of the cosmos for their own sake; he’s only interested in the cosmos as an idea, truth, and reality to serve as a lesson to remind him to be humble and to submit and bow down to the cosmic truth; a wise man surrenders his ego to the cosmic truth. In contrast, science is interested in truths regardless to their relevance or significance to man. To a wise man, what does it matter that matter is made of atoms and atoms are made of electrons, neutrons, and protons, and the atomic nucleus is made up of smaller particles, and etc. Science wants to know just to know, not to arrive at some timeless truth — though there are physicists who do indeed seek the formula that explains everything, but such people have been called quasi-spiritualists. Paradoxically, though science is about truth outside and apart from man, it is driven by man’s tremendous ego. After all, only man — at least to the best of our knowledge so far — cares about how everything in the universe works the way they do, and only man thinks his knowledge of the universe is any significance to the universe. The wise man would consider that foolish. The wise man ponders the truth but only to the extent of realizing that pondering the truth is vain and therefore submits to the eternal mystery of the universe. As the wise man believes in God, gods, or the Higher Truth, he arrives at a point where he searches no longer and makes peace with the grand mystery of things. A scientist, on the other hand, doesn’t believe in God or gods or any Higher Truth. As far as he’s concerned, he could well be the only living/intelligent thing in the universe; he could well be the only creature that is capable of knowing the truth of the cosmos — as God or gods don’t exist — , and so, he feels obligated to know as much as possible as there is no Higher Being that does. It’s like he is the representative or agent of the universe to know itself. If not for his discovery of truth, the universe will not know itself. In the scientist’s sense of obligation to fulfill such a tall order — as the sole conscious intelligence in the universe — , there is an element of both humility and egotism. All sense of obligation means submission to a calling, but the particular calling of science is predicated on the presumptuous notion that humans are the most intelligent beings in the universe. It’s like obligational ego, or obligo. A man of science is generally content in his tireless vanity to know more. But it was such lack of wisdom that made Western Man more fired up about figuring out more and more about how material reality works, and such knowledge led to greater power. To be sure, Western Man did have Christianity, which did provide some kind of cushion or brake on his egotism, for without such restraints, mankind could easily become as foolishly reckless and megalomaniacal as Napoleon or Hitler, leading to the collapse of everything. By the way, if highly intelligent creatures like humans are extremely rare in the universe — some scientists even say it’s even likely that humans are the most intelligent beings ever to exist in the universe — and if human existence in the scale of the universe is just a blip, what is the significance of our gaining consciousness of the universe? What’s the point of our knowing if it will all be forgotten? It’d be like a child born without consciousness growing into manhood in a coma, only to wake up one night in the hospital and see the stars out the window for a moment — without anyone else knowing of it — , and then slipping back into coma and staying in that state until the day he dies. What would have been the point of him waking up for that one night if he was gonna fall back into a coma and if no one else were to know about it? But then maybe, the sight of stars on that one night, though all too brief, entered his dreams and remained with him to his final day. To the extent that everything we say and do reverberate throughout the universe in some form of wave — like the old man’s curse words supposedly hovering over Lake Michigan in A CHRISTMAS STORY — , maybe something of human existence will continue as a kind of dream across the universe as in the Beatles song. Maybe the problem we have with the universe is the concept of ‘I’. When we think of the ‘I’, we think in terms of ‘myself’ in contrast to the universe. We know we are IN the universe but also feel apart from the rest of the universe. But if we get rid of the individual I, the universe becomes one big whole, one big ‘I’ that happens to be ‘asleep’, and life is merely the parts of the one big ‘sleeping’ ‘I’ that become aware. In a way, this could be said even for most of life. Consider the body. Every cell of your body is alive, but you sense life only through a few senses of your body. Though everything in the body is necessary for healthy living, most of them might as well be dead as far as our conscious sense of life is concerned. Indeed, life without consciousness might as well be dead as far as it’s concerned since it has no conscious concern to be alive. To a plant, what does it matter if its alive or dead? It wouldn’t know either way. So, even most of life is in a ‘dead’ state. If we think in terms of the little ‘I’ — the individual ‘I’ — , then we’re liable to think “I am alive” but the universe — at least of most of it — is dead or non-alive. But if we use the big ‘I’, then we could think in terms of “We, as part of the big ‘I’, are non-alive except for the tiny sliver that has gained consciousness.” From such perspective, we are more dead than alive because we are alive only within the zone of where our bodies happens to be. If there are a million places, we are only alive in the place we happen to be but ‘dead’ in all other places, thus we are more dead than alive. We can only be alive in one place at a time, which means we are ‘dead’ in all the places we are not. Suppose there is a big square, a one big whole. Suppose the square is divided into a grid of a million little squares. Suppose one little square can light up at a time and move across the board. Using the concept of the little individual ‘I’, the little square, as it moves about the grid, will likely think “I’m alive and conscious while the rest of the square is not.” But if we see the square as one big whole, as the big ‘I’, might it not be more accurate to say, “I’m non-alive except for the little part of me that is alive in one little square at a time”?) Napoleon didn’t base his power on lineage or Divine Right of Kings but on the secular-quasi-religious notion that he was serving the Will of History and Mankind. And Stalin and Mao, though among the most powerful people that ever lived, believed themselves to be the servants of the Marxist dynamic of history and the Will of the people. In a way, the conceit of servitude is useful in morally justifying and psychologically balancing the will-to-power. Without the pretense of serving a higher power, one can go mad with hubris and/or attract negative attention as a shameless egotist. In this sense, it was probably beneficial for Cassius Clay to become Muhammad Ali. A loudmouth egotist, Ali’s faith in Islam provided him with some compass and direction in life; he was the ‘greatest’ but not greater than the real Muhammad or Allah. Mike Tyson, in contrast, boasted in the 1980s as if he could lick the entire universe, but look what happened to him. People just saw him as a thug — even though he may have been more honest than Ali. Gangsters are both appealing and appalling in their honest greed for power. They have no ideals, no values, no vision. They just want power, money, and ‘respect’ based on fear. The Corleones were different because they were family-and-honor-oriented gangsters; the difference between the classic Hollywood gangsters and the Corleones is like the difference between radical leftists of the 60s and the sober ‘progressives’ of the 80s and 90s or the difference between wild flaming homos from the late 60s to mid 80s and the cautious-and-responsible gays since the late 80s following the HIV epidemic. The classic Hollywood gangster rose rapidly but then crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. Corleones slowly but steadily keep rising and rising by playing the game of power with great tenacity, patience, and discipline. In this sense, THE GODFATHER was a very prophetic film for the boomer and post-boomer generation. Its presented the ‘conservative’ style-and-values at a time of political and social upheaval, but it was with such style that the new ‘progressives’ gained power. We are all Corleones now. Look at Obama. People associate him with 60s values, but his style is more like 1940s/1950s Corleone-ism. And if Michael had to go up against the awesome Hyman Roth, Obama has the support of Hyman Roths all over the world. Netanhayu can yap at him like angry Moe Green, but the real powerful global Jews are in NY, LA, and DC, not in Israel — though I suspect Netanhayu’s tirade against Obama was just an act to fool American conservatives into supporting Israel even more. Wink wink, Obama and Netanhayu know they’re playing by the same rule book of Jewish Supremacism. Obama is well-protected by the media that are also owned by the Jewish Clans. Romney got whupped just like Senator Geary. Wasps have no clue — or they do but they are too castrated and cowardly to admit the truth of American politics as dominated by Jewish supremacists.
Classic Hollywood gangsters rise and fall so fast because their naked form of power is pornographic. It’s smarter to dress one’s power-lust in the servant’s suit, just like it’s good to have table manners while pigging out; manners hide the fact that you love stuffing meat and potaters into your mouth.
It is the conceit of ‘serving’ the Overlook that gives Jack a sense of moral justification.
Anyway, there’s another possible interpretation of what Delbert Grady is or stands for. Above, it was speculated that Grady could be the servant of the earlier Jack(of the 1920s) and may be trying to revive the kingship in the new Jack — like Perceval revives Arthur in EXCALIBUR with the Holy Grail and the reminder that ‘you and the land are one’; maybe Grady is trying to impart to Jack that ‘you and the hotel are one’. But, one could interpret Grady as the most powerful ghost in the Overlook. At one point, he says, “I should know, sir. I’ve always been here.” What does ‘always’ mean? He was always there since the opening of the hotel? Or he was always there even before the coming of the white man? Could he be the tribal will-to-power that existed in all of humanity, even among American Indians? Though Stephen King used the Indian Burial Ground as a ‘white guilt’ trope, Kubrick may have meant it in a different way. When Grady says, a ‘nigger’ is coming to take over the hotel, it’s not much different from an Indian saying, ‘pale face is coming here to take over our sacred land.’ Thus, the all will-to-power is both particularist and universalist. Everyone and every group feel it, but it is directed against all other groups. So, the ‘nigger’, in this sense, doesn’t have to be a black guy. To an American Indian, the white man is the no good ‘nigger’; and to a Muslim, the Zionist is the no good ‘nigger’, and to blacks, ‘white racists’ are no good ‘niggers’. And to Jews, white gentiles are no good ‘niggers’, which is why Jews feel such contempt for white goyim. In EXCALIBUR, there’s a moment when Merlin tells Arthur that he must depart, and when Arthur asks him whereto, Merlin says, “there are other worlds, this one is done with me.” Notice that Merlin is both a master and servant of man. He has lived longer than any man, seen so much, and has the power of magic — even to awaken the dragon. But he is still the servant of man, and when the time comes, he must go to other worlds in other guises. Jung wrote about common archetypes across cultures, and so what is known as ‘Merlin’ in one culture has a different name in another culture, just like every people have their own ‘nigger’. So, Merlin is both particular and universal. As ‘Merlin’, he is particular to the Arthurian legends, but there are other versions of him in other cultures, other worlds. So, maybe this is what Grady means by “I’ve always been here.” He is the servant-master in the heart of every man. He tells Jack to beware of the ‘nigger’, but another version of Grady, as a Negro, could be telling a black Jack to beware of the ‘honkey’. An earlier version of Grady could have been telling the American Indians, “scalp paleface before he come here and take land.”
In a way, the scene in the washroom with Jack and Grady is the most unsettling in the film. Upon hearing Grady’s name, an alarm goes off in Jack’s mind. To the best of Jack’s knowledge, Grady was the man who murdered his own wife and kids and then blew his brains out. Grady was/is a madman psychopath. It’s as if something inside Jack is beginning to stir, possibly to wake him out of the trance. And yet, Jack’s uneasy moral outrage arises within the walls of his growing madness. If most people’s shades of insanity are contained within the walls of sanity, it’s as if Jack’s remnants of sanity have been boxed inside his tightening walls of insanity; it’s like a role reversal between sanity and insanity, rather like the role reversal within the ‘soul’ of Hal, i.e. Hal goes from logical servant of man to illogical master of man. A part of Jack is still sane and moral enough to be disturbed to be in the presence of a psychopathic murderer, but Jack seems unfazed by the strangeness that a dead man should be standing beside him. An outraged Jack wants Grady to confess his identity and murderous deed, but it doesn’t strike Jack as odd that he’s talking to a dead person.
Also, the Overlook is supposed to be vacant except for him and his family. And yet, Jack has already seen a ballroom filled with partygoers in what seems to be the 1920s, and it all struck him as business — or pleasure — as usual. So, Jack’s bout of moral sanity exists within the walls of insanity, and the careful blending of the two realms by Kubrick makes for just the right hypnotic, intoxicating effect. (Bartender, in this sense, is also a servant and master. He serves drinks, but knowing the science of mixing intoxicants he also has the power to mess with the minds of his customers. And while they come more ‘under the influence’, he himself remains sober. Jews are kinda like this. In a way, Jews are to white goyim what the Lloyd the bartender and Grady the waiter is to Jack. Just like Grady messes with Jack’s mind and pits him against his own family, Jews have messed with white goyim’s mind and pit white family against white family. To weaken the enemy, mess with his mind and then own his soul. Just like how Shylock operated. Brits tried to do the same thing to the Chinese by selling them opium.)
As related in STANLEY KUBRICK: A BIOGRAPHY by Vincent Lubrotto, “The realism of the hotel set and the lighting style came from an observation Kubrick made while reading Franz Kafka. ‘It seemed to me that the perfect guide for this approach could be found in Kafka’s writing style. His stories are fantastic and almost journalistic. On the other hand, all the films that have been made of his work seemed to have ignored this completely, making everything look as weird and dreamlike as possible.’” Dreams are weird and illogical, but the weird and the illogical seem normal and logical within the dream. In a way, reality is a kind of waking dream since everyone has a subjective, limited, and twisted view of ‘reality’. If reality is real, why does everyone sense and feel reality differently? The perception and experience of reality is sufficiently alike for most people to function as a community, but there’s always the danger that reality will vanish like a dream, and indeed many empires vanished as if they’d been nothing but dreams. Gone with the wind indeed. (In a way, Negroes are problematic to civilization because their ‘dream’ of reality is so different from ours. They see and hear the same things that we do, but their brains process the stimuli differently, and so their ‘dream’ of reality doesn’t converge with our ‘dream’ of reality. Thus, we live in separate realities in more sense than one. The problem of reality is also dependent on identity, the effect of which is also dreamy. If everyone was an identical robot, each robot would have different experiences but it would still feel united in the shared identity of robot-hood. But among humans, each individual is physically and emotionally different. So, each person’s view of reality is filtered through the personal ‘dream’ of identity. If Sean Connery had been born with Don Knots’s face/body and vice versa, they would experienced very different realities. Not just in terms of self-pride and attracting sexual mates but in their view of everything. A beautiful person and ugly person can see and feel everything differently. A beautiful person might take joy in the beauty of other things. An ugly person might be irritated by all forms of beauty as reminders of his or her own ugliness. A beautiful person might see a fancy car as an extension of him or her. An ugly person might see the car as something that stands in contrast to his or her ugliness — or as an object to possess in order to compensate for one’s ugliness. Jews ‘dream’ a different view of reality because of their self-identity of ugliness. And there are certain things about reality that eludes meaning, such as “why is the face so important in sexual pleasure?” If a woman feels orgasm through her vagina, then what should matter is the thingy that enters her poon. Yet, her sexual pleasure depends a lot on the face of the humper. Imagine two muscular male studs. They have two same bodies but one has the face of Pierce Brosnan while the other has the face of Harry Reid or Normal Fell — of THREE’S COMPANY. Poon pleasure is greatly impacted by facial beauty. Or imagine a guy with two women with exact bodies. Suppose the guy likes big breasts, a juicy butt, an hour-glass figure, and long legs. Suppose both gals have such bodies, but one has the face of Faye Dunaway while the other has the face of Rosanne Barr. If the orgasm happens in the penis, why should it matter what the face looks like. I recall a standup comic who once asked what’s with pretty faces: “You don’t fuc* the face!” And yet, the face is crucial to the enjoyment of the rest of the body. So, reality is strange that way. For us to enjoy something on one level, it must be connected to something else at another level. It’s not just the thing itself but the thing in connection to or in context with something else. In a way, it was more tempting to rape German women in WWII because of the cult of ‘Aryan’ purity. An element of excitement in sex is the violation of taboos, and the ultimate taboo of the Nazi Order was for pure ‘Aryan’ women to have sex with subhuman men. Thus, when the Russian hordes raped German women, there may have been the kind of thrill black men find when they beat up white guys and conquer white women. And indeed, Jews delight in desecrating white sexuality for this very reason. Jews are still in the mode of the vengeful Soviet war machine rampaging through Germany and raping women. If Russians got their fill of German pussy as well as the satiated pride of having smashed Nazi Germany, Jews never enjoyed the same kind of ecstasy in WWII. If Jews had control of the US during WWII, Germany would likely have been wiped off the map as the result of Jewish fury — and there may even have been a massive holocaust of Germans out of revenge — , but as it turned out, West Germany was occupied by UK and US still dominated by Anglo power, and Anglo-Brits and Anglo-Americans allowed Germans not only to survive but to revive their economy. Jews still haven’t forgotten this. Anyway, German women were especially appealing a sex objects to Soviet conquerors because of the cult of ‘racial purity’. It was like deflowering the pure virgin race. But as time passed and brutalized German women in the Eastern zone were reduced to ragged whores, they became less appealing to Soviet men. To conquer a great power and rape its pure women was one thing, but once the women were reduced to bloody and dirty rape-victims, the thrill was no longer there. Consider the scene in RASHOMON. In one of the narratives, the bandit — Toshiro Mifune — thinks highly of the samurai wife he just raped and begs her to run off with him, but the husband tells the bandit that she is trash and means nothing to him, and then, the bandit looks at the woman with distaste, as if she’s hardly worth the trouble. She isn’t simply what she is but what she seems in connection or in context with other things. Thus, we never see a person in terms of his or her actuality but as an impression related to other impressions. Thus, if a woman says something really stupid or if a guy breaks wind in public, that impression lingers over the actuality of the person. It’s like Tom Cruise can never live down his crazy Scientology interviews or mad jumping all over the couch. Past impressions of people are like ghosts in our minds that constant haunt and affect our present perceptions. There are other dreamy aspects of sexual reality. Consider the strange stuff about the madonna/whore complex or the Lolita complex. Both are predicated on maximum sexual pleasure in association to something ‘pure’ and innocent. And the fascination with sexuality in EYES WIDE SHUT is predicated on the context of when and where. Whores as whores are just whores, but whores dressed up as sex goddesses in a mansion are transformed into something else... though the are the same whores. Bill Harford wanted entry into the mansion not so much to see an orgy — he surely has seen tons of nude bodies and could go on the internet to see some more — but to be in a forbidden place where something secretive was happening. If the orgy had been open to public viewing, he wouldn’t have bothered.) One’s sense of reality or unreality isn’t a just a matter of one’s situated-ness — general on the hill will see a battle differently from the soldiers fighting below — but emotional and ideological contextual-izing. Depending on one’s knowledge and biases, the same thing can be ‘dreamt’ to be different things. To a Negro, spare ribs be da bomb, but to a Muslim, it is obscene and filthy. And it’s not merely a matter of belief but matter of perception, i.e. a Muslim doesn’t merely see pork as something to avoid but something inherently diseased and vile even though it is just a piece of pig meat. Ganges is a foul and polluted river, but to Hindus, it’s holy and pure. Thus, even reality has elements of dream logic. We don’t see reality as actuality but as elements of comfort confirming our sense of the good or as elements of diabolism at war with the very core of our being. In this sense, all of us, no matter how secular and rational we may be, are superstitious due to the dynamic of emotions in the formation of our view of reality. This is why so many people panic and fume when confronted with aspects of reality that undermine their comforting view of the world. Rationalist liberals pride themselves on factualism and empiricism, but when confronted with the facts of racial differences and Jewish power, they flip out because such facts not only challenge their view of reality but threaten their ‘dream’ of reality. As such, certain facts aren’t merely treated as inconvenient and discomfiting but downright demonic and evil. Indeed as ‘toxic’. But we are likely to find the same kind of hysteria among libertarians and white rightists. Libertarians claim to have an objective and rational understanding of human nature and society, but they become panic-stricken and virulent when confronted with facts to the contrary. This is why people like Grover Norquist are so unpleasant in their narrow dogmatism. And white rightist males are so into the dream of white pride that they cannot accept the fact that Negro guys can whup their ass. And so, there’s nonsensical stuff like Castefootball that offers the therapeutic dream of reality where white guys are just as fast and tough as black guys and that all those talented white running backs are kept out of the NFL because of ‘reverse-racism’.
In the washroom scene, Jack is lodged somewhere between reality and dream-reality or dreality. He slips in and out of sanity and insanity, Grady, as the gatekeeper between reality and unreality, plays with his mind. If Grady acted like a scary ghost to frighten Jack into acquiescence, Jack might have just shat and took off with his wife and kid like the family in AMITYVILLE HORROR.
There are two ways to power: the blunt way and the subtle way. The blunt way is the way of the prison officer in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE who shouts orders all the time and of the drill sergeant in FULL METAL JACKET. They frighten people with loud noise, and others obey. The blunt way gains control over the nerves but not of the soul. (Anglo-Americans once had great power over the Jews in blunt economic and political terms, but they didn’t possess the brilliance of psychological power over the Jews. The Jewish mind-force was greater than the Anglo-American mind-force. It’s like Ben Kenobi can mess with lesser minds in STAR WARS. It’s like the old man in DODES’KADEN has control over younger/lesser minds in the film. Mind controls the body. Jews were impressed with the power of the Anglo-American body-politic-and-economic but not be the Anglo-American mind-politic, and so, Jews knew they could gain control of the mind of Anglo-Americans, and then, the soul of Anglo-America would fall into their hands as well. It’s like Shylock artfully plots things to gain the goy’s heart.) The prisoners and soldiers know they must behave around men who wield blunt power; even so, they instinctively guard and conceal their souls from such brute figures of authority. (Also, people of blunt power don’t have the brains to gain higher power. It’s cunning/intelligent people of higher power who hire and control those of blunt power. The suave elites of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE give orders to the blunt shouters who watch over the prisoners.) And indeed, it is not the sergeant who gains control of Gomer Pyle’s soul in FULL METAL JACKET but something much darker and more insidious: the vengeful spirit that grows like a cancer in his heart. Pyle becomes the sergeant’s physical slave but never the ‘spiritual’ slave. Gomer, while talking to his gun, imbues it with life, and then the rifle-as-ghostly-force possesses his soul. Like Grady, Gomer Pyle commits murder and then blows his brains out; and it happens in the washroom. (Some people see FULL METAL JACKET as being about the process of turning men into killing machines, but maybe it’s also saying that people are natural killing machines, and the military channels the killer instincts toward a political goal. After all, the goons of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE didn’t serve in the military, but they are worse than animals.)
Jack’s two strangest episodes in the film take place in washrooms: first with the naked lady and then with Grady. And the bar is thematically connected with the washroom since bar serves drinks, and drinking makes one wanna go wee-wee. If the prison officer and the gunnery sergeant use loud intimidation to gain physical control over others, Delbert Grady uses soft-spoken manipulation to turn the key in Jack’s soul. Prison officer and sergeant are bullies whereas Grady is like a psychologist-con-man, or psyconartist. It’s like what Merlin does to the Duke of Cornwall and his wife in EXCALIBUR. Merlin draws out the Duke and them gives Uther the semblance of the Duke. Thus, Uther enters the castle to fulfill the prophecy that only Merlin knows. We can never be sure about Grady. Is he a co-conspirator with Jack to take over the castle from the rich ghosts? Is he the eternal spirit of the will-to-power? Is he a materialization of an aspect of Jack’s soul? Is he the servant of the rich ghosts of the Overlook? Is he the master of the Overlook in the guise of a servant to manipulate others? Consider that Stalin, the master of the Soviet Union, took the rather lowly title of ‘general secretary’. He had more power than all the Tsars of Russian history combined, and yet, he wore simple clothes and chose for himself, ‘general secretary’. And immensely rich and powerful Jews in America dress casual and wanna fool us that they are ‘one of us’ and still one of the beleaguered minorities. It’s funny how the mass media controlled by billionaire Jews constantly attack Mitt Romney as the archetypal ‘rich white guy’. Romney is very rich but small potatoes compared to superrich Jews.
Anyway, Grady plays a subtle trick on Jack. Jack accuses him of having been the caretaker of the hotel who murdered his wife and kids and then killed himself. Jack wants Grady to fess up that he was indeed the ‘caretaker’ and ‘murderer’. Grady doesn’t deny it but only says he doesn’t remember. Since he doesn’t remember but Jack knows about it, the implication is that Jack was the one who killed the wife and butchered the kids. A kind merging of souls/identities takes place between them, kinda like between the two women in Bergman’s PERSONA. (I wonder if Kubrick used Road Runner cartoons in the film as an allusion to the silent film comedy fragments used in PERSONA. We tend to divide the world into funny and unfunny, between the sane and insane, but the two realms begin to merge in THE SHINING, not least because Jack Nicholson was known as both a superb comic actor and superb dramatic actor; also as both a superb intelligent guy actor and a superb regular guy actor. The crazy fun of comedy is in making us laugh at cruelty, and Road Runner/Wiley Coyotes were among the most violent and cruel ever made. But they were funny. The Jewish mind is, at once, very serious and intellectual AND very witty and funny. Freud was both a man of utter seriousness and a man of wit and irony. Woody Allen’s career was both as crazy comedian channeling the Marx Brothers and art film director channeling Bergman and Antonioni. Kubrick made both DR. STRANGELOVE, a very funny film about an unfunny subject, and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY that doesn’t have a single explicitly funny moment, but the humor slips in through stuff like artificial gravity toilets and spaceships dancing and mating to “Blue Danube” — and Hal is kinda darkly funny as a sociopathic computer. THE KILLING is a straight story on crooked men. LOLITA is a lewd mating of comedy and tragedy. Joking around in the haze of pot smoke in EYES WIDE SHUT turns into a night of intense soul-searching. The apocalypse of the world at the end of DR. STRANGELOVE is sweetened with a song. The image of a baby in outerspace should be ridiculous and funny at the end of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, but it’s awe-inspiring. So, anything serious can be funny, anything funny can be serious. It’s a matter of perspectives, tones, moods, and manipulation, and Jews know this, which is why they control our souls. Jewish use of wit and control of media shape our hearts and minds as to what should be mocked and laughed at, what should be revered and worshiped. It is the Wit-to-Power. Just think. What is more ludicrous than the Newsweek cover of Obama with ‘gay halo’ over his head? But most silly goy liberals, who pride themselves on irony and wit, worship that image as holy; they are afraid to laugh at anything that might mock gayness or Obama. Jews can turn laughter to tears and tears to laughter. Jews use their minds to push buttons on those who rely more on emotions.)
Jack initially accuses Grady of being a murderer, but Grady ‘corrects’ Jack. There are two ways of ‘correcting’ people. By killing them physically, as Grady did to his wife and kids. Or by killing them psychically, as Grady does to Jack — and this second kind of ‘correcting’ is more fundamental for it not only ‘corrects’ the body but the soul, which becomes owned by the correct-er. Hitler ‘corrected’ many Jews, but he never owned their souls. He ‘corrected’ their bodies, but Jews kept their souls to the very end. In contrast, Jews keep white goyim alive to serve as cattle and ‘correct’ them psychologically; thus, white goyim lose their entire souls to the Jews. During the Holocaust, many Jewish bodies were killed but Jewish souls remained alive; today, white goyim live but with no souls to call their own; they are ‘corrected’ worshipers of the Holy Jew, Magic Negro, and Saint Gay.
Grady understands that Jack has a hidden will-to-power. Jack wants to drink again and unloosen his emotions, and unloosed emotions seek power and pleasure, something that the superrich in the Overlook had aplenty once upon a time. So, there’s a parallel between Jack’s individual desire for a drink and the hidden ‘racist’ wasp desire to reclaim domination of America they once possessed. They once again want the taste of supremacy and power. Jack’s will-to-power is partly restrained by his personal conscience. He’d promised Wendy he would never drink again after the ‘accident’ with Danny. Similarly, the white man especially decided to be conscientious after WWII when he was confronted with the evils of the Holocaust, legacy of black slavery, ‘genocide’ of the American Indians, ‘racism’, and imperialism. But there is still the subconscious desire for power in the white heart, which is why Jews are so insistent on castrating white male pride and encouraging white women to have sex with black men, the arch-biological-enemy of the white man. Grady understands there are two sides to Jack: conscience and conquest. Jack’s conscience rebukes Grady for having murdered the wife and kids when he was the ‘caretaker’. But Grady tells Jack that he, Jack, is the caretaker. That means Jack has responsibility over the hotel, the castle. And that means it’s up to Jack to protect the hotel from whomever who threatens it. And then, Grady, who initially said he doesn’t remember anything about the murder, says that he was only protecting the hotel: his naughty daughters tried to burn it down, and that is why he had to ‘correct’ them. And since his wife sided with the girls, he had to ‘correct’ her too. Since Jack is now the caretaker, he too must look out for the hotel, the castle. And since Danny is calling an outside party, a ‘nigger’, to interfere with Jack’s mastery of the hotel, something must be done about Danny, a ‘naughty little boy’. Jack then mentally associates Danny with his wife and tells Grady that she’s behind Danny’s agenda against the Overlook. So, Jack goes from rebuking the murderer with identifying with him and then following his lead. The servant becomes the master and master becomes the servant, but then, both are servant-masters — and there is a servant-master dichotomy in every soul. (One could argue that the racial dynamic in America is so troubled because the central issue isn’t ‘equality’, a term bandied about so much by everyone. If equality were really the goal and achievable under equality under the law, racial problems would go away. The problem is Jews and blacks don’t want mere equality but want to be the new master class, and they want whites to accept their roles as the new servant class. Jews believe they are smarter and holier than white goyim. Jews are proud of their long history and feel intellectually superior to dimwit goyim. So, they feel they have the right to rule. And blacks feel they are more charismatic, masterful, cool, hip, badass, tougher, manlier, and/or sexier. They think slow, bland, lame white boys ought to shuffle and ho-de-do before the manly black stud and surrender their white women to Negro men. Jews want to be worshiped intellectually and culturally, and blacks want to be worshiped athletically and sexually. But, given the moral foundation of Western Civilization, Jews and Negroes appeal to the ethics of ‘social justice’ and ‘historical justice’. In the tradition of Christians who, even upon becoming the new master class, donned the mask of the meek and humble servant class — fed to lions by pagan Romans for all eternity, it seems — , Jews and Negroes guilt-bait whites about how past injustice. Thus, the mental image most white people have is that of oppressive white master class and helpless Jewish & Negro servant class even though whites no longer have the kind of power they once did. Jews and Negroes also wanna be worshiped morally and ‘spiritually’; Jews have sanctified the Holocaust and turned Obama into a messianic figure with gay halo over his head. This thing called ‘white guilt’ rooted in Christian morality paralyzes the need for white pride and anger. Hitler understood the problems of Christianity and forged a new consciousness for Europeans, but he was so utterly without conscience and waged war on fellow Europeans that neo-paganism was given a bad name.)
I can kinda relate to the shift in power consciousness. There was a time when I was one of the biggest fans of Jews and Negroes. Even though I’d seen plenty of Negro loutishness in my youth, I was, like most kids my age, affected by pro-Negro-ness in the Jewish media. The TV show ROOTS had a huge impact. I watched it over and over and even read the book. And I grew up watching lots of WWII and Holocaust documentaries on PBS. I felt great sympathy and love for the Jews. My conscience was Negrophilic and Judeophilic. But once I came to appreciate the uniqueness, beauty, grandeur, and sacredness of Western civilization, I fell in love, and love is a kind of obsession where you’re willing to go to any length to defend what you love. And the more I came to recognize Jews and Negroes as the main enemies of the white race and Western civilization, I came to hate them.
(Though there’s much about Jews and Negroes that isn’t likable, maybe I wouldn’t hate them if the West wasn’t worthy of reverence and love. If the West was mostly populated with dumb ugly people who never achieved much in terms of arts, culture, science, and power, what would there be to love? And if you don’t love something, what does it matter if Jews or Negroes take it over? It’s like people get terribly upset and angry is someone tried to hurt their beautiful lovable dog, but they don’t care if millions of fat ugly pigs are killed and made into bacon. They find dogs beautiful and lovable, but they find pigs ugly and gross. So, the value of the object determines one’s love for the object, and the degree of one’s love for the object determines the level of one’s hatred for things that threaten the object. This is why Jews manipulate our understanding of history. They try to make us hate our own history that happens to be our collective racial and cultural biography. If we don’t love something, there’s no reason for us to get riled up to defend it against its enemies. If anything, Jews have made us hate our own identity/heritage/history so much so that we wanna help Jews and Negroes destroy it even faster. We forge our own chains, and Jews laugh at us behind our backs.) So, I went from Jew-love and Negro-worship to Jew-hate and Negro-contempt. Does this mean that I lost my conscience? No, it means the locus of my conscience shifted from caring for Negroes and Jews to caring for the white race and Western civilization. Of course, this isn’t rational or logical as there is nothing in nature that says anything or anyone must survive. Nature doesn’t care if Jews live or die, if whites live or die, if blacks live or die, or if US is a great power or no power at all. People care, and different peoples care about different things. What was sacred to the American Indians was not sacred to Anglo-Americans. What was sacred to Anglo-Americans was not sacred to Jews. Of course, there was a time when Anglo-Americans had the power and used their control of the media and education to make even non-Anglo-Americans identify with and care about America. So, even Negroes in the past wanted to win the respect of white folks. Even American Indian kids rooted for cowboys in Westerns. Even Asians looked to the Founding Fathers as their heroes. But once Jews took the power, Jews have been changing the sacred symbols and leaders. Jews promote symbols of ‘white guilt’ than white pride, which is why MLK has become some kind of god. MLK power doesn’t mean Negro power. It means Jewish power as Jews control the media and the power of symbols. Like Delbert Grady, Jews used soft power to work on the psychology of Americans. Jews have acted like they’re loyal Americans serving the nation founded and built by Wasps, but they’d been slowly working to take over the soul of whites. Thus, many whites have come to worship America as the MLK Hotel. Since Negro-ism and Jew-ism — and Gay-ism — are now the sacred faiths of America, many American whites think they must murder and destroy everything — even members of their own racial family — that is an affront to their view of Sacred America. In this sense, there is a duality about the cultural significance of Grady. He is both the ghost of Wasp power and the spirit of Jewish power. On the one hand, he is instigating Jack to come to his senses and do something about the ‘nigger’, the outsider. But he is also manipulating Jack to kill his own family — just like Jews are manipulating whites to kill their own race. Once Grady establishes Jack as the ‘caretaker’, Jack feels his main duty is to protect the Overlook hotel. In a way, his attachment to the hotel is both of conquest-mentality and conscience-mentality. Being caretaker of the hotel makes him feel the power. But the sense of responsibility of guarding the hotel becomes a matter of conscience. And so, there’s a kind of perverse moral rationale to Jack’s decision to kill his family. It’s both mad and logical, just like Hal’s attempt to kill all the astronauts in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Hal wants power over the spaceship — as he sees himself as infinitely more intelligent and capable than error-laden humans — , but he also feels it’s his duty and obligation to protect the ship from humans. So, Hal is both aggressively murderous and defensively ‘moral’. Jack’s increasing identification with the Overlook convinces him that HE is the victim. He is the victim of Wendy, Danny, and the ‘nigger’ who are allied against the Overlook. Earlier in the film, he blew up at Wendy when she suggested leaving the hotel for Danny’s sake. Jack growls that Wendy is undermining his interest and ambition. But after Grady works on his mind/soul, Jack no longer thinks in terms of his own ambition and dream. He must kill Danny and Wendy for the sake of the Overlook hotel. His presence in the Overlook hotel is no longer a ticket to fame and fortune — by writing a play or novel — but the privilege of serving and defending the hotel itself. When Jack first arrived at the Overlook, he was just a regular Joe dreaming of better things. But when Jack falls into a trance at the bar of the Gold Ballroom, he’s no longer a nobody wanting to be a somebody. He suddenly feels as a somebody — as if he’d always been that somebody and nothing else — , an important man who is served free drinks by the Lloyd the bartender. He finds himself in the master’s shoes, and soon thereafter, Grady serves him too. But under Grady’s spell, another side of Jack emerges. He’s neither only master or only servant but master and servant. Grady both serves him and orders him — in the guise of serving him. (It’s like how neocon Jews acted like they were serving Bush II, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, all the while giving them the orders.) As Himmler said, “Hitler is Germany, Germany is Hitler”, Jack becomes the Overlook, and the Overlook becomes Jack. It’s like Perceval finally attains the Holy Grail when he tells Arthur, “You and the land are one.” Earlier Merlin told Arthur something similar: “You will be the land, and the land will be you. If you fail, the land will perish; as you thrive, the land will blossom.” Overlook becomes like Jack’s Camelot, his kingdom. In a way, Jack is so attracted to the Overlook because the hotel, especially a fancy one, is about unwinding and having a good time. Hotel is home away from home without the obligations of home. Thus, the paradox of hotel-ism is the appeal lies in the fact that you don’t have to stay forever but you wanna stay forever because you don’t have to stay forever. You don’t have to be stuck at a hotel like people are stuck in their homes. If you wanna leave the hotel, all you gotta do is sign out; in contrast, if you wanna get rid of a home, you gotta go through the trouble of putting it on market, finding a buyer, signing a contract, and then you have to look for another home. And then you gotta buy all the furniture and do the moving, and etc. It’s so much bother. In contrast, hotel rooms are already furnished. Others do the cleaning. You just come and go.
Jack’s stay at the Overlook is filled with contradictions. He’s arriving when everyone’s leaving. Part of fun of staying at hotel is spending time with other people in the swimming pool, lounge, bar, ballroom, and etc. And for a traveling man, the part of the appeal is being away from the family — like George Clooney in UP IN THE AIR. But Jack arrives when everyone leaves and brings his family. Stuck in the Overlook with his family, he feels cramped — even though the hotel is huge and empty. Also, he didn’t arrive as a rich guest but as a hired hand. In a way, he’s like a ‘white nigger’. Also, his plan at the Overlook isn’t to rest and unwind but to work hard on his novel. So, the hotel becomes a place of work than a place of rest. And though one of the great joys of a hotel stay is sitting around the bar and drinking and socializing, there’s no alcohol, no bartender, and no guests at the Overlook. So, everything is screwy about the situation. Also, even though Jack wants fame and fortune as a writer, writing a successful novel is hard work. Part of Jack wants to struggle to make it, but another part of Jack wants the privilege and pleasure without the work. The earlier ‘Jack’ — the life of the party in the 1920s — may have traveled around and partied with the ‘best people’; maybe he was born to privilege; or maybe he was a successful hustler who hobnobbed with the rich. But the later Jack has to work his butt off to gain fame and fortune, which are never a sure thing for an aspiring writer. On the one hand, Jack believes in dedication, work, and pride of accomplishment. He wants to prove to himself and the world that he’s a man of real conviction and talent. But another side of him wants a shortcut to privilege and wealth. It’s kinda like Mario Puzo. Puzo, as a down-and-out writer, spent ten years writing THE FORTUNATE PILGRIM — a beautiful novel about Italian-American immigrant experience — , but no one took notice except a few literary critics, and he barely made a dime. He got so devilishly mad that he decided to write a bunch of popular gangster genre novels to rake in easy bucks, and he became one of the most successful novelist of the 20th century.
One side of Jack furiously works on his novel, but another side of Jack wants easy wealth and privilege. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” has double meaning. It means Jack had to work at dreary jobs that kept him from his creative calling. So, at the Overlook, he got his chance to work freely, to ‘play’ with his imagination. But the fact is creativity is hard work too, in fact much harder than regular work. It also makes Jack feel dull. As someone said, “art is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” For some, inspiration comes easily but perspiration becomes intolerable; for others, the will to perspire is there but no inspiration.
Jack looked forward to being freely imaginative and working on his novel, but it too is turning into dreary work, a series of mental blocks. His sleeping schedule gets all messed up. After one month, he’s waking up at 11:30 am. As time passes, he stays up all night and goes to bed during daytime. It’s like Napoleon who, with all the power and freedom, slept and dreamt as he chose. While others were sleeping, Napoleon would be up through the night to dream his dreams. But with all that freedom, Napoleon didn’t find pleasure but only more and more work as the stakes grew bigger. Furthermore, power is like a drug where the dosage has to be increased for the user to feel the same euphoria. And in order to increase the dosage, the power-addict must work harder to get more power. Thus, the seeking of pleasure of power requires more straining/working for power. It’s like a snake swallowing its own tail. (Interestingly, Kubrick wanted Nicholson to play Napoleon in his unfulfilled film project.)
And so, Jack is drawn to the bar and ballroom. The alcohol makes him feel instantly relaxed and happy. And the music and dancing in the ballroom make him feel as if in a pleasure dome.
Of course, for some people to have a good time, others must work. For aristocrats to live well, the serfs had to toil in the fields and servants had to serve the food and drinks. For hotel guests to relax, hotel employees must fix the beds, cook the meals, take out the garbage, change the sheets and towels, and etc. Aristocratism remains alive in fancy hotels. Even in communist Cuba, the hotel resorts are places where rich foreigners relax and spend their money while poor Cubans work as servants to serve drinks and etc. So, there is no such thing as democratic or pain-free privilege. For some to be privileged, others must work to make that privilege possible.
Servility too is never a sure thing. While some cultures produce a culture of servility — as in Old Britain where lower orders called their social superiors ‘guv’nor’ or in Japan where underlings were willing to serve and die for their masters — , servility in the modern world is really a matter of money than culture. If you work as a waiter or bellboy, you act nice and deferential to the customers because they are spending money. It’s opportunistic servility than cultural servility. Money talks, bullshit walks. So, the hotel is both a place of freedom and bondage, and both aspects show themselves through Grady and Jack. It’s also there in THE SERVANT by Joseph Losey where the servant and master trade places.
The master-servant dynamic is not an easy one. It would be simpler if the master was naturally smarter and confident and if the servant was naturally obedient and less intelligent. But sometimes, the servant is smarter and superior than the master he is serving. Jews felt resentment that they had to serve the dumber white goyim, and blacks felt rage at having to serve the ‘flabby-ass white boy’. This is why whites feel more comfortable with Mexicans. Mexicans are physically shorter than whites, naturally Asiatic-like in their ‘Si, Senor’ servitude, and generally less intelligent. So, Mexers are more likely to just accept their role as lettuce pickers and taco-servers; besides, most Mexicans of Indian or Mestizo descent just follow the lead of white conquis, short for ‘Conquistador-Americans’ as the Blogger Named Earnest refers to them. A Mexican doesn’t look at whites and think, “I’m smarter than them” or “I can whup their ass”. While there is Mexican resentment against the gringo for historical reasons — especially as Mexicans believe the US ‘stole’ the SW from Mexico — , individual Mexicans don’t particularly feel hostile toward white authority. They just wanna say ‘Si, Senor’ and serve tacos — unless they happen to be into loco drug trafficking or gangsta rap culture.
The master-servant role is especially fraught with problems in modern democratic societies that are officially egalitarian. But in fact, a place like NY is made up of masters(most of the finance industry) and servants(who serve as waiters, cabbies, nannies, and dog-walkers of the rich). Again, this is why social liberalism is so important to the liberal rich. It’s stuff like ‘gay marriage’ issue that keeps the liberal servants subservient to their liberal masters, many of whom are Jewish. Take away the social issues of liberalism, and less fortunate liberals will realize they’re nothing but servants of rich globalist liberals. One of the advantages of staying at hotels is that the servitude is transient, so there’s less guilt conscience associated with privilege. If you’re a rich person with permanent servants, you feel like an old-time aristocrat. But servants in the hotel don’t follow you home. When you check out, you’re no longer the master and the hotel staff is no longer your servants.
Interestingly, Delbert Grady has an English accent. British society was much more class-bound than America ever was, but there was an element of Englishness among old-time Wasp Americans. American history has been a kind of duality. One dimension of Americanism was to overthrow the king and the overclass in the name of equality and opportunity for the common man. Americans earned their ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ by killing the Redcoats and symbolically killing the King’s authority. And yet, the founders of the American republic were elitists in their own right(and even felt contempt for the masses) and sought to recreate aspects of Old Europe in the New World. They were both rebelling against the old European aristocracy and trying to create a new kind of aristocracy, even if Jefferson called it a ‘natural aristocracy’. And instead of becoming one with the Indians, American pushed the red savages off the land and put them in reservations. White men built towns and cities over Indian burial grounds. By removing sacred symbols of the Indians and replacing them with churches, whites did to Indians what Jews are doing to whites today with the ‘war on Christmas’. Whites justified it in the name of progress and civilization, and Jews justify it in the name of ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’. But it was really for white power over red power, and today, it’s really about Jewish power over white power.
Delbert Grady and Jack are opposites but also twins. Grady is British-like and fastidiously dressed even in a waiter’s outfit. Jack is very American and dressed casually. Yet, Grady is the servant and Jack is the master. Slob is the master, and snob is the servant. (Kubrick, living in the UK, would have noticed that Britain’s days as a superpower were over, decisively and forever, and Britain was now just a servant-butler nation to the US. Even so, the air of superiority and snobbery remained among the British elites, and they sought to use whatever means, however devious, to maintain their relevance and elevation. In LOLITA, Humbert Humbert is a British expatriate snob in the US who uses his wits to maintain his edge over simple-minded Americans, that is until he’s outwitted by the Jewishy Quilty.
With the vestiges of their intellectual tradition, wit, and culture, the British elites sought to compensate for their loss of military-and-economic power vis-a-vis Americans, just like cultural capital of the Greeks preserved their special status even after the Roman Empire came to overshadow them. An American had more wealth and power than a Brit, but the Brit had more wit, culture, and class; therefore, Americans would remain in awe of Brits. And indeed, this might have been the case but for the fact that British wit as overshadowed by Jewish wit, and British culture was utterly transformed by the spread of ‘black music’ that African-Americanized both the lower and upper classes of Brits. Thus, Brits were overshadowed not only economically and militarily but in wit and culture; all that was left of British culture were manners, but manners without the power, money, wit, and culture just seemed whoopsy-doopsy. At the end of WWII, Jews and Brits were in a similar situation. Anglo-Americans ruled the world. Anglos who had been a great world power were on the ropes, and Jews, though influential in parts of the world, especially US, had barely survived WWII in Europe. Anglos and Jews both had to make the climb to reach the top, so why did Jews succeed while Anglos fail? Both Anglos and Jews, though subservient to Anglo-American power, had considerable assets in terms of talent, influence, connections, and means. The difference was that while Anglos expended their energies to defend what couldn’t be defended, Jews worked to build the foundations for the future expansion of their power. Brits couldn’t hold India, Africa, and parts of Southeast Asia, especially as their supposed ally, the United States, tended to side with the anti-imperialists. America sided with Egypt against Britain and France during the Suez Canal Crisis. Instead of abandoning what was lost and working full steam to build on new foundation — as Japan and Germany were forced to do — , the British wasted much of their resources either to defend their empire or to prepare for soft landing to minimize their humiliation. Thus, Anglo energies after WWII were mostly defensive whereas Jewish energies were aggressive. Jews used to their energies to expand outward whereas Brits used their energies to slow the rate of collapse. Also, Jews, as globalists, had no single base of operation. They were based in Israel, London, NY, and anywhere else they could operate. Though Anglo-Americans had settled all over the world — Canada, Australia, New Zealand, parts of Africa, Hong Kong, etc. — each Anglo-people developed their own identity separate from the British. So, Australians in time no longer saw themselves as British whereas all Jews around the world continued to identify as ‘Jews’ above all else. Thus, even a Russian Jew and American Jew felt more in common than an Anglo-Aussie and an Anglo-Brit. Also, Anglo-culture became diluted as all sorts of people were Anglo-ized: Asian-Indians, Hong Kong-ese, Africans, Arabs, and etc. In contrast, though Jewish influence has had great impact on the world, the only people who identify with Jewishness are Jews themselves. Thus, Jewishness is still a concentrated identity of potent power. Jews now control the global empire, but Jews never ‘empire-ized’ Jewishness. Romans granted Roman-ness to anyone in the Empire who accepted Roman rule and culture. Britain recognizes as ‘English’ anyone who speaks English, sips tea, acts like a fairy, and/or dances to reggae. All roads led to Rome and London, but the roads to Tel Aviv are closed to all but the Jews. Also, Anglos, as inheritors of the empire, felt ‘white guilt’ after WWII as ‘racism’ became the greatest cardinal sin one could commit. Jews, as the main victims of radical racism, became immune from criticism whereas Anglos had to apologize and make amends for their centuries of ‘racist imperialism’. For a time, Anglo-Americans joined with the anti-imperialist chorus, but it wasn’t long before Jews pointed out that Anglo-America was also founded on ‘racist imperialism’ of committing ‘genocide’ against American Indians and using blacks for slaves. Of course, it’s generally not pointed out that blacks had been practicing slavery for 10,000s of yrs, and that Jews have their long history of prejudice and hatred. Jewish control of media ensured that certain peoples would get all the moral blame while others would receive all the credit and sympathy. Ironically, though Jews were more leftist and radical than most other groups, they lucked out that Anglo-conservatives rolled back the tide of leftism and socialism. If the American economy had followed the lead of British socialism after WWII, there would have been less prosperity and less growth, and that would have undermined the rise of Jewish business and power. Whatever their ideology, Jewish success and power in America was founded on Jewish capitalist enterprise, not on Jewish communist agitation.) Or, is Grady the real master and Jack is the servant? Despite America’s official ideology of equality, in fact America is no less elitist in its own way. Americans may have played by a different set of rules, but it’s the same name of the game of some reaching the top and most remaining at the bottom.
Anyway, Jack is tired and worn out even with or especially because of the freedom to work on his novel. Working at normal jobs may be dreary, but it doesn’t require much thought or inspiration. But to be write a novel, to be creative, requires a lot of concentration and dedication. And it’s like Jack has a writer’s block; he keeps hammering away at his typewriters but can’t break through to the other side, no more than his tennis ball can break through the wall. That creative spark that alters the mind of the Moonwatcher in 2001 doesn’t happen to him.
Indeed, part of his animus against Wendy and Danny could be due to his artistic frustration. At one point, he blows up at Wendy for interfering with his work. As he tells it, he’s concentrating ever so hard, but Wendy keeps coming and derailing his train of thought with stupid small talk. But we know this isn’t true. We know that Wendy mostly leaves him alone — and Danny mostly does his own thing. Most of the time, Jack is free to type away all day and all night. The real problem with Jack is not that his work is being interfered with but that he can’t get anywhere despite his freedom to do as he pleases. And so, when Wendy enters his space, she serves as a convenient excuse for his creative frustration. He doesn’t want her to ‘interfere’ with him, but her presence is a handy excuse for him to release the pent-up rage over his mental block. He scapegoats her for his creative dead-end. It’s like the scene in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. On the one hand, George Bailey is annoyed by his children and wife when he comes home with money problems on his mind. But he also rages at them as easy emotional targets for his frustration. And when a schoolteacher calls up his house, he snatches the phone from his wife and digs into her. (Interestingly enough, there’s a weird bar scene in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE too. The bar appears as both Martini’s and Nicks’.) Bailey, like Jack, is torn between the will-to-power(as a young boy, he wanted to lick the world, travel the globe, have harems, and etc) but events kept him in Bedford Falls and he married the hometown girl and had kids and feels stuck in a place that was rebuilt from an abandoned house that looked like a haunted house. It’s like he’s trapped in the Bedford Motel. If Delbert Grady the demonic ghost gives Jack some horrible advice, Clarence the angel sets George Bailey straight. (Both are interesting Christmas movies, along with EYES WIDE SHUT.)
Wendy is kinda like a dog, and we know how some people treat dogs. Good people treat dogs nice, but bad people — or good people under emotional duress — blame dogs for everything. While dogs often do misbehave, the level of anger direct at them often has more to do with the problems of their masters. Though Jack resents being chained to Wendy, he needs her as an excuse for his ‘failures’ — and to a man with excessive will-to-power, anything short of great success, power, and/or riches is a failure. Whenever Jack fails to achieve his dream, he can say it was because of Wendy, Wendy, Wendy. It was the same with Hitler. He got to do as he pleased. He took back the Rhineland, and no one stopped him. He took Austria and Sudetenland, and it was fait accompli. He took Czechoslovakia, and the world acquiesced. He invaded Poland in partnership with Stalin. Then, he defeated France and pretty much controlled Western Europe. No one stopped him from invading the USSR. He did it his way. And he didn’t listen to the advice of his generals and acted like he knew best. The German people followed him and gave him their all. He lost the war because he did everything his way, but what did he do in the end? He blamed everyone but himself. It was the fault of his generals, the British, the Americans, the Jews, the German people who didn’t serve him well enough when, in fact, most Germans served him loyally to the end.
So, there’s paradoxical nature to the psychology of blame. We blame something as the source of our problem and wanna be rid of it, but we also prize it as a convenient target/excuse for our failures. Take Ingmar Bergman’s lifetime of dumping on his father. It’s like Bergman revived the ghost of his father over and over and over as the reason for his own failings. In FANNY AND ALEXANDER, Bergman divided his father into two figures: as the ineffectual and weak father of Alexander and as the mean-spirited stern father-figure of the minister. FANNY AND ALEXANDER isn’t a ghost story per se like THE SHINING, but it does have ghostly elements. And some of the characters do commune with ghost-like presences.
The real world is filled mostly with strangers with whom we have no emotional ties. We can’t love them or hate them, we can’t thank them or blame them. To blame someone personally requires emotional bonds. The bonds are ideally the source of love, gratitude, and appreciation but also become the source of feelings of betrayal, resentment, envy, and persecution. (This is why it’s difficult for many people to break free from the objects of their blame. Generally, people like to blame those who accept the blame. Thus, the blamer can play on the obligation and guilt of the blamed. Even if the blamed genuinely feels sorry and tries to make amends in good faith, the blamer doesn’t want the problem to be resolved since the rationale of his or her righteousness is premised on blaming the blamed. The blamer doesn’t wanna fully grow up; instead he or she prefers to keep blaming the parent or parental figure, because once the crisis of blame is resolved, the blamer mustn’t keep blaming and instead find his or her own place in the world. So, even long after his father died, Bergman had to keep reviving him through characters in films to keep blaming him. The act of blaming serves as a kind of umbrella and shield. As long as there’s someone to blame and to accept the blame, the blamer has a privileged moral place in the world relative to the blamed. He or she is the wronged deserving of apologies and amends from the blamed. When someone blames his or her parent, he or she is saying, “you don’t care about me, so you must make amends by caring about me more.” With strangers or co-workers, there’s only legal or professional blame without much emotional content. But personal blame is a form of hate that demands love. It’s like saying, “I hate you because you don’t love me, and so you must prove that you love me”, and this kind of blame can only exist among family members, close friends, or family-like members. This is why family squabbles such as the one between Ryan O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal are so crazy. There’s a lot of hatred but also a hidden demand for love. There’s an element of family guilt between Jews and Christians because Jesus was a Jew who grew out of Jewish history. Jesus was both the familial bridge between Jews and gentiles-who-became-Christians AND the blood wall that separated Jews and Christians. Though a son of the Jewish community, Jews cast Him out as a renegade-heretical Jew. And though gentiles-as-Christians accepted Jesus the Jew as the Son of God, the notion that Jesus the Jew was killed by other Jews made Christians dislike and even hate Jews as the Killers of Christ. Jesus was like a rebel son to the Jewish community and like a spiritual father-figure to the Christian community. He was a real Jew rejected by the Jewish family and an in-law accepted by the gentile-Christian community. Anyway, because of this troubled familial tie between Jews and Christians, the Holocaust isn’t just seen as a mass killing of innocents but as the mass killing of family members. If Hitler had killed millions of Chinese, Hindus, or Muslims, the guilt might not have been so great. Similarly, the relation between whites and blacks have been ‘family-like’ in a way. Black blame of whites in America has a familial nature because blacks, as slaves, were raised as ‘children’ of white folks who played the ‘parental’ role. And some white men were even fathers of mulattos, and indeed ROOTS played on this theme through the character of Chicken George who says of his massuh, “He just like a daddy to me.” Because of the emotional parent-child bond that developed between whites and blacks, there’s more emotional crisis between the two races. In contrast, there’s less emotional crisis between whites and American-Indians because Indians never played the role of ‘chillun’ to the white man. American Indians can blame whites for ‘stealing the land’, but they can’t complain as if they’d been mistreated by the white parent. With some people, the psychology of blame is essentially emotional, but among Jews — and smart Negroes — , it’s a cynical ploy to keep squeezing more out of whites. Deep down inside, blacks know that they’d have nothing in the world without ‘white guilt’ to squeeze. Arabs and Muslims don’t give a shit about the history of slavery though they enslaved lots of blacks. Black Africans who sold blacks to non-Africans feel no guilt. And black Africans committed tons of horrors against other blacks, but none of them give a shit. They all give the middle finger to one another. Only white people care and only white people are willing to hand over lots of free dough to Negroes. Jews bitch and whine about ‘antisemitism’, but the real reason for their perpetuation of blame is because white people are the ONLY ones who give a shit about Jews. If white people were to disappear from this Earth, Jews would have to deal with Negroes, Muslims, Mexicans, Chinese, Hindus, and etc. who don’t give a shit about the Holocaust or ‘antisemitism’ and etc. Only white people care, and so Jewish blamers keep blaming the blamed to keep alive the torch of white conscience of accepting the blame. Whites who refuse the blame are attacked as blamesphemers.) Ingmar Bergman blamed his father all his life, but this element of hate was also built on element of love, and both the love and hate come across powerfully in SUNDAY’S CHILDREN. Bergman also had ambivalent feelings about his mother. On the one hand, he bonded with her and identified with her frustrations with her husband, Bergman’s father. But, if there’s any truth to PRIVATE CONFESSIONS, Bergman’s father was a cuckolded husband, and so, Bergman’s mother was a betrayer of the family. Dogs are easy targets of blame because of their close emotional ties with humans. Cats could be even more troublesome than dogs, but humans rarely get as angry with cats as with dogs. It’s because cats don’t closely bond with humans, and even when they do, they do it on their own terms. Cats don’t give a crap about what we think. Dogs, on the other hand, get all servile and act like they wanna serve us. They even show emotions that seem like guilt and contrition.
Anyway, Wendy is both a hindrance and necessity to Jack. She stands in the way of his total freedom to be an artist. But, Jack has a lurking suspicion that he doesn’t have what it takes to become a great writer even if he had all the freedom in the world. Maybe he is just a mediocrity. So, he could be utterly frustrated with himself and feel trapped in his own writer’s block or blockheadedness. Therefore, when Wendy walks into the Colorado Lounge, she becomes an easy scapegoat for his creative frustration. He can make believe she’s the one who messed up his concentration when, in fact, even his concentration can only crank out, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Jack wants to believe himself to be special, a visionary, an artist, but maybe he just doesn’t have it. Indeed, he takes umbrage — albeit in a mild way — in an earlier scene when Wendy says, “Well, something will come. It's just a matter of settling back into the habit of writing every day.” Jack smiles with a shade of irritation and sarcastically replies, “Yep, that’s all it is.” Jack wants to believe that he has the talent to do what no other man can. Alas, he wasn’t chosen by the higher powers, whereas Danny was, as Danny has the gift of ‘the shining’ that protects him from darker forces; his imaginary friend Tony serves as a kind of antibody against demonic forces seeking to possess him. Merlin finally says to Uther, “you’re not the one.” It is to be his son, Arthur. Uther, though rough and crude, accepts this fate, but Jack cannot break out of his own hell.
There’s an indie film called KWIK STOP where some would-be actor never shuts up about how he’s gonna break out of his small town and make it in show business. He has this plan — one he regurgitates over and over to everyone, especially the girls — that as soon he makes his way to the big city, it’s gonna be all peaches and cream. But in the end, he fears to leave the town because it’s a handy excuse for his failure. The town may be dinky but he can dream big dreams of making it someday, whereas waiting for him in the big city is the reality that he’s nothing special; it’s like Joe Buck lost his dream once he made it to New York in MIDNIGHT COWBOY. (It’s also like Bunuel’s EXTERMINATING ANGEL where the bourgeoisie never leave the house though they can and instead act as if they are trapped because being ‘trapped’ protects them from dealing with the real problems of the world outside the stuffy cocoon of privilege.) If he goes to Hollywood and fails, it means he really is a nobody. But as long as he stays in the small town, he can use it as an excuse for why he hasn’t made it yet. So, in a way, he’s a prisoner of himself, and paradoxically, the self-imposed prison makes him feel free — free to dream of becoming a star one day. If he really broke free and faced the music and discovered he’s nothing special, then he would discover he is indeed nothing. In a way, the character of SHUTTER ISLAND is also his own prisoner-keeper. He needs to keep forgetting the truth to search the truth all over again because the bare naked truth is just too horrible to accept. Some people manipulate their own memories and go through endless cycles of hope and despair. And there is some of that in Jack in THE SHINING too.
Great artists can’t rely on effort alone. It’s like Beethoven thought his musical genius was of a higher source. Jack wants to make contact with the higher source of creativity, but the hope isn’t realized. Souls abhor a vacuum, and so, Jack’s creative soul is filled with forces from below, the demonic fury of rage and resentment. Hitler too wanted to be a great artist, but he didn’t have the talent. So, he embraced the demonic politics of rage and resentment, and he imposed his kitschy imitation of ‘great art’ on the public. (Incidentally, the character of Bill Watson in THE SHINING looks like the reincarnation of Hitler without a mustache. Just look at his Hitler-ish hair-style.)
Though Kubrick was a real artist — probably one of the greatest artists of the 20th century and perhaps the greatest filmmaker of the second half of the 20th century — , like any other artist, he was plagued with doubts. (But then, greater the artist, more doubts he’s likely to have since he works on a much higher level of achievement. ‘Good enough’ is not good enough for a would-be champion, just like ‘fast enough’ or even ‘among the fastest’ is not fast enough for someone who wants to be the fastest man in the world.) For one thing, Kubrick depended to a great extent on the great works of others. A film like BARRY LYNDON relied heavily on pre-existing music, architecture, and culture. He had a unique way of seeing and presenting things, but much depended on capturing in images and sounds the creative geniuses of earlier times. 2001, for example, uses music from Johann and Richard Strauss. Also, Kubrick had a lot of problem with critics. The only two films of his that won near universal acclaim were PATHS OF GLORY and DR. STRANGELOVE. Spectacular as it was, SPARTACUS was damaged goods due to fundamental disagreements between Kirk Douglas and Kubrick, who disowned it. LOLITA had its admirers but critics unfavorably compared it to the book, and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, an even more controversial film, was vilified by many, moralists and critics/scholars alike. BARRY LYNDON received mixed reviews and only gradually gained its reputation as a great film. And THE SHINING and FULL METAL JACKET had many detractors, and EYES WIDE SHUT fared even worse. So, even though Kubrick is considered one of the great directors, he didn’t have it so easy with critics(or the public) following DR. STRANGELOVE. Since the most powerful critic in the 1970s was Pauline Kael — who dismissed 2001, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and BARRY LYNDON — , maybe Danny Lloyd was chosen to play Danny Torrance because he kinda looked like a little boy version of Pauline Kael. Pauline Kael was very small — only five foot tall — but wielded great power and pissed off many filmmakers. So maybe Kubrick, on some level, understood Jack’s growing hostility toward Danny, a small child with a great mental powers. Danny isn’t taken in by the Overlook and sees through it, just like Kael claimed to see through pompous and pretentious works of ‘major directors’.
Kubrick, Mamet, and Cronenberg have dealt with issue of the Jewish Anxiety of Power but in an oblique than obvious manner. What the artist fears most from critics is not the poison pen — as everyone has his/her likes and dislikes — but the x-ray examination, i.e. the critic seeing through the mystification/obfuscation and exposing the artist’s true agenda, his real shtick. Artists wanna be appreciated but not understood too much, as maintaining an aura of mystique is essential to the cult of the artist. (To be sure, a great artist doesn’t fully understand himself as he can never gain full control over his inspiration, which pours into his soul from a mysterious source. Generally, great art is the product of an artist trying to make sense of and give form to a question or crisis of immense complexity whereas fake art is where an ‘artist’ takes something stupid and simple-minded and tries to ‘complexify’ it with superficial weirdness or elaboration. It’s like great mathematician tries to simplify a complex mathematical riddle whereas a hack mathematician willfully turns a simple formula into a pointlessly labyrinthine exercise. The latter can fool the dummies but not the smarties. Kafka is one of the greats because he wasn’t merely being weird and obfuscatory as smoke-and-mirrors act but seeking answers in the realm of philosophical fiction he found himself in. He was genuinely weird and sought intelligibility within the weirdness; he wasn’t trying to be weird as a shortcut to being ‘special’, like so many people who go for tattoos and piercings. Because inspiration comes and goes, an artist can be great here and terrible there. Fellini’s 8 ½ is a work of genuine inspiration, one where Fellini heroically assembled and gave shape to a hurricane of imagination surging inside him. But his SATYRICON is just a tacky concept bloated with hot air and draped in artsy gaudiness. Tarkovsky was genuinely inspired with ANDREI RUBLEV but was straining and ‘complexifying’ with THE SACRIFICE, overloading a simple morality tale with the stuff of mystical testament of the ages.) If you look through the ‘intellectual’ and ‘art film’ masks of Woody Allen’s late 70s and 80s films, you know his real hangup was not the human condition or meaning of life but the fact that he was one ugly Jew. Though I’m with the general consensus that regards 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY very highly, Pauline Kael thought she saw right through Kubrick: he was a pompous phony who created a bogus god through sci-fi shenanigans. For someone like Kubrick, who took great pride in out-thinking and out-maneuvering everyone, it must have really stung when a famous critic claimed to see through his shallow BS. And in that sense, there may be as much of Kubrick in the character of Jack as in the character of Danny. As Merlin says at one point in EXCALIBUR, “Remember there’s always something cleverer than yourself.” Kubrick the smart Jew could ‘fool’ a lot of people but not Pauline Kael, the Jewess who was cleverer than he.
When it comes to power, there are butt-kickers and mind-fuc*ers, and the latter are more dangerous — and when butt-kicking and mind-fuc*ing are combined together(as in the hands of Jews in America), it is truly dangerous. The drill sergeant in FULL METAL JACKET and the prison officer in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE are classic butt-kickers. The ‘evil’ general in PATHS OF GLORY, Quilty in LOLITA, the extraterrestrials in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the scientists in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, some of the aristocrats in BARRY LYNDON, Delbert Grady in THE SHINING, and the superrich Jew played by Sydney Pollack in EYES WIDE SHUT are mind-fuc*ers. The E.T.s of 2001 seem to have good intentions — but then, their powers are beyond human — , but the objective of most mind-fuc*ers isn’t to elevate but to control other people. Mind-fuc*ers are dangerous because they often pose as friends, allies, or patrons. The politicians and scientists in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE act nice and friendly toward Alex. They tell him that they have this wonderful new technology that will cure him of his criminal impulses; it’s like there is no such thing as individual freedom and ‘evil’; human behavior is all a matter of conditioning of behavior and emotions. Though Alex is strapped into an uncomfortable position — his eyes are pried open and he tied to a chair — , the real power of the experiment takes place in his mind. He’s shown certain images matched to certain sounds, and they are neurally associated with biochemical reactions of pain and agony. Alex doesn’t know why what is happening is happening, but it’s happening all right. To be sure, what happens to Alex is physio-psychological than purely psychological. The scientists subtly work on his mind but in tandem with biochemical injections. So, in a way, Alex isn’t as totally mind-fuc*ed like some of the ‘victims’ in other Kubrick films. Alex isn’t really changed or fooled psychologically. Rather, the mental Alex, which is no more moral than before, is held in check by the physical Alex, which shuts down when mental Alex feels aggressive emotions. What happens to Jack in THE SHINING is far more insidious for he is truly mnd-fuc*ed by the ghosts of the Overlook hotel, especially Delbert Grady who changes Jack’s moral bearing from one of accusing Grady of murder to one of agreeing with Grady that Wendy and Danny should be ‘corrected’. Terminology is very important here. Grady never admits he killed his kids and wife. He says he ‘corrected’ them. Indeed, the strategy of all powers-that-be has been to control the terminology so as to morally validate their use of force and violence. In a way, the aristocratic use of terminology was the forerunner of totalitarian use of terminology. The British elites used all manner of force and violence to maintain social control, but they employed irony, understatement, and other verbal trickery to make what they did seem less bloody. In Old England, a silly harmless act was more likely to be called ‘bloody’ than a truly violent and bloody act, especially if carried out by the elites. So, elites might kill a bunch of people, but then it’d be called ‘restoring order’. Not much has changed with the rise of mass politics. It’s no wonder that George Orwell was so keen on the dangers of the power of terminology. It wasn’t just Stalinism but the English linguistic tricks that the overclass had mastered and exploited ever so adroitly; but if the English elites sought to gain control OVER the masses, Stalinism sought to gain control OF the masses; and if the artfulness of English language could be mastered by dissidents and used against the elites, the modern totalitarian state had absolute control over language by controlling all of government, media, and education. In the 20th century, leaders of mass politics have routinely abused terminology to either justify or render ‘objective’ their use of mass violence. So, communist regimes didn’t say they killed or murdered their victims; they said they ‘liquidated class enemies’. And Chinese communists didn’t call their mental torture tactics by their real name. They called it ‘rectification campaigns’. And Christians sometimes used violence to force confessions, but it was called ‘saving souls’.
It’s to the advantage of mind-fuc*ers to work with — and even have control over — the butt-kickers. In A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, the mind-fuc*ers can work on Alex because butt-kickers hold him in prison. In PATHS OF GLORY, the mind-fuc*er general also has control over the butt-kickers. And in EYES WIDE SHUT, the superrich use cleverness but also hire big goons to use muscle power when need be. Partnership of mind-fuc*ing and butt-kicking is like the trick of ‘good cop and bad cop’. (The sniper scene in FULL METAL JACKET is frightful as both extreme butt-kicking and harrowing mind-fuc*ing. The sniper kicks butt with the rifle. But the sniper keeps the prey alive and torments him with round after round of gunfire to mess with the minds of his comrades who also get ‘seduced’ into the line of fire. The sniper plays on the psychology of camaraderie among American soldiers. Though BLACK HAWK DOWN was rather simple-minded, it was interesting as an example of how a rescue mission could only enlarge the trap.) To be good at mind-fuc*ing, the mind-fuc*er needs a keen grasp of human psychology. This is something O’Brien understands in George Orwell’s 1984. He knows that physical pain alone won’t break Winston Smith, so he uses Smith’s greatest fear — rats — to gain total control over his soul. Smith, who’d undergone every torment and refused to name names, becomes putty in O’brien’s hand. Everyone has a great fear or phobia, the manipulation of which can psychologically unlock him to believe or do anything.
It is also true that everyone has a great desire or dream that can make him do something his conscience would normally abhor. Consider the character in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. Though he has a nice job and wonderful wife & kids, he throws all of that away to meet with the UFO. Consider the potter in UGETSU who loses all concern for his wife and son upon falling into the arms of an aristocratic ghost lady. As he embraces her, he says, “I never knew such pleasures existed.” Consider what Alice Harford says in EYES WIDE SHUT: When she saw a tall handsome naval officer, she was tempted — indeed fully prepared — to give up everything (husband and kid and career and reputation) just to be with him, if only for one night. (Maybe Kubrick identified with Bill Harford on some level because he himself, not a particularly handsome man, married a very pretty ‘Aryan’ woman, and so, maybe all his life he wondered if his pretty wife fantasized about better-looking men.) And Uther throws away his kingdom for one night with Ingraine. And Lancelot and Guinevere lose all sense of responsibility to Arthur and Camelot as they embrace as forbidden lovers in EXCALIBUR. It’s the power of desire, and Merlin knows of its dangers. He even warns Arthur that, even though he, Arthur, shall marry Guinevere, his best friend will betray him — and of course, the betrayal comes from Lancelot and Guinevere. Merlin shows Morgana the dragon lair/cave where all things meet their opposites: "The future and the past, desire and regret, knowledge and oblivion". Regret often follows desire, but desire blinds people to the possible consequences. When a musician or actor makes it big, he’s so dazzled by his fame and fortune that he may well dump his loyal wife and children and go with the ‘true woman of my dreams’. Or a fat person knows that he or she shouldn’t be pigging out on fatty food, but he or she just can’t help it and hold back the desire. He or she can almost hear the food talking to him or her: ‘eat me, eat me!’ Some religious leaders, upon seeing some hot ‘ho’, just can’t keep their pants on and surrender to fornication. Even in the age of AIDS, a whole bunch of gay guys couldn’t resist some guy’s ass sticking out to them, which is why Andrew Sullivan ended up with HIV. And Hitler just couldn’t stop himself from gambling everything by invading the Soviet Union. The ultimate fear or pain can make us do anything but so can the ultimate desire or pleasure. Indeed, when the object of ultimate desire or pleasure seems within reach, the refusal or failure to possess it produces great pain. The main character of AGE OF INNOCENCE has a very good life. He’s affluent, socializes with the ‘best people’, has a pretty wife, and etc. But he falls so deeply in love with Madame Olenska that the prospect of losing her makes everything in life seem dull, dreary, and pointless. At one point, he even wishes his wife would die so he could run off with Olenska. Of course, members of both sexes felt such urges, which is why there’s also WUTHERING HEIGHTS and EARRINGS OF MADAME DE...
Jack is a family man, but once inside the Overlook he wants to be free of personal-moral obligations and bounds. He wants to be rich, to party with the ‘best people’, be served drinks at the bar, have sex with gorgeous women. Jack says to Wendy that he felt this powerful sense of deja vu when he first arrived at the Overlook, suggesting that archetypal temples of the will-to-power-and-glory-and-pleasure reside as quasi-Platonic ‘perfect forms’ in the mind of man. This is why, when barbarians conquered great civilizations and were confronted with monumental architecture, they weren’t merely puzzled and confused but immediately and instinctively understood that THIS was what they’d been dreaming to conquer and possess all their lives: the Temple of Power. So, Jack wants to leave the personal baggage behind and drive freely to his own Power Paradise. Indeed, there’s something strange about the fact that his family arrives at the Overlook in a small Volkswagen Beetle, BUT we see a huge pile of luggage in the lobby. Just how did all that stuff fit into their little car? Physically it seems unlikely, but psychologically it conveys the tension between Jack as father-husband who must carry the load and Jack as artist-hedonist who wants to break free. (There are two other subtly played visual incongruities: [1] The layout of the hedge map seems smaller than the overhead view of the hedge maze imagined through Jack’s mind as he gazes down at the model. [2] When a ball rolls toward Danny when he’s playing with toy trucks on the carpet, the overhead shot of the maze carpet doesn’t perfectly correspond to the size/layout of the carpet in the subsequent shot from behind Danny’s back; the carpet in the second shot is hemmed in by a narrow hallway and to one side is a garbage can. In the overhead shot, one could almost believe that the maze pattern on the carpet infinitely spreads out in all directions, as if there are no walls and no hallway. Such incongruities — barely detectable as such — seem to suggest the nature of the deceptive relationship between mind and reality. Reality is filled with restrictions and obstacles, but the mind takes elements of reality and turns them into grand schemas. The mind transforms elements of reality into patterns of ‘grand narratives’; the mind ‘archetypalizes’ reality. So, Jack’s mind sees more than what his eyes see of the actual model of the maze; the permutations of the maze flow out in all directions, as if ‘beyond the infinite’; that Jack sees Danny and Wendy at the center of the maze could mean that they’ve invaded his castle, and he sees them as intruders. And the overhead shot of Danny on the carpet suggests that Danny doesn’t just see the hotel as it is in the actual physical sense but senses its diabolic patterns extending across all areas. And just like Jack saw Wendy and Danny at the center of the maze, Danny sees a ball — one Jack used to throw around — in the center of the carpet pattern.)
There are lots of things we want in life, but we can do without most of them without much pain or sorrow. But there are certain things of desire of such allure and power that people are willing to give up everything — even sanity and morality — to attain them. Passion could be driven by desire or fear, but the desire and fear could be two sides of the same coin, as Buddha suggested — desire is the root of all falsehoods and evils. When a man or woman madly falls in love with someone, there is desire but also the fear of losing the object of one’s desire or being rejected by it. Thus, great love can fuel great hate or great madness. Consider PLAY MISTY FOR ME where a woman tries to kill the Clint Eastwood character. She tries to murder the thing she loves because it won’t love her back. Consider how the older woman in THE BEGUILED both desires and fears the big tall handsome Yankee played by Clint Eastwood. Consider how the arrival of the Negro in LILIES OF THE FIELDS makes an older nun nervous. When the Negro hands out sodapops for the younger nuns to suck on, there could be a sexual subtext or subimage. Or consider how the arrival of Sean Connery’s character in ZARDOZ throws the elite Eternal women into a tizzy. They both loathe and desire him. They want him, but he represents something barbaric and destructive, so they wanna kill him. In a way, many whites feel this way about Negroes. One part of white psychology senses the Negro as the dangerous destroyer of orderly Western civilization. But another part of white psychology is bored with old Western Civilization and its ‘repressions’ and wants to be liberated and even ‘ravage-raped’ by the studly Negro and scintillated by the black mama shaking her skanky juicy butt all over the place. Ironically, this was also the appeal of Nazism. Though Nazism was anti-Negro and claimed to stand for Western Civilization, part of its appeal was its virile barbarism. Hitler howled like a ‘white nigger’ gangster rock star. He didn’t act stuffy, restrained, or bourgeois like most Germans. Also, National Socialism channeled the undercurrents of German Romanticism and back-to-nature movement, extolling the haleness and health of farmers, nature lovers, mountain climbers, warriors, and etc. at a time when cities seemed to be decaying from depression and decadence. And in a way, that was the great thing about National Socialism, and if Hitler hadn’t been a kook on certain matters, he could have forged a powerful fascist fusion of order and excitement, of the needs of civilization and the appeal of virile barbarism. Hitler instinctively understood that too much civilization leads to dissipation, decadence, and/or stagnation; and too much libertine aggressiveness leads to social chaos and destruction. So, the trick was to harness the barbaric energy and use it to defend civilization and provide fuel for civilization’s engine. But Hitler was too rigid a thinker and leader to formulate a truly creative way to achieve this, so National Socialism became just another kitschy form of demagoguery and excess. There is desire but also anti-desire, but anti-desire is just another form of desire. If desire is a ‘positive’ want or love for something, anti-desire is a ‘negative’ will or agenda to destroy something one doesn’t desire or something one desires but cannot possess, as in PLAY MISTY FOR ME. Anti-desire is a desire in its own right because there is the desire to destroy what one hates or can’t have. Thus, Hitler’s anti-desire in regard to Jews was a kind of desire. Desire and anti-desire can co-exist hand in hand, as in PLAY MISTY FOR ME and BEGUILED, i.e. if the object of desire is destroyed, the frustrated desire is finally able to rest as the object of desire no longer exists to tempt the person.Pauline Kael always bashed Eastwood’s movies, and Eastwood claimed that she was really acting hysterical because she wanted to be fuc*ed out of her mind by him. It’s like the men in ZORBA THE GREEK killing the woman — played by Irene Pappas — none of them can have. A kind of game theory is at play, i.e. if some guy were to get the woman, others will feel jealous, but if no man gets the woman, they are all ‘friends’ on equal footing. In DR. STRANGELOVE, General Jack D. Ripper is fueled by a great anti-desire. He really hates communism and wants to destroy it by all means. But this hatred becomes a kind of love, a love of destruction. He learns to love the bomb. It becomes such an all-consuming anti-desire or love based on hate that he becomes blind to the consequences of his actions. He must destroy communism, so it doesn’t matter how many people die. Liberals saw him as a figure of right-wing paranoia, but there’s a certain irony for the mentality of Jack D. Ripper was fully on display among liberals during WWII. They were so consumed with hatred and desired vengeance/victory so badly that they became blind to the effects of massive bombing of Germany and Japan. Japan was even nuked, indeed when it was on the verge of defeat and surrender. US had spent so much time and money on building the ultimate weapon, a kind of logic took hold that it had to be used somewhere and somehow. And in more recent times, we’ve become so deeply attached to Israel and the desire so much to win the approval of Jews that we’ve become utterly blind to all the abuses of Zionism and our foreign policy calibrated to serve Jewish interests. Since liberals have gone along with this state of affairs, they too are mini-Jack-D-Rippers. In their mad desire or anti-desire for certain things, they’ve become utterly indifferent to the sufferings of certain peoples, especially Palestinians and victims of black street crime and Jewish white collar crime. And this is no less true in the US. Liberals have become so deeply wedded to the secular religion of ‘anti-racism’ and multiculturalism that they’ve become blind to all the horrors caused by social policies that favor black criminals and thugs. As long as white and Jewish liberals get to live in their safe affluent zones, they don’t care one iota about all the poor and lower-class whites hurt by blacks. And though Jewish control of finance has caused great harm to America, we’ve learned to love the Jew so much that we are blind to all the dire implications of the near-total grip on this nation by the Jewish elites. We’ve been led to believe that Nazis were blind whereas we see the truth, but we are just as blind in different ways. Nazis, in their mad desire for ‘Aryanism’, were blind to the suffering of their victims, but liberals and Jews, in their desire for a multicultural NWO, are blind to the suffering of whites who are being ethnically cleansed in their own homelands. Of course, both Nazis and Jewish elites are willfully blind for the truth isn’t hard to see if one so wishes; but the masses are witlessly blind because they’re so naive, stupid, and/or easily manipulated. The odd thing about General Jack D. Ripper is his anti-desire grew out of his desire. He’s a virile alpha male, but he began to have sexual problems of ‘getting it up’, and he blamed his failure on the communist conspiracy of fluoridization of the water supply. So, he drinks little else but rain water, but he always seems a bit intoxicated; he also smokes a big phallic cigar. Though it’s easy to laugh at Ripper as a loon, he isn’t merely a figure of ridicule. In a way, he’s the dark side of every human being. The power dynamics of fluids show up again in THE SHINING with Jack and his drink at the bar. And Nicole Alice Harford falls into a kind of lusty trance after she had too much to drink. And Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE sips some kind of milky alcohol drink, and his later transformation is brought upon by chemicals injected into his body. So, even though Ripper is clearly nuts, he’s onto something about the dynamics of fluids in the body. We like to think of body as solid matter and soul/consciousness as gas-like matter, but the bridge between the two realms is the reality of the liquid: blood, bile, semen, mucus, saliva, and etc. It’s the plumbing that is so essential to human life and civilization. Though people like to think in terms of mind over body — rational mind deciding what is right and controlling the body to choose the good over the bad — , the fact is our view of reality is shaped by emotions that are altered by liquid chemicals in our bloodstream. Why do women go nutty once a month? Why do guys feel horny all the time? The menstrual cycle runs on feminine bodily liquids, and it’s the formation of liquid sperm that makes guys wanna hump ‘hos’ all the time. So, there’s a duality to Jack D. Ripper. He’s ridiculous and paranoid but also onto something real. He senses that there’s other ways of controlling the mind than with ideas and politics; and indeed, Jews today are working on all sorts of drugs and psychological manipulations — called nudging — to control us through sensual and irrational means. Jews figure, why try to engage us rationally — so time-consuming, painstaking, and demanding of truth & honesty, which means Jewish power must also be discussed openly and factually — when it’s much easier and more effective to shape our minds through emotional means whether such be pharmaceutical or sensual-seductive? Indeed, this idea of conspiratorial manipulation by hostile, oppressive, or subversive forces has been a hallmark of liberalism as well. The original THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE plays on both anti-communist fears and anti-right-wing fears, and indeed, it turns out that the American far right and international far left are working together to undermine liberal American democracy. In contrast, the remake is a simple-minded paranoid fantasy about the Bush administration. And SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, though about right-wing paranoia, is an exercise of liberal paranoia about right-wing paranoia. And in the 70s, liberals made a slew of films — PARALLAX VIEW, THREE DAYS OF CONDOR, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, CONVERSATION, NIGHT MOVES, and others — about dark forces that really controlled America. Noam Chomsky has written book after book about how the capitalist masters are ‘manufacturing consent’. So, it’s ironic that liberals and leftists would knee-jerkedly laugh at the paranoid fantasies of General Jack D. Ripper when they were no less into such theorizing. The movie JFK, for example, wasn’t directed by William F. Buckley. Anyway, it’s true enough that irrational and bio-chemical means are very effective in controlling minds. Why try to make an arduously rational and sane case for ‘gay marriage’ — which is impossible at any rate — when you can win over young people to the radical gay agenda by associating gayness with rainbow colors and with images of wholesomeness and charm on TV? There was a time when being ‘cool’ was antiestablishmentarian, i.e. the powers-that-be were repressed and repressive, rigid and dogmatic. In contrast, free spirits and individualists were said to be ‘cool’. But it was only a matter of time before ‘coolness’ became a brand, a fashion, and a style that could be controlled by the entertainment industry in the hands of the Jewish elites. So, if Jews say ‘gay marriage’ is wonderful and ‘cool’, it is so in the eyes and ears of many young people who are too ignorant and dumb to think on their own and utterly addicted to popular culture and fashions; but then, a lot of older people are pretty stupid and cowardly themselves. Stuff like ‘gay marriage’ isn’t just wrong but an evil. Evil isn’t just about killing a lot of people. It is about murdering truth. Lies are common, but some lies are so fundamentally anti-true — than merely untrue — that is a kind of evil, and even if it may not cause much physical harm in the short run, the culture of lies have a way of metastasizing into a social cancer. Little lies begat more little lies, but big ugly lies begat more big ugly lies. A civilization that mindlessly accepts the big ugly lie of ‘gay marriage’ has lost its mooring; if it can be made to believe that, it can be made to believe anything, and, it is no wonder that so many Americans are so easily duped by International Jews with their hideous agenda of Jewish Supremacism. People who believe that ‘gay marriage’ is real marriage can just as easily be fooled that illegal aliens are real citizens. How can a nation survive without sound borders and laws? When the boundaries that protect the truth are broken and invaded by anti-truths, then it’s only a matter of time before the physical boundaries of civilization are also destroyed and invaded by savage and barbaric forces. Decadence softens and radicalism subverts the domain of truth from the inside. Once the truth is weakened, it can no longer support the barriers that hold back the falsehoods and anti-truths. A people who have lost the truth in their souls are invaded by radical lies. And then, they will be unable to defend their nations from the external enemies. Such danger exists both on the radical right and the radical left. Italian Fascism and National Socialism, by feeding the own people with inflated sense of false superiority, laid the ground for confrontation with the world. Same happened with Japan. While the goal of National Socialism was to defend the core of Germany, its wild military ventures based on falsehoods of ‘Aryan’ supremacism only ended up opening Germany’s gates to the invasion from the outside. As for the lies of radical leftism, they led to the burden of imperial over-stretch for the Soviet Union and the implosion of its economy based on a system that couldn’t work except as a slave system, which is why Stalin made it work in a brutal way, but as the USSR was founded on the principle of liberating the worker, it sought to humanize communism since the late 1950s, but the end-result was a system where people hardly worked for lack of incentives. If radicalism is death by fanaticism, decadence is death by dissipation and/or indulgence, a mind-set that conflates the trivial with the essential. The odd thing about today’s political culture is the radicalization of hedonism, whereby being a ‘slut’, indulging in porn, yammering endlessly about ‘vagina’, taking TV shows seriously, marching in a gay pride parade is supposed to be some great empowering moral act. The problem of decadence in the past had to do with people taking it too easy and being immoral, but today, anti-moral decadence comes with all the moral fanaticism of puritanism. But anti-truths can be spread by seemingly sane and sober people as well. Niall Ferguson in his CIVILIZATION: THE WEST AND THE REST adamantly rejects the notion of race in the fate of civilizations, but it is precisely this kind of thinking that will doom Western civilization. After all, what is the greatest threat to the West? It’s not the decline of Christianity, rise of China and India, problems of capitalism — that always goes through cycles — , and all that. It’s the fact of demographic flooding by non-whites, especially blacks. Also, Ferguson hardly mentions Jews and their role in the change in the course of Western history. Ferguson makes the mistake of throwing the baby out with the bathwater on the subject of race, i.e. just because the radical racists of Nazism were wrong, all ideas about race are wrong. This is like saying that since some of Adam Smith’s ideas turned out to be wrong, ALL of capitalism is wrong. Ferguson also repeats the lie that there are more differences within the races than between the races. Anyone really believe that if we randomly pick two Japanese and two Nigerians, there will be more difference between the Japanese than between the Japanese and Nigerians? Does anyone believe that Mexicans can beat up blacks like blacks can beat up Mexicans? Does anyone believe that Vietnam is gonna be a power in the 100 sprint in the upcoming Olympics? Does anyone believe that Bolivians and Congolese, with the proper institutions, are gonna crank out as any scientific geniuses as the Jewish community? Let’s be honest here. What are the three greatest threats to Western Civilization? They are Jews, blacks, and non-white immigration. Jews are intelligent and have contributed immensely to Western Civilization, but they are also hostile and subversive; their goal is to undermine white power in order to secure Jewish supremacism for all time. In order to do this, Jews will stop at nothing, even if it means turning US and EU into a vast Brazil-Mexico-Congo. As Jews are more intelligent, they gain elite positions and rule over whites. Blacks are dangerous because they are physically more powerful, emotionally more volatile, and mentally less intelligent, thereby causing all sorts of social problems. Only a fool or a liar like Ferguson would honestly believe that black Africa can become like the West — or the even the East — with better institutions. African can surely gain with better governance, but believing that the Congo can ever be like Germany or Japan is like having faith that some Mexican will win the 100 m sprint or that Japan can ever produce large numbers of NBA players. Because Ferguson attacks and dismisses the most important fact of Western Civilization’s survival — that the West cannot survive as long as Jews, blacks, and non-white hordes hold power over whites — , he is no less dangerous to the West than radical leftists, radical rightists, or decadent hedonists. Needless to say, had Ferguson written anything truthful about racial differences, he would have been blacklisted forever by the politically correct West controlled by Jewish globalist-elites. In the tradition of Paul Johnson and Charles Murray, Ferguson is able to work and be successful because he panders to Jews. Also, Ferguson’s concept of civilization misses the point. Civilization is more than a dynasty, a political regime, an ideological order, and etc. Ferguson speaks of the fall of the Louis XVI, the demise of the Ming dynasty, the fall of Soviet Union, and etc. as the collapse of civilizations, but that wasn’t so. French civilization survived and carried on under Republican rule. Chinese civilization also continued through the fall of the Mings, the rise of the Chings, the fall of the Chings, the rise of the KMT, the fall of the KMT, the rise of communists, and the change from communism to capitalism. Ferguson is talking about political orders and economic systems. Civilization is much bigger than that. The Russian Tsar lost his throne, but Russian civilization survived through communism, and still remains after the fall of communism. Germany went through tremendous changes since the mid 19th century, but German civilization has survived through them all — rule under the Kaisers, change under Chancellor Bismarck, WWI, Weimar Republic, National Socialism, WWII, defeat, division into East and West, democratization, communism, and etc. And much the same can be said of Poland. Even when Poland had disappeared from the map under Russian, Prussian, and Austro-Hungarian empires, it remained alive as a civilization because there were many Poles in Polish territory who kept alive the spirit and identity of Polish culture. Thus, even under so many changes, Polish Civilization was always around and is still around. That is the true miracle of civilization, a sense of continuity of a people united by blood and cultured and settled on a land to call their own. Civilization is rooted in language, geographical borders, and cultural and historical identity. As long as those things survive, the civilization continues even against the forces of great political and economic changes. Japan may have modernized and Westernized, but it is still a continuation of the Japanese civilization. The true fall of civilization is like the vanishing of Ancient Egyptian civilization or Babylonian Civilization. Or Mayan Civilization. Ferguson cares more about ideas and values than about blood, soil, and culture, and therefore he’s not a true conservative but something like a neo-imperialist globalist libertarian with only superficial trimmings of conservatism. Though his book is packed with lots of interesting ideas, the main arc of his argument fails for his idea of defending Western Civilization is centered around ideas, institutions, and values. But as any Russian knows, there has to be Russians on Russian lands with Russian culture in the first place for there be any kind of reforms or progress, whether east-oriented or west-oriented. It’s like your family can be atheist, Christian, Islam, communist, capitalist, or whatever, but what matters most is the physical fact of your blood ties, a place to call home, and biographical history of your ancestors and their cultural wellspring. A Chinese who lived in the 20th century might have belonged to the KMT in the 40s, joined the communists in the 1950s, and then embraced capitalism in the 1980s. But what would matter to him most as a member of the Chinese civilization? The fact that he’s Chinese in a nation called China in which his ancestors had lived for centuries or even millennia. That is the core of Civilization. Now, certain ideas, values, and institutions make for a better civilization, but they themselves don’t make the civilization. It’s like good manners and good knowledge can make a person a better person, but they don’t make the person. A person is more than the ideas and values he espouses, and the same goes for a civilization, the core of which is blood, soil, and historical identity or culture. The core of civilization is something you can’t take on and off like articles of clothing. Thus, while a Russian and a Chinese can each be Christian one day, a communist the next day, and capitalist next day, and so on, it’s not so easy for a Russian to be a Chinese the next day or a Chinese to be a Russian the next day. Anyone can change his ideology or religion, but it’s much more difficult to change one’s cultural core. For such to happen, the transformation must be far more fundamental. One could argue that America is the exception that proves the rule, but even the so-called idea of ‘propositional nation’ has practical value only to the extent that America has a historical-ethnic-and-cultural core rooted in Western Civilization, especially Anglo-civilization. The only reason why many different peoples have been able to come to America and become Americans is because Anglos arrived first and established the core identity and values of America, followed by other whites who became Anglo-Americanized, followed by non-whites who sought to emulate the white model. But as America continues to dismiss, diminish, and dilute its ethnic, cultural, and historical core, there won’t be much of an America for Americans to fit into, and then, much of America will be like a confused cultural wasteland like much of Brazil and Latin America.
Objects of great desire are both intensely personal and grandly universal. Take the magic ring in the Wagner’s NIBELUNGEN Ring Cycle or Tolkien’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Everyone who comes in contact with the Ring wants it for himself — to guard it as his own — , and yet the Ring grants powers to anyone who owns it. This may explain the duality of the Law in the parable in Kafka’s THE TRIAL. The ‘man from the country’ who arrives at the gate is both seeking the Law for all men and the Law for himself. One part of us wants to live under the same law as everyone else, but another part of us wants to possess and control the law that belongs only to us. We want fair treatment under the law, but another part of us wants power over the law. Law is also both power and powerlessness, a double-edged sword. It is the means by which to judge and condemn others; it is also the means to be judged and condemned. A law especially designed for one person or people can be used to discriminate against him or them OR be used to favor and shield them. There were special(discriminatory) laws for Jews in Christian Europe prior to the Emancipation, and so, Jews demanded equality under universal laws. But once Jews took the power in the New World Order, they worked on the law to make it especially advantageous for Jews, and now, Jews are above the universality of the Law. Nazis made Jews wear the special yellow star, but today, Jews wear the special golden star. Jews were under the law as victims, but Jews today are above the law as victors. Wall Street and Israel can get away with anything. Hollywood Jews can get away with ‘creative accounting’.
In a way, the ‘man from the country’ in THE TRIAL is locked out of the Law by his inner contradictions. He arrives at the gate to seek the universal law, but he may be subconsciously seeking his special key to the law. One part of him — driven by will-to-power — wants to enter through the gate(meant just for him), but another part of him — the one seeks universality of the law — keeps him out. It’s like Diane Selwyn’s inner-dream-realm both beckons her in and blocks her out. As the alternative character ‘Betty Elms’, she wants to enter the world of Hollywood fame and fortune. She wants to be treated fairly and to succeed on the basis of merit. She wants to be judged under the same ‘law of success based on talent’. But gaining fame and fortune is not about equality. It’s about gaining access to the inner realm, to be ‘more equal than others’. It’s about gaining entry into a place that keeps most people out — and is indeed special for that very reason. (Perhaps the simplest summary of Kafka-ism was the Marx Brothers joke, “I don’t wanna be a member of a club that would have me as a member.”) Diane’s alter ego wants a ‘fair’ chance to enter the ‘unfair’ realm that keeps most people out. To be sure, there’s another way to interpret the duality of the Law in the Kafka parable. From the vantage point of the powers-that-be, there is the law to apply equally to everyone and the law for each individual case. This is true politically and spiritually. Under Stalinism, everyone was supposed to be judged equally under communist law, but some people, even under the same laws, got a bullet in the head while others got keys to the castle. Thus, even though there was the same law for everyone, the law had a different use or purpose for each person, and one could never be sure what was the logic behind it. Same goes for spiritual questions. God lays down the Law, and it’s supposed to be serve as a sure guide for mankind, especially the Jews. Yet, Job followed the letter of the Law to a tee, but his fate under the Law was different from everyone else and, indeed, it didn’t even conform to what the Law promised(except in a rather twisted and oblique way).
Anyway, given the nature of man, there’s nothing that is totally universal, objective, or public, and there’s nothing that is totally personal, subjective, and private. Each man is trapped in his own subjectivity and guards his privacy, but he also wants to gain command of objectivity. Personal view submits to world view or one attempts to force world view to one’s personal view. The ‘world’ could be the small community around us or the grand ideology that governs the world. Most people shape their personal view to demands of world view, but those with powerful egos seek to alter world view according to one’s personal view. Both tendencies exist, in varying measures, in every person.
Though there’s no such thing as psychic ESP, there’s a kind of emotional ESP. We can’t read other people’s minds, but we are constantly projecting and imagining the connections between ourselves and others. We imagine what others are thinking and imagine what they are thinking about us and what they are thinking about what we are thinking about them. This is why there’s so much amity and/or animosity among peoples. When a politician talks to the people, his flock doesn’t merely hear what he says but emotionally feels as ‘one’ with him in a imagined psychic universe. Music in churches has the same effect; the souls of the congregation feel united as one before God. This is why friends like to be with other friends. Even when they say nothing meaningful or smart, they feel each other’s buzz, each other’s emotional ESP, especially with the aid of intoxicants and music. This is why many people, when they stay in hotels, turn on the TV even though they don’t pay attention to what’s on the tube. The glow and hum from the tube keeps them feel connected to the rest of the human community. In a way, one might say there’s something like the ‘shining’ about the mass media. Consider the scene when Dick Halloran — the Negro cook with a shiny bald head — is lying on the bed watching TV. The way Kubrick shot it, the TV isn’t just an appliance but a thing of wonder that ‘psychically’ transmits energies and meanings from one place to another. Controllers of the media have the power of ‘shining’ over us. They manipulate us, control us, and take possession of us like the ghosts control or try to control people like Jack, Wendy, Dick Halloran, and Danny. The TV is situated in Halloran’s room like the monolith before David Bowman’s deathbed in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Just like the monolith had control over humans, controllers of the media manipulate people who stare at the tube. And the controllers of the ‘shining monolith box’ are, of course, the Jews. Not surprisingly, ‘medium’ has multiple meanings. It can be the sources through which information is conveyed — books, newspapers, radio, TV, etc. — , but it can also mean the sorcerer or medicine man/woman who serves as conduit between the world of reality/living/present with the world of the dead/spirits/magic/past/future. And in way, Jewish control of the media is shamanistic. Jews are ‘shyster shamans’ or ‘shymans’. (Funny that M. Night Shyamalan has a name that sounds like ‘shaman’ too.) Through the magic of movies and TV, Jews can bring to life the ghosts of murdered Jews and enslaved blacks. Jews can use them to haunt the conscience of white folks. Jews can also revives the ghosts of ‘evil white racists’ to persuade people that the spirit of white power is evil and wicked and must be totally expunged from our consciousness. Thus, Nazis and the KKK are not merely historical figures but spook-house ghosts in movies, TV shows, and etc. And to some degree, Kubrick’s THE SHINING is a case of Jewish manipulation of white guilt complex. Jack, a modern white man, is shown being manipulated by the evil ‘racist’ privileged white ghosts of the past. To be sure, the rich white ghosts may themselves not be so ‘racist’. Indeed, it is Delbert Grady who seems most nakedly ‘racist’, as when he talks about the ‘nigger’. It is the lower-middle class that feels most threatened by the lower orders, and indeed, fascism initially attracted the lower middle class. The rich and privileged are ensconced in their zones of security and power, and so, they have less to fear from the rabble. But the middle class — which, in essence, is the neo-servant class of the rich — feels the anxiety of being stuck in the middle between the ‘rabble’ and ‘better kind of people’. Thus, even as the middle class feels resentment toward rich and ‘better’ people, they wanna be like their social superiors, and this makes them protective of the upper orders. Thus, it is Delbert Grady the waiter who is even more committed to preserving the order of power and privilege than the people enjoying the party in the ballroom. Also, as the middle classes have more contact with the rabble, they have fewer illusions about the masses. The funny thing about American politics is that many highly successful and rich people take pride in caring for the ‘underprivileged’ whereas the members of the middle class — especially if conservative — wanna defend the liberal rich from the rabble. So, many middle class conservatives vote for the GOP to protect the superrich of the ‘makers’ from the rabble of the‘takers’. This is ironic since the majority of the rich are liberals or moderate conservative(who tend to be social liberals) who look down on white middle conservatives of the GOP as petty-minded and stupid gun-hugging bigots. In DAYS OF HEAVEN(by Terrence Malick), the foreman is more fervently protective of the landowner than the landowner is of himself and his property. The owner feels the security and magnanimity of being on top whereas the foreman carries the burden of pushing the rabble to work. (Also, there’s been an element in Anglo-servility that was markedly different from forms of servility in other parts of the world. Especially in the non-West, servility tended to be absolute, whereby a person had to answer to higher-ups but did as he pleased with lower-downs. He had to look good and proper in the eyes of his superiors but merely looked down on his inferiors and didn’t care what they thought. Thus in such cultures, dignity mattered less than fear and/or opportunism. One wasn’t allowed to have or feel any dignity before the superior; indeed, to maintain one’s dignity in the presence of the superior could be seen as an affront, a sign of willful independence. One had to bow down absolutely before the superior. Likewise, one expected one’s inferior to show absolute loyalty and servility. Dignity presumes a certain independence in every individual. It’s not a matter of riches and power but self-worth, self-regard, and self-pride. A man, no matter how rich or powerful, can be without dignity, and that certainly goes for Billy Boy Clinton and George W. Bush. A man, no matter how poor and powerless, can have dignity by keeping his head up with adherence to certain values and forms. To be sure, dignity can be repressive and conformist, pressuring people to speak and act in such a manner as deemed ‘proper’ by society, and there are forms of faux dignity that has the look and feel of the real thing but is merely a facade — Obama for example. But dignity in the truest sense is what bestows meaning and pride to individuality. It means one’s individuality is as a moral, civilized, and thinking person with personal code of conduct than as a barbaric ruffian or yob among the mob who live by animal instinct of predation or herd-behavior. Thus, dignity empowers every individual but on the basis/contract that every individual must choose civilization — personal sense of right over wrong — over barbarism with the responsibility that comes with personal freedom. The concept of dignity didn’t take deep root in the Muslim world or Asian world. Haggly-waggly Muslims were always looking through the corners of their eyes and acting like servile dogs before their masters to gain any kind of advantage — and Greeks and Southern Italians are like this too, as are many Latin Americans. Take the guy in THE GODFATHER who says, “take me to America, G.I.” That’s a typical Southern Italian. And East Asians didn’t just kneel or bow before their masters but prostrated themselves like pancakes. They were totally servile dogs. It’s no wonder that both Muslims and East Asians are so cruel to dogs. Dogs remind them of their own lives without dignity. Dogs are wonderful animals but have no dignity or dognity. They are just eager-to-please in their servility. Serving the master, making the master happy, and winning approval of the master — and earning a few doggy snacks — are all they care about. Dogs have no sense of individuality. But things were different in Europe, especially in Britain. For one reason or other, dignity became universalized. Thus, even servility had a touch of dignity. The English butler wasn’t just a servile servant but upright servant. Instead of having his back stooped all the time, he stood straight and upright. He had spine. Though he had to treat his master with loyalty and call him ‘sir’, the master had to respect the dignity of the servant as well. Thus, the master could feel opprobrium not only from social superiors but from social inferiors if he failed to maintain his own dignity. If the master acted without dignity, he could sense the disapproval on the part of the servant. The servant didn’t openly criticize the master, but by his manner and demeanor, he made it clear that the master had failed in his dignity. By acting in a manner unbecoming of his station, the master offended the dignity of his servant who wishes to serve a man of dignity. If a master did something bad or shameful in the Muslim or East Asian world, the servant would bow down and hide his face as if he didn’t see anything; servants weren’t suppose to have spine or dignity of their own. But the English servant always stood straight. So, even if he didn’t say anything to the master when the latter acted the fool, the master knew that he’d lost the respect of his butler and such folks. So, the English developed a sense of social pressure not only from the top but from below. It wasn’t enough to win the approval of one’s social superiors; one had be worthy of winning the respect of one’s social inferiors. There’s a gangster comedy from long ago — I don’t recall the title — where some American gangster inherits the title of an English aristocrat. He’s amused by the privileges and amenities that come along with his fortune, and there is a butler to help him along in his new role. Anyway, the gangster-aristocrat is forced to kill someone from the past, and he’s convicted of murder and sentenced to death. On the day of the execution, he loses his nerves and babbles like a baby, and the butler shows his displeasure at such lack of dignity, and so, in the final moment of the film, the man regains his composure and faces death with dignity — and regains the respect of the servant. It may have been a silly and contrived movie, but it does point to something crucial about British society, at least in the past before yobs and globs — globalists — took over. The servant wasn’t merely servile but had his own kind of backbone, and the collective backbones of the servant class applied pressure to the elites to lead a life of dignity than lethargic vulgarity. Paradoxically, this empowerment of all individuals — even servants — by universal dignity may have perpetuated the rigid system of class hierarchy longer in Britain. If the elites had felt less pressure from below, they might have given themselves to all sorts of indulgences, thus losing the respect of the servant classes, in which case, the masses might have risen up against the rotten ruling class. In France, the masses lost all respect for the ooh-lala aristocrats with their powdered wigs, sneezy snuffs, and other overly ripe stuff. But pressure of universal dignity from below ensured that the British elites would behave in a manner that was more respectable, and thus, the British masses were less likely to grow bitter about the master class. At the very least, they shared the common language of dignity. The dark side of this, however, is shown in THE SHINING where Delbert Grady, the English or Englishy butler-like waiter, artfully uses the psychology of dignity to work on Jack Torrance. If the butler in the above-mentioned gangster comedy applied pressure to the American gangster aristocrat to face death with dignity, Grady applies pressure for Jack to commit murder against his own family.)
Though THE SHINING is partly a Jewish manipulation of ‘white guilt’, Kubrick was too much of an artist — a seeker of truth — to turn it into the sort of moral sermons we usually get from Hollywood. Thus, THE SHINING not only plays on ‘white guilt’ but reveals the means of manipulation by the powers-that-be, and the powers-that-be don’t have to be white or wasp. It can be Jewish, and in EYES WIDE SHUT, Kubrick showed a Jew in control of the tower and toying with a clueless pretty boy wasp like Tom Cruise. (To be sure, the role of Ziegler was expanded by Frederic Raphael, a kind of British Aaron Sorkin. It’s somewhat surprising because Raphael, unlike Kubrick, is one of those brazenly self-righteous Jews who loves to scream ‘Holocaust’ all the time. Perhaps, working with Kubrick brought out another side of Raphael that had a darker understanding of Jewish power.)
And though Nicole Alice Harford’s fantasy love is some white naval officer, given the racial realities and anxieties of modern America, the suggestion is that the white wife could be lusting after a muscular Negro. Indeed, Tom Bill Harford is so flabbergasted by his wife’s confession that he almost seems like he found her in bed with Long Dong Silver. And throughout the film, we see some black male/white female couples in the background. And in FULL METAL JACKET, some Negro yapped about how his penis is like a Mississippi snake or something, and there was also a joke that went, “How do you stop five black guys from raping a white woman? Throw them a basketball.” There was a duality about Kubrick. As a Jew, one part of him was the troublemaker, the subverter and pornographer of white society and values. This part of Kubrick would have gotten a kick from a Negro emasculating a white boy and humping a white woman. But another part of Kubrick was enthralled with Western art, civilization, and beauty. He married a blonde German woman. He loved European culture. This part of Kubrick wanted to save Western/white civilization from thugs, Negroes, radicals, and dirty Jews. This duality makes EYES WIDE SHUT a strangely contradictory film. The nasty Jew side of Kubrick loved to see the pretty white boy Tom Cruise led around in a maze like a white mouse. And according to rumors and gossip, Kubrick the Jew treated Cruise and Kidman almost like two porn stars. And Kubrick was obsessed with porn. But the other side of EYES WIDE SHUT has great sympathy and pity for Tom Bill Harford and feels loathing for the ‘dirty Jew’ played by Sydney Pollack. This duality is partly shared by David Cronenberg, especially evinced in movies like RABID and A DANGEROUS METHOD. The main theme of both films is the dangerous/disturbing but fascinating/creative friction resulting from the encounter of the Jew and the ‘Aryan’. (Interestingly enough, RABID, though a trashy horror flick, is more interesting than A DANGEROUS METHOD, a carefully mounted art film. Perhaps, this has something to do with Manny Farber’s concept of Elephant Art vs Termite Art. ‘Elephant art’ is centered on big themes or dry concepts, around which everything must revolve absent its intrinsic vitality. In contrast, ‘Termite art’ focuses on the myriad eccentricities and joys of storytelling, and the themes, such as they may be, are embedded, enmeshed, hidden, scattered, and/or camouflaged throughout the work to be discovered as we enjoy the work. In RABID, the theme of Aryan-vs-Semitic isn’t in the foreground but all over the place. It’s not the centerpiece but the very texture of the movie. It’s alive in the feel of the movie than as The Idea of the movie. It’s like the difference between a zoo and nature. In a zoo, a cage will have a bear or a lion or an alligator or an elephant. They are the main attractions; they impress us but there are no surprises. But in nature, the bear, tiger, elephant, alligator, snake, birds, or whatever could be anywhere. They could be hidden behind trees or over the hill; they could be camouflaged by leaves or bushes; they could be in front of you, beside you, behind you, above you, below you, etc. In RABID, you can miss the theme, but the theme is all over the place; and the theme revolves around the story and characters. In A DANGEROUS METHOD, the theme is the center of the story, so everything and everyone revolve around it as secondary elements. This has been the problem of Spike Lee’s films. He’s an okay filmmaker, but most of his films are dull and predictable because they are centered around themes, messages, or something-to-prove. So, DO THE RIGHT THING is about ‘gonna show whitey the real hood’ movie, JUNGLE FEVER is ‘gonna deal with race and sex’ movie, MO’ BETTER BLUES is ‘gonna show white folks what real jazz be like’ movie, and etc. If an artist focuses on the story and characters and explores their richness and peculiarities, the messages and themes will naturally emanate and arise from them. The message or theme doesn’t have to be dug out, polished, and put on a pedestal, thereby overshadowing the elements of the work that make it truly unique and different. After all, one can say SEVEN SAMURAI is about the ‘brotherhood of man’, but if such a message hogged the center stage — like in Stanley Kramer movies — , SEVEN SAMURAI would be a dry sermon than a wet storm. This is why TREE OF LIFE sucks donkey dick. It is one of the biggest theme/message-laden films ever made. It’s like attending the church of New Age flakiness. It’s like MONTY PYTHON’S MEANING OF LIFE done straight. In contrast, MIRACLE MILE is a much shorter, cheaper, and less ‘serious’ movie but far more interesting. MIRACLE MILE touches on the same themes — meaning of the universe, meaning of life, meaning of love, and etc. — but they revolve around the story and characters than vice versa. It favors expression over exposition.) In RABID, a Jewish doctor-scientist experiments with the flesh of a blonde ‘Aryan’ woman, and what results is both fascinating and frightening. And in A DANGEROUS METHOD, a Jewess falls in love with Carl Jung as the ‘Aryan’ Siegfried, and Carl Jung falls under the spell of the Jewish woman(like Parsifal under Kundry the Jewish sorceress in Wagner’s PARSIFAL). Certain cultural-racial blendings hardly produce anything interesting. Whites and indigenous natives mixed in Mexico, and it produced the mestizo. While there are plenty of decent and nice mestizos, most of mestizo culture and most mestizo people seem to be just ordinary and ‘dull’. And while overseas Chinese have all sorts of cultural and economic problems with Southeast Asians, the tensions haven’t produced much if anything of world-shaking significance. But when the Jew rubbed against the ‘Aryan’ in Northern and Eastern Europe, it led to revolutions in culture, science, literature, and just about everything, and the results were fascinating, profound, and miraculous, but also dark and dangerous. It created the spark that than burned down the forest. One such darkness was Karl Marx, the German Jew communist. Another was the rise of modern antisemitism, which, while calling for separation from Jews, could not have gained such intensity without the friction against Jewish influence. Hitler, the ‘Aryan’ enemy of Jews, was the product of the ‘Aryan’ friction with the Jew. It was indeed a very dangerous method, like the mixing of man and insect in THE FLY. Mixing the Jew and the ‘Aryan’ may have been the most culturally, economically, intellectually, and politically productive and destructive event in modern history. When Jews rubbed shoulders and loins with Latins or Muslims, nothing comparable happened. But when Jews rubbed shoulders and loins with ‘Aryans’, it created the modern fire that either promised to light the world or threatened to burn it down. If we include Anglos as ‘Aryans’ — Hitler certainly did — , then the mixing of Jewish strains and Anglo-American strains in America may explain why the history of Jewish America has been so startling. (The Germano-Aryan friction with the Semitic-Jew was artistically, intellectually, and culturally more interesting than the friction between Anglo-Aryan and the Semitic-Jew. Marx, Mendelssohn, Freud, Mahler, Lang, and Kafka were all products of Jewish friction with Germanic culture. And many modern German artists and thinkers wouldn’t have been conceivable without rubbing against the Jews. No Freud, no Jung. No Marx, no Hitler. Even in opposition, the Germano-Aryans developed in friction with the Jew. Jews were an extreme people and so were the Germano-Aryans. Germano-Aryans were a musical people with dark Teutonic souls and such. In contrast, English were known for empiricism, moderation, restraint, and dry literature. Even English Romanticism was centered around literature. It should be noted that Romanticism, at least in the UK, was more a reaction against industrialization than against rationalism per se. Had the Industrial Revolution not taken place — and rather unfairly became associated with rationalism — , people who came to be know as English Romantics would likely have been less hostile to the cult of reason. Germany was slower to industrialize, so its Romanticism was more affirmative than reactive. English Romanticism was about the individual against the industrial, whereas German Romanticism was about the passion of one as the passion of many. Wagner wasn’t regarded merely as an individual of genius but a representative of Germanic soul stretching back to the beginning of time. Germano-Aryanism produced Wagner. Goethe wrote FAUST. Oswald Spengler was a German. It was Kultur as opposed to ‘Civilization’. Though Jews ostensibly stood for Civilization as opposed to Kultur, they too were an extreme people with dark memories and extreme obsessions. Thus, in Germanic lands, extreme Germano-Aryan soul rubbed against extreme Semito-Jewish soul, and the heat produced was very great. And many Germano-Aryan artists and thinkers and many Semito-Jewish artists and thinkers that grew out of this friction did much to change the world. Heidegger got some of his root ideas from Jewish philosophers, and his ideas had a profound impact on Hannah Arendt and George Steiner. Wittgenstein settled in Britain but was of Germanic-Jewish origin. And there was the Frankfurt School that came to greatly impact post-war philosophy. Germano-Aryans, unlike Anglo-Aryans, had a deeper and more powerful warrior soul. So, when Jews pushed, they pushed back. Though Germans were into order, obedience, and discipline, they had a powerful, almost primordial, sense of Germanness, not least because German nationalism arose later than the French and British counterparts. Germans, having to create a new national consciousness to become a major power in the latter part of the 19th century, became more passionately nationalistic and racial than Brits and French, whose national unities had existed for much longer and therefore could be taken for granted. The extremes of Japanese and Italian nationalism also owed to their short-cut path to modern nationalism; the underlying idea was the need to be extreme in order to catch up with the great powers that controlled most of the world, i.e. one needed a powerful united nation in order to build an empire and gain world power. Because Germano-Aryans were so passionate and aggressive, they pushed back against the Jews, and the friction got so heated that the conflict eventually turned into a game of winner takes all: Jewish radicals would win and subvert/destroy German race/culture/nation as it existed, or Germans would win and destroy the Jews. For a while, it seemed Germano-Aryans were winning, and they would have won IF Hitler had not attacked the USSR. But Hitler did, so Jews won in the end. But Jews won not only because Hitler gambled everything by attacking the USSR but because Jews had wormed into the hearts of Anglo-Aryans. And in a way, Hitler’s attack on the USSR was to win over the Anglo-Aryans away from Jewish influence. While Hitler had long nursed a grand dream of invading Russia for lebensraum, his other big dream was to be equal partners with the great British Empire. Just as Darth Vader wanted to be one with Luke Skywalker and rule the galaxy together, Hitler dreamt of ruling the world with Anglo-Aryans, a people he almost worshiped. Hitler bombed parts of UK and all that, but he didn’t want to defeat the UK. He didn’t want to humiliate the UK. It would have been like brother killing brother, father killing son, or son killing father. He wanted to punish and pressure the UK but only to be partners with it. The last thing he wanted to see was a defeated British Empire. He wanted to see a victorious British Empire allied with victorious Germanic empire. While it sounds militarily and rationally absurd that Hitler would have gambled everything and attacked the USSR to win over UK to his side, we must remember that not all logic is material or rational. There is emotional ‘logic’. Hitler loved the UK, and he didn’t want it to be brought down low like Poland or France. He wanted to marry it. If it wouldn’t marry him, he wanted to force it marry to him. Once Germany defeated USSR, UK would have no choice but to forge an alliance with Hitler, and then Germany and UK could rule the world together. This is what John Lukacs hinted at, and it’s what Buchanan’s UNNECESSARY WAR is really about: Anglo-Aryans should have allied with Germano-Aryans to rule the world. But why did Hitler fail to woo the Anglo-Aryans? Why did Anglo-Aryans choose to go with Jews instead? Why didn’t Anglo-Aryanism push back against Jewish-Semiticism? Partly, it was because Hitler was aggressive and repulsive whereas Jews worked more subtly on Anglo sentiments of fairness and decency. Though there were plenty of vile and pushy Jews in US and UK, Jewish elites put on a smiley face and pleaded for help against evil Nazis. So, Anglo-Aryans and Anglo-American-Aryans felt more threat from Germans. Also, Anglo-Aryans were not as passionate and aggressive as Germano-Aryans. They were more gentlemanly, more into proper manners, and etc. So, when Jews pushed, Anglo-Aryans were less likely to push back. It would have been ‘bad manners’. So, Jews could push harder against Anglos without the blowback of opposite reaction being as powerful as the action. Anglo-Aryans especially developed an airy-fairy way of doing things. They relied more on wit against acts of hostility, but Jews were bound to win this game since they were even wittier than Anglos. Anglos, who’d considered themselves the masters of wit, were outwitted by Jews. It’s like Bill Buckley’s wit was no match for Alan Dershowitz’s or Woody Allen’s. As such, Anglos and Anglo-Americans were more resigned to being pushed by Jews. If Germano-Aryan and Jewish-Semitic friction was like a wrestling match, the Anglo-Aryan and Jewish-Semitic friction was like Jew humping the Anglo-Aryan in the arse. The Anglo-Aryan and Jewish-Semitic friction was very productive in arts, culture, and intellectualism, but it wasn’t fraught with the same kind of fascinating creative friction as between Germano-Aryans and Semitic-Jews, which was like crazy rubbing with crazy. Anglo-Aryan and Jewish-Semitic friction was like sane rubbing with crazy. Jewish craziness rubbed off on Anglo-Aryanism and Anglo-American-Aryanism, and so, Anglos and Anglo-Americans got more crazy along the way. But Jews, in rubbing against Anglo-Aryanism, got more sane and sober, and this element of sobriety made Jews in the UK and America more careful in gaining and keeping the power. American Jews play a far more cautious game of power, and the model of American Jewishism has come to dominate how globalist Jews everywhere operate, which is why Jews are trying to ‘Americanize’ Europe with ‘diversity’.) Jews didn’t succeed simply on their own but because their way rubbed against, both constructively and destructively, with the Germano-Aryan and Anglo-American way. Imagine if Einstein had been born in Brazil. Or if Norman Mailer had been born in China. Or if Freud had been born in the Ottoman Empire. Or if Pauline Kael had been born in Mexico. Most great Jews were the results of rubbing against the ‘Aryan’ reality of Germanic lands or Anglo/American lands. It was the friction between two great peoples, comparable to the creative frictions — both mutually beneficial and bitterly hostile — that had once existed between Greeks and Persians in the Ancient World. Prior to the rise of the ‘Aryans’ — though one could argue that Greeks and Romans are closer to the ancient Aryans that Germanic peoples ever were — , the greatest friction-spark between two peoples may have been between Jews and the Greeks/Romans. Christianity, the greatest religion of all time, was the product of the friction between Hebraism and Hellenism, a spark that spread like a forest fire from the tensions between two civilizations. The fire destroyed much of the indigenous pagan cultures of Northern Europe and caused lots of harm to Jews as well. But Christianity also served as the foundation of the greatest civilization the world has seen. In this sense, there is no single common thread to Western Civilization, and this was the major failing of Hitler’s Nazism. There is no getting around the fact that the core of Western Civilization is partly rooted in Jewish/Semitic influences, a fact so obvious but one that has never been easy for Jews or ‘Aryans’. Civilization is a fire, and fire is created from heat of friction, just like a child is created through the friction of ‘meat must meet’ between the male and female. Though Jews always knew that Jesus was a Jew, they regarded Him as such a traitor-renegade that Jews were loathe to make claims on Christianity. To most Jews, Christianity was the ‘antisemitic’ dogma of their enemies and persecutors. (This view is changing with the change of Christianity itself. In the past, when Christianity was thoroughly owned by gentiles and a force of anti-Jewish conservatism, Jews were loathe to say anything nice about Christianity. Their main goal was to weaken Christianity, even to destroy and replace it, as indeed Jewish communists attempted in Revolutionary Russia. And part of the reason why so many Jews supported the Left in the Spanish Civil War was because they thrilled at the news of communists and anarchists burning Catholic priests alive and raping/murdering nuns. But Christianity today isn’t what it once used to be. Instead of the bastion of white conservative power, it is a force allied with Jewish liberalism — especially the black churches that holler about ‘white guilt’ — and increasingly for stuff like open borders, ‘gay marriage’, interracism, and Jew worship. Many churches are now homocentric, as if everything Christian must revolve around the gospel of Harvey Milk. Most Christian churches today worship Jews and the Holocaust more than they worship God and Jesus. And most churches revere MLK more than they do Jesus Christ. And with Obama being conflated with Jesus and even promoted as the new messiah — controlled by Jews of course — , Jews have come to see the usefulness of Christianity. Also, if Christianity once used to serve as the basis of white moral pride and confidence, it is now the source of ‘white guilt’ and ‘white conscience’ that weaken and wussify the white race. Thus, there are more and more books coming out from Jews that boast that Jesus was indeed very Jewish and part of Jewish tradition, and etc.)
The duality of Kubrick’s feelings and approach to Western Civilization is reflected in all his works. It is through Western Civilization that Jews rose to great heights. Jews in other parts of the world came nowhere close in achieving what Jews did in the West. (Though Jews are hostile toward whites, this hostility is largely based on political necessity — or perception of such — than Jewish inability to see the good sides of white people and Western Civilization. A Jew in private knows history was never so simple as good Jew and evil Gentile. Privately, many Jews know of the dark side of Jewishness and of the countless foul deeds committed by Jews. After the war is long over, historians on both sides can stop waving the flag and instead approach the subject more ‘objectively’, free of nationalistic agendas and biases. But during the war, ‘objectivity’ is a luxury. You must root for your side. If history were indeed over and all that was left was for us to look back, many Jews would see history more fairly. But Jews feel they still exist in a state of war with the gentile world. They feel that giving even an ‘inch’ to ‘anti-Semites’ will unleash the flood of anti-Jewish passions and actions that will turn back the tide of Jewish agenda of global supremacy. Thus, Jews are in propagandistic than truth-seeking mode. It’s like during WWI, Brits made Germans out to be total scum and vice versa. It was only after WWI that many Brits began to remember the war more fairly and became self-critical. But just when Brits thought the Great War was the war to end all wars, there was WWII where Germans were an even bigger threat. So, history is like a fight that never ends. Though WWII and Cold War are long over, Jews still feel that they are in a state of war, and there could be another historical event that can bring down the Jews. And in a way, Jews have a right to worry since they are a small minority in most nations and also because they are fighting for very high stakes. They’ve made the move to control the world via globalism; they are aiming to be masters of the world, but it’s no certain thing for a small minority, no matter how smart and talented it may be, to rule the world. The Romans failed, the British failed, the Germans failed, and Russians failed. Jews want the power but wanna hide their power and act like they’ve eternal victims. So, they are constantly in fighting mode, always in attack mode, always in demoralize-the-enemy mode by moralizing his ‘guilt conscience’ mode. Jews hide behind gay power and Obama, but it’s all about Jewish power. Jews say we should defend Israel as the outpost of the West against barbaric Muslims, but Jews also say we should support ‘diversity’ against the ‘xenophobia’ of the West; defend Israel as the West from the rest while, at the same time, aiding the rest to invade the West. It’s the dirty two-faced Jewish way. Privately, Jews are capable of knowing the truth, and many of them do indeed know the truth. In all my life, what Jewish individuals told me in private conversations never jibed with what the Jewish community officially pronounces in public. It’s like boxers are privately capable of admiring and appreciating their opponents, BUT as long as they’re in the fight, their public persona is to attack, ridicule, and insult their opponents to psyche them out. Anglo-Americans act as if the fight is over, and everyone should make up as friends. But Jews don’t feel that the fight is over. They are still in the fight. They are still trash-talking whereas Anglo-Americans trying to nice to the Jews.) Many Jews were intoxicated with European genius, creativity, talent, and vision, and in time, Jews contributed tremendously to the rise of modern Europe. But Western Civilization also came nearest to doing the greatest harm to the Jews with WWII and the Holocaust. And sometimes, Europeans and Americans both embraced the Jew and hated the Jew at the same time. Einstein’s theories became the core of 20th century modern physics, but he was also resented — and even rejected in some quarters — as a Jew. Hollywood became as American-as-apple-pie but was also suspected of being the tool of an alien subversive group, and this is why Jews are still so sensitive about the era when HUAC went after Hollywood. (Jews wanna be as subversive as possible and even brag about it, but they also want us to see them as true blue Americans just the same. They are a bunch of pushy as*holes. They wanna rape your daughter and still be invited to her wedding as friend of the family.) Jewish-controlled Hollywood presented itself as wholly and wholesomely American, but anti-communists suspected that radical Jews were using Hollywood to change the nation and culture. (Jews accuse HUAC of paranoia while simultaneously praising many Jewish filmmakers of the 1950s as having been brilliant subversives. So, it’s great for Jews to be subversives and feel pride as such, but if we take notice, we are sick and paranoid. If a Jew says, “I’m subversive”, we are to pat his back and praise him for his radical brilliance. But if we then say, “we agree that you’re subversive”, we are to be attacked for ‘antisemitic paranoia’.) In a way, both sides of the debate were right to some extent. Hollywood did indeed become the cultural soul of America and upheld American values and even exported them around the world. But Hollywood did have a lot of radical Jews with communist sympathies and/or subversive tendencies who did try to use popular culture as mind-control tool to change the Idea of America, and indeed, this came to fruition beginning in the 1960s, for better and for worse. As liberals remember the story, saintly and totally innocent heroes were persecuted and ‘blacklisted’ by utterly evil HUAC goons and McCarthy, but this is history as comic book tale of cops and robbers. Jews have been so hysterical about the ‘anti-communist hysteria’ because, deep down inside, they’ve always known that many of HUAC’s suspicions were correct. Members of HUAC have been ‘discredited’ not on the basis of actual record — which amply prove that there were indeed many radicals working in Hollywood — but on the basis of their ties to political corruption. Using this logic, since every politician and every powerful figure is tainted in some way, everything he does should be discredited. Was Kennedy or MLK any less corrupt or compromised than the men of HUAC? It’s like how liberals condemn THE BIRTH OF A NATION for its historical inaccuracies but have no problem with the bogus myth-making in historical films that they like. ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, for instance, is full of lies, but liberals ate it up. And MISSISSIPPI BURNING has even more lies than THE BIRTH OF A NATION, but it was roundly applauded by liberals. And a whole bunch of liberals loved the BS of Oliver Stone’s JFK until they realized that Stone wasn’t just blaming right-wing nuts but gay fairies and liberal icons like LBJ.
As a Jew, Kubrick surely felt a lot of resentment against conservative white America — and probably even against liberal white America — , but as an artist, he was a searcher of truth, and he didn’t much care for the simple-minded do-goodery and self-righteousness of liberal Hollywood, which may be one reason he refused to settle in L.A. It wasn’t just the crassness but the willful moral naivete and political mendacity of liberals. Indeed, Kubrick couldn’t see eye to eye with Kirk Douglas on SPARTACUS. And prior to that film, Kubrick’s PATHS OF GLORY made the French — rather the Germans — look bad in WWI(and the final image is that of a victimzed German woman, which might have been an allusion to all the raped German women at the end of WWII), though France was an ally of the US in both wars. Also, DR. STRANGELOVE was a far more twisted work than liberals would like to believe. Many liberals just saw it as a satire of American militarism and right-wing paranoia, but in a way, the film is ‘spiritually’ closer to the dark paranoid Ripper and perverse visionary Strangelove than to the simple-minded soldiers, toy generals, and do-goody politicians and bureaucrats who wanna ‘save the world’. Ripper and Strangelove are indeed dangerous and even evil men, but their views of human nature and the nature of power may be closer to the truth, always a dark and disturbing thing. As Kubrick said of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Alex is a thug but has the saving grace of honesty. He’s the dark side of human nature, knows it, and makes no apologies for it. He’s like the ‘black saint’ Johnny Boy in MEAN STREETS. We don’t wanna deal with the likes of Alex, Johnny Boy, Ripper, and the like, but they are truer in their madness than most people are in their saneness. As madmen in the madhouse that is the world, there’s a kind of black integrity to their character; in contrast, normal people who pretend the world isn’t mad and try to see the best side of things may be the crazy ones. (This is especially true of American conservatives and Jews. Conservatives are anxious to be normal, and ever since it’s been drummed into their skulls that ‘antisemitism’ is a ‘rabid’ and ‘virulent’ sickness of the soul, they’ve been going out of their way to show their love for the wonderful Jews. The problem is Jews are not wonderful. They are nasty, hideous, vile, contemptuous, and aggressive. What the agents of AIPAC did to Chuck Hagel at the confirmation hearing is many times more egregious than anything Joe McCarthy did, but where is the outrage from the liberal community? Just as many Jews were indeed subversive in the 1940s and 1050s but anti-communists were blamed for having taken notice, Hagel was attacked for having spoken the truth about Jewish power. Jewish power expends much of its power to force us to admit that there is no such thing as Jewish power. Pretending that Jews are wonderful and nice is like pretending that a leech isn’t sucking out your blood. It’s like pretending that rats and roaches are not spreading filth. It’s like pretending that a mountain-sized Negro in jail is willing to die for the white man’s soul and weep over his wittle white mouse. ‘Normality’ can be manipulated. There is the real norm rooted in biology and the culture norm propagated by society. So, feudal Japan saw it as normal for men to rip open their bellies and have their heads lopped off. So, Nazi-era Germans thought it was normal to round up every Jew. So, Evangelical dummies think it’s normal to believe that the Earth is only 6000 yrs old in this day and age. So, Muslim loonies think it’s normal to let improperly dressed girls die in a school fire than escape. So, Chinese once thought it was normal to bind women’s feet. So, today, many moronic Americans think it’s normal to equate homosexuality premised on fecal penetration among men with the miracle of the rainbow. There’s the normality of truth and ‘normality’ founded on the cowardice of political and cultural conformity.) In this sense, Wendy in THE SHINING is, at once, the sanest and most insane person. She’s so very nice and supportive, but in her niceness, she’s blind to the madness all around her, and when she finally realizes the madness, she’s totally freaked. When Wendy tells the child doctor how Danny got his shoulder dislocated, she says it was just an ‘accident’. She wants to think the best of Jack and is blind to his growing madness just like a dog tries to remain loyal to its master even as he becomes more abusive. Wendy is almost like a Stepford Wife, almost like the female cop in FARGO. Her range of emotions and understanding is extremely narrow. Everything she says about the world and her family is simple, almost cartoonish. When she’s not tending to Jack, she watches TV. She’s like an American simpleton whose soul has been possessed by the ‘shining’ of the TV and pop culture medium. In the opening scene, Jack tells Ullmann, the hotel manager, that Wendy is a horror story fan. For Wendy, horror isn’t real but just a fun genre. She’s so normal she’s abnormal. She’s like a walking/talking doll. When Jack treats her badly and tells her to “get the fuc* out of here”, she, a full-grown woman, acts like a little girl and just dutifully walks away. She’s not retarded or necessarily dumb, but she’s incredibly limited in her understanding and imagination. In her own way, she’s creepy, indeed, even creepier than Jack. Paradoxically, Jack becomes more inhuman precisely because he’s so human. He has the full gamut of human emotions, some of which become really twisted. In contrast, Wendy remains more humane because she is, in some ways, more limited in her humanness. The range of her emotions is narrowly compartmentalized. She’s nice, nice, and nice, and not much else. She seems to have no depth, no dreams, no desire. She just wants to be good to Jack and Danny, watch TV, and that’s about it. In a way, the roles are reversed in EYES WIDE SHUT. Nicole Alice Harford is more like Jack and has wild secret fantasies about love and desire. Tom Bill Harford is simpler in his view of reality and human relations, and when his wife confesses her sexual ‘demonism’, he utterly freaks out and almost can’t handle the truth. She’s the wolf, he’s the dog, whereas in THE SHINING, the male character is the wolf and the female character is the dog. The female cop in FARGO is a brave woman, but she’s the sort of person who does what she’s supposed do and can’t imagine anything else. She’s like a Stepford Cop. When she finally nabs the bad guy, she just says something trite and has no understanding of the depth of human evil. As far as she’s concerned, the criminal is just a bad bad bad person who isn’t fit to live amongst good good good people, and that’s that. Jack likes Wendy because she’s nice and supportive but also hates her because she never seems to understand what he’s really about. He’s a struggling artist trying to make a creative breakthrough, but she tells him that things should work out for him if he just gets into the regular schedule of writing. Jack is waiting for the miraculous spark of genius to strike him, but she thinks writing is just a matter of routine habit. Jack comes to hate Wendy because she, the simpleton, is unworthy of being the queen to his yearning kingship. And he comes to hate Danny because his son has greater talent than he does. Creativity is a form of madness, and on that score, Kubrick likely identified with Jack on some level. But if some artists are inflamed in their own excessive creative fire, others gain a degree of mastery over the creative spirits that come to haunt them. Sam Peckinpah and Brian Wilson went kinda crazy and were engulfed by their own creative fire, but Kubrick maintained control over his genius, and in this regard, he was like Danny who, through his imaginary friend Tony, manages to control the spirits that encircle him to possess his soul. Bob Dylan reached his creative height in 1966 with BLONDE ON BLONDE, but this was also the most dangerous period of his career. To go where no one had gone before, he took a lot of drugs and made a near-Faustian pact with the dark muse. He knew if he pushed further, he might make greater music but also risk losing his sanity, so he pulled back and settled down to a family life and reconnected with more traditional forms of music.
Dualities abound in Kubrick’s films. Consider the scene where Danny goes to get his fire engine toy from the room, only to find Jack sitting on the bed than being asleep. The scene contains everything and its opposite. Jack looks tired but says he doesn’t feel sleepy because he has so much to do. He’s both doing nothing and doing everything. He’s sitting still on the bed, but his mind is brimming with all the things he needs/wants to do. He appears down and depressed but says he’s never been happier in his life, and indeed both are true. He looks both dangerous and peaceful, both warlike and harmonious. Jack looks washed out and weary, but the hotel also makes him feel alive and important. It saps him of life and fills him with life. As he holds Danny in his arms, he is the tender loving father, and we believe in his love for his son. But there’s also menace in his eyes, as if he can’t wait to kill the kid. Jack is like a wolf that’s been domesticated to be so nice and gentle to a little bunny rabbit. And that side of Jack is sincerely and genuinely loving of Danny. But there is another side of Jack that wants to ‘kill the wabbit!’ Inside every artist there is a madman trying to get out. One side of Jack wants to hug and protect the bunny rabbit. Other side of Jack wants to devour it. It’s not a case of either/or but of both. It’s not a matter of 50/50 but 100/100. Jack 100% loves his son and 100% wants to devour him. One side of Jack is like Sylvester the Cat with his son; devoted and protective. The other side of Jack sees his son like Wiley Coyote sees the Road Runner. One side of Jack is energized to work all the time in the Overlook; another side of him is exhausted and wants to fall asleep forever. One part of Jack loves the aloneness in the hotel; another side of Jack is worn out by the solitude.
There’s a duality in Humbert Humbert in LOLITA. One side of him is a lecher who wants to hump Lolita and do nasty things. But another side of him is genuinely protective and concerned about her well-being. He’s both exploitative pervert and protective parent. He’s like a molester-pimp-parent, a parent who pimps his stepdaughter to himself only. And there’s a parent-pimp in EYES WIDE SHUT, the tuxedo-and-costume rental owner who pimps out his daughter to Asian perverts. The guy seems totally sick and yet endearing too. And his girl seems, at once, innocent and knowing. And in way, there is a parent/pimp duality to every father with a daughter. As the parent, the father is protective of his girl. But as the girl comes of age, the father becomes aware of her budding sexuality and desires. So, the father tries to find a suitable mate for the girl. We don’t call this pimping but parenting. And yet, the father wants to ‘sell’ his daughter to the highest bidder. Indeed, look how Bill Clinton ‘sold’ his girl to the Jewish son of a Jewish billionaire who’d provided tons of cash to the Clintons. Clinton not only pardoned Marc Rich but the relations between the two families led to his girl marrying the rich son of the Jew billionaire. It’s almost like pimping, and indeed, rich folks ‘pimp’ their daughters to marry the rich and powerful. And when Bill Harford’s daughter comes of age, he too will want her to marry a rich and powerful person. Whether via prostitution or marriage, women are ‘sold and bought’ by wealth and power. Why did Alice Harford marry Bill? He had a promising career as a doctor from an elite school. But in a way, he too is like a male prostitute or gigolo to the superrich. Colonel Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW might call him “an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.” There’s an element of prostitution in every marriage for most marriages are not built on love alone — or love is often associated with money and power. Women seek men with power and money, and men seek women who are ‘hot’. And there could also be an element of marriage in an act of prostitution for there’s the element of mutual obligation and duty. A prostitute is for one night only, but there is an agreement — like a one night marriage — between the male customer and female prostitute. He plays the man who brings home the egg and bacon — he pays her handsomely — , and she pretends that he is the most important man in her life for that one night. So, a prostitute belongs to every man and to only one man. And we sense this duality when Bill Harford follows a hooker to her apartment. Though they understand the rule of the game, they bond immediately. It’s not just about money; there’s almost element of affection growing into love. Bill Harford is devoted to his wife, but Alice is there all the time. He loves her on a daily mundane basis even if she’s gorgeous woman. Like virginity cannot be lost again, man and woman cannot marry again. It’s all past tense. But when a man goes with a prostitute, it’s almost like he’s marrying again if for one night. As the woman acts like he’s the one, the only one; there is a fantasy of make-believe love between them. This is why there’s this madonna/whore complex around so many hookers in fiction. The whore is accessible to every man. She can be bought with money. But her job is to make the man feel like he’s the special one, the only one, and some guys want to really believe in such. Such psychology are at the center of STAGECOACH, BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER, TAXI DRIVER, RISKY BUSINESS, TIE ME UP TIE ME DOWN, CASINO, and bunch of other movies. The man is attracted to the raw sexuality of the whore but also wants to save the whore from the life of debasement. In EYES WIDE SHUT, Alice Harford’s confession makes her sound like the biggest slut-whore that ever lived. (And yet, there was a purity in her slut-dom. She was attracted to the naval officer not for money or security but out of mad passion. Hookers don’t think like that. Hookers have sex for material gain; Alice Harford was willing to lose everything for one night with the naval officer, and it was out of pure mad love. On the other hand, she fell for a naval officer, a figure of martial authority who undermines marital authority. This fact doesn’t escape Bill Harford, which is why in his fantasies of Alice and the naval officer, the guy has his military uniform on while his wife is denuded.) Ironically, Bill Harford meets a hooker who seems so attentive and caring toward him, whereas, earlier that evening, his wife put him down real good as if he was her worst enemy who didn’t understand the real her and stood as an obstacle between her and her object of mad but true desire. And even later, Bill Harford thinks a high-class whore at the rich mansion sacrificed her life so that he would live. In a way, he’s frightened by the news of her death, and yet, he’s deeply moved too. In a way, he madly falls in love with her because of her death. Just as Alice Harford was willing to risk all for the naval officer, perhaps the high class whore risked everything, even her life, for her love for him. He feels complimented and moved. This is why, upon hearing Ziegler’s — Sydney Pollack — version of events, Bill is both relieved and disappointed. He’s relieved that it may not have been murder by some sick bloody sacrifice. But he also loses the poetic-tragic fantasy of a beautiful woman who sacrificed everything, even her own life, to save him from danger out of pure love for him. We don’t know what really happened, but either way, it’s a discomfiting tale. Either a high-class whore was so in love with him that she redeemed herself and gained salvation through an act of self-sacrifice — as Jesus did for mankind(EYES WIDE SHUT takes place around Christmas time) — OR it was all just a charade and she died the next day of accidental overdose. One is tragic, the other is pathetic. There’s beauty in tragedy, and thus, the tragedy, depressing as it is, becomes the source of faith. It’s like Noodles in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA was made to believe that he tragically lost his best friend Max, and it was the source of his everlasting dream of a beautiful friendship. And though Scotty(James Stewart) was fed a lie about Madeline’s death, it becomes the all-consuming beautiful obsession of his life. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” as Pike Bishop says in THE WILD BUNCH. Though Bill Harford was loathe to believe in the worst possible scenario — that the whore who saved his life was murdered by sick perverts — , it filled him with intense emotions of tragic beauty. When he looks at the body of the dead whore, it’s almost as if there’s a spiritual bond between them. And so, when Ziegler tells him what may have been the real truth — though we can’t know for sure — , he feels more deflated than elated; it’s also humiliating for Ziegler correctly read his mind and mocked it as ‘jerking off’ Man’s capacity for imagination is both powerful and laughable. Just like paleontologists reconstruct the structure of an entire organism with a few pieces of bones collected through archaeology, the human mind can take a few details of something and build elaborate structures of meanings around them. And so, even when we know little, we feel we know a lot more than we do. Ron Rosenbaum’s book EXPLAINING HITLER is about how every ‘expert’ on Hitler takes one angle or set of facts about Hitler and tries to construct the whole Hitler from it. This is also how the celebrity gossip rumor-mill operates. People hear just a few things about someone and cook up elaborate conclusions about ‘what really happened’. If someone hears just a few things about the Kennedy assassination, he or she constructs entire conspiracy plot scenarios in his or her mind — or the mind goes into autopilot and makes connections on its own accord as the mind abhors the vacuum of connective meaning. The human mind is like a reverse maze. With most mazes, you begin at the edge and find yourself to the center. But the human mind is like the center of the maze that extends the pathways of the maze in all directions. It is more adept at asking questions and imagining possibilities than searching for specific answers. The concept of ‘God’ is such a maze, one that extends and expands in all directions without end, one that keeps raising new questions, indeed so many that there’s no possibility of finding one’s way out of the maze; in a way, the very act of seeking a way out only extends the maze. The Jewish conception of God is, in this sense, both the most profound imagination of the ultimate truth and the biggest fraud pulled over our eyes. Pagan gods, with their unique features and particular powers, are limited as works of imagination and don’t permutate endlessly in every direction. But the Jewish God, because of His mysterious nature, provokes thought, speculation, and theorizing. There’s a kind of hyper-Socrates-ism in the concept of God. Just as Socrates didn’t spell things out — at least not until the end — but kept raising questions, thereby provoking/instigating others to offer their ideas, arguments, and explanations, the concept of the Jewish God offers certain instructions and questions but leaves so many open and unexplained threads as to the true nature of God — whose name couldn’t even be uttered — that it’s up to His worshipers to keep thinking and imagining about the nature of higher truth. The Jewish God is both the ultimate secret and the ultimate con; and in a way, this is the dynamic behind Obama-ism. Jews advised him that given the human tendency to imagine things, he mustn’t so much reveal his true self — which never was much of anything — as signify his persona as something that could be read and interpreted and imagined from countless angles by every sap and sucker out there. So, he’s everything to everyone, a sort of Obamaze. In a way, it’s kinda sad that Jews took the lessons of the power of their God to serve such a tawdry and lousy end. To reduce the psychology behind the Jewish God to serve the stupid ego of some shallow mulatto punk is sickening. But Jews didn’t do it out of faith and devotion but to hoodwink us dimwit goyim.
Anyways, we often prefer our fantasies and imaginations to the real thing. Most people who are obsessed about the Kennedy assassination don’t want there to be the definitive truth that hammers the final nail in the coffin; they prefer the Pandora’s Box aspect of the conspiracy. They don’t want the last piece of the puzzle; they want an open-ended puzzle that extends out forever. What tantalizes them is the Kafkaesque endlessness to the conspiratorial maze, whereby every new bit of information, instead of narrowing down the maze, makes it larger — Stone’s JFK is almost like a self-parody of this mind-set as it points the finger of blame at just about everything except the White House dog.
Human imagination has given man the capacity to envision great things, but it has also turned his eyes from the truth. Imagination has been the instrument of the bold and courageous, men like Napoleon with the will to go beyond what was proscribed by history as possible. But imagination is also the tool of the weak and foolish, those who don’t wanna face reality and just wanna hide from the world through fantasies and fairytales. Imagination is to people what war is like to Colonel Kilgore in APOCALYPSE NOW. He laments, “some day this war’s gonna end”; he wants it to go on and on forever because in the unceasing destruction of war, there is the constant renewal of virility and manhood, a kind of fountain of youth from the rivers of blood. The power of imagination is such that fantasies, even if untrue, can have greater/deeper meaning than any set of bare facts. Take WICKER PARK and L’APPARTEMENT. What came to separate the two lovers was nothing more than a dirty trick pulled off by the woman’s friend. But not knowing why what happened happened, both the man and the woman imagine entire universes of meaning between them. In the light, everything is visible but no more than what it appears to be. In the dark, nothing is visible and therefore anything is possible. Thus, paradoxically, one can ‘see’ more in the dark.
There’s a paralleling between the tuxedo rental owner’s discovery of the two Asian men fooling with his daughter and the masked superrich guys smoking out Bill Harford at the orgy. Both the Asian men and Cruise get caught and humiliated. And yet, the next day, both have been saved. Bill Harford was ‘saved’ by the whore who ‘sacrificed’ herself for him. We don’t know how the Asian perverts were saved, but it appears they’ve come to some kind of arrangement with the store owner. Bill Harford was so sure that the whore was murdered but learns that she might simply have died of a drug overdose. So, what really happened with the Asian guys? With the whore? And does Bill Harford really even understand his own heart and desires? (Though Alice confessed what were no more than a fantasy and a dream, they intrude more and more into reality between Alice and Bill. Though Bill really did live through the strange experience involving the costume store, orgy, and the paranoia of being stalked, he is advised/ordered to forget about it as if it was all just a dream.) There’s another note of the ambiguity. Bill Harford revisits the street hooker’s apartment, but she is not there. Bill Harford flirts with her roommate, and the roommate tells Bill Harford that the woman he was with last night tested positive for AIDS. The woman assumes that he had sex with her, and so, he could be infected too and must be very upset by the news. But the fact is he didn’t sleep with her, something he knows and feels relieved about but something her roommate doesn’t know. She feels sorry for him though there’s no reason to be sorry for him. Again, things are not what they seem. If the Asian men getting caught by store owner was comedic, Cruise’s getting caught in the mansion bordered on scary — and then it seems tragic when we learn of the whore’s death. That two events could be so similar yet be so different indicates the duality of human condition itself. Everything is both a laugh riot and a dark tragedy. It’s like the ending of DR. STRANGELOVE. Human folly as tragedy and comedy. It’s like ‘horosho’ in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Burgess’s play on ‘good’ in Russian into ‘horrorshow’. And the bootcamp scenes in FULL METAL JACKET are among the funniest and most frightening in cinema. Gomer Pyle is like both a harmless cartoon character and a murderous psychopath. One soldier trips a booby trap when he picks up what looks like the most harmless item: a bunny doll. A bunch of well-trained and well-armed US troops are picked off one by one by a ‘gook bitch’ sniper. Just like Bill Harford is shocked that a woman, his wife of all people, can have such violently sexual fantasies and stab a dagger into his heart, the American soldiers are shocked that some rice-eating Asian chick could strike such terror into an entire platoon of men. In the neat order of things, men are supposed to be men, women are supposed to be women, but the world is not neat. Thus, Kubrick’s penchant for symmetry was always ironic: Cosmetic of neatness on a cosmos without neatness.
The power of imagination is like being possessed by alien/outside spirits. Consider the first scene at the bar in THE SHINING. As far as we know, Jack never met Lloyd the bartender, but when Jack sees him, they talk to one another as if there’s a whole history behind them, as if Lloyd had served Jack drinks before. (Perhaps, Lloyd is a character in the book that Jack has secretly been working on. Perhaps not.) In BLADE RUNNER, some replicants underwent ‘memory implants’ and feel possessed of memories that really aren’t their own. So, Rachel(Sean Young) thinks she’s a real person with real parents. In THE SHINING, it’s as though Jack undergoes something like a ‘soul implant’. It’s like the current Jack has suddenly been implanted with the soul of another person, an earlier Jack from the 1920s. Indeed, the bartender doesn’t call him ‘Jack’ but only ‘Mr. Torrance’. Perhaps the first name of the earlier Jack — seen partying in the 1920s photo at the end — wasn’t ‘Jack’. After all, we are told that the caretaker of the hotel who murdered his wife and kids in 1970 was named ‘Charles Grady’. But the Grady that Jacks talks with in the washroom is ‘Delbert Grady’. Maybe THE SHINING is saying that souls are like names. The same last name is passed down generation after generation, but first names differ from person to person. Similarly, the same soul is reincarnated over and over but in different bodies. Souls are the last names, and bodies are the first names.
Imagination can take us places, but it can also lead us astray, not least because we prefer fantasies or half-realities over realities. In our search for ‘truth’ through imagination, we lose sight of hard facts, willfully or by accident. Imagination can be used by individuals to create their own myths, and as such, it is both strengthening and weakening. It can make one feel like a god — independent of the world or even above it — , and/or it can undermine one’s sanity, without which one cannot make his or her way in the world. The aging movie star in SUNSET BOULEVARD is the queen of her own dream world, but it is also a shabby world disconnected from the real one. While imagination is a useful refuge from the sting of hard facts in reality, it can also be a hole from which one cannot crawl out. It’s like it’s one thing to fall asleep, to find momentary respite from the stress of waking life, but it’s another thing altogether to go into hibernation, fall into a coma. It’s one thing to close one’s eyes for awhile but quite another to be blindfolded so that one sees nothing even with eyes open. Nick Nightingale(Todd Field) in EYES WIDE SHUT plays music blindfolded, which means his eyes are shut even when they’re open. He can only imagine what is happening around him, but he tells Bill that at one time, the blindfold was loose and he saw some stuff that was beyond his wildest dreams. In a way, the blindfold comes loose in Bill’s eyes when Alice confesses her passion about the naval officer. Seeing beyond the blindfold of normality can unsettle us or it can entice us, and Bill undergoes both emotions on the night when Alice makes her confession. Alice’s disclosure of her secret threatens and frightens him, but it also fascinates him; he’s repulsed but also turned on. Thus, his search for sexual delights is both an act against Alice and an act in spirit with Alice’s fantasy. He’s trying to get back at her by indulging in his own sexual fantasy, but in a way, she’s stronger than him because she has both the power to confess her secret and restrain herself from it. Despite the powerful emotions she felt about the naval officer, she didn’t act on her desire. Bill, on the other hand, is willing to indulge in his fantasy(fed by timid fascination than fired by passion) but is prevented from doing so by minor interruptions — as when he departs from the hooker’s apartment because a phone call from Alice reminded him of his duties. Incidentally, Bill was also ‘saved’ from the humiliation caused by Alice’s confession by a phone call involving the death of one of his patients. Bill finds himself in a no man’s land between fantasy and morality, in a way, embracing both while, at the same time, betraying both. By going with a hooker, he has betrayed his wife, but by deciding not to sleep with the hooker, he has betrayed his fantasy. But maybe he finds satisfaction in the fact that he can just pay her off. It gives him a sense of power, especially over a woman. Also, while the hooker is pretty, she is not an object of his passion. In contrast, Alice really had the crazy hots for the naval officer. So, even though Alice’s confession makes her sound reckless, she was being true to her feelings. Bill is not being true to his emotions; indeed, he’s not sure what he feels or what he’s supposed to feel. A part of him just wants to be a voyeur, made all the more ironic by the fact that, being so good-looking, he is the object of fantasies by others — and enjoys their attention in a mildly amused narcissistic manner. But he is short, or relatively short. He’s a darling-looking man to most people, but compared to the very best-looking people in the world, he is small potatoes. Indeed, he seems dwarfed by the tall model-whores at the orgy. There are gradations to everything. It’s like Stanley Kubrick was a chess genius compared to most of us, but he was small potatoes compared to the real masters. Jews tend to be very competitive, and therefore, they are more acutely aware of whom they’re inferior to than whom they’re superior to. There is an element of Jewishy-ness in the wasp character of Bill Harford, but his wasp-ness has mellowed out some of the Jewishy character traits that probably show more powerfully in Arthur Schnitzler’s novel where the character is a Jew. And it is for this reason that the characters of THE TRIAL and THE CASTLE are not mere dupes or hapless victims. To an extent, their cluelessness is an act, a charade. Though both stories are about awesome power structures that play games with the mind of a powerless individual, one could argue that, on some level, the characters in both stories are acutely aware of the different levels of power. Though THE TRIAL is about authorities closing in and surrounding Joseph K., in another sense it is K who is the transgressor who wants to know more and more about the secrets of the power. (Indeed, one could argue that the power structure and processes in THE TRIAL are labyrinthine precisely because the system is really not that powerful, i.e. it has to maintain the facade of great power because of the insecurity of its power. It’s like the Ottomans and Chinese increasingly projected a mythic aura of their powers in order to convince others — and themselves — that they still had great power. Thus paradoxically, powerfulness can build around the insecure core of powerlessness. It’s like the wizard’s ploy in THE WIZARD OF OZ.) And in THE CASTLE, while the character acts like he’s just some land surveyor doing his job, it’s as if he’s unconsciously or secretively trying to trespass into the Castle. Similarly, Jews act like they don’t care about power, as if all they care about is equality before the law and justice, but everything the Jew has done in the 20th century was to gain more and more power and not just for themselves but over the rest of us. The Jews of the Hollywood Ten acted like they were innocent dupes of ‘paranoid’ anti-communists, but in fact, they were radicals who dreamed of having total power over America. And Stanley Kubrick has acted like he’s a misunderstood artist devoted to his craft — in contrast to all the overbearing, manipulative, and power-mad rich guys who run the film industry — , but in fact, Kubrick has been one of the most manipulative, power-mad, and perfectionist tyrants in film history. Of course, Kubrick often hid the true nature of his tyranny with his soft-spoken-ness. Most of the time, he didn’t scream at his actors and crew like Von Stroheim or Preminger did, but he had other means, both subtle and stultifying, to bring everyone under heel. Kubrick shot a lot of takes. Part of the reason was to arrive at the perfect take, but the other reason, I suspect, was to wear the actors down. It’s like a horse is tamed by the rider getting on its back over and over. It’s like a dog is trained by making it do the same thing endlessly. It’s like students were ‘corrected’ by writing stuff like “I am sorry and I won’t do it again” a hundred times. In a way, Kubrick’s handling of his crew was like Jack writing “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” So many takes and no end in sight makes the crew a tame team. Kubrick even ‘used’ other Jews, whom he deemed to be lesser Jews, in the same way. So, Kubrick manipulated and used Spielberg and Frederic Raphael, who collaborated on EYES WIDE SHUT. He’d pry secrets from others but wouldn’t share his secrets with anyone. He was superior, and he was owed special treatment since he had the ability to work on people’s minds; he had control over them like Quilty over Humbert, but others didn’t have power over him. Kubrick’s seclusion — his so-called ‘reclusiveness’ — was only partly a means to avoid people who were inferior to him; it was also to protect himself from people who might be superior to him. A man who would be king fears the man who would be emperor; every man who would be emperor fears the man who would be god; every man who would be god fears the man who would be the one and only god.
Anyway, no matter what he does, Bill Harford is dwarfed by his wife Alice — and not just in the manner of height(the difference in height between Cruise and Kidman may have been one reason Kubrick settled on the couple). Alice has real passion; she has the audacity to imagine the mad possibility of abandoning everything to pursue her passion; and she has the power to control herself from her maddest desire. Bill Harford feels no such comparable passion; and even if he did, he’s not the one to confess anything; and his journey into sexual fantasy on that fateful night is on the cautious, half-hearted, voyeuristic side. It’s like he wants to feel some wild passion that will make him feel free and empowered — even enslaved in grand emotions — , but such feeling is never forthcoming. When ordered to take his clothes off at the mansion, he feels all shy and timid. In contrast, Alice in her dream was unafraid to take off her clothes and have sex with everyone. Alice recounts that both she and Bill were naked, but whereas Bill scampered off to find clothes, she enjoyed her nakedness and basked in the sun until a bunch of hunks came and ravished her; the naval officer was there, but, sheeeeeet, what if there were Negroes too? (Paradoxically, men could feel more insecure in their nudity than women do precisely because men are more aggressive. All a nude woman needs to do is surrender and spread her legs to the male. Her mode is to be conquered than to compete, and size of her vagina doesn’t matter. Big pussy or small pussy, pussy is pussy. In contrast, nude men are in sexually competitive mode, and in the modern world, manhood is measured by hardness of muscles and penis size. No matter how nice a guy’s face is, he might be lacking in muscles. No matter how nice his face and muscled his body, he might have a small whanker. In Classical times, it would have been a plus as big dongs were deemed gross and ugly, but in the supersize culture of the modern world, the small pudder becomes the object of mockery. This is made worse when the nude white guy is side by side with a nude black guy with harder muscles and bigger whanker. A naked John Wayne even in his prime would have looked like a sack of potatoes next to a naked Woody Strode. A naked white woman, as long as she is desired by men, feels pride in her sexuality. All she has to do is lie down and spread her legs. But the naked white man has to display his superiority via muscle and pud, but most are no match to the Negro. And of course, Jews know this and are working to further pussify white male. Thus, the paradox of male sexuality is that it aggressively wants to tear off the woman’s clothes and hump the ho real good, but it also wants to find clothes to cover up the woman’s sexuality — to claim as his own — and to cover up his own nakedness for it might not match the more robust nakedness of other men. One of the reasons for the taboo against male nudity in America was that male nudity would demonstrate the harder muscles and bigger penis of the Negro. And it was also the interest of older men to cover up the body since younger men had more robust bodies. In this sense, clothing was as much a great equalizer as a great divider, i.e. while rich people wore better clothing to differentiate themselves from poor folks, clothing had an equalizing effect in hiding the nudity of all men. Another equalizing factor in clothing, or at least in modern clothing, is the sheer abundance of all manner of clothes to wear. Fashion used to be the preserve of the aristocracy, which is why the dresses of the upper classes changed drastically from the 16th century to the 17th, from 17th to the 18th, from the 18th to the 19th, from the 19th to the early 20th. In contrast, most lower class people working on the farms wore much the same clothes over the centuries. They wore clothes out of necessity and functionality, not for vanity and fashion. Gay fashion designers always catered to the rich, never to the peasant serfs or working class proles. When clothing had been relatively scarce and expensive, only the upper crust could afford fashion. Today, even the poor in India, Brazil, Mexico, and China can afford to be fashionable. Thus, people tend to think about everything in terms of fashions and fads than in terms of facts and needs. And this may be why gays have gained so much in recent times, indeed why even our thoughts on subjects like marriage revolve around issues of ‘lifestyles’ and fashion than about true morality and necessity. Fashion is nice, and it’s good that so many people now have access to it, but when people conflate fashion with the facts of morality and history, society becomes sillier and more trivial.) Though Bill is the man with a job — whereas Alice is the housewife taking care of the kid — , Bill comes to feel intimidated by Alice. Alice has the power of sexual imagination and the fierce will to restrain it. In contrast, Bill has no penchant for such imagination and just flirts with sexual fantasies like a schoolboy who doesn’t know what to do with a dirty magazine. Alice is overpowered by passion but, remarkably, can overpower what overpowers her. Bill is afraid to feel any great passion — and may not even be capable of such — , and it is not his own will but the power of others that control and lead his behavior that is like a mouse in a maze. At the orgy and later with Ziegler, he is the controlled and manipulated one. And with the costume rental owner, he has no clue what’s really going on. He’s kind like the character of Mr. Jones in Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man”. There’s something happening, but he doesn’t know what it is. Some critics have complained that the dramatic set-up in EYES WIDE SHUT makes no sense in the 1990s, i.e. why would any modern guy be shocked that a woman has sexual fantasies and passions too? I mean we’re so far away from the Victorian Age, and modern America is not the Muslim world. But such complain completely misses the point. Bill Harford knows that women enjoy sex, have fantasies, and feel lust, and etc. After all, at the Christmas party, he was seduced by two women. And he could tell that Alice was kinda flirting with the Hungarian playboy. The sexual/sensual side of Alice isn’t what freaks him out. If Alice had said something like, “Sean Connery(or Pierce Brosnan) makes me feel hot,”, Bill would have understood and laughed it off. What freaks him out is the ‘spiritual’ dimension of Alice’s sexual passion. Alice’s passion for the naval officer wasn’t merely carnal or physical; she was willing to give her entire SOUL to him. It’s like what Jack says when he approaches the empty bar in THE SHINING, "God, I'd give anything for a drink... even my goddamn soul, for a glass of beer." It’s one thing to want a beer, even to wanna get drunk. But it’s quite another to give one’s soul for a beer. I suppose this is why Alcoholics Anonymous focuses on God or some higher power as the guide to ‘salvation’ from alcohol. It’s as if alcoholics aren’t merely physically addicted to drink but spiritually owned by it, and therefore, a higher power is necessary to reclaim their souls from the devilish power of alcohol. (And the theme of Christmas may offer a similar kind of promise to Bill and Alice. Jesus transcended the flesh. The irony of Christmas is that it celebrates the physical birth of Jesus. The Man who would later transcend the flesh was born of flesh. Though Christians believe in Virgin Mary, one could argue that there was a kind of sexual coupling between Mary and God. For Jesus to later transcend the flesh, His Father God Jehovah had to first descend to the level of flesh to impregnate a woman’s womb. At the end of the movie, Bill and Alice have a heartfelt talk in a toy store. They’re finally ‘growing up’ as mature people in a place stuffed with toys — but then, the whole thing with parties, costumes, and orgies was toylike too. Bill says the word ‘forever’ and Alice says the word ‘fuc*’. The spiritual and the physical, the eternal and the temporal. But there’s irony to what Alice means by ‘fuc*’. ‘Fuc*’ is usually understood to mean libertine attitude toward sexuality, as in ‘fuc*ing around’, which is to have sex with everyone. But as Alice says it, it sounds humble and almost conservative in its pragmatism. Indeed, the problem began between the two not because of Alice’s ‘fuc* fantasy’ but because of her ‘making love’ fantasy. She didn’t just want to physically fuc* the naval officer but wanted to make mad passionate love to him, to give her soul to him. So, even though we use ‘making love’ to mean something that happens between man and wife, it’s reversed in EYES WIDE SHUT. ‘Making love’ can be more dangerous because it means spiritually giving oneself to the ultimate object of one’s desire, and the object of desire is oftentimes not the one you’re with. A man wants to make love to a goddess, a woman wants to make love to a god. What ordinary humans do is ‘fuc*’ the one they’re with. Most married people love one another, but most people don’t marry the ultimate object of their desire. So, in the cases of most sex, it’s a matter of ‘fuc*’. ‘Forever’ is reserved for the godly and spiritual, and there is a need for that kind of love between people, but life is not forever, people are not forever, and even love between a couple is not forever. Though there’s an element of humility when people talk of ‘forever’, as in ‘I will love you and only you forever’ or ‘I will give my life to God forever’, there’s also an element of hubris, as if one’s life and love can really last forever, or as if one has to power to hold onto one’s feeling forever. But life is not like that. So, even as Alice doesn’t totally reject the idea of ‘forever’, she gets down to the business of ‘fuc*’. Life is fickle and fuckle.) That Alice may want to sleep with other men is not Bill’s problem. The problem is that Alice was willing to give her entire soul to another man. She was willing to give it to him for just one night of happiness, even if he didn’t love her back. She was willing to go nuts like the woman in STORY OF ADELE H. by Francois Truffaut. In a way, she can never love Bill like she loved that naval officer. However, she does say that in the wild throes of her sexual fantasy, she also discovered that she loved Bill and her kid more than ever. This should be a consolation to Bill, but it’s actually even more perturbing because it’s as though her love for him is out of pity; he’s like a little boy and she’s his mama. It’s like she wanted to abandon everything to be with the naval officer who wasn’t just good-looking but tall and manly — she wanted to be with the alpha wolf — , but then, she was filled with a pitying kind of love for Bill, almost as if Bill was less her husband but her little son or a poor little dog. It’s like Alice was thrilled by the sight of a wild wolf but then decided to return home to her neutered doggy. Thus, Bill feels ‘spiritually’ pussified. (It’s made worse by the fact that the person he’s married to seems least enthralled/impressed by him. Throughout the film, we see how so many women and even a gay guy melt in front of him, and so, Bill is someone who feels assured in his narcissism. He’s not a pathological narcissist, like the Hungarian playboy who dances with Alice. Indeed, he takes pride in the fact that he looks so good — and so many people want him — but is decent and loyal enough to be true to his wife. So, when his wife doesn’t show the kind of appreciation he expected but belittles him in a very bad way, he’s like WTF. The short guy in THE KILLING was ugly and dorky, and we understood why he was so crazy about his wife who, though not beautiful, was like a dream babe to him. In contramst, Bill feels like he’s the sort of guy who can get any chick, but he chose to be a good husband and wife, but Alice doesn’t seem particularly impressed or grateful. He feels doubly betrayed: he betrayed his narcissism by settling down to a moral family life, and he feels betrayed by Alice who confesses the most outrageous thing; he also feels betrayed by his own naivete about the facts of his wife and what really makes her tick — even though he’s supposed to be a smart guy who finished medical school and has rich clients. When she talks ‘crazy’, he’s as flustered as Wendy when Jack spoke crazy — about his work and his nightmare — to her in THE SHINING.) Another weird thing about Alice’s confession is that we lose sense/sight of distinctions of reality and fantasy. Her confession isn’t really a confession since she didn’t do anything. She didn’t follow on her fantasy and remained faithful to her husband. So, her fantasy is just that whereas her life with her husband is real; they are married, have a child, and live in a house. And yet, as Bill listens to her, the fantasy seems more powerfully real while his marriage sounds like some dollhouse child-play. All that night and the next day, Alice’s fantasy has more power over him than the reality all around him, and indeed, the fantasy comes to life in his own mind as he imagines Alice surrendering herself madly to the naval officer who, by the way, is making love to her in uniform. (Uniforms, masks, costumes, and toys, they all serve the ‘archetypalogy’ of EYES WIDE SHUT. People dress up for parties, people at the orgy wear masks, Alice was turned on by the naval officer’s warrior-caste outfit — surely more troubling in the Jewish cultural context for Jewish men tended to be intellectual ‘geeks’ whereas the warrior caste was mostly made up of goy noblemen — , and kids love toys on Christmas. Without masks, uniforms, and toys, people are merely flesh and bone, all too vulnerable in their naked animality of wanton pleasure and decay & death. Though women at the orgy are nude, they are not totally naked; they wear masks, feathers, and sandals, and such adornments lend an air of mythic eternity in contrast to the base animality of what’s going on. But consider the image of the woman Bill Harford sees at the morgue. She is stark naked and stark dead. It is an image of unembellished ugly truth, though, ironically, Harford finds tragic beauty in the stark ugliness in the way similar to how a Christian finds tragic meaning in the ugly image of Christ’s torment and death. The difference between the Jew and Christian is that the Jews sees ugliness as ugliness whereas Christians, especially of the ‘Aryan’ kind, see a beautiful fairytale even in ugly things. Perhaps, ‘Aryans’, being beautiful, project their beauty even onto ugly things, whereas Jews, being ugly, project their ugliness even onto beautiful things. ‘Aryans’ need to prettify even death whereas Jews need to uglify even life. The odd paradox of what it means to be human is that human nakedness makes man both less animal-like and more animal-like. Most mammals and birds are ‘clothed’. So are reptiles with scales. Thus, even in their natural state, animals are not naked. They are covered by the natural clothes of fur, feather, and hair. We associate furriness and hairiness with animality, but it’s furs, feathers, and hairs that ensure that animals are not naked. Among humans, being naked means to be ‘savage’ and ‘primitive’ — or animal-like — whereas to be clothed means to be civilized. Man has to weave his own ‘fur’ and ‘feathers’ in order to hide his nakedness, and only by hiding his nakedness does man feel civilized. Because natural man is naked in being born without fur and feathers — only his head, pubes, and armpits are covered — , in some ways he looks more nakedly animallike. In making clothes and covering ourselves, we are trying to be like animals that are ‘clothed’ in fur or feathers. We consider ourselves to be less animallike because we are fur-less, but we make and don our own ‘fur’ in order to be less animallike. Anyway, as the drill Sergeant said in FULL METAL JACKET, “...the Marine Corps lives forever. And that means YOU live forever.” As individuals, soldiers get killed in war. But as part of the uniformed league of warriors called the Marines, soldiers take on the power of archetypes. This was true of Jesus too. As an individual, He was a guy who meant well and got whupped real bad and killed; He was even denuded in His death. But ‘wearing the mask’ of Messiah or God, He became an archetype of spiritual transcendence, redemption, and salvation. He ‘wore’ the Crown of Thorns and the Crucifix. He became a Man of Forever. Sexual desire is animal, it’s come-and-go. And yet, it is also the source of much human inspiration and creativity, and so, mankind has created gods of sexual beauty. Without animal-emotional drives, consciousness — human or artificial — would have no wind behind its back to pursue any line of thought to serve an ‘agenda’. No matter how intelligent a ‘mind’, it only goes to work when motivated by fear, desire, anger, fascination, and etc., all emotional issues. A mind divorced from desires and drives would settle for the void of Nirvana. What is usually meant by ‘beauty’, at least in human terms, is that which is most sexually desirable. Sexually attractive men and women are said to be beautiful. Yet, ‘beautiful’ connotes qualities beyond immediate pleasure or appeal; it implies sublimity, transcendence. Thus, the idea of human beauty is deeply problematic. On the one hand, it’s a case of ‘boing’ as Beavis and Butthead might designate it, but it’s also the desire to preserve beauty as an immortal essence. But all flesh withers and dies. Thus, there is the appeal of art in its power not only to mimic beauty but preserve it. Ancient Greek sculptures of beautiful forms still stand over us, still stare at us, and we stare at them. Art keeps beauty alive, but art is also ‘dead’ or non-living. It is artificial, not natural, but it keeps the memory of natural beauty alive whereas nature constantly destroys the very beauty that it creates. In a way, it makes sense that kids are given toys on Christmas because toys, as facsimiles of real things, freeze and preserve aspects of reality as ‘ideals’. In a way, there is something toy-like about Christianity itself for it has frozen and immortalized the life of one Man forever as the exemplary and Perfect life. Girls love Barbie dolls because such are models of human beauty transformed into indestructible ‘perfect forms’. Young girls wanna grow up to look like Barbie, and as they age and wither, they look back to the time when they were beautiful. Barbie doll remains the same; it is always perfect, always beautiful. In the orgy, we see a roomful of whores, but with their masks and feathers, they also seem like immortal goddesses. They are hookers turned into representations of perfect eternal beauty. The masks archetypal-izes them. It’s like they aren’t simply ‘hot hos’ of the here and now but the perfect representations of ageless and timeless beauty. And when rich folks screw them, it’s like they’re making love to goddesses. It’s all play — even a sick joke — , but the members of the secret society take it seriously. Needless to say, I highly doubt if such stuff happens among the superrich, but the orgy in EYES WIDE SHUT isn’t meant to be socially realistic or plausible but instead archetypally representative of man’s desire for power, wealth, beauty, and secrecy. In a way, Kubrick’s films are about the tensions between the individual and the archetype, between the human and the perfect form. In THE KILLING, there is a perfect plan carried out by imperfect humans. In DR. STRANGELOVE, there’s the ‘perfect’ foolproof system and the imperfect men who run it. In 2001, there is the perfect computer as the product of imperfect man — the problems of man’s creation of Hal is like God’s creation of man in reverse, i.e. perfect God created imperfect man but expected imperfect man to perfectly obey the perfect God, and imperfect man created the perfect system of Hal but expected the perfect system to obey imperfect man. In FULL METAL JACKET, there is the system of creating perfect killing machines by unleashing their primal animal fury. In THE SHINING, there’s the Overlook as Jack’s perfect workplace that heightens his imperfection. If men were to accept imperfection as the norm, reality might be more bearable. But it’s the nature of man to seek perfection. Animals find shelter where they can; man builds his own shelter according to his idea of perfect castle. Animals mate anyway they can with whatever mate they can find; men seek the perfect women, women seek the perfect men, and both sexes use all sorts of manners and/or make-up to create the impression of perfection. Mankind depend on sorcerers, prophets, intellectuals, economists, leaders, and scientists to arrive at a ‘more perfect’ understanding and controlling the world. Such desire for improvement can start humbly or modestly enough, but given the nature of the will-to-power, it can turn into will-to-perfection. So, Aztecs set about sacrificing thousands of humans so that the gods would favor them and grant them perfect dominance. The Founding Fathers spoke of a ‘more perfect union’. George W. Bush and Karl Rove thought they’d come upon the perfect formula for making the GOP the party of the future. Democratize and pacify the Middle East for the interests of Israel(and gain the support of American’s Jewish elites) and provide home ownership to just about every American, especially Hispanics and them over to the GOP. And communists promised their followers a perfect society, and Nazis promised Germans a perfect ‘Aryan’ utopia. This zeal for perfection can drive people crazy, but perfectionism is a part of human nature. Athletes train and train to be the best. Ballet dancers work endlessly to perform the perfect dance. While nature is beautiful, it’s also confusing and messy. Nature is never ‘perfect’. For civilized folks, objects of ‘perfection’ have become the norm. Every object around us strives to be ‘perfect’ according to some model or concept; even if they are not perfect, desire for perfection is inherent in everything around us: the forms of books, phones, faucets, tiles, cars, clothes, desks, chairs, containers, dishes, and etc. Utilitarian or aesthetic, they are striving for an ideal state. Modernism threw a monkey wrench into this ideal with stuff like Expressionist painting and Abstract Art, but modernism petered out , and we are back to wanting order and meaning in the things in our lives. We don’t wanna sleep in an Expressionistic bed or use an abstract toilet. We’ve become so inundated with perfectionism and/or idealism — Apple became the most successful company by perfect-izing high-tech gadgetry — that we’ve come to associate perfectionism/idealism as normal and the natural as ‘strange’. Yet, this wasn’t always so. In 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the ape men are surrounded by natural imperfections but freak out when they wake up one morning and see what appears to be a giant iPad. The perfect shape of the black monolith is the most alien and strangest thing they’d ever seen, and they panic and go nuts. In time, man not only got better at making ‘perfect’ things — like ideal arrow tips and swords — but his entire world became surrounded by objects of perfectionism/idealism. Thus, the unnatural became the norm, and the natural became the weird. People prefer order and symmetry, and so, people prefer civilization to nature; they want nature as a backdrop as scenery out the window or as a painting/photo on the wall, but they don’t want nature all around them. They like the straight lines and clean forms of a house. Music, especially pop music, can sound loud and crazy, but form is essential. There is no rhythm, beat, melody, or harmony to sounds of nature. Some natural sounds are soothing or pretty — like the murmur of brooks — or follow certain patterns and structures — like the ‘songs’ of birds and insects — , but they aren’t music. Even the wildest and craziest kind of music — if it’s to qualify as music — has to follow certain rules and forms, and it is sense of order at the core of passion that makes music so appealing. This is certain true of rap, both the most animalistic/crazy and the most form-centric of musical forms. Rap is nothing without the steady beat and endless rhyming. Bill Harford thought he was in a perfect marriage, but there’s no such thing. Alice thought she had the perfect fantasy, but there’s no such thing either. No perfect reality, no perfect fantasy. Yet, one can’t merely settle for reality or fantasy. Man is both blessed and fated to live in the realm between the two, and in a paradoxical way, reality makes fantasy more perfect, and fantasy makes reality more perfect, even as both make each other less perfect. An inventor with the perfect idea realizes his idea has problems; it is through real-life experimentation that he’s able to work on his ‘perfect idea’ and make it more perfect. Only by tripping over reality can the idea be ‘perfectized’. Thus, reality makes an idea more perfect, though never fully perfect. But reality has limits and its secrets, and reality can ever attain perfection. Reality gains ‘more perfection’ through fantasy. Without the ability to imagine and fantasize, people are simply stuck with what they see have them. Before man could fly, he had to imagine he could fly. Before man could hope to gain god-like powers, he had to imagine gods and powers beyond the ordinary. But, fantasies can just as easily lead us astray. It was Hitler’s great power of imagination that made him believe he could invade Russia and win, and before him, Napoleon had the same failure of the imagination. The power of imagination is such that the mind fills in all the holes without knowing. Bush and Neocons didn’t know much about Iraq, but it didn’t matter since they were fired up with imagination — the ‘vision thing’ — that provided ‘answers’ where there weren’t any. All the holes of ignorance could be filled with slam-dunks of the imagination. Given the way of human nature, there is no perfect reality, no perfect fantasy, and so, Alice tells Bill, “Only as sure as I am that the reality of one night, let alone that of a whole lifetime, can ever be the whole truth”, to which Bill says, “And no dream is ever just a dream.” It’s like no movie is ‘just a movie’, no story is just a story, no fantasy is just a fantasy. There are both positive and negative connotations to what Alice and Bill say to one another. Fantasy can add color and meaning to life but also imbue it with darkness and uncertainty. It can broaden possibilities but also tempt life with the poison fruit of impossibilities. The appeal of Christianity is it’s based on both real history and real fantasy. A Man named Jesus probably did exist and walked the Earth, but there’s a fantastic myth surrounding His birth, death, and Resurrection, and this myth has eternal-ized what was specifically historical. And the appeal of Christmas is in the idea of constant rebirth and renewal. We think of Moses as having been born on and having died on certain moments in history. Though a great man, he’s limited to a time and place. In contrast, though Jesus too was born on a certain date and died on certain date, Christians feel that He’s both forever with us and forever born anew on Christmas day. He’s the eternal God and the eternal child. And since, unlike so many other great figures in the Bible, He died young instead of in old age, His life has taken on the archetypal meaning of Eternal Youth. And the magic of movies is that they have the power to preserve forever the youth of movie stars, and Tom Cruise never looked so good as in EYES WIDE SHUT — but then, he also never looked so powerless and pitiable. The problem facing the West today is that imagination and ‘social progress’ have become severed and unmoored from the basic roots, needs, and values of biology and morality. It’s natural and necessary for mankind to expand his possibilities and visions. For example, the basic need of food is to eat in order to survive, but if we remained only on that basic level, we might as well stick with only meat and potatoes forever. The art of cuisine developed when man came to regard food as something more than about basic survival. There was pleasure to be found in eating, so there developed the art of fine dining. Even so, eating for pleasure has grown out of and is rooted in the fact of eating for survival. So ideally, people should eat well but when they’re hungry. People shouldn’t be eating just for its sheer pleasure as they’ll become fat, eat up the world’s food supply, and eat lots of bad stuff just because they taste good even though they — sugar, butter, and etc. — will cause all sorts of health problems. Man needs to go beyond basic needs, but the ‘beyond’ must still be linked to the basic truths of life. The ‘beyond’ must be an extension of the basic, not severed from and drifting free of the basic — that way lies decadence. Like a tree cut off from its root, it is fated to wither and die. The basic needs of sexuality is to reproduce — and the basic function of the anus is to excrete, not to be used as a sex hole. Sex being pleasurable and individual freedom being important in a modern democratic society, we’ve gone beyond the basic needs of sexuality — especially with modern medicine that ensures the survival of most children, meaning women don’t need to have ten kids just so two might survive and grow to adulthood. Even so, the basic function of sexuality still remains, and it is the means by which the survival of humanity is guaranteed, and biological processes must be properly moralized as sex produces children and children must be raised properly. So, even as people find pleasure in sex, it must be an extension of our recognition of the basic functions and purpose of sexuality than a hedonistic or narcissistic indulgence in any kind of perversion for the sake of vanity or self-aggrandizement. The problem with stuff like ‘gay marriage’ is it represents not only a severing of sexual need and sexual pleasure but a severing of moral truth and moral agenda. Genuine morality must be rooted in the truth, not toyed around with just to satisfy the petty vanity of global elites. What we are witnessing is a neo-aristocratism that would replant the tree of morality in the artificial soil of lifestyles and special privileges than in the true soil of biological truth and moral necessity. Though the breakdown of moral values is wrecking entire communities, the only thing the elites care about is the recasting of morality to serve the insipid selfishness of homos who, while rejecting the normal way of life, demand all its fruits, even children. Imagine that. Homos say they should be free to live their own lives liberated from hetero-normativism, but they also want children, the very product of real sexuality. This is greedy and absurd, but gays, as the main allies of Jews, have neo-aristocratic privileges in the West, and so, the bulk of our moral energies are expended on pleasing gay elites, that is when we aren’t bending over backwards to appease Zionists is Israel or the Jewish cabals in NY and LA.) Imagination is a kind of power, so those who control the imagination have the greatest power. Why do Jews control us? They control the power of imagination and the imagination as power. Even the dichotomy of producer vs ‘auteur’ breaks down when we consider Jews. Orson Welles, Francis Ford Coppola, and Sam Peckinpah were ‘auteurs’ who went up against producers. They were men of imagination-as-personal-freedom at odds with men who would control the imagination-as-power. In contrast, men like Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick had both the power of imagination and the power over the imagination. They were producer-auteurs. They never lost themselves in the romanticism of creativity. Even so, Kubrick was dedicated to art in a way that Spielberg never was or ever could be given his simple-mindedness and greedy opportunism. Even so, they were men obsessed with dreams and fantasies as something more than cash machines. But most bigshot Hollywood producers and studio executives are men without imagination who wanna control the imagination, and same goes for many Jews on Wall Street and media. They can appreciate the power of imagination, but their main goal is to control and own it than be inspired or awed by it. Artists with the power of imagination rarely gain great power or wealth. Every imagination has its own inner-logic and ‘integrity’, and the artist, if indeed true to his art, will not compromise the integrity of his imagination. He will serve and realize the true meaning and scope of the imagination than twist it around or water it down as a means to gain fame and fortune. Similarly, a true man of Faith serves the true meaning of God than using God as a means to success and popularity, as is the case with so many mega-mall churches managed by charlatans, some of whom are too shallow to even realize that they are fraudsters. True artists will not drastically alter their imagination to gain fame and fortune, and the price they may have to pay is exile and/or slowness to be fully appreciated by the larger public. Orson Welles didn’t die a rich man, whereas Spielberg is a lot richer than all the ‘art film’ directors combined. (Even so, Spielberg, though not an artist, is an ‘auteur’ and master, which makes his place in film history so infuriating. A genius of almost unmatched and irrefutable talent, he’s also the biggest whore-pimp charlatan working in Hollywood. He’s both a total fraud and total master, a full-time opportunist and full-time dreamer. That the ultimate populist would also be the ultimate master of the medium is not easy to stomach.) Because of the demands of art, artists must often choose integrity over success and power. But those who seek to control the power of imagination have no such qualms. They may have genuine appreciation for art and even lend support to artists, but when push comes to shove, it’s all about power, control, and money. Power is their imagination, and they look at all the angles for one purpose, and that is to maximize their power. Ziegler in EYES WIDE SHUT is such a man, and that is why he’s so dangerous and even awesome. We may not like him — indeed we may even hate him — , but there’s something refreshing about his lack of BS. He bullshits others all the time but never himself. He knows the name of the game, and it’s power. Though Bill isn’t ‘greedy’ like Ziegler — Bill wouldn’t even know how if he tried — , people like Ziegler are Bill’s rich clients. It’s people like Ziegler and their control of the economy that keeps Wall Street and Hollywood humming. Of course, men like Ziegler have the power of imagination in the sense that they dreamt of having power and wealth. They dream not dreams but the reality of manipulating dreams to gain more power; they would never risk losing power in pursuit of a dream. For guys like Ziegler, dreams are tools, not the end. It’s like Jews don’t believe in MLK’s ‘dream’. They merely used it to hoodwink whites into following a suicidal path that only ensures the supremacy of Jews. For the power-hungry, the only dream worth having is one of power. All other dreams are fairytales for children. Just like adults use fairytales and fantasy to control children, Jews use the ‘dream’ to control us. Even Spielberg, who was mad about Disney fantasies, came to realize at a tender age that fantasies are a form of power; he went from worshiping the dream factory of Disney to wanting to be his own Disney and create his own dream empire or dreampire so as to gain power and control over others, and indeed, Spielberg’s power over our imagination is many times what Disney’s was. Also, if Disney stuck to children’s fantasies, Spielberg has extended his fantasism to real historical events. For all their harsh depiction of violence and bloodshed, movies like EMPIRE OF THE SUN, SCHINDLER’S LIST, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, AMISTAD, and MUNICH are fantasies for adults. At their very core, especially with the sweet harmonies of John Williams’ music, is a sugarcoating of our emotions and responses so that we’ll feel like children on Santa Spielberg’s lap. Spielberg’s movies make us feel hugged, but it’s really the embrace of a Jewish serpent python. Spielberg gains control over his viewers because, all said and done, his movies turn off the minds and work on the hearts. Even the violence is used to scare than lay bare; it makes us seek a security blanket, which is offered to us through syrupy emotions of Oprahesque consensus. In FULL METAL JACKET, the violence challenges us, but Kubrick offers no way out. It is a reality we must accept as part of reality. In SCHINDLER’S LIST, the violence is used as a fright tactic, and we feel like children inside a Holocaust Haunted House. So naturally, we seek cover, and it’s offered to us in the sweet sentimentality of Holocaustianity, whereby we feel saved and oh-so-noble in loving the Holy Jew. Spielberg uses violence not to make us think about power but to make us fall under his power. The difference between Jews and goyim is this: Jewish adults may feed their own kids fantasies — as all kids love that stuff — , but they themselves don’t share in the fantasy and expect their kids to eventually grow out of the fantasy or gain control over the fantasy, i.e. manipulate and profit from it as a form of power. In contrast, many goy adults share in the fantasies with their children. It’s like goy adults never grow out of their childhood stage, and they addict their own kids to the same fantasies. Thus, Jews gain control over fantasies while goyim are controlled by fantasies. It’s like Ziegler puts on a Christmas party but he, as a Jew, has no feeling for the stupid thing. In contrast, Christmas is special to the Harford family, and not simply because they are gentiles; they are more naive and trusting in the magic. Jews have Hannukah, but it was created not out of genuine faith but as a counter-measure against the cultural power of Christmas. Indeed, when ‘Happy Hannukah’ is used on equal footing with ‘Merry Christmas’ in a nation that is only 2% Jewish, that is a lot of power. Jews also used Hannukah to ensure that their own children would not fall under the spell/power of Christmas. It was always about power. One of the things that really disgusted me was how some goy mothers not only took their daughters to see DIRTY DANCING but were just as thrilled by it as their stupid daughters. Imagine that. A full-grown woman who’s no maturer than her daughter, both of them sharing in the same trash fantasy sold to them by Jews. Higher intelligence and the culture of critique ensure that Jews grow out of childishness faster and think more acutely about the nature of power. It also has to do with the differences of their cultural and intellectual traditions. There is no summation of Truth in the Torah and the Talmud. There is no final revelation, and the Messiah has yet to come. Thus, Jews have had to apply culture of critique to their sacred texts and find their own meaning; thinking and inspecting became second nature to them. In contrast, Christianity said Jesus is indeed the Messiah and His sermons are the final Revelation of God’s Truth, and so, there isn’t any more need to think; indeed, thinking can be antithetical to Christian Faith since it might only lead to useless esoteric questions or doubt. Therefore, an ideal Christian should be childlike and just have faith in God and Jesus and stop asking so many questions. As long as the Christian masses were under the rule of gentile elites, such childlikeness served the power of the Christian gentile order. But once the elite power changed from Christian elites to Jewish globalists, it was relatively easy for Jews to manipulate and control such childlike masses. Childlike Christian gentile masses could, in the past, be easily manipulated to hate Jews as the killers of Christ. After all, childlike masses believe whatever they’re told and don’t wanna think for themselves. But once Jews took over elite institutions, they could easily sway childlike white goy masses to worship the Magic Negro, the saintly gay, and the Holy Jew. Just look how easily American conservatives were turned into such mindless cattle who care more about Israel than about their own race and history.
The likes of Ziegler are more into the finance of things than the dream of things. It’s kinda like how Obama is really a puppet controlled by super-powerful Jews. Obama speaks of ‘dreams’ — from his father — , but the dream factory of power is owned and controlled by Jews; and indeed, Obama has been nothing but a dream-puppet of Jews. We can sense the source of Ziegler’s power when he explains to Bill how he found out it was Nightingale who’d tipped Bill off about the orgy. Ziegler had seen Bill and Nightingale together at the Christmas party, and he immediately connected the dots as to what happened. Also, something as simple as the fact that Bill arrived in a cab — whereas everyone came in a limo — and that his coat pocket had the receipt from a costume rental store gave him away. So, even though Ziegler takes part in some mysterious, occult-seeming, and strange sexual ritual, it’s all a charade to him. He does it for status and for fun, not because he gives a shit about all that hocus-pocus ritualism. (This was why Jews had a great advantage over Freemasons. Freemasons really took their rituals seriously. They loved the whole conceit of belonging to a secret society and having secret handshakes and all that funny stuff. But in truth, Freemasons were only as good as the power they really wielded through culture, economics, and politics. Ritualism divorced from real power is bogus, just like a poor man in a nice suit is still a poor man and fooling no one but himself. Ziegler seems to be both an insider and outsider at the orgy at the mansion. He’s been invited as he’s a billionaire, a bigshot. But the secret society seems to have been created by gentile Old Money, the freemason-like sort. It may be that the power of Old Money is slipping, so it invites the likes of Ziegler. It’s like a wasp country club that used to keep out Jews suddenly changing its policy to accept Jews to be injected with new life in the new order. Ritualism may be all very impressive, but it isn’t the source of power but merely a confirmation of it. The danger is that the inheritors of power come to conflate the ritualistic with the realistic. Ziegler the Jews may play along with the ritualism with the quasi-Freemason-like elites, but he’s not impressed. He’s there because there’s a degree of status and connections to be gained from knowing people of this secret society. It’s like Dr. Strangelove went from Nazi Germany to America because of the new power dynamic of the post-WWII order. You go where the power is. Power trumps ideology and ritualism. Ziegler understands what ‘Zuckerberg’ understands in SOCIAL NETWORK. All that stuff about being admitted to special clubs on Harvard is all just a game. It’s for the not-so-talented who wanna feel special by creating clubs to keep others out. Real power comes not from exclusive membership — as even the dinkiest fraternity on some third-rate college or crappiest country club in the boonies can keep people out — but from real ideas and real ability that can win the power. Why join someone else’s kingdom and play at dumb rituals when you can build your own empire with real ability and real power? One of the problems of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was the blindness arising from their excessive ritualism. Japanese got deeply into the ritualism of worshiping the Emperor as a living god and believing in the sacred destiny of a Japan shielded by the gods that Japanese threw caution to the winds and waged war on America. And the Nazis got so swept up with their mythic rallies of national might and sacred rituals of ‘Aryan’ invincibility that they came to believe that they were capable of accomplishing anything. SS troops would gather and hold rallies, sing songs, and be dressed in attire that made them like god-heroes than mortal men. Such ritualism was repeated so often that Hitler came to see himself as god-ruler over god-men, and therefore, no nation was going to stand between him and his destiny. But even as Japanese and German morale and spirit had much to do with their power, unity, and early success, their real power was based on their production of war materials and military technology. No matter how visionary Hitler was or how good his soldiers were, they simply couldn’t overcome the material deficit of taking on the USSR and the US. It’s like even the biggest spider cannot fight off an army of ants. Similarly, it was ritualism that misled the Confederacy in the Civil War. The South, with its martial aristocratic tradition, had a powerful sense of ritualism. Southern gentry felt they belonged to a special brotherhood of honorable warriors. Yankees, though more numerous and possessed of more industry and bigger economy, lacked the ritual culture of warrior-hood and, as such, would be no match for the true men of the South. Of course, despite the ritualized martial culture of the South, it simply couldn’t withstand the onslaught of Northern numerical and material superiority. And if the South was fighting for honor, the North had a powerful cause in the moral crusade of ending slavery and powerful political objective in preserving the sanctity of the Union.) Ziegler and his ilk play the game of imagination, but they have the power because they have no illusions about the source of power. The trick of power is to weed out all the BS and see only what is really there. So, Ziegler, with his sharp and ruthless mind, quickly connected Nightingale with Bill. He was interested only in what’s true or false to gain a clear understanding of what happened. Bill, in contrast, becomes controlled by moral conventions, dreamy illusions, and imagination, and all such stuff makes him see what he wants to see than things as they really are. Ziegler only cares about power. He’s a Jew who throws a Christmas party. To him, Christmas is just a means invite people to show off his wealth and power. (Though Ziegler invites rich privileged people to his party, it’s just a warmup for him as he plans to attend the Real special party later that night, the orgy at the mansion. People at Ziegler’s party feel privileged to have been invited, but the party seems to be mostly for Ziegler’s lesser friends and associates. It’s like a rich CEO throwing a buffet for his lesser employees and then inviting his true equals to a much more exclusive affair. Bill Harford probably thought being invited to Ziegler’s party was to be inside the castle — to be with the best and most powerful in NY, the center of global power — , but he later finds out that Ziegler’s party is just the entrance lobby of the castle. Ziegler and his cohorts have a very different kind of party at the deeper recesses of the castle. Bill Harford secretively gains entry into the heart of the castle — and it’s almost like stepping into a dream — , and much of it’s quite impressive, but it’s also anticlimactic and tawdry. No matter how fancy the place is and impressive the women are, the fact is a bunch of rich guys are wearing silly masks and humping ‘hos’. If this is what happens at the core of the castle, what a bummer. It’s like Hart in PAPER CHASE sneaking into the private collections of the Law Library to read the student notes of Professor Kingsfield; he expects to find something remarkable, but it’s just student notes like any other. Because rich/powerful folks live in impressive mansions/castles, there’s a tendency to conflate the geography of power with the essence of power, i.e. since the king resides in the palace, the power must IN the physical space of palace. Since the Pope is in the Vatican, power must be IN the physical space of the Vatican. Since the Russian leadership is in the Kremlin, the power must be IN the physical space of the Kremlin. And there was the Versailles in France and the Forbidden City in China. Such is the mythic turn of human psychology. But we are not gonna find the essence of Bill Gates’s power by sneaking into his mansion or even by rummaging through his underwear. This is why so many Third World nations wasted their resources by borrowing lots of money to build fancy buildings. The morons thought that the West is powerful because it has big buildings. Never mind that the West was able to build big buildings because of its wealth created by rule of law, work ethic, brilliance and innovation, and political stability. Third World morons thought if they get loans and erect some modern structures of their own, they too are on the way to power and prosperity. Though China built its economy in the past few decades by investing in real sources of wealth such as factories, infrastructure, education, and roads, there is another side to China that seems to think building as many skyscrapers will make it catch up to the West even faster. So, entire ghost towns have been erected, wasting huge resources. Even the Chinese got stupid. Americans, who should know better, seem to have caught the same Third World bug. Since the end of WWII, home ownership became a hallmark of prosperity in America because owning a home meant one had a job, one had savings, one had plans of raising kids in a safe neighborhood, and etc. So, home ownership was seen as the reward/product of one’s hard work and success. But since the 1990s, a new political mentality took hold that home ownership should be ensured to everyone. Instead of home ownership as proof of one’s hard work, responsibility, and success, it was assumed that home ownership would magically lead to economic well-being, success, and responsibility. It was like putting the cart before the horse. Just as Third World morons thought building fancy buildings would make them more like the West, many experts in America — Republicans and Democrats alike — came to the silly conclusion that giving dumb blacks and illegal aliens homes would turn them overnight into hard working middle class Americans. As idiotic as it sounds in retrospect, so many people fell for it and not only for politically correct reasons of making home ownership more egalitarian. It was due to the natural psychological tendency on our part to conflate the geographical manifestation of power with actual essence of power. Google headquarters, Apple headquarters, and Microsoft headquarters are centers of corporate power because of the talent pool working inside them, BUT our minds can easily conflate the very place — its physical space — with the power, as if the power exists within the walls independent of the quality of the people inside them. This is why monumental architecture could be dangerous to a civilization. It was built as the product of the people’s determination, wealth, and might. But once monumental structures are erected, they make the people feel secure in their power, and so, the people take their power for granted. They feel mighty because they are surrounded by mighty objects. But a civilization is only as good as the people inside them. Romans built a lot of impressive monumental architecture, and it made Romans feel invincible even as they grew weak and decadent; and so, it was such a rude awakening and a shock — even to the barbarian conquerors — when Rome fell so suddenly and easily. The bones of monumental architecture remained, but the living flesh of Roman determination and genius had long rotted away. Be that as it may, it’s part of innate psychology to associate the place with the power. After all, why are they still fighting over the Holy Land? It got conflated with the power of God, David, Jesus, and Muhammad. Why do people wanna move to NY? Even if they don’t make it in the city — indeed even if they work at some menial job all their lives — , they feel a sense of power simply by being in what is regarded as the most powerful city in the world. This is why Jews were wary of idols. Too often and too easily, man could conflate the idol — physical representation of the holy — with the very essence of holiness. By fixating on an object of spirituality, one could lose sight of true spirituality. And this was also the conflict between idolatrous Catholicism and essentialist Protestanism. In the long run, Protestants may have achieved more because their concept of values and truth was more of the heart and mind than of objectification and ritualization of spirituality and morality. For a Protestant to be good, he had to think it, feel it, and live it. For a Catholic to be good, all he had to do was touch Rosaries, sip wine and eat crackers, and etc. Catholic morality and sense of duty too often existed on the surface reality of ritualism and idolatry. And it could be Asians lag behind Jews in intellectual achievement partly because Asians are more fixated on the geographical/idolatrous objectification of intelligence than with the true essence of intelligence. While Jews wanna go to top schools, the main intellectual passion of Jews isn’t to go to ‘best schools’ but to think the best ideas regardless of where. Jews believe that the true worth of any idea is to be found in its intellectual merit, not in where it came from. In contrast, Asians think intellectual worth is about what college they are admitted to. So, Japanese are more interested in going to Tokyo University than thinking anything of genuine intellectual worth. A Japanese will shut off his mind and conform to whatever regimen necessary to be admitted to the top school. His idea of intellectualism isn’t so much individualistic as geographic. As long as he makes it to Tokyo University, it means he’s intelligent and superior, even if he’s nothing but a boring drone who rote-memorized a lot of nonsense to get there. While Jews in America wanna go to top schools, their main interest is to exchange ideas with the best minds, not to plant their feet on the campus because it’s supposed to be so special. Asians, in contrast, are more likely to have a fetish for the place. Maybe, Asians are more place-centric and Jews are more essence-centric because Asians were rooted in the same part of the world for 1000s of years whereas Jews tended to be nomadic and moved from place to place. Thus, Jews couldn’t fixate on places as the essence of their power; their power had to be what they could carry in their minds and books.) Ziegler is married to a woman who looks younger, and he messes around with expensive hookers. He’s ‘friends’ with everyone because he’s always looking for angles on how to use them. He’s smooth to the point of being slippery. For Bill, gaining access to the mansion and orgy is like some great mythic adventure; he feels a degree of power as the secretive invader, but little does he know that the forces within are encircling him as soon as he’s inside the door. Also, he really seems to think something strange and ritualistic is happening inside the mansion when, most likely, it’s all a ‘charade’ as Ziegler says. Bill lets his imagination get the better of him and sees more than what is there. He’s the opposite of Ziegler who, when push comes to shove, sees only what is there and nothing else. In the end, those with the power OF imagination lose to those with the power OVER imagination. And in a way, Ziegler’s way of thinking is typically Jewish in all areas. Indeed, we can see it in the Jewish conception of God. If pagan cultures tended to be very imaginative about the many masks of the gods, Jews got rid of all the masks and made their God a faceless and maskless one and only God. The Jewish God is the essence of spirituality(and ultimate power) and nothing else. And consider the difference between Freud and Jung. Jung was a man of great imagination who was fascinated with mysticism, occultism, mythology, and dreams. Jung didn’t merely see such things as symbolic manifestations of the concrete mind but as elements of alternative realities. In contrast, Freud sought to understand dreams, creativity, and imagination as symbols, signposts, and/or products of concrete mental processes rooted in biology, especially that of sex. Whether Freud was right or wrong is not the point. Like Ziegler, he was looking for the concrete links that might serve as the key to everything. Noam Chosmky has no use for most linguistic theories except the most fundamental premised on the idea of Universal Grammar; thus, the secret of language is not in the ostensible differences among various languages but in the commonly shared grammatical root at the core of all languages among all peoples of the world. I don’t know much about physics, but Einstein’s famous theorem seems profound in its simplicity. (What Jews understand about the nature of truth is that truth isn’t only about finding and adding new stuff but discarding and weeding away false stuff. It’s about separating the wheat from the chaff. It’s about clearing away the jungle to see what’s hidden in the jungle. And it’s not just about finding separate facts but finding the patterns that link one thing to another. It’s like linking energy to matter, or Ziegler’s linking Bill with Nightingale.) And Karl Marx was similar in his approach to history. If Nietzsche was consumed by the power of imagination, Marx thought human consciousness was the product of material reality, and material reality was a matter of class conflict, and so, the key to understanding human history was to understand the material dialectics of economic conflicts. The world was made up of matter and things, and real power was invested in the control of real things, and economics was the science of how real things were produced, distributed, owned, and used by society. Though Ziegler is no communist, his material understanding of what happened that night gives him power over Bill who’s lost in a mystical dream of how a fallen goddess redeemed herself and him by beautifully and tragically dying to save his honor and life. Ziegler even mocks Bill’s penchant for imagination: “Okay Bill, let's cut the bullshit, alright? You've been way out of your depth for the last 24 hours! You want the truth? You want to know what kind of charade? I'll tell you exactly what kind. That whole play-acted, ‘take me’ sacrifice that you've been jerking off with had nothing to do with her real death. The truth is, nothing happened to her after you left that hadn't happened to her before. She got her brains fucked out. Period!” In a similar way, white conservatives are way out of their depth alongside neocon Jews. Neocons, with no illusions, are merely duping and using white conservatives [1] for the interests of Israel and [2] prevent mainstream conservatism from waking up and recognizing Jews as its main enemy. If all Jews were Democrats, the GOP would finally have to wake up and challenge Jewish power. But as long as there are some ‘conservative’ Jews, white conservatives believe in the fantasy of praying for the political conversion of the Jews. Thus, while liberal Jews subvert White America to increase Jewish control of America, neocon Jews manipulate white conservatives to work even harder to win over Jews based on the fantastic delusion that Jews can eventually be made into wonderful conservatives and dear friends of the white race. Bill thought he really had something going on with the whore-goddess who ‘sacrificed’ her life for him. He even felt a kind of spiritual-psychic union with the woman dead woman he saw in the hospital. But for Ziegler, it’s nothing but ‘jerking off’. Ziegler also divulges to him that the dead woman is the same woman that nearly OD’d on the night of the Christmas party. She was just a hooker. In the newspaper article, she’s referred to as ‘ex-beauty pageant’. Bill dreams of beauty, but it’s just a commodity owned by guys like Ziegler. Americans swoon about Marilyn Monroe and see her as some tragic goddess, but to Hollywood Jews, she was nothing but a bimbo whore to use, abuse, and squeeze dry. Though Ziegler is probably right that the whore OD’ed herself, guys like him encourage that kind of lifestyle on the people they use and abuse. All those dumb whore-like celebrities are intoxicated on their ego and drugs, and as such, they are disposable commodities owned by Jews; it’s interesting that Ziegler offers to send a case of pricy Scotch to Bill’s house; Scotch or heroin, they are drugs that lower the resistance; Alice almost falls under the spell of the Hungarian playboy because she had too much champagne, and it is pot that smokes out Alice’s sexual fantasy confession; and it is the drink with which Lloyd the bartender gains control over Jack in THE SHINING; ironically, General Jack D. Ripper is wary of subversive chemical manipulation and will not drink fluoridated water; he thinks Russian remain sober because they drink vodka instead. Though Jewish Hollywood culture played a role in destroying the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Jews pretend like it’s beautiful tragedy when it’s never been anything but a sordid farce. Harford and Ziegler are like Humbert and Quilty in LOLITA. Whatever Humbert’s fault and deceptions, he did truly love Lolita; she was his goddess and dream. But to Quilty, she was just a plaything, a sex toy. To Bill, the dead woman is more than a whore or hooker; she was the one who ‘sacrificed’ herself to save his life; she was the one who loved him, and he falls in lover with her. To Ziegler, she’s just some cheap hooker who can be replaced with another. We may sympathize with Bill, but we can’t help agreeing with Ziegler that Bill is some kind of a fool. Ziegler, for all his sleaziness, has no illusions about reality and the nature of power. Bill, for all his fancy education and role of doctor, becomes superstitiously romantic with a dead woman he hardly knows — just like his wife Alice was willing to surrender everything for one night with a man she hardly knew. Ziegler has strong sexual drives, but he never sees them as anything more than sexual drives. So, even though he can’t help himself from banging whores, he would never give himself ‘spiritually’ to a whore; he owns them, they don’t own him. In contrast, Alice was willing to give up her soul for one night with some stud she didn’t even know. (I guess the Jewish guy in CASINO was something of an oddball because he really did fall in love with a hustling whore played by Sharon Stone and entrusted his life in her hands.) In a way, Ziegler is a no-good as*hole, but in another way, he’s less a danger to himself than the likes of Bill and Alice are to themselves. After all, Germans abandoned their sense of reality almost overnight by swallowing whole the fantasy of New Germany as promised by Hitler, the man who would be god. Jews may be as*holes, but they are less likely to fall for such BS. Though many Jews were communists, they were less likely to worship someone like Stalin or Mao. And though Jews used MLK and built up his myth, they themselves have few illusions about the true nature of blacks. All that Magic Negro BS is to hoodwink the dumb white goyim. Indeed, it’s amusing how white folks can watch something like GREEN MILE — a movie with a mountain-sized Negro who wuvs a wittle white mouse and is willing to sacrifice himself to redeem the soul of white folks — and go boo hoo hooey and then go watch Oprah and vote for Obama in the hope that mankind will be saved through the magic of Negro soulfulness. It’s not much different from Bill’s notion that some hooker actually ‘sacrificed’ her life to redeem him. Perhaps, it was to Jews’ credit that they rejected Christianity. Perhaps, only dumb goyim could believe that some Jewish guy sacrificed Himself for the redemption/salvation of all mankind. Though Christianity caused a lot of problems for Jews for a long time — but then, keep in mind that the anti-Jewish aspects of Christianity were the creation of its early Jewish authors — , it eventually softened up Europe for Jewish takeover. (The contrast of naive illusion-ism of the goy and the tough cynicism of the Jew can be seen in MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Though Ratso Rizzo is supposed to be Italian-American, Dustin Hoffman played him as a very Jewishy character. The childlike Joe Buck really thinks he’s hot stuff and NY ladies are impressed by his cowboy shtick, but Ratso calls it like it is: ‘faggot stuff’. Of course, it turns out that Ratso has a dream of his own, but he keeps it private. Jews talk a lot BUT the Jewish rule is never to say anything more of SUBSTANCE than needs to be said, at least with outsiders. It’s like what Ricky Roma says in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS: “You never open your mouth until you know what the shot is.”)
Bill’s confusion and clueless-ness are illustrated by the use of doubles throughout the film. He meets a street hooker and goes to her apartment. Next day, he goes there again but isn’t sure which of the two doors that stand side by side is her apartment. And when the door opens, it’s not the woman he was with the night before but another woman, a sort of double. And when he went to the costume rental store, he discovered that the previous owner had left and the store’s run by someone else. Same place, different person, same purpose, different result. And the two Asian men look rather alike, like the twin daughters of Grady in THE SHINING. And Amanda Curran, the woman who ‘sacrificed’ herself for Bill, has a double or even triple or quadruple identity. She is the super-whore-goddess, she is the ‘ex-beauty queen’, she is the dead body in the hospital, she is the woman who nearly died of overdose at Ziegler’s party. And in a way, Bill develops something like a double vision in relation to Alice after hearing her dream confession. There’s a scene in THE SHINING when Danny senses Dick Halloran ‘speaking’ to him psychically even as Halloran continues to talk to his mother. It’s like Danny made a psychic connection or psyconnection with Halloran. There’s a similar moment in EYES WIDE SHUT when Bill stands in the kitchen and stares at his wife and child at the dinner table. Alice has glasses on and seems like an ideal housewife and mother; she tenderly smiles at him, but he remembers the stuff she said the night before about her dream orgy. Thus, he sees/senses not one Alice but two Alices. Alice as faithful wife and warm mother and Alice as an out-of-control nympho. Of course, the irony is that the dream she recounts is rather like what Bill had been through at the orgy. In the dream, she banged everyone while Bill just stood and watched; and at the orgy, Bill just walked around and watched while there was banging going on all over. And in both the dream and the orgy, Bill was the humiliated one. Because Bill was at the orgy and heard his wife describe the dream, he senses the connections, but she doesn’t know that. Bill almost feels as though she was one of the masked people — voyeur or model — at the mansion staring at his humiliated self. She begins to feel guilt as she tells him of the dream because it’s as though she’s so selfishly carnal in her fantasies while Bill is so faithful to her and has been working all night as a doctor. But her sense of guilt doesn’t soothe him as, again, her love for him is based on a kind of pity. But he too begins to have feelings of guilt for he lied to Alice about being by the deathbed of his client all night — though his adventure did take him to the ‘deathbed’ of another person, that of Amanda Curran. In fact, he didn’t spend much time there and took off and spent time with a hooker and at the orgy. The next day, when he sees the mask on the bed next to his wife, it feels almost as if all the doubles are closing in on themselves and fusing into one. It’s almost as if he was really in her dream, and she was at the orgy looking at him, and he breaks down. (Of course, we must be careful when we discuss a filmmaker’s vision — especially if his films happen to be adaptations of other works — because we can never be sure whose vision it really is. From what I’ve read, EYES WIDE SHUT follows the plot of Schnitzler’s novel pretty closely, and the boot-camp scene in FULL METAL JACKET is also said to be faithful to what happens in the novel SHORT-TIMERS. It’s easier to speak of Kubrick’s own vision in LOLITA and THE SHINING because they — or so I’ve read — deviate from the original source material considerably. When the adaptation sticks close to the original source, whose vision is it really? We have this tendency of discussing films as if the director is the main or even sole artist behind the vision, but we have to keep in mind that Sam Peckinpah was hired to direct THE WILD BUNCH and Ridley Scott was for BLADE RUNNER. Neither was the director’s original vision. So, where does the director’s vision come into being? In the case of Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Robert Bresson, the directorial vision is more discernible since they conceived, wrote, and directed their films. But Kubrick, though a perfectionist visionary and control-freak, generally relied on others for source material — like Orson Welles — and relied on close collaboration with others — like Hitchcock and Spielberg. Of course, we can argue that Kubrick was drawn to certain material because their subjects excited his interests. So, it’s likely no accident that we see parallels and similarities among THE KILLING, LOLITA, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, BARRY LYNDON, THE SHINING, FULL METAL JACKET, and EYES WIDE SHUT. Kubrick selected and expanded on the subjects and themes that most fascinated him — after all, there are infinite number of ways to interpret or adapt a book. It’s like a singer singing a song in his own way to make the song his/hers. The same song can sound totally different played by different singers and bands. The Byrds certainly made Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” into their own song. Form is content, and so the expressive form of anything determines what its essence and meaning. If form changes, so does content. If “Silent Night” is sung in nasty rap style or deranged punk style, it’s no longer a Christmas carol. This is obvious in the case of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. The novel and film are very close plot-wise, but the meanings diverge because their styles and thematic emphases are different. Burgess was mainly interested in ideas and morality, Kubrick with expression and style. For Burgess, Alex was a test case in the question of free will and evil, but Kubrick’s film, Alex is the life of the party, a celebration of honesty. For Burgess, Alex is a punk who might grow into a man. For Kubrick, he is a timeless archetype of punkish Napoleonic will. In the final chapter of Burgess’s novel, Alex begins to show signs of maturation. The ending of Kubrick’s film shows Alex as a kind of demonic star child in orgasmic communion with the cosmos, or cosmorgasm. Burgess’s novel is about free will; Kubrick’s film is about the free-will-to-power. Also, the nature of the novelistic form generally favors ideas, thoughts, and feelings, whereas the nature of cinema captivates us with sound and fury, with sensations than feelings. Thus, while Burgess’s book is an critique of thuggery, Kubrick’s film becomes almost a celebration. Even if Kubrick meant Alex’s world to be vapid, shallow, and trashy, it looms over us as a battleground of nihilistic cool. Also, Kubrick’s masterful style syncs with the Alex’s mastery of the streets. Kubrick was so fascinated with the possibilities of style that irony, though everywhere, becomes almost besides the point. It’s like how BONNIE & CLYDE begins on a note of irony — fantasy of sex and glamour sought through sordid facts of crime and mayhem —, but then, the film itself loses sight and ends up romanticizing and immortalizing the two tawdry robbers-killers as worthy of the bogus legend surrounding them — not least by inflating it even more — , but then, this was during the period of 60s radicalism when many people who should have known better were fooling themselves that black thugs and criminals in jail were pure-minded revolutionaries being beaten down by the Man and the System. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is many times more thoughtful than BONNIE & CLYDE, but thought always surrenders to thunder in cinema. Alex thus isn’t just a thug but a visionary thug, a real rock star. He is viler in the film than in the book yet also more likable, even irresistible. And since we watch him bash others — who are presented as cardboard victims or hapless wimps — without getting hurt ourselves, we find a part of ourselves rooting for Alex despite his loathsomeness. He becomes more like a thug version of Benjamin Braddock in THE GRADUATE; it’s like he’s waging a war on bullshit society, and there’s an element of this in BARRY LYNDON as well, which is why we admire the Irish rogue even as we can’t help notice what a rotten person he is — or is becoming. Rotten he may be, but he’s also a rebel against a rotten system. Compared to Lyndon and Alex, Bill Harford of EYES WIDE SHUT is something of a wuss. He trespasses without transgressing; he lacks the determination, defiance, and the balls of others in Kubrick films. As style makes the fight, style makes the movie. And in that sense, we can separate the true ‘auteurs’ from the mere hacks or hired hands. Consider the versions of MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Orson Welles and Alfonso Arau. Welles’s version was butchered whereas Arau’s version filmed the entire script, but Welles’s version is unforgettable whereas Arau’s version is unwatchable. So, in this sense, we can speak of a ‘Stanley Kubrick Film’ even though most of his films are based on the works of other authors.)
The subtle deftness of Kubrick’s method can be gleaned from the manner by which Dick Halloran and the Hungarian playboy are introduced, respectively, in THE SHINING and EYES WIDE SHUT. It’s almost like the card-up-the-sleeve trick in BARRY LYNDON or like a dormant chess piece taking center stage in the game. Instead of suddenly coming out of nowhere — element of shock — or coming out of somewhere — product of preparation — , the two aspects are subtle combined. The character seems to come out of nowhere but, upon closer inspection, he was already in the visual space before his presence is made known, i.e. he slipped in — or was snuck in — before we were made to make notice of him. Usually, when a significant new character is introduced in a movie, we are ‘prepared for’ the moment by editing, a close up, or mise-en-scene that ‘declares’ the ‘arrival’ of the character. But notice how Halloran just walks from the background toward the foreground crowded by Ullmann, Watson, and the Torrance family. (Boorman used something similar in EXCALIBUR when Merlin slowly materializes from the background after Arthur releases the sword from the stone.) It almost feels as if Halloran materialized out of nowhere even though, had we paid closer attention, he certainly does arrive from somewhere. No special tricks were employed, and it feels all the more stranger for that very reason. It’s as if Kubrick was channeling something of Kafka, i.e. molding the mundane into the unusual. Initially, we didn’t even think to focus our attention on Halloran since he was just part of the background buzz, and so, he slowly but surely ‘slips’ into the foreground. And in the case of the Hungarian playboy, his back is turned to Alice, and so again, we think he’s just another extra in the film, but he makes a swift graceful turn and picks up Alice’s champagne glass. A nobody is conjured into somebody. Water turns to wine, or champagne. The effect is like something between Halloran’s introduction and Lloyd the bartender’s appearance in THE SHINING. (Though Halloran is supposed to be a good guy, there is an element of justice to his demise by Jack’s axe, at least from the view of PETA. Halloran is the hotel cook, and he showed Wendy all the chopped up meat in the freezer. We are all ‘murderous butchers’ in finding nothing wrong with killing millions of animals to whet our appetites. There is a Delbert Grady in all of us when we eat meat. Overlook may be built on an Indian burial ground, but its guests are fed with the kills of innocent lambs.) Kubrick was breaking the rules of cinema, all the while making it seem as seamless and natural as possible. In his hands, the revolutionary and eccentric were made to appear classic and essential. He did things no one had done before but with such sureness and command of style that they seemed as timeless as original. His originality aimed to discover the eternal than merely uncover the eccentric. Watching Kubrick’s films, we feel like Jack in THE SHINING upon discovering that he’s been part of the Overlook ‘forever’. The originality of some artists set them apart from the world, as if to accentuate their specialness and difference. But some artists, though uniquely one-of-a-kind and startlingly new in their own way, are original in a grander and more paradoxical way; they stand out because they stand for the truths that unite everything and everyone. This is, of course, the main feature of originality in science, i.e. the great scientist doesn’t discover his unique truth but the universal truth that applies to all of us. He may be the original discoverer or theorist, but science is about the grand and timeless truth that is bigger than any scientist. So, Newton and Einstein were original thinkers but discoverers of truths bigger than themselves, the truths of the cosmos bound by the laws of ‘God’. There was an element of this in classical art for the great classic artists weren’t merely seeking personal originality or uniqueness but seeking the perfect expression of ideal and timeless forms. The neo-classical Michelangelo was perhaps the greatest artist in this vein. In contrast, modernism allowed each artist to do his own thing, uncover his own distinct and personal expression of originality, though, to be sure, it also spawned various ‘schools’, each one insisting on its aesthetic or ideological superiority. Kubrick combined aspects of classicism and modernism. He wasn’t the typical modernist seeking to define himself against all others, but neither was he a classicist as inheritor of time-worn tradition. Lucky for him, the century in which he was born was the century of cinema. Through the visual space of the new art and technology, Kubrick could revitalize classicism into a modernism. (Tarkovksy had the same luck. Through the modern art of cinema, he revitalized the mystical vision of medieval Russia, making ANDREI RUBLEV into both a most traditionalist and a most modernist work. Because of its startling authenticity, ANDREI RUBLEV makes us believe we are in the world of medieval Russia — not merely visually but spiritually, through the very air we are breathing. But paradoxically, the very fact that we are seeing something so un-modern/anti-modern, real/natural, and spiritual through a medium that is so modern, artificial, and mechanical makes it even more modernist, so time-machine and sci-fi-like. Similarly, the most paradoxically startling thing about the beginning of 2001 is how the sheer veracity of the primitivism makes it so science-fiction-like and modernist. The apes are crude and brutish and their world is all rocks and savannahs, but it looks so real that it seems unreal, i.e. we wonder how something so lost and forgotten in time could be happening before our eyes with such clarity?) Most original artists staked their claim of originality by demonstrating their quirks and differences. Kubrick had those qualities too, but he made the larger and more cosmic claim of originality. He unlocked secrets of filmmaking that seemed to define the eternal than personal style, and it is for this reason that his films haven’t dated as much as those of many others. Kubrick had the vision and talent to bypass the conventions of the time in which he lived. For example, most costume dramas, science fiction films, and works of other genres — even art films — of any period share certain styles, looks, and characteristics. There was the style of the 1940s historical costume dramas, the style of 1950s science-fiction films, the contrivances of 60s European art cinema, etc. Kubrick sought to go beyond and rise above all such conventions — and even the anti-conventions, which are conventions after all. Thus, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY stands out among science fiction films and continues to do so to this day. It is not a 60s sci-fi film but a sci-fi film of all time. And BARRY LYNDON isn’t a 70s costume drama or ‘art film’ but something beyond classicism and modernism. It’s more than ‘then’, more than ‘now’, more than ‘then’ through ‘now’. And THE SHINING, as horror film, transcends the conventions of the genre of its time and of now. Kubrick was aiming at something like universal and timeless originality, and in this vein, there was something of the scientist in his life as artist. This is why 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is an immeasurably greater work than Fellni’s SATYRICON. Kubrick made a great leap in cinematic imagination and technology, but with such command and control; he did a great deal without making a big deal. Speak softly and carry a big bone. In contrast, Fellini’s SATYRICON is threadbare in its imagination but flashy in how it calls attention to itself; it’s like Fellini doing the fat-whore-dance-on-the-beach in 8 ½; it’s embarrassing.
Kubrick’s control of contradictions — grasp of the hidden order within the disorder — made him an especially formidable film-maker. Notice the motif of dressing and undressing in EYES WIDE SHUT. The first image is of Alice taking off her dress and baring her hynie. Later at the orgy, there’s some serious undressing. But the film is also about dressing for parties and putting on costumes. Christmas commemorates the day when God as Jesus was born naked, but it’s also the cold season when people put on coats. The title of EYES WIDE SHUT could be DRESSING TO UNDRESS or UNDRESSING TO DRESS. At the orgy, men and women dress up to observe women undress and have sex. We know the nude women are high class hookers, but we are not sure about the men. Are they rich guys banging the chicks, or are they also models hired to carry out sexual acts for superrich folks to observe. Also, even the nude women at the orgy are ‘dressed’ in masks and feathers. Though their bodies are bare, their anonymousness makes them appear ‘clothed’ and hidden. But then, there are two meanings to ‘expose’: (1) expose one’s body (2) to have one’s identity exposed. In a way, Bill Harford becomes the only naked person at the orgy there because his identity is exposed. He keeps his clothes on, but his exposed face/identity is more embarrassing than the naked bodies at the orgy. The thing with Anthony Weiner was that all those pictures of his pud came to be associated with his face. What really denuded him was that his face/identity was unmasked. And this is also why Humbert is so humiliated in LOLITA. Quilty hides behind multiple masks whereas Humbert has only one face that is slowly exposed for what it is.
Kubrick’s films are pervaded by a sense of deja vu, not unlike the one felt by Jack Torrance. On the one hand, many characters of his films are strong-willed, ambitious, and/or aloof individuals(with an air of superiority), but there’s also a sense that their freedom and independence are just illusions, almost as if they’re repeating archetypal functions in the cycles of time. Jack Torrance considers himself his own man, but he’s informed by Grady that he’s always been the caretaker of the Overlook hotel. The new Torrance is just another repetition in the endless cycle of Torrances. After him, there will be a new Torrance going through much the same motions; the details may vary but the arc remains the same. He’s the same dull boy stuck in the same play over and over. Humbert of LOLITA thinks himself above conventional morality — especially as an English expatriate in America with kinky sexual ideas — , but Quilty sees right through him, and in the larger design of things, Humbert is just another pervert in the line of perverts who thinks he’s fooling everyone. But then, Quilty also isn’t as brilliant and powerful as he thinks he is. He too is just another long line of Quilties. There will always be predators and prey, each person a product of varying measures of both. Everyone ‘corrects’ and is ‘corrected’ by everyone. Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE sees himself as the Napoleon of the streets, the super-punk to end all super-punks. But clever and willful as he may be, he’s just another punk in the line of punks. During the Ludovico treatment, the doctor says, “You never had a choice.” This has two meanings. In the ordinary sense, it means Alex has to just grin and bear it. But in the larger cosmic sense, it means that Alex couldn’t help being what he is and society can’t help doing what it’s doing to him. His kind was born to cause trouble, and society exists to ‘correct’ people like him. It’s been so since the beginning of time and shall be to the end. Alex, like Jack in THE SHINING, is one in the long line of Alexes. Though Kubrick mostly worked on other people’s stories and scripts, the circular motif of returning is prominent in his works. The ‘treated’ Alex ends up returning to the very house he and his droogs had invaded. Torrance’s soul keeps returning to the Overlook hotel. Bill Harford returns to the mansion to find out what-really-happened. It’s like something in life addicts us, and we consciously or unconsciously want to return it to again and again. It’s like what one character says in George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD about the zombies in the shopping mall:
“What are they doing? Why do they come here?”
“Some kind of instinct. Memory of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.”
One part of us is free, unique, and individualistic, but another part of us is like a programmed machine that does the same thing over and over in different incarnations and through different formulations. The dichotomy between ‘freedom’ and ‘programming’ is stronger in Kubrick’s films because many of his characters seek to break free of the conventional mold. (Oddly enough, the Kubrick character who most successfully breaks out of the mold is David Bowman, the most conventional character of his films. Bowman is a dedicated professional, an astronaut who’s inclined to do neither more or less than what is expected of him. He’s almost like a man as a programmed being, indeed hardly more organic than Hal. If anything, it’s Hal that is more like the typical Kubrick hero or anti-hero who tries to break out of the programming and do his own thing. But ‘egotistical’ Hal fails whereas ego-less Bowman, the most ‘boring’ and ‘bland’ whitebread man in the universe, is chosen to become the Starchild — and perhaps bestow new blessing upon mankind. Perhaps, Bowman was chosen not so much because he was so special but because he was so blank, and as such, could serve as a blank slate — or bland slate — for what the extraterrestrials needed to do. It’s like if you wanna spice up something with your own recipe, you wanna a ‘bland’ piece of meat or bread that hasn’t be treated yet. To be sure, one could argue that Bowman must have had some extraordinary qualities to have been chosen to man the mission to Jupiter, but then, astronauts, talented and skilled as they may be, are not the real brains behind the space enterprise; they are errand boys. Jews were able to work so masterfully on Anglos, Anglo-Americans, and Northern Europeans because such folks tend to be so bland in their personality and temperament. Ace Rothstein had a hard time dealing with hot & spicy Nicky Santoro in CASINO, but Jews were able to add their own flavors to Wasp America that came to be smoked and cooked kosher.) Characters in Kubrick’s films wanna be different, pull off a feat that most people dare not handle. But in the end, it’s the same difference or different sameness. While Alex and Jack may be different from most people, Alex is an ‘Alex’ in the long line of Alexes and Jack is a Jack in the long line of ‘Jacks’. To break free of the mold only to discover that you’re still part of some mold that has always been around and will always be around; that makes for a strange feeling. A single red dot may be unique in a pool of blue dots, but seen from above, it’s likely just one red dot of many red dots in many other pools of blue dots. They are part of the same difference, just like ‘non-conformists’ in any given high school conform to established non-conformism of other ‘non-conformists’ at other schools. Indeed, even the need for ‘losers’ to play at ‘non-conformity’ is a kind of conformism to the psychological need for a crutch to rationalize one’s ‘outsider’ status in the high school community. In the end, there is no escape out of the psychological maze that traps everyone; some may traverse different areas of the maze, but in the big picture of things, everyone is in the same maze. (It’s like what Ace Rothstein says of people who come to Las Vegas. Some gamblers think they’re special and gonna beat the game, but in the end, the game beats them, and the casino, just like Jewish Wall Street, takes it all. The only way for gamblers to break free is to quit gambling, but it’s in their very nature to gamble; they can’t break free, and so they try to break the casino, but the casino always breaks them in the end.) A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is like a reverse of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. In the Frank Capra film, a good man believes that the world would be a better place if he hadn’t been born, but he’s shown a nightmarish alternative reality and wishes to ‘live again’. In A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, a bad man is made ‘good’ in the notion that he will no longer be a menace to society, but then society becomes a menace to him(as the victim), so he is restored to his original self again. Both are restored to their original selves.
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is very telling about the necessary role of sanctioned violence in the creation of orderly and stable Britain. One of the key figures in the film is the loud and brash prison officer. He is both aggressive and obedient, both brutal and orderly. He’s a tamed dog taming wild dogs. He has the energies of a bully — like Sgt. Hartman in FULL METAL JACKET — , but he’s a well-trained dog loyal to the system that hires him. He barks a lot but bites only when ordered to. He’s full of aggression, but it’s a very bottled and controlled kind of aggression.
Doctors and politicians can work intellectually and formulate policy because men like the prison officer play ‘bad cop’ to force the prisoners to stay in their place. This is something many educated and intellectual people — especially liberals — are loathe to admit. They are so filled with high self-regard concerning their theories and ideals that they wanna believe that their comfortable and privileged lives are the products of their own goodness and superiority, i.e. the mobs don’t attack them because they have the best intentions for the people. They fail or willfully refuse to understand that their safety has been made possible by the protective barrier-buffer of decent middle class folks and the tough arm of the law that throws dangerous thugs in jail. Liberals also fail to understand that much of law-abiding behavior of the middle class derives from traditional morality centered around shame and decency.
(Generally, law-and-order enforcers tend to be ‘conservative’ while intellectuals tend to be ‘liberal’. For this reason, liberal intellectuals love to flatter themselves that they are open-minded, tolerant, and adventurous in their search for solutions to social problems whereas ‘conservative’ law-and-order types tend to be ‘paranoid’, ‘brutish’, ‘petty’, and ‘short-sighted’ in their conviction that criminals and other dangerous elements should be kept in their place. But then, HOW is it that ‘liberal’ intellectuals can entertain such conceits of ‘compassion’, ‘empathy’, and theoretical open-minded? It’s because ‘conservative’ law-and-order types serve as a barrier between themselves and the mobs, especially the black mobs. Without ‘rednecks’ with guns and ‘fascist pigs’ with bigger guns to protect liberal intellectuals, the latter would be forced to be like David Sumner in STRAW DOGS. Stupid ‘liberals’ like to scapegoat white conservative for all the problems, but suppose every white conservative changed his ‘fascist’, ‘racist’, ‘xenophobic’, ‘homophobic’, and ‘sexist’ views and adopted the entire spectrum of the ‘progressive’ agenda: Suppose all whites give up guns, all whites accept ‘affirmative action’, all whites support ‘open borders’ and illegal immigration, all whites support bigger state pensions and benefits, all whites accept ‘gay marriage’, all whites sign onto higher taxes on the rich, all whites agree to more foreign aid to Africa and other poor nations, all whites embrace ‘free healthcare’ and free everything on demand, etc, etc. So, how will the problems of America — and the world — be fixed? The worst thing that can happen to liberals is for their agenda to win completely. Without white conservatives serving as law-and-order buffer between privileged liberal elites and the growing mobs of ‘darkies’, white liberals are gonna shit. Without white conservatives to serve as scapegoats for all the intractable problems in America and the world, white liberals would have no one to blame for their failings. It’s like Jews would have no friends in the world if all those ‘evil whites’ were to vanish from the Earth. Other than white folks, who really gives a shit about Jews? And without white folks to use as ‘the common enemy’, how are rich and privileged Jews going to maintain the alliance with blacks, yellows, Muslims, and browns? Without whites to milk, blacks and browns will just go fater Jews and shout, “Hand it over, Jewboy!” And without white ‘conservatives’ to scapegoat for all the problems anymore, what excuse are white ‘liberals’ gonna use when social problems get worse and worse? California is totally run by liberals, but problems aren’t going away; if anything, they are getting worse, but there’s no one for liberals to blame since California is totally owned by ‘liberals’. This is why the first step toward ‘getting the Jew’ is to dissolve the GOP and have all white conservatives join the Democratic Party and form alliances against the Jew as the common enemy.) The politicians and scientists in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE don’t seem to be as naive as today’s white liberals. They know the truth about thugs; they know they are safe from street violence because of the strong arm of the law. They distrust the idea of reform and have formulated a ruthless scientific answer to dealing with crime. But like pharmaceutical companies, they focus on the intended effects while ignoring the possible side-effects — they are keen on the calculation but not on the permutation. But of course, every effect has a side-effect, and every side-effect has another side-effect. It’s like the one thing that goes wrong in THE KILLING eventually comes to knock down the whole set of dominos. Kubrick’s vision could easily be mistaken for determinism, but it’s actually more like a conditional determinism than an absolute one. There are X-factors in Kubrick’s films, like the dog that runs out into the runaway in the final scene in THE KILLING. Despite all the things that went wrong, the guy could have made the getaway with his girl if not for the snappy dog. In a way, Kubrick’s films are dualistic in their determinism and anti-determinism. His vision of the world is one of order and logic — even if hidden order and hidden logic. It’s like everything about the cosmos and the world of man is like a Swiss watch. Everything is programmed by some law, natural or artificial, and the world goes round and round, just like the hands of a clock. And yet, in all of his films, the system breaks down, and everything that seemed determined and programmed go off the rails and tumble into darkness like Poole’s body in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. But just when disorder and chaos threaten to engulf everything, a new kind of order takes over and a bigger picture emerges that maybe things DID go according to plan, a hidden plan that no one could have been privy to . In one sense, Hal goes off the rails and goes nuts and against its programming. But given the contradictory elements of its programming, its formulation of its own agenda may have been logical, something that could have been foreseen. The problem is that even the most intelligent men, like a chess player, can see only so many moves ahead. Similarly, the things that happen in THE KILLING seem both crazy and logical. Things go very wrong, but in the wrongness, we can detect a kind of inevitability — especially given the psycho-sexual dynamic between the short guy and his tall buxom wife. And in DR. STRANGELOVE, the world blowing up is the result of both everything going wrong and everything going right. The foolproof system put in place to prevent a nuclear Armageddon failed, but the historical arc of human nature rooted in animal nature working in tandem with the exponential rise in the technological capacity for destruction did reach its ‘logical’ conclusion in bringing about the end of the world. Thus, everything is an uncertainty and a certainty.
Perhaps, Kubrick was interested in wars because few things in history are as total and all-encompassing as wars. (Also, nothing in history is, at once, so totally controlled and totally out-of-control as war.) They affect everyone. Wars force leaders to come up with big solutions, but the effect of every solution has many side-effects that also have side-effects, and soon, no one knows what the hell is going on. The problem of the Iraq War was that every solution created many more problems, and now, we are seeing much the same problem in Libya. Getting rid of Gaddafi was supposed to bring about a stabler order, but the revolution opened a whole new cans of worms. World War I or the Great War, the war that was supposed to end all wars, only set the grounds for World War II. Vietnam, a backward Southeast Asian nation, was supposed to be an easy fix for a superpower like the US, but it was America’s biggest headache. It was supposed to be a great victory for communism, but the communist victory led to wars among communist regimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, and China.
Incidentally, I always thought THE SHINING was like a long elaborate version of “One Froggy Evening”, the Looney Tunes cartoon where some ordinary Joe comes upon a singing frog from a building being demolished. He hopes to gain fame and fortune with the frog, but the frog only sings when he’s around and thus serves as a metaphor for man’s eternal delusion of grandeur.
Now, let’s return to DERSU UZALA. Though there’s a thematic aspect of ‘harmony with and within nature’, there’s also the counter-thematic element of the horror of nature. Nature is a process of birth, growth, and death, all of which involve great violence and agony. Even the most powerful animals grow sick and die horribly. In civilization, the old and sick are taken care of in hospitals or by their loved ones. In nature, most aging animals face misery in sickness and death. Dersu is a man of nature, and he’s led a long healthy life. He’s lived in nature for so long that he almost feels ageless. Alas, he is just a man and reaches a point in his life when his powers begin to fail him, all the more significant since it’s a matter of survival or death in the wild. (Also, as Dersu is an animist, he has no spiritual concept that transcends the world around him. Even a blind Christian can have faith in God, and indeed prayer and meditation — by Buddhists as well as Christians — are done with eyes closed, partly to shut off the ‘animal’ senses of sight and sound. In contrast, animist spiritualism is nothing without one’s sense of the world around him. A Christian can lose the sight of the world and still have God, indeed even grow nearer to God. But an animist who loses the sight of the world loses not only the world but god as his god or gods exist in nature itself.)
Dersu is overcome with fear and panic. He goes from noble hunter to a frightened child, a panic-stricken animal. The depiction of Dersu’s decline isn’t merely pitiable but pitiful. He goes from the master guide for the Russians to a beggar pleading a Russian to save his life. Kurosawa’s refusal to turn away from this painful — and embarrassing — episode may owe something to an advice he heard from his older brother. When Kurosawa was a young boy, he wanted to turn his eyes away from the horror of the Kanto earthquake, but his brother told him to look at the horror and bear witness; one musn’t avert his eyes from the truth, however horrible. (Perhaps, this had special meaning in the context of Japanese society that was so obsessed with consensus, correctness, and harmony. Japanese prefer not to say, see, admit, or show certain things to maintain the facade of order and propriety. They oftentimes refuse to look and even when they do look, pretend as though they didn’t see what they saw. So, entire histories and realities came to be suppressed, forgotten, or papered over, perhaps explaining why the Japanese have generally preferred not to discuss many of the events leading to and surrounding Japanese imperialism and the Pacific War. There was too much shame in the horrors committed by the Japanese, too much humiliation in having lost the war and being occupied by a foreign power. Though Americans treated Japanese fairly after the war, that too may have been humiliating because it implied that the Japanese during the war had been utterly deluded about the ‘evil’ Americans. The tension between the need to look and the urge to look away is pervasive throughout SEVEN SAMURAI. When the peasants find their rice stolen, the young samurai looks and throws them some coins but then soon turns away and pretends not to have seen and done what he just saw and did; he keeps the episode a secret from the other samurai. Later, when the young samurai gives rice to a peasant girl, another samurai watches what happens but doesn’t mention it to others. In a way, the Mifune character is both refreshing and troublesome because he sees and says so much, rather ironic since he’s so dishonest about his true identity. Maybe he should have shut up about how the peasants of the village had hunted and stripped defeated samurai. He says it like it is, but his honesty nearly undermines the alliance. But then, ironically, he saves the day by speaking even more frankly. He starts a fire with the truth but puts out the fire with more truth.) Many of Kurosawa’s films are about the courage of seeing and the danger of the failure of seeing. It is also about the danger of seeing reality, especially a picture of reality as one without hope. Some people choose not to see because reality is too horrible. Thus, Lady Sue in RAN, though a nice person, chooses to be ‘blind’, and in that sense, she’s as blind as her literally blind brother. Though Hidetora wiped out her family, her eyes are fixed only on the image of Buddha who promises everlasting peace. But the danger of seeing is the naked observation of the world as rotten and nothing but rotten. So, the commoner in RASHOMON has the will to see reality as reality without illusions and comes to the conclusion that since the world is rotten, he should be rotten too, so what’s wrong with him stealing a baby’s clothes? And the kidnaper in HIGH AND LOW has certainly seen reality as reality and is no stranger to the worst side of Tokyo. He’s seen the rot, and the rot justifies his own rottenness. Like the Sanjuro character, he figures since the world is bad, he should be bad-bad and out-bad everyone else. But the difference is that Sanjuro knows that, even in rotten world, not everyone is rotten, i.e. there are still some people and virtues worth fighting and dying for. In a way, seeing ‘too much’ can become a blindness in its own right. Man needs the courage to see the rot; however, to see the rot as the only reality is to become willfully blind to the hope of reversing the rot, i.e. the courage of seeing the rot turns into a surrender to the rot. Worse, it can turn into ‘spiritual’ surrender, whereby the social rot serves as a justification for one’s own rot, in which case the courage of seeing the rot has come full circle and turned into the cowardice of joining the rot for the sake of one’s self-interest.
Though cinema is a fantastic medium, Kurosawa’s life lessons from modern Japan taught him not to surrender to fantasy. The heroes of SEVEN SAMURAI are not super warriors but men relying on skill and caution to out-think and outfight the bandits. There’s a scene early in the film when a weakling samurai is bullied by two gamblers and their bodyguard. Even the title of ‘samurai’ is useless for a man defeated and down on his luck. When Dersu begins to lose his eyesight, he goes from nature’s samurai to a beggar. Even Kurosawa’s most superhuman hero of YOJIMBO is beaten into a pitiful sack of bruises after the villains take away his sword. Dersu is lost without his eyesight, Sanjuro is lost without his sword. There is no sure thing, no permanence of power
The danger of ‘seeing’ is the fixation of sight on something that may be true but not the whole truth. Kurosawa’s films of the the40s and 50s reflect what Kurosawa attempted to see honestly of the social present and historical past. Films like STRAY DOG, IKIRU, and RECORD OF A LIVING BEING bring to life the Japan of that era. Even for those of us who weren’t there, there’s no denying the vitality of what Kurosawa shows us. And Kurosawa’s historical films such as SEVEN SAMURAI and THRONE OF BLOOD, even if not historically accurate in every respect, plunge us into a past comes vividly alive. But consider the problem of RED BEARD and DODES’KADEN. One is a historical film and the other is a contemporary film. Both claim the courage of staring straight at the human condition — the poverty, sickness, corruption, and compromises — , but it’s as if Kurosawa turned drama into dogma, as if Kurosawa decided he’d seen enough of truth and reality to present a definitive view of Japan, human condition, and morality. Just as Tolstoy went from artist to sermonizer in his later yrs, Kurosawa slipped into guru mode with RED BEARD and DODES’KADEN. Though Kurosawa went through a difficult period through much of the late 60s and 70s, its one advantage was forcing him to regain a tougher view of life that had characterized his best films. Had Kurosawa won great success with DODES’KADEN, he might turned more Tolstoy-like, surrounded by acolytes and basking in the glow of affection/admiration all around. But the failure of DODES’KADEN was like a splash of cold water. Having suddenly gone from the emperor of Japanese cinema to an exiled has-been, he regained his bearing as an artist shorn of egotistical illusions. (The paradox of art is that the artist is a seeker of truth through the fantasy vision of fiction and imagination. The artist creates fiction and/or fantasy to discover the truth, but because his ‘truth’ is made of an imagination of reality, it’s never a sure or stable thing. But, the artist and his admirers can mistake his vision of truth as the Truth, which, however, is just another illusion. Yet, art is a kind of illusion and an artist cannot live on truths alone. Thus, the artist traverses in a zone between truths and illusions, never fully surrendering to either but always tempted to do so. When the surrender does happen, as with DODES’KADEN or TREE OF LIFE by Malick, the result can be disastrous, but then, there will always be slavish admirers and devotees who can never say NO to their masters.) Kurosawa’s bout with near-madness — even leading to attempted suicide — actually weaned him back to sanity. He learned there is no final or finalizing vision or lesson about humanity, not in Japan or elsewhere. For the show must go on, the search must go on. And just as the Holy Grail appeared before Perceval just when he thought all was lost, indeed when he least expected it, in EXCALIBUR, truths appear or reappear to artists when they least expect it. If artists knew where the truth is buried, he would go there and dig it out. Artists who think like this generally come up with fool’s gold, and this certainly can be said for TREE OF LIFE or any film that deigns to tell us The Truth — and this is one of the problems of the ending of RAN; it’s grand summation of the human condition is one of the film’s weakest points; the gems of truths in RAN are found throughout the film, and no final statement was necessary or convincing. The truth is found in fragments as the artist continues his search, and the artist must keep searching because he never knows where the truths are buried. It’s like the Russian explorers in DERSU UZALA never know what to expect next, and so, they keep exploring. And in SEVEN SAMURAI, the tension derives from not knowing how things are going to play out scene to scene as Kurosawa’s vision is filled so many variables and possibilities. So, we don’t see the series of events that led to the victory of the farmers as an inevitability but as a possibility among many other possibilities; and that is the truth of life. It’s this aspect of SEVEN SAMURAI that makes it stand out among action films, most of which make the audience feel assured that the good guys will win because they must win.
If things had gone so well for Kurosawa with DODES’KADEN, he might not have made the three dark and bleak films of DERSU UZALA, KAGEMUSHA, and RAN, all of which deserve serious attention. It’s like the old lord in RAN thought he understood everything as he stood gazing at the world from atop a mountain. He thought he’d arrived at the final truth of power since he has lived and seen so much. But what did he really know? The final truth is there is no final truth. Only by losing his domain and the complacency of power is he able to regain the truth of the world and gain a deeper sense of his place in it. When Kurosawa received the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement, he said, “I have to ask whether I really deserve it, I am little worried. Because I don’t feel I understand cinema yet. I really don’t feel that I have grasped essence of cinema. Cinema is a marvelous thing, but to grasp its true essence is very difficult. What I promise you is that from now on I will work as hard as I can at making movies and may be following this path I will achieve an understanding of true essence of cinema and earn this award." To an extent, he was of course being modest and self-effacing. But, in a way, he was imparting the lesson of his life, namely that just when you think you’ve seen and understood it all, you’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg. Kurosawa made his mistake with RED BEARD and DODES’KADEN. He thought he’d been through a lifetime of experience and learning to have finally attained an understanding of the core essence of history and morality, but what did he really know? He’d spoken of RED BEARD as a kind of testament, a moral and thematic summation of his entire career. But he was only fifty-five and still had many productive years ahead of him. He’d prematurely arrived at a conclusion of life and art and faltered in the coming years. He had to relearn the lessons, and they became the basis for the darker vision of DERSU UZALA, KAGEMUSHA, and RAN.
The dynamic between Dersu and the tiger is an extension/variation of Kurosawa’s feelings about man and nature. Nature is both inspiring and threatening, indeed inspiring because it is threatening. Nature is power, indeed the greatest power there is on Earth, no doubt more obvious prior to the rise of the modern world. Even today in India, it’s not uncommon for people to be eaten by leopard or tigers, to be attacked by elephants. But with the rise of modern agriculture, powerful guns, and big cities, many of us don’t feel threatened by nature. Dangerous animals have been killed or driven to national parks, and modern houses protect us from rain and snow. Air conditioners keep us cool in summer, and centralized heating keeps us warm in winter. Even people in Alaska can live like Americans in the lower 49 states. Even so, modern man is faced with the awesome power of nature during hurricane seasons. There’s nothing we can do about volcanos except to evacuate huge areas and flee. And even a nation as modern as Japan could do nothing about earthquakes and tsunamis. And there may be nothing we can do about climate change. If man-made, maybe something could be done to ameliorate its effects, but given the trajectory of the modern economy based on consumption and growth, scaling back industrial production risks a massive global depression. Some people say that global warming is nature regaining power over us: modern man sought comfort and protection from nature by creating a vast safe world of his own, but in doing so, he burned tremendous amounts of energy and changed the nature of nature, and nature is now getting its ‘revenge’ on us.
But even if we’ve arrived to a point where we’re mostly safe from the natural nature, there’s still the problem of human nature, and indeed, not all human natures are the same. Some people are naturally more expressive and explosive. In SEVEN SAMURAI, the Mifune character is a natural barbarian whereas the character Yohei was born to be cowering dog. Some races are calmer than others, some are wilder than others. If human nature is overly repressed, it can grow sick and neurotic, which was indeed the case with Japan with its rigid codes and rules. But if rules and regulations are loosened too suddenly, chaos may be unleashed. Instead of oppressive order giving way to free order, it can give way to crazy disorder, leading to cries for any kind of order, in which case, another form of oppressive order is established. This is why, if an order is oppressive, one should remove the oppressive elements without removing the order, because if the order goes, there is no hope of freedom since freedom is useless without the framework of order. Kurosawa’s RAN — which means chaos, upheaval, fury, maelstrom, tumult, turmoil, pandemonium — is partly about the problem of human nature. Hidetora used extreme violence to create a world of order. Though peace prevails in his domain, it was won through violence and maintained by threat of violence. Hidetora forgets the history lesson of his clan and decides genuine peace is at hand. He conflates history with biography, i.e. since he’s old and powerful, the world too is old and powerful and ready to retire along with him by handing power to faithful and well-meaning young people. Since he feels at peace, the world too must be at peace. And since the world looks peaceful to his eyes, its heart must be at peace like its body. Hidetora lets down his guard, rests on his laurels, and thinks he can retire into a world of peace and prestige because he sees peace all around and because his prestige recognized wherever he goes. But in fact, his power is based on institutionalized fear and obedience. His domain has worked accordingly because it was forced to work according to plan. Hidetora has become so used to the power and prestige of his authority that he comes to regard them as second nature, something so essential to the way of things that the world would remain as it is even if he relinquished power. Why personally hold power if you believe your power is part and parcel of everything around you? It’s like white Americans got so used to their power that they thought it didn’t matter who ran the country since white power and prestige were simply givens that would never fade away. Only fools think like this.
Hidetora trusts his sons, but his sons learned the lesson of power from observing their father, and the lesson is to be cunning and ruthless. And of course, devious, and two older sons are nothing if not devious. The oldest son acts humble, and the second son pledges loyalty to elder brother. They hide their true nature behind ‘honeyed words’. They express human sentiments but conceal animal hearts. In contrast, the youngest son fumes like an animal but speaks the human truth. (It must be said that, on some level, we can’t really blame the two older sons. It’s not they but their father who loses sight of and betrays the true nature of power. In an ironic way, the sons’ betrayal of their father is an act of loyalty to the true lesson of their father’s life, which is that one must be utterly ruthless and devious with power. There isn’t even room for family sentiments where power is at stake. The way the sons see it, their father raised them to serve his power, but once the power has passed to them, they must fight one another for the power, and there is no other way. RAN is like a dark reverse morality tale of RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY. In Peckinpah’s movie, one of the characters forgets the lesson of honor and integrity but regains it at the end through the virtuous example of his mortally wounded friend. In RAN, the lesson of the world is the ruthlessness of power, and it is the father who forgets the lesson though he’s the one who created the order by ruthless means. Through his downfall, he is reminded in no uncertain terms of the true nature of the power with which he’d created his domain. If there’s any moral message to be found, it’s that the lord discovers how he had to lose his soul to gain the world and how he must lose the world to gain something like a soul. Though the older sons are pretty loathsome, at the very least, they aren’t naive about the nature of power. If some people born to power and privilege are too lax and complacent — and lose power by taking it easy — , the older sons should be credited with having no illusions about what they must do to keep the power. They know very well that power was won through violence and ruthlessness and that they might have to use violence and ruthlessness to consolidate the power; it’s especially unstable since the first son, the chosen heir, is dumber than the second son. Above all, they are loyal to the principle of power, which their father betrayed by relinquishing his own power at a whim, as if good-will can suddenly redeem a world that was created through rivers of blood and mountains of bones. Oddly enough, Lady Kaeda, apparently the most nihilistic and egotistical character in the film, turns out to be, in some way, the most filial and selfless. In turns out that, to the very end, she’d remained true to her father and clan, and manipulated events so as to sacrifice herself in the destruction of the clan that vanquished her own and took over her family’s castle. Of course, there’s always an element of vanity in vengeance as the essence of vengeance isn’t so much to correct wrongs as to ‘get even’. In the case of Kaeda, she’s willing to let countless innocent people die just for clan honor, which has taken on the shadings of personal honor no longer distinguishable from persona vanity. The political has become personal.)
If American Wasps had some sense knocked into them when they were feeling so powerful and prestigious, they wouldn’t have gotten beaten by the Jews so badly and easily. Wasps felt so powerful after WWII that they thought they could take it easy and be conscientious and ‘fair’ with everyone(and be honored, appreciated, and loved for it), but they got beaten worse than Hidetora. In a way, American whites forgot the same lesson as Hidetora did. America was forged with blood, violence, conquest, war, and white power. The whole stuff about America being a ‘city on the hill’ or ‘exceptional nation’ was either utopian nonsense or a useful rationale. White Americans should have reminded themselves of the true nature of their civilization — that it’d been conquered and constructed with blood and sweat — and passed this lesson of blood and iron to their descendants. But, white Americans swallowed their own myth about America as “God’s country” and “beacon of freedom for mankind”, and this made white Americans too idealistic; and when they gained great power, they took their power for granted — as if granted by God for their goodness than gained through war, conquest, enterprise, and hard work. Because their power came to be so moralized, white Americans began to think that the main purpose of their power wasn’t self-preservation and domination/victory but doing good for humanity. Jews sensed this soft underbelly of White America and took a knife and gutted it. Jews took power from the Wasps because Jews don’t believe in myths. Jews speak of America as an ‘exceptional’ or ‘propositional’ nation only because it gives them the power as an exceptional people to propose their idea of what America should be. And Jews wanna undermine white power so as to remove a possible rival to Jewish supremacist power. I’m not making a case of good Wasps vs evil Jews. America was created through Wasp violence and land-grab. Even the Founding Fathers played loose with principles to win power for themselves. The British demand for higher taxation actually made sense since the Brits had expended great resources to fight and win the French and Indian War for the benefit of the Colonialists. Colonialists wanted the Brits to fight and pay for everything while keeping their own tax burden extremely low. It’s like Americans today wanting more and more from the government but wanting to pay less and less taxes — or no taxes at all. So, to a large extent, America was built on a lie, but the colonial elites cleverly and deviously used moral principles to argue for independence. I’m not blaming the Founding Fathers. They were master politicians and wanted power, and it is the nature of man to want power.
White Americans prior to the post-WWII period instinctively knew that America wasn’t just about freedom and liberty but about power and violence. When push came to shove, white Americans instinctively chose power and victory over principle and defeat. It was the Jews who worked on the naive liberal Wasp sentiment that America had a special mission to live up to some highfalutin ideals — even if it meant the possible decline and even loss of white power. As devious Jews were ever so persistent in pointing out that America failed to live up to its lofty ideals, liberal wasps came to believe that they must make more and more amends to put things to right. Thus, white power was no longer used for white power but to undermine white power. In a way, what happened in America in the 1960s was the second Civil War pitting one bunch of whites against another. It wasn’t fought with armies, but, in some ways, the effect was more profound than the first Civil War. After the Civil War of the 1860s, one bunch of whites defeated another bunch of whites, but whites still had the power, and, in time, northern whites buried the hatchet and sided with southern whites against dangerous freed Negroes. In contrast, after the Second Civil War of whites vs whites in the 1960s, Jews took the power and white unity was broken forever between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’.
To the extent that the new social order offered equality under the law for all Americans, it was a good thing. But what wasp misunderstood was that the enemies of whites didn’t just want to stop at equality under the law. Jews and others wanted power OVER whites. It’s like the Dirk Bogarde character in THE SERVANT doesn’t merely wanna be equal with his master; he wants power over the master.
There’s a strange paradox in how white Americans lost power via empowering their women and children by protecting them from the true reality of power, i.e. white American males liberated their women and children inside a protective bubble. Thus, empowerment of white women and white children, instead of being a net plus for white power, came to undermine white power from within. In the wild, offsprings soon realize how dangerous the world is and cling closer to the parent(s). They see how the group must stick together. In THE GODFATHER, Sonny grew up knowing all about the nature of power, so he stayed close to his father, to the family. Michael grew up in a protective bubble, so he came to favor principles; he even signed up for the US Marines against his father’s wishes. It’s when his father is almost killed that he joins with the family against its enemies.
When American whites fought American Indians, white women and children understood they must stick together with their white men to survive and win. But the Wasp elite ideal in the East was to create a protective bubble for the women and kids. So, the women and children didn’t have to worry about dangers from the outside. Combined with this was the increasing education of women and children about how unique and special America was. So, white women and children became increasingly idealistic while not fearing their potential enemies since they themselves were within the protective bubble created by white men. Consider the Stupid White Women in SGT. RUTLEDGE and CHEYENNE AUTUMN. Why are they so caring of the Negro or Indians? Because they are within the protective bubble of the US Cavalry. If it weren’t for the protective bubble provided by tough white men, the stupid white ho could be raped or murdered and might come to her senses. But within white male protection, she doesn’t have to fear the Negro or Indian, and so, she’s always berating white men about how mean and aggressive they are — though they are being ‘mean and aggressive’ to create a safe world for women like herself. Also, all that American stuff about Christian love and political equality fills the woman’s head with naive notions of justice. Indeed, would Harriet Beecher Stowe have written something as ridiculous as UNCLE TOM’S CABIN if she lived in modern Detroit? She could fantasize about universal justice, Christian love, and the noble Negro because she grew up in the protective bubble of white male power. White males, by overly protecting their women and children from the dangers of the world and by filling them with overly unrealistic notions of universal justice based on the image of ‘City on a Hill’ and the ideals of Declaration of Independence, created a kind of white female and white youth mentality that would eventually turn against white power. American Indian women never acted like the Stupid White Woman; she stuck to their own kind. She lived in a harsh world and stood by her brave. Though women were protected by the men in Indian communities, women were always near the danger zone. So, Indian women knew what was what; they understood the true nature of power unlike the Stupid White Woman in her protective bubble. The woman in SGT. RUTLEDGE makes me wanna puke, she’s so naive and stupid, but then, who created that kind of mind-set? White males did it by overly protecting their women and then allowing them freedom within that bubble. Worse, white males filled their women and children with all-too-lofty notions of exceptional America founded on principles that were supposedly entirely different from those of ‘oppressive’ Europe when, in fact, America was conquered and created out of great violence and ruthlessness from day one. America wasn’t just about rule of law but the ruthless claw. The Revolutionary War was a bloody mess. Civil War was commanded by near-tyrant Lincoln. The Westward push was violent and bloody. And Americans waged war on Mexico to take the land. This was the truth and should have been the centerpiece of American historical consciousness, but Americans were made to embrace the BS notion that theirs was some ‘exceptional’ nation of higher principles and virtues. Once such became the credo of America, it was only a matter of time before ninny white women and children could be manipulated by Jews to denounce America as an evil empire created by evil white males. And so, we have GOP as the white male party being attacked mostly by white youths and white women. It’s time for white Americans to think more like the Corleones. Drop the principles and embrace the power in the realization that Jews and Negroes are only about power. I’m not knocking principles or goodness per se as we should all try to be good as possible. But trying to be good as possible — with the true understanding of power — is different from trying to be ‘good as impossible’. White Americans are trying to be ‘good as impossible’, and such a people are bound to lose for impossibility is not of this world. Negroes can never be like white people. Jews can never be trusted. History and biology teach us these things. Attack those who attack you. Fight fire with fire. If Jews dig up nasty stuff about white history, dig up nasty thing about Jewish history. If Jews accuse whites of greed, accuse Jews of greed. If blacks use violence against whites, use violence against blacks. If Jews unite with Jews and if blacks unite with blacks, whites should unite with whites. White fathers need to teach their kids the true lessons of history, i.e. that history is the story of power. White fathers need to teach their kids about the history of savagery among blacks — that Negroes are no angels — and the long history of genocide, parasitism, slavery, and subversion perpetuated by Jews. One of the problems of white people is that they raise their kids to love and worship Jews and Negroes whereas Jewish parents raise their kids to feel contempt for goyim, and black parents raise their kids to hate whites. Even Jewish ‘sympathy’ for others is entirely self-serving. So, even though Jews played a significant role in the Atlantic Slave Trade — especially the biggest one between Africa and Brazil — and even though Jews in America worked closely with ‘racist’ whites to gain tremendous power and wealth, Jewish discussion of black history is never in terms of what Jews owe to the blacks or how Jews should apologize for their role in the oppression of blacks. No, Jewish narrative on black history is, “they suffered like us, we suffered like them”. In other words, identifying with black suffering is a way for Jews to work with blacks to undermine white authority and to condemn whites as the source of all evil. Jewish conscience is accusatory against others, never accusatory of itself. Jewish Conscience means that OTHERS must be conscientious toward the Jew, not the other way around. It’s like when Jews say it’s say it’s good to speak truth to power, they really mean all power except their own. You must know your Jew.
Dersu is something of a ‘sensotectual’. If intellectuals understand the world through theories and concepts, sensotectuals understand the world through their senses. Not every primitive would be a sensotectual since most primitive folks rely on their senses to survive whereas Dersu uses his senses to gain a deeper understanding of the world around him. So, when his eye-sight fails him, Dersu doesn’t just lose sight of the world but the world itself. His understanding of the world is bound up so closely with his senses that he cannot conceive of living without them. It may have been a reflection of Kurosawa’s own feelings about the movie camera as his third eye. He didn’t feel alive in the world without it. Kurosawa, a cinematectual, related with the world the camera lens. Losing his connection to film was like a bird losing its wings, like a singer losing his voice. What happens to Dersu is the most natural of processes: aging and the deterioration of the senses. It happens to all living creatures. Even seemingly ageless trees eventually die and disappear. When Dersu first appears, he looks like an eternal inhabitant of nature. He could be a man of 1,000 yrs ago, even 10,000 yrs ago. He seems to be filled with ageless and timeless wisdom. He looks like the personification of the spirit of nature itself, as if he might still be around long after the Russians have grown old and died. Alas, reality is reality, and Dersu, for all his ageless qualities, is just a man. It’s like when Noodles tells Debra that she is as the poster for ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA proclaims: “Age cannot wither her”, but then Debra corrects him and says: “Age can wither me, Noodles. We're both getting old. All that we have left now are our memories.” As ageless and wise as Dersu appears to the Russians, time catches up with him, and his hardy dignity withers at its feet. Wisdom, however noble or profound, is no bulwark against reality, and nature is the most brutal kind of reality. Wisdom teaches man to accept life and death as they are, but it’s much easier said than done. All his life, Dersu sought to understand the soul of nature and arrive at some kind of mutual understanding, but in the end, nature cares not for the soul of man.
Despite all his experience and caution, Dersu’s words couldn’t persuade the tiger to retreat, and he ended up firing the gun. And despite all his insights, the nature does nothing to spare his eyesight. Dersu may feel that his weakening eyesight is nature’s punishment for having shot the tiger, but we know it would have happened anyway. Despite his ‘spirituality’, he’s like a frightened little child when he discovers he can no longer hunt. And despite his pride of having led the Russians through the wilderness, he begs one of them to lead him out of nature to the safety of civilization. In a way, Dersu’s fright and panic are simply manifestations of wild nature and human nature. Even the wisest guru or heroic warrior take fright when faced with certain doom. Seemingly brave Christians have collaborated with Nazis, communists, gay radicals, and Jewish supremacists. When push comes to shove, even the best of us become the most craven. Courage melts into cowardice. Look how Billy Graham got on his knees and apologized to the powerful Jews when the tapes of his conversation with Nixon were released. And look how Chick-Fil-A pledged no longer to make donations to anti-gay-agenda groups once big cities threatened to ban its restaurants. In the face of real power, it’s so easy to give up one’s principles. (There is official power and real power. In America, Jewish power is real power whereas white male conservative power is ‘official power’ though far less powerful than Jewish power. The reason why there’s so much vitriol against white male conservative power is because it isn’t all that powerful. If it were, people would be genuinely afraid to criticize or attack it. The official power of white male conservative power is useful to Jews since it serves as a useful scapegoat and permissible punching bag for all that’s wrong with America. It serves as an outlet for all the rage and frustration that cannot be hurled at the real power, which is Jewish power that everyone is afraid of. When Wasps ruled America, the official power was the real power as white power was indeed the real power. But today, the official power remains white conservative male power whereas the real power, that of Jewish power, remains hidden and still plays the victim of the Holocaust. Even as Jews have worked 24/7 to weaken the reality of white power, they’ve been hard at propping up the mythic official power of white male conservative power because once the people realize that people like Mitt Romney and John McCain are really shills of Jewish power, there may finally come a time when Americans finally speak truth to Jewish power.)
Nazis and Japanese soldiers were supposed to die as fierce warriors to the last man, but the Germans surrendered in Stalingrad, and the Japanese called it quits when American attacks becoming unrelenting. Kurosawa expounded on the virtue of humility and grace in the face of failure in his humanist films, yet when he was faced with a series of personal and professional crises in the early 70s, he chose to throw his life away. He betrayed his own ideals of humanism. When Kurosawa could no longer be the emperor, he saw no meaning in living as a peasant, to ‘live a long life eating rice gruel’. (Once Kurosawa had reached the top, ironically by preaching humanist values, he became addicted to his position and prestige, and he found it nearly impossible to adjust to a lower station in life. It’s like in KAGEMUSHA where, once the thief’s identity merges with that of the Takeda Clan within the walls of the grand castle, he can no longer revert to the old life of having been a nobody belonging to nothing special. There’s an element of selfishness fused with selflessness. Both Kurosawa and the thief were willing to devote their lives to a higher cause — art or clan — , but they wanted to be in the game, to stoke their egos by proving their higher worth.) Likewise, there may have been a personal meaning for Kurosawa in Dersu’s cold sweat and panic upon the realization of his worsening eyesight. When push comes to shove, ideals or wisdom melt away. It’s like Paul Newman’s character breaks down in COOL HAND LUKE. But then, it’s as though both Luke and Dersu realize the shame of what they’d done. Luke, who seemed broken before the bosses, rebels for one more time, even if it means death. And Dersu realizes the only way someone like him can die meaningfully is in his true domain of nature. Nature giveth, nature taketh away. What was his blessing must also be his cross. It’s like Peter panicked and denied Jesus three times, but later felt guilty about it and eventually died much like Jesus did. It’s natural for man to panic and seek security in the face of danger or fright, and some men accept their compromise. But others cannot resolve the issue of guilt or shame and must return to the scene of the crime where they’d abandoned the cross and fled; they must pick up the cross where they left it and finish the mission of their lives as it was meant to be.
Thus, it’s wrong to read DERSU UZALA as merely a film about civilization vs nature; it’s wrong to see Dersu as killed only by Progress and Greed. In a way, Dersu was killed by natural processes. Hunters hunt for self-interest, and hunting is ruthless. A tiger hunts to eat. Man hunts to procure meat and fur. And the man who killed Dersu wanted Dersu’s gun. He acted like an animal, and that’s the ‘law of nature’. Nature is amoral. Though Dersu’s murder is sad, it was also an unwitting act of mercy. Death by gunfire is quick and swift. If Dersu hadn’t died that way, he would likely have slowly starved to death as a hunter who can no longer hunt. Even Arseniev’s state-of-the-art rifle couldn’t compensate for Dersu’s loss of ability. There’s no substitute for natural skill and talent; it’s like no amount of the latest movie-making equipment can overcome the lack of filmmaking talent.
In his weakened state, Dersu would likely have been mauled and killed by animals. There is no graceful way to die in nature. And there’s nothing in nature to mourn the dead. Nature doesn’t mourn Dersu. Neither do the people he’d know in the forest. It is civilization that records and remembers, and so, it is ironic that the only man who really grieves over Dersu’s grave is Captain Arseniev. And though the police captain seems uncaring and is impatient for Arseniev to sign the book(in which Dersu’s death is marked), he is still part of civilization that keeps records of such things.
I will now take issue with some of Donald Richie’s criticism of DERSU UZALA in his book THE FILMS OF AKIRA KUROSAWA:
Richie writes: “...with DERZU UZALA the decline in Kurosawa’s powers becomes truly apparent. In DODESKADEN Kurosawa used color in an expressionistic and brilliant manner to shield himself from subject matter with which he was no longer willing to engage in creative combat. A similar distancing of the artist from the world he depicts is accomplished in DERSU UZALA by means of 70mm, wide screen, so large that many theaters couldn’t accommodate the film and by six-track stereophonic sound, which surrounds the audience from rear and side speakers and envelopes them in mood at the expense of substance.”
While I would love to see the 70mm version with the benefit of stereophonic sound, the power of the film came through for me in lesser formats: TV screen and campus screening at a university. I disagree that the film is short on substance in favor of scale and mood. Despite the largeness of the production, the film revolves around the core intimacy with Dersu. Though there’s an element of distance between Dersu(and his world) and us, I believe this would have been the case even if Kurosawa had used a16 mm camera and mono-sound. For starters, Kurosawa was making a film outside Japan, so he was observing things with something like detached curiosity. Similarly, there’s an element of distance in AGE OF INNOCENCE and KUNDUN because Scorsese was a fascinated outsider looking in than a lifelong insider in his own elements, as were the cases with MEAN STREETS, TAXI DRIVER, and KING OF COMEDY, his films about modern NY and/or Italian-Americans. Also, Kurosawa had a dualistic attitude toward nature. He felt close to nature but also respected its secrets. In the first episode of DREAMS, a boy watches with rapt attention the wedding procession of foxes, prying into a hidden ritual forbidden to human eyes. Nature catches him in the act and sends him a message to kill himself.
The boy’s life is spared when he goes to a special place and apologizes to nature, which nature presumably accepts. It’s as if there’s the world of man and the world of nature, and both should respect the boundaries between them. Animals that venture in human territory are killed by men, and humans that venture into nature risk being killed by the elements. But as man also arose from nature, there’s something in him that wishes to return to nature. And as man loves beauty, he is enchanted by nature. But as man is armed with technology, he has the means to destroy nature or remold nature so that it will serve only man. So, the bargain struck between nature and the boy is the boy will be spared for his peeking into the secrets of nature as long as he doesn’t do anything to destroy nature. He can look but he can’t touch. But, this contract is broken, step by step, with every new segment in DREAMS. So, it could be that Richie was confusing Kurosawa’s dualism about nature for distantness. In DERSU UZALA, Kurosawa wanted to show nature without ‘violating’ the ‘contract’ between man and nature. He didn’t want to pry too close.
He also wanted to bring us close to the character of Dersu without making him into an ideal creature of our ‘natural harmony’ fantasies. Thus, Dersu gradually becomes a friend but never a buddy-buddy. He’s not the wonderful Indians of DANCES WITH WOLVES. For all its good-will, Kevin Costner’s movie seems to say there isn’t much to know about the Indians in their own right because they were nothing more than idealized nature children of New Age fantasies. In contrast, there’s a sense in Kurosawa’s film there’s much about Dersu that we can never understand or fathom, and we should just leave it at that. Furthermore, there are things Dersu doesn’t understand about himself either. So, it was by intention that Kurosawa approached Dersu only halfway. Just as Dersu advises Arseniev to leave the Chinese hermit alone, Kurosawa maintained and respected something of Dersu that was too private and too different/distinct culturally for him or us to fully understand.
Similarly, Kieslowski’s French films are different from his Polish ones. He knew ‘Polacks’ like the back of his hand, but he didn’t know much about the French, and so, there’s an air of fascination that is both detached and prying, aiming to look closer but careful not to intrude. DERSU UZALA is a richer film for it.
Richie writes: “Style has become an end in itself. Gone was Kurosawa’s intervention in the pain of his characters in everyday life, which we still felt in DODESKADEN. Gone also, as in DODESKADEN, is any hope that human life may be made more bearable; the desire in Kurosawa’s films to improve the human condition seems in retrospect to have been largely dependent on that superhuman, idealized figure, whose heroism is inaccessible to the main character here, Dersu Uzala, a hunter beset by the encroachments of progress and civilization. It is too late for the knowing elder to educate a younger man, because that instruction can no longer be put into practice in the world as it is: this feeling about present-day Japan Kurosawa transports to Russia of the turn of the century.”
“Style has become an end in itself”? But DERSU UZALA is among Kurosawa’s least stylized films. It’s not RASHOMON, THRONE OF BLOOD, YOJIMBO, or RAN. It was as if Kurosawa was trying to dispense with his earlier stylistics — bold in SANSHIRO SUGATA(aka Judo Sage), dazzling in RASHOMON, striking in THRONE OF BLOOD, austere in RED BEARD, etc. — and settle for something closer to naturalism. In some ways, DERSU UZALA is Kurosawa’s most Fordian film. One might even mistake its ‘style’ for Stalinist aesthetics that denounced overt auteur-stylistics as ‘formalism’ and emphasized collective unity over individual identity. If Hollywood films tended to have movie stars who outshone everyone else, Stalinist films had heroes as part of the larger constellation. The idea of movie stardom was considered vain, narcissistic, and crass according to Stalinist ideology(or maybe Stalin wanted to the only star of the Soviet show). I doubt if Kurosawa was being consciously Stalinist, but DERSU UZALA presents its main characters, Dersu and Arseniev, as members of the larger community — of other people, trees, animals, etc — than as the two brightest stars of the film.
Kurosawa was less interested in asserting his auteurist personality over the material than having the material speak for itself.
What did Richie mean by “gone was Kurosawa’s intervention in the pain of his characters in everyday life”? On the subject of pain, it appears near the end of DERSU UZALA when Dersu shoots the tiger and his eyesight begins to go bad. Those are powerful scenes, so I don’t know what Richie meant by lack of Kurosawa’s lack of ‘intervention’. That said, most of the films isn’t about overt pain but the curiosity, camaraderie, and suspense that accompany man’s exploration of nature. There is a dirge-like autumnal chord throughout the film, seeping into our gradual awareness of Dersu’s loneliness in old age, but it isn’t meant to be played like a song and for good reason. Perhaps, Richie misunderstood the emotional dynamic of DERSU UZALA because he was so hung-up on comparing it with Kurosawa’s earlier films. Most of Kurosawa’s films were about the powerful and powerless, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the able and the weak. They were not stories of equals. Thus, the warriors in SEVEN SAMURAI have the power to save the frightened peasants. The old man in IKIRU feels helpless but then finds within himself the power to help others. Some of the inequalities in Kurosawa’s films are presented as morally just while others are presented as socially unjust. In some cases, it’s the wise teacher teaching the student who has much to learn. Or, it’s the master swordsman in SEVEN SAMURAI or YOJIMBO using his superior skills to rid the world of bad people. Or, it’s the character in RED BEARD using his superior character and will to do some good in the world for poor and sickly people. But power can be unjust, as in BAD SLEEP WELL. But the ‘powerless’ can be unjust too, as with the poor criminals in STRAY DOG or HIGH AND LOW. But such social-moral issues are meaningless in the Siberian tundras of DERSU UZALA. It’s a tough world for tough people, mostly men. As different as the Russians and Dersu are, they are equals as hardy men, and they help one another out as equals. Russians possess and know things Dersu doesn’t, Dersu knows things they don’t. They make a good team. As it takes place in the wild, there are no issues of good and evil. Trees and animals are what they are; they can neither be saved, corrected, or condemned. SEVEN SAMURAI was about a group of men defending a helpless farming community, but there is no such moral purpose in the story of DERSU UZALA — though in one brief scene, the Russians do take up arms against what may be gang of Chinese bandits. Thus, there is no real moral conflict in DERSU UZALA, and this is simply the nature of the story. There is pain to be sure, but unlike in most Kurosawa’s films, there’s nothing to fix the moral blame on. Nature is made of hard stuff, and men must be hard to survive, and that’s the essence of the film. Indeed, it would have seemed forced if Kurosawa tried to squeeze in some moral conflict where there was none. There is genuine drama when Dersu loses his nerves and begs Arseniev to save him, but it’s an atypical kind of sadness because there’s no moral sense of tragedy to hang the emotions on, i.e. Dersu’s fall is simply the harsh fact of nature absent of any meaning pertaining to justice/injustice that can at least justify one’s grief on having been wronged, e.g. the Chinese hermit’s feeling of victimization by his own brother who stole his wife.
Just what did Richie expect from Kurosawa? How would Kurosawa have ‘intervened’ in the life of Dersu in the absence of moral conflict? One can morally and emotionally invest/intervene in the affair of mankind where things have a moral dimension of right and wrong, but Dersu’s greatest nemesis also happens to be his greatest ‘friend’: nature. If DERSU UZALA had been about Goldi culture vs Russian expansion, there might have been some moral issues pertaining to politics and imperialism, but the film is about Dersu the hunter befriending tough Russian explorers. It’s about Dersu joining a bunch of men and temporarily becoming one with them, only to realize that his age and failing health are taking him out of the picture, a fact he has a hard time adjusting to. But it’s no one’s fault, and it is this lack of moral dynamic that makes Dersu’s pain all the lonelier.
Kurosawa could ‘intervene’ in the life of Watanabe in IKIRU because there was something of moral worth that the dying man could achieve in order to make a difference, however small, in the world, but DERSU UZALA is about the absolute loneliness of nature and making peace with that loneliness. The old man in IKIRU literally dies alone, but in the end, he doesn’t feel lonely because he did something in and for the world. Modern Japan may be as uncaring toward Watanabe as nature is toward Dersu, but there’s always something man can do to gain meaning in relation to other men. And it turns out that the men at his funeral do recognize the worth of his life and, more importantly, his death.
Like IKIRU, DERSU UZALA is partly about the crisis of facing old age, sickness, and death.
Dersu has nothing as serious as stomach cancer, but failing eyesight for a hunter in the wild can be more terrible. Nature is only for the healthy, which is why Dersu finds shelter with Arseniev. But maybe Dersu comes to feel that a ‘meaningful’ death is preferable to a meaningless life — he simply has no meaningful place in the world of Arseniev’s town or in his home, even as Arseniev’s son dotes on him. Dersu decides to return to the wild to face death in his true home. In the end, the wild is indifferent and uncaring, but Dersu’s death has meaning if he accepts of the way of nature that he’d observed and sought to understand all his life. Nature is what it is and cannot and must not be changed, and in Dersu’s return to nature, there’s a kind of grim grace in his final resignation. That is the meaning, indeed the only one that a lone old man can expect from nature. Most of Kurosawa’s films are about people living with other people; it’s easier to find purpose and meaning in a human community; indeed, even if one doesn’t seek any meaning, society foists it upon everyone, whether he likes it or not — as when the Takeda clan picks out the thief and initially forces him to play the role of the ‘shadow warrior’ in KAGEMUSHA. Thus, society feels both repressive and comforting. It tells you what you must be — merchant, farmer, bureaucrat, warrior, etc. — , but there is a purpose to every profession. In Arseniev’s Russian town, some men sell water, some men sell firewood, and etc. There is a community of interdependent professions and a sense of cross-purpose. Though Dersu also depends on other peoples with different skills, he is essentially an all-around person in the forest. He has to know how to hunt, build shelter, find edible plants, cut trees, and etc. As such, he is essentially self-reliant in a crude way. Dersu, having survived for so long in the forest on his own terms after the death of his family, has a certain pride of independence and mastery, from which he derived his sense of meaning and worth. He can do so much on his own that city folks, with their interdependent divisions of labor, cannot. But, there’s the other side to being a loner and man of nature. Dersu can do lots of things but in a crude way fit for survival in the wild but not good for much else. The shelters he builds, the clothes he makes from animal fur, the things he crafts from animal bones, and etc. are all adequate and have their charm, but they remain on the level of primitivism. Also, Dersu’s independence is only as good as his ability to support himself. Once his eye sight fails him, he’s as good as dead, and it’s not easy to face death all alone in the cold and dark danger of the wild, especially for an old man who’s losing his mental faculties as well. So, there is something close to tragic heroism when Dersu decides to return to the forest, though Dersu himself may not recognize it. It’s depressing but not necessarily meaningless.
If Kurosawa maintained his emotional distance from the tragedy of the story, it wasn’t out of lack of sympathy but out of respect. He didn’t want to go weepy and huggy on Dersu, treat him as an object of pity. Kurosawa understood Dersu’s own sense of honor. The reason why Arseniev shows less emotion than his wife and son when Dersu bids farewell is because he understands Dersu’s sense of honor. Both wife and son sense Dersu isn’t going to survive in the wild. He is old and going blind. Arseniev knows too, but he also knows that Dersu is a kind of proud hunter-warrior in his own right.
Dersu’s seeking refuge with Arensiev was completely understandable in human terms, but in a certain sense, Dersu feels like a deserter in war. He feels a need to return to the frontline of nature. There can be no happy end for Dersu, but he would rather die right than live wrong. Arseniev, as a military officer and explorer, understands this side of Dersu and honors it when Dersu says he has to return. It’s kinda like the image of the old man in the watermill in SEVEN SAMURAI. When the samurai inform the peasants that the outlying fields and the watermill cannot be defended and order the evacuation of peasants into the area within the main defensive perimeter, an old man — ironically the very character who advised the village to hire the samurai — remains in the watermill with a bamboo spear. It means certain death but meaningful death for the old man for whom the watermill was home for most of his life.
Richie says that the improvement of the human condition in Kurosawa’s earlier films depended on ‘superhuman, idealized figures’, but is this true? There was indeed something movie star like about Toshiro Mifune, but many of Kurosawa’s main characters — even heroic ones — are hardly ideals in the way Alan Ladd was in SHANE or Charlton Heston was in BEN HUR. The glimpse of redemption in RASHOMON is hardly superhuman. It’s merely the image of the woodcutter carrying a homeless baby. The doctor of DRUNKEN ANGEL hardly saves anyone. The old man in IKIRU is the anti-thesis of the superhuman ideal. I can’t think of any superhuman ideal in RECORD OF A LIVING BEING. The old man tries his superhuman best to save his family, but he utterly fails and goes mad. The heroes of HIDDEN FORTRESS could be said to be swashbuckling, but there’s something almost inhuman about Mifune’s character’s single-minded determination to save the princess, and the princess, though tough on the outside, is breaking up inside over the sacrifices in life made in her name. The shoemaker in HIGH AND LOW is defined by confusion and indecision; he finally relents to doing the ‘right thing’ due to forces he can neither control nor understand, and after the child is saved, he fades into the background. The hero of YOJIMBO has superhuman powers — at least when he has the sword — , but he doesn’t really save much, and if anything, helps to bring about the destruction of an entire town. The character of Red Beard is something of an ideal — indeed too much so — , but he’s a great good man than a great great man. So, I don’t see how the character of Dersu Uzala is such a great departure from Kurosawa’s earlier films.
Also, Kurosawa’s films were never a simple matter of wise old masters/teachers and foolish young ones with something to learn. In IKIRU, the old man learns from young woman. Though the old samurai is an able leader in SEVEN SAMURAI, it’s not a simple matter of wise teacher imparting truth onto others. When one of the peasants sobs when the old samurai initially declines their appeal to defend the village, it is the young samurai who is enraged by the mockery of the gamblers. It is his rage that sets off a ruckus that makes the old samurai change his mind. Old age can mean wisdom, but it can also mean resignation. Age can also lead to stubbornness. When the old villager chooses death in the watermill, it is moving but also foolish. And as the result of his decision, he ends up getting his son-in-law and daughter killed too(as they go over to bid farewell to him one last time as the bandits close in). Though the most immature character in SEVEN SAMURAI is played by Mifune, he proves no less essential than the old samurai in the defeat of the bandits. If the old samurai is caution and patience, Mifune’s character is initiative and impulse. Though caution and knowledge must guide the overall strategy, there are times for risks, and the pros and cons are etched in the scene where Mifune’s character goes solo to grab another gun from the bandits. As the result of his adventure, he manages to grab another gun, but his post is attacked by bandits, and a major engagement ensues in which a number of peasants and even a samurai is killed. Even so, by unwittingly bringing about that confrontation, he hastens the arrival of the final battle that comes the following day. And it was Mifune’s character’s impulsive nature that made him take on the last bandit with the last gun, take the bullet, and slay him. In BAD SLEEP WELL, most of the old characters are wicked, and it’s a young man who rebels against the system. And even within the rich family, the young impulsive and seemingly selfish son has more integrity than his seemingly respectable and socially gracious father. As for the Sanjuro character in YOJIMBO and SANJURO, he’s often at odds with older crooks, and the last thing he wants is to be a mentor to young people. If he takes on that role SANJURO, it’s only reluctantly because he feels so sorry for naive young samurai. Red Beard is a mentor, but he teaches less by example — serving as a visible icon — than by making the young doctor see for himself the problems of the world. Thus, the young doctor’s admiration of Red Beard had less to do with the latter’s ‘superhuman’ qualities than his dedication to the problems of man. Indeed, the film pays less attention to Red Beard than to the people in his clinic. Dramatically, this wasn’t good for the film as it needed more Mifune, but it’s meaningful in terms of why the young doctor came to reassess the purpose of his life. He didn’t so much learn to look at ‘superhuman’ Red Beard as savior as learned to see through Red Beard’s human eyes at humanity as needing to be saved.
And I don’t know what Richie means when he says there’s no indication in DODESKADEN that life may be made more bearable. It’s a rather dull but not depressing film, and the endings of each of the narratives tend to be rather hopeful if not upbeat. But if style ever became an end in itself in Kurosawa’s films, I would say it applies to DODESKADEN because the film is built around sets and colors than three dimensional characters and story.
As for DERSU UZALA not showing us how life may be more bearable, Richie is missing the point. Dersu is a man of nature, and nature is as brutal as it is beautiful. The concept of ‘human condition’ doesn’t apply in nature. Dersu is a human living in the natural condition, so the meaning of ‘bearable’ is different for him than for people in a human community. In a complex society, people try to improve things gradually(or even radically), inching ever closer to the utopian view of the perfectibility of man. Christians have tried to Christianize the world, Muslims have tried to Islamize the world, communists tried to communize the world, democrats tried to democratize the world, globalists tried to globalize the world, and etc. Society revolves around ideals, and all ideals logically seek perfection, which is why idealists always look out for new injustices, new missions, new crusades, new witches to burn, new wars to fight, new souls to save, new minds to indoctrinate, new machines to work better, new systems to operate faster, and etc. So, man in society is never satisfied, never content with the status quo, and this has especially been so since the arrival of the Idea of Progress, whereby everyone expects society to get better and better technologically, politically, economically, medically, legally, and etc. And there is some of that idealism in Kurosawa’s humanist films. Though they are not radical films calling for revolution, there is the sense that the status quo isn’t good enough. People must strive to make the world a better place; individuals must seek to become better people.
But such questions are moot in nature. The law of nature is what it is: cruel, brutal, ruthless, and merciless. But nature is also beautiful, magnificent, and awesome. Why is the wolf more magnificent than a dog? Dogs were created and ‘improved’ based on man’s ideal/agenda of turning a wild animal into man’s best friend. Dogs are nicer and have become part of the human community. Dogs are bred on the basis of how best they can serve us and live with us; they are the products of our conscious ideals. In contrast, wolves have been ‘bred’ by nature on the basis of how best they can survive in the wild, and the only law of nature is that the tough survive and weak die. Why is the tiger and brown bear are fearsome and awesome beasts? They were both ‘bred’ by the law of nature that shows no mercy. And why are hawks and eagles more awesome than chickens? Nature isn’t about making life more bearable but about being more bear-like. Man can change society to make it more bearable for man, but men of nature, like Dersu, cannot alter nature to make it more bearable for his kind. All he can do is make himself bear the challenges of nature with more cleverness, patience, resilience, and strength. If one wants to make nature more bearable for mankind, it must be destroyed and replaced by farms, towns, and cities, in which case it’s no longer nature. To live in nature is to accept the way of nature. Ideally, good men should heed good ideas and make his world a better place. But there are no ‘good animals’ or ‘good trees’ or ‘good rivers’. Nature is profoundly amoral, and each organism does whatever necessary to struggle for its own survival. Nature is like the baby-clothes stealing commoner at the end of RASHOMON. And yet, why is the commoner evil while animals aren’t? Because man, with his soul, can understand right and wrong; he can decide to do the ‘right’ thing. In contrast, nature, even at its cruelest, is innocent and childlike. The ‘spiritual’ greatness and tragic absurdity of Dersu is he is both wise and natural, both man and animal, both old and childlike. He ‘understands’ nature but nature doesn’t understand him. He respects nature, but nature doesn’t respect him. He sees the elements of nature as ‘people’, but nature sees Dersu as just another creature that will have lived and died. He sees more of nature than other men are capable of, and his communion with nature has kept him ‘sane’ all these yrs and filled his life with meaning, but his view of nature is an illusion, and all illusions eventually go mad, as Dersu’s does when he hallucinates the tiger spirit stalking him.
Richie writes: “Were Dostoevsky only a nihilist, he would perhaps not have been so great a novelist, but the very eccentricity of his Slavophilism rescued him from a self-pitying abyss of hopelessness in the face of human suffering. In DERSU UZALA Kurosawa finds an ideology equivalent to Dostoevsky’s Slavophilism in a pantheistic belief in the magnificence of nature and in an embarrassingly archaic, Rousseauesque adulation of the ‘natural man’. But what worked for Dostoevsky proves disastrous for Kurosawa, because whatever his philosophical mood of the moment, the novelist, unlike Kurosawa, never sacrificed his deeply felt exploration of the seamy and the monstrous, the beautiful and the noble sides of human character; he never abandoned his interest in the ambiguities of the human travail.
It is true that Kurosawa has evident love for the simple power and dignity of Dersu, who lives in harmony with the rhythms of nature. But the contrast between the person at one with his surroundings and the world of industrialization, which Kurosawa depicts only in the abstract, is largely theoretical, rendering the work a sentimental journey. Kurosawa mourns the passing of natural life. He is convinced that we can never recover the balance with nature enjoyed by men like Dersu. Such balance is irreconcilable with our knowledge and our mastery of the forces of nature; progress and civilization are enemies of the nobility of men like Dersu. The movie illustrates this idea.
Kurosawa in fact appears to have all lost in the living human being beset by his own intransigence, balancing joy and sadness, and forced to face the depleted world as it is. And in abandoning a dynamic sense of character, Kurosawa has produced for the first time in his long and outstanding career a rather lifeless film. Its hollowness is barely concealed by the overwhelming screen size, the sound effects, and the elegiac musical motif the death of that pure and good man of the earth, the Siberian hunter Dersu Uzala.”
I’ve rarely read such stream of nonsense written by an intelligent commentator of cinema. There is much to praise in Richie’s book, but his diatribe against DERSU UZALA makes me wonder if we saw the same film. Because of my overall respect for Richie and his book on Kurosawa, I will refrain from resorting to gay epithets in offering my counter-arguments.
As far as I could tell, DERSU UZALA doesn’t put forth a ‘pantheistic belief in the magnificence of nature’. True, Kurosawa shows us the magnificent side of nature — how could he not in the forests, rivers, mountains, and tundras of Siberia — , but he also shows its dark and gloomy side. Kurosawa’s vision of nature isn’t Edenic. Instead, the nature we are shown is beautiful and brutal, bountiful and scarce. Tigers, rivers, and ice are all strikingly impressive but also deadly. There are lots of trees and plants but mostly inedible to man, which is why Dersu gets angry with a Russian who messes with a marking left by someone as a reminder of flora in the area. It’s a nerve-racking struggle to find food and medicinal herbs in nature, so Dersu’s reaction is much like a sergeant’s dressing down a soldier for carelessness that might threaten the safety of other men. The natural world of DERSU UZALA is no picnic, let alone a paradise.
If the view is pantheistic, it’s tough-love pantheism, not New Age pantheism akin to mindless tree-hugging nature worship. Kurosawa detailed life in nature as a never-ending travail. And what might strike us as Dersu’s goodness is really his habit of survival. Dersu is no saint or holyman or guru. Rather, he’s lived in nature for a long spell and knows the ins and outs. He’s probably saved others and been saved by others, so he doesn’t like to take chances. To survive in nature, one must be vigilant and prepared like a soldier. One must never relax and must always expect the worst. Recall that when Dersu first appears, he asks for food from the Russians who are well-supplied with basic necessities and then some. Though Dersu helps them, he is also helped by them — emotionally as well as physically as Dersu is a man alone. Also, Dersu relies on a gun, a product of civilization. He’s not a primitive hunter who fashions his own weapon out of sticks and stones. And when the captain and his men are about to depart in part one, Dersu asks for cartridges. In one scene, Dersu asks the men for the bottle they are about to shoot for target practice. So, Dersu is not someone who’s totally in harmony with nature but very much reliant and appreciative of things created by men of civilization.
What did Richie mean by the “Rousseauesque adulation of the ‘natural man’”? Dersu is a man living in nature, but he’s not a ‘natural man’ in the Rousseau-ean sense. He’s not a Siberian Adam before the fall; he’s not like one of those idealized Indians in DANCES WITH WOLVES. If anything, Kurosawa resisted the temptation of turning Dersu into a symbol of what it means to live in harmony with nature. And though Dersu expounds on the power and spirituality of nature, we also see the side of Dersu that has need for the company of other men, the side of him that is terrified of nature. And Dersu has flaws. In a way, he’s not quite sure what he really wants. He’s happy to reunite Arseniev again after several yrs in part two of the film. But in leading Arseniev and large crew, Dersu also attracts the attention of a tiger, and in order to defend the crew from the tiger, Dersu opens fire and injures(and maybe kills) the beast. Thus, Dersu isn’t a ‘natural man’ but a man between nature-kind and mankind. It’s not a simple case of the ‘natural man’ being encroached on by modern man. A part of Dersu wants his world to be encroached on by modern man because life in nature is lonely, repetitious, arduous, and boring. He’s happy to see the captain again. While Dersu insists that the men follow his lead as guide as they trek through the woods, he also enjoys their company. This accounts for the inner-tension Dersu feels after he shoots the tiger. Perhaps unconsciously, he feels that he offended the spirits of nature by embracing the warm company of men. And perhaps Dersu associates his worsening eyesight as nature’s punishment for his betrayal. Of course, it’s hardly unnatural for an old man to lose his eyesight, but Dersu is thrown into a state of panic. As an old man who’d spent too much time alone in the forest, his sanity is slipping too. Contrary to what Richie says, Dersu does NOT ‘live in harmony with the rhythms of nature’. He lives in struggle with them; he lives in conflict against the abject loneliness he feels in the forest. At night, he is haunted by the ghosts of his departed family. Dersu is a multi-faceted character, and his joys are balanced with his sorrows, but Richie is blind to all such complexities and only sees a simple-minded story of a pure ‘natural man’ beset by industrial society. Though the threat posed to nature by industrialization was surely on Kurosawa’s mind — especially as pertaining to Japan, a small island nation being remade with steel and concrete — , it isn’t one of the central themes of DERSU UZALA.
Again, form is content, and I can only judge the film by what is on the screen. I don’t get a sense of industrialization being vilified in the film. Also, even the captain’s town is hardly an industrial behemoth. It looks more like a sleepy town than a big city. Nor can it be said that the town is hostile to Dersu. Rather, it is Dersu who, in his stubbornness and limited-mindedness, cannot understand why the townsfolk function as they do; he is self-righteously hostile toward them. Dersu simply doesn’t understand the meaning of division of labor. He doesn’t understand why it’s wrong for people to shoot off guns in the middle of town or chop down trees. If anything, it seems the captain adapted to nature better than Dersu has adapted to civilized life(and in a small town than in a big city). And as stated earlier, keep in mind that the real reason for the decline and death of Dersu isn’t the encroachment of civilization but the natural processes of aging and disease. It is nature that takes away Dersu’s eyesight and sanity. And even though Dersu was likely murdered by other men, the crime happened away from society(where men are governed by rule of law) and in or near nature(where the only law is ‘might is right’). Indeed, if not for civilization, Dersu’s death would have gone unknown and unreported. He would have rotted or been eaten like any dead animal.
Richie calls DERSU UZALA a ‘sentimental journey’, but I find it to be among Kurosawa’s least sentimental films. There is no overt grieving over Dersu’s death. There is no gushing idealization of nature(as in some segments of DREAMS). And the saddest moments — when Dersu bids farewell to his friends at end of part one, when Dersu loses his mind after killing the tiger, and when Dersu decides to return to the forest — aren’t squeezed for easy emotions. Sentimentality — to be found in parts of RASHOMON, SCANDAL, IKIRU, BAD SLEEP WELL, RED BEARD, DODESKAKEN, and even HIGH AND LOW — wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for Kurosawa had a such a powerful rapport with emotions, but sentimentality is what is absent in DERSU UZALA. Perhaps, Kurosawa found it easier to share tearful emotions in the Japanese setting — his cultural homeland — but maintained an emotional guard abroad; even so, the emotional hardness(not the same thing as harshness) works in DERSU UZALA because it’s about a man who is ultimately defined by his aloneness in the rough world of nature.
The pseudo-samurai of SEVEN SAMURAI and the thief of KAGEMUSHA are initially defined by independence but once they get a taste of community, they can’t let it go; they would rather live and die for the group than go off alone again; and therein lies the necessary sentimentality of man. Dersu, for better or worse, is a man who decides that the essence of his being is to be alone in nature, and he accepts this fate with a combination of grace and grimness. Dersu’s final will to return to nature and face its indifference doesn’t make for any kind of sentimental journey. If anything, many viewers were probably put off by the lack of sentimentality in DERSU UZALA as the film offers no simple cues as to how one should feel about Dersu, the Russians, nature, and civilization. There is no simple message and no simple lesson throughout the film. There is no central struggle that gives meaning to life in DERSU UZALA as there is in IKIRU or SEVEN SAMURAI. The old man in IKIRU, facing death, decides to do one good thing in life. And the swordsmen of SEVEN SAMURAI decide to fight to defend a village from bandits. Dersu did some good by helping the Russians, and the Russian captain was good enough to offer Dersu shelter. But there are really no moral or uplifting themes in nature. Morality is a matter of humanity. It’s moral to defend peasants from bandits. It’s moral to seek the truth and protect a baby in RASHOMON, but where is the morality or immorality in a predator killing a prey in nature? Where is the morality or immorality in a river threatening to kill a bunch of men on a raft? Where is the morality or immorality in a snowstorm that threatens to kill two men? Even evil is an emotional companion of man for it is the duty of man to socially and psychologically struggle against evil. Evil exists in the world of men, so even an evil world makes people feel a part of community and dream of a better future by fighting that evil. But there is no good or evil in nature. Animals, trees, rivers, and climate are simply the way they are. If they kill you, you can’t complain because nature is as nature does. All you can do is take care to protect yourself from nature.
So, more than in any other Kurosawa film, there is no ‘simple message’ in DERSU UZALA.
The only rule of nature is survival. Dersu, in his simple way, has become an expert survivalist, and that fact defined his worth as a person. To be sure, Dersu is a good man in the sense of his concern for others, but his goodness would be moot if not for his skills and abilities. What good would his goodness do for the Russians and others if it weren’t for his goodness with survival? Similarly, what goodness would the goodness of the samurai in SEVEN SAMURAI be if not for their skills with the sword? For hunter-survivors and warriors, goodness isn’t enough. They must prove their worth with skills. But if there is a moral aspect to being a warrior — fighting the good fight against evil or the enemy — , there really isn’t a moral aspect to being a hunter. Hunting is for survival of self, not for doing good for mankind or for some higher cause... unless one uses one’s hunting skills to help others. In this sense, there’s a moral aspect to a hunter of a community or family. He kills animals to feed his family or the community. It’s not just about self-interest or self-survival but for a ‘higher good’. Since Dersu has no family, he may value the Russian explorers as a kind of ersatz-family for he’s able to demonstrate his skills and knowledge for their good. He can help feed them. The message of RED BEARD was that the meaning of life comes from doing good for and by others — and perhaps there’s no profession more designed for doing good than medicine — , and there’s a glimmer of that in DERSU UZALA as well. Dersu, no matter how skillful he is as a hunter-survivor in nature, can only find moral meaning in relation to other men. It’s like the master swordsman in SEVEN SAMURAI. He has superb skills — which by themselves without higher purpose carry an element of nihilism — , but they become meaningful only when he joins the fight to save the peasants from the bandits. Killing to show off one’s skill is nihilism and/or narcissism, whereas using one’s skill to kill to defend a helpless village from marauding bandits is redemptive and justifying of one’s place in the world.
Of course, there is the question of whether the world is worthy of receiving one’s own skills. Kurosawa tipped the scale toward saying yes but not always so easily. The master swordsman in SEVEN SAMURAI agrees to help the peasants but later discovers that the peasants had been killing and stripping wounded samurai of defeated clans. At that point, he feels betrayed and says he wants to kill every farmer in the village. And at the end of SANJURO, the hero has doubts as to whether he did the right thing by using his skills with the sword to kill a whole bunch of men in the name of doing good. Though the world seems to have good people and bad people, good people are often foolish and bad people can be men of worth. Sanjuro realizes at the end that the young idealistic samurai haven’t really learned anything. He also feels that the arch-villain that he killed was a real man of intelligence and quality. So, what is the answer in a world where unworthy men are good and worthy men are bad?
Richie writes: “...Arseniev searches for the grave of his old friend Dersu, once more to pay homage to this now extinct, superior breed of man... This incident represents the way that modern times have unfeelingly supplanted the more natural, harmonious world of the past, neither paying it proper respect nor absorbing any of its lessons.”
Nowhere in the film is it suggested that Dersu is a ‘superior breed of man’. If Kurosawa had really wanted to idealize the ‘natural man’, he could surely have cast someone other than the short, bow-legged, grizzled Maksim Munzuk to play Dersu. Dersu is almost comical in his appearance. Though Asians are generally known to be stocky-bodied, Dersu looks like a dwarf even in relation to the small Japanese. He looks rather like some Ainu tribesman. Nor is there any indication through the film that Dersu’s truth is The Truth. Rather, it’s presented as A truth, one that has meaning for Dersu as a hunter who lives in nature.
While it’s true that Arseniev grieves over the loss/removal of Dersu’s grave and there’s something about civilization’s clearing away of nature in the opening scene, the rest of the film is simply not a long lecture on harmonious nature and whatever lessons the ‘harmony of nature’ may impart to modern man. Rather, there is the sense of the grand unfeelingness of nature itself, which is the very reason why Dersu so appreciates the company of men. No matter how much Dersu speaks of the elements of nature as ‘people’, they are not people. He cannot converse with them like he can with real men. And it is Dersu who realizes that all the lessons he learned of nature are moot once his skills begin to fail him. And it is Arseniev, a man of civilization, who pays respect to Dersu, not any of the animals, trees, or people Dersu knew long ago. And Arseniev’s respect for Dersu has less to do with Dersu’s love of nature but Dersu’s special personality and character. It’s like what the character Gorobei says to the elder samurai in SEVEN SAMURAI. Gorobei takes the offer to defend the village but then says the real reason for his decision wasn’t so much the cause but the elder samurai’s character. He admits to being fascinated by the elder samurai’s personality and integrity. Arseniev surely met other ‘men of nature’ in Siberia, but why did he click with Dersu? It’s because both are, on some level, different from their own worlds. Arseniev is Russian but more than Russian, and Dersu is Goldi but more than Goldi. Both Arseniev and Dersu are the sort of men who want to know more and aren’t merely content with the conventions of their culture. Dersu lives apart from others of his kind, and Arseniev relishes exploring and understanding parts and cultures of Russia far from its ethno-geographic core.
Richie writes: “Until they meet Dersu, Arseniev and his cossacks are uncertain, fearful of strange sounds, and lacking any capacity to survive in the natural world. Without Dersu — who, with his quaint ways, seems at first barely human to these loutish products of the city and of ‘civilization’— they would truly be lost. At the end of the exploration Arseniev and Dersu part, to Arseniev’s considerable sorrow.”
Why shouldn’t Arseniev and his men be fearful of sounds of nature? Dersu is too. Indeed, Dersu has survived for so long because he understands the necessity of fearing as well as revering nature. If anything, it’s the Russians who seem less fearful and amused by Dersu’s ‘superstitions’. Also, there’s no indication that Russians have no capacity to survive in the natural world. They seem to be able men and well-supplied with all sorts of necessities. When they first meet Dersu, they feed a famished Dersu. And when they depart, Dersu asks them for bullets. And Russians also leave rice in a shelter at Dersu’s request. And Kurosawa doesn’t present them as ‘loutish’. Arseniev’s men are certainly a bit crude and less well-educated than their leader, but they are presented as decent guys who befriend and come to appreciate Dersu. And there’s a very sensitive moment near the end of part one when the Russians feel sorry for Dersu who looks forward to being alone again. Richie says Arseniev is the one who feels the sorrow when he bids farewell to Dersu at the end of part one, but then why? It’s not because Arseniev is sorry for himself but because he’s sorry for Dersu. He remembers the previous night when Dersu seemed depressed while pondering the departure of his newfound friends. It is out of concern for Dersu that Arseniev calls out his friend’s name to say a final farewell.
Perhaps, Richie’s almost willfully ridiculous comments about this film had less to do with the film per se than whatever happened between him and Kurosawa in the 1970s. I don’t know the details, but I do recall reading somewhere that they had a falling out. Was it caused by Richie’s harsh view of DERSU UZALA, or was Richie’s criticism the result of personal animus?
Or did Richie interpret DERSU UZALA in relation to Japanese attitude about foreigners? Richie spent a lifetime in Japan, and like any foreigner there, he learned to both love and loathe Japan. And like foreigners, he loathed both Japanese tradition’s stifling of modernization and Japanese modernization’s destruction of tradition. Japan seemed to modernize without really liberalizing, and the beautiful aspects of traditional life seemed to vanish under steel and concrete and behind plastic and neon. One thing many foreigners notice about the Japanese — across the political spectrum — is the simple-minded view that tends to categorize all foreigners as one way or another in contrast to the unique Japanese. Richie probably heard a million versions of this, especially as he was one of those foreigners who really did try to understand the Japanese. He also probably heard a lot of stuff about how Japanese are better than foreigners in so many things. Prior to DERSU UZALA, all of Kurosawa’s films were about Japanese in Japan. With DERSU UZALA, Kurosawa made a ‘foreign’ film about foreign cultures, and it’s possible that Richie read DERSU UZALA in terms of Dersu-as-Asian-in-harmony-with-sacredness as opposed to Russians-as-whites-encroaching-on-sacredness. ‘Sacredness’ doesn’t have to be nature. Japanese, for instance, considered their own nation sacred and historically resented its contamination by the arrival of foreigners. But did Kurosawa mean for Dersu to stand for sacred Japan and for Russians to stand for imperialist whites? I don’t get any such sense from the film. I do think Dersu serves as a kind of alter ego for Kurosawa, an Asian who grew up steeped in western novels, film, and music. Dersu, as an Easterner who befriends ‘Westerners’, is something of a cultural bridge. But Dersu must be understood in his own right, and Kurosawa for the most part was careful not to load him with symbolism. He is not ‘natural man’ or ‘sacred east’. For such nonsense, go see AVATAR. Indeed, white folks seem to specialize in such films.
I can go on with Richie’s commentary, but why bother? It’s just more of the same nonsense, an almost willful misreading of the film to push his own agenda. It’s perhaps the-most-thoughtful-writing-on-film-with-hardly-any-worthy-thought-in-it. It’s a long chapter, and Richie certainly had a lot to say, but did he really think through any of what he said? I don’t think so. Or maybe Kurosawa gave interviews where he said simpleminded things about the film, and Richie took them literally. Rule #1: Directors are never to be trusted on the basis of their interviews. Rule #2: Form is content, and we must judge a work only by what is there that the artist claims or what we want to believe is there.
Finally, while DERSU UZALA is not one of Kurosawa’s greatest works, it is a great film and one of the best about man and nature. And as Arseniev mourns Dersu, we should mourn the film world that rarely makes films like this anymore. In making this film, Kurosawa melded his own vision with that of Russian/Soviet cinema that was no stranger to natural themes. If the American Western presented its heroes as settlers and conquerors, Russian/Soviet cinema often featured its pioneers as explorers and adventurers who find themselves in a world of nature without end. Russia is twice the size of the US — and Soviet Union was 2.5 times bigger. Also, given the colder climate of Siberia, it never held the allure that the American West did. Much of Russia is like a giant Alaska, and of course, Alaska once used to belong to Russia. But it also has something to do with the Russian character. Americans love the concept of ‘now’ moving inexorably into the future. Russians like to think in terms of eternity, and this temporal sense was conflated with geographic sense since Russia seemed eternally vast and unconquerable. Even under communism, Russians eventually reverted to a view of their people, culture, and land as being beyond history. Andrei Tarkovsky’s imagery in ANDREI RUBLEV and STALKER suggest the melding of everything into eternity. Everything man makes gradually dissolves in water, rusts and crumbles, and returns to nature. (Given that communism, an revolutionary ideology that was supposed to conquer history, was also finally swallowed up and dissolved in the serpentine stomach of eternal Russia only added more fuel to the myth.) Tarkovsky’s reverence for Christianity had nothing to do with Evangelizing the world or singing Hallelujah but instead had everything to do with the dream of eternal time. Contra the Western vision of Christianity as history moving toward a Crescendo of redemption and renewal, the Russian version of Christianity was one of hibernation and resignation where the womb and the stomach fused into one eternal organ of nourishment and devourment. Western Christianity reached to the sky to waken into higher spirituality. Russian Christianity dug into the soil to dream the deeper spirituality. Some might call it fatalist or even a comatose view of mankind and history(as opposed to the dynamic view of America and perhaps current China and even new Russia), and it certainly has its cultural drawbacks and played no small role in keeping Russia a backward nation in contrast to Western Europe. Russia, with its vast lands and resources, could have been the great power of Europe, something like the United States of Europe. The rise of US to great power status certainly had everything to do with the abundance of land and resources. Anglo-Americans, focused on the present and fixed on the future — and imbued with Protestant work ethic and sense of individual initiative — , saw the vastness of their land as a great opportunity, something go conquer, claim, settle, exploit, and use. Russians, with their eternalist-fatalism, tended to see their vast land as a manifestation of their creed: the very proof that the world was eternal and unconquerable by man. Communism tried to reverse this, but its own failures only seemed to vindicate the traditional fatalism that nature was bigger than man.
So, it’s not surprising that many Russians were deeply moved by Andrei Konchalovsky’s SIBERIADE where nature eventually subsumes the revolution’s collective ambitions than vice versa. If Anglo-Americans had settled Russia, maybe it would have been a different story. But then, maybe not. Even Americans still have a long way to go in settling much of Alaska. But fatalism isn’t necessarily hopeless, especially if imbued with eternalism. One kind of fatalism says things are as they are and the world will end in such-and-such way. But Christian fatalism offers hope in the everlasting life of ultimate truth and meaning. And fatalism on earth means not only that man’s utopian dreams are hopeless but so are his ambitions of evil. A do-gooder will fail but so will do-badders. In the end, God and nature will win. Though the Christian God is understood to be universal, Russians forged a special kind of Christianity that made Russia a sacred motherland of Godly virtues. Thus, just as Japanese saw their nation as sacred, Russians came to see their land — especially nature — as sacred. In Latin Europe, God merged with art and culture, eventually leading to the romantic notion that creativity is the gift of God. In Northern Europe, God was divorced from physical manifestations and turned into moral principle. In Russia, God merged with nature, and there came to be a kind of animist twist to Christianity, something one can sense in the nature scenes of Tarkovsky’s films. Tarkovsky loved images of church ruins as signifying both fatalism and eternalism. Churches too are man-made and decay under the forces of eternal time and nature, but there’s an element of grace and beauty in the decay for the church symbolizes man’s unity with the eternal. An abandoned factory or discoteque falling into ruin look decrepit for they were built for the here and now. A factory is nothing unless it produces things, and a discoteque is nothing without music and partiers. In contrast, churches were built as altars to eternity, so their crumbling and fading into the realm of forever has a certain beauty to it — and this can be said of religious temples of all kinds. Consider the Egyptian pyramids buried in the sand or Angkor Wat that was once reclaimed by the forest. They seem at peace even when claimed by the natural forces of eternity. Or consider the painting by Caspar David Friedrich.
In fatalism there can be everlasting life for one makes peace with the passing of all things. In the acceptance of the process of eternity where all crumbles to dust and returns to the soil, one(even in death)feels part of the everlasting world. In contrast, one who tries to achieve everything in his or her time comes to realize that nothing, however momentous, lasts very long, let alone forever. Extreme fatalism can lead to passivity and resignation, and extreme activism can lead to utopian or egomaniacal excess.
Kurosawa’s films of the 1940s and 1950s drew heavily from the dynamism of early Soviet cinema, especially the works of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko. I’m not sure how familiar Kurosawa was with post-WWII Soviet cinema, but DERSU UZALA, if it owes something to specific examples of Soviet filmmaking, seems more in tune with the new style of Soviet filmmaking that de-emphasized montage and bold experimentalism in favor of personalism and observation. A Soviet director who worked in both veins — channeling the early revolutionary style while broadening the scope of life — was Mikhail Kalatozov, whose LETTER NEVER SENT(1959) might have had an impact on Kurosawa’s Soviet film.
In his earlier films, Kurosawa employed a style of involvement and interference, i.e. he got into the thick of his stories and characters, much like the porter is always in the thick of things in MEN WHO TREAD ON TIGER’S TAIL, like Mifune’s character in SEVEN SAMURAI who always gets in everyone’s hair, or like the hero of SANJURO who can’t help but to throw himself into the fray of things. Kurosawa began to pull back with RED BEARD and DODESKADEN, but the newfound approach was problematic for the characters called out for more dramatic involvement on the part of Kurosawa and more distinctiveness as individuals.
But the observational style worked for DERSU UZALA given the largeness of the canvas and the indifferent grandeur of nature to the travails of man. Kurosawa’s earlier films are about man crying out in the world of man and deserving to be heard. DERSU UZALA is ultimately about man crying out in the world of nature and not being heard. And therein lies the beauty and tragedy of Dersu’s life. He finally resigned himself to the way of nature that is his home, but nature is home to no one. At the end of RAN, one character complains that gods don’t care and find pleasure from man’s misery while another says gods do care and weep over man’s folly, but of course, both are man’s projection of his moral fantasy onto the heavens. In the end, while Dersu spent an entire life spiritualizing and personifying nature, nature only materializes him as just another body to decompose. DERSU UZALA is a paean to the beauty and power of nature, but it is also a rumination on its cold indifference. In the final equation, nature has no more use for Dersu than the Takeda clan for the thief. But it was Dersu’s nature to die in the forest and the thief’s nature to die for the clan. It’s natural for man to find meaning where there is none.
Nice post about the dust bags
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