Audience Wide Asleep (P.S. Spoilers)

[Gary Thompson]

I agree with Rich that there's not a lot Pynchonian about _EWS_ beyond
the mood of paranoia inspired in the main character, along with the
suspicion that those about you are not what they seemed. (Compare Roger
when he finds that hair or Slothrop when he thinks he's being followed,
or better later on, strolling down bombed-out Berlin, when he sees
things no one else sees.) I'm still sorting out whether I think it's a
"good" film and how it rates w/ other Kubrick--further comment on
Keith's take, below--

Keith Woodward wrote:
> 
> At 12:00 PM 7/19/99 PDT, Rich wrote:
> 
> >Keith, my man, never underestimate the human heart.  Unfortunately, there
> >are far too many stories of men killing wives, girlfriends, etc. over the
> >issue.  Yes, they are monsters for thinking such thoughts, but Mr. Cruise's
> >character is saved by a woman twice. Once at the party and once by his wife
> >by calling at the right moment when he's picked up by a hooker. He's a
> >decent guy who gets in over his head.
> >I admit to it being not Kubrick's best, but better than most.
> >
> >Is it msyognist to show the nude female? I say it's beauty.
> 
> The nude body is fine with me.  But the camera generally is pretty rough on
> Kidman (e.g., the opening scene in which Cruise is looking dapper (and,
> incidentally, at himself in the mirror) while Kidman urinates) etc etc. 

I dunno. She has other moments, doesn't she?

> Cruise's problem
> is that women are capable of an autonomous sexual identity and that they are
> capable of fantasy.  It immasculates him (he's threatened by a group of
> teenagers who think he's a homosexual, rents a costume from "Under the
> Rainbow", a gay hotel clerk flirts with him), and the approach that Kubrick
> takes to represent that immasculation is just too tacky for words (this is
> 1999, remember).  

I mentioned _EWS_ initially in the context of the ease with which we
talk about fictional characters as though they were autonomous agents
(Slothrop as real person, etc.). I know this way of writing/speaking is
just shorthand for something like "Kubrick [or the screenplay's author]
has Bill whatsit make these choices when he hears about Alice's
fantasy," but it does lead to a different set of questions IMO. It draws
some of the audience in, to think about emasculation [wouldn't
_im_masculation be the beefing up of one's masculinity??? never mind],
probably affects others differently--no hard data here--but the point is
that we're _conditioned_ to think about films, and often about fiction,
as though from the "inside." 

I think it's more than just convenience going on here: what Slothrop
should do, what that Clarice Starling is up to, Bill's nightmare
evening, all present the audience with choices, and we are invited to
imagine ourselves in their circumstances, faced with those choices. We
get to test ourselves by what they do--would we let voyeurism and
horniness take us to the costume shop and the Den of Iniquity
(incidentally, what's Cruise's character supposed to be thinking as he
drifts from room to room?)? Would we take a slice of brain, drugged or
not, from our enemy? One difference with Pynchon, and a mark of GR's
greater sophistication, is that its unconventional and unstable nature
leads us to question the reality of the choices as well. Slothrop's
escape proves to be a set-up. Slothrop himself proves to be an unstable
character, marks on the page. But the default position here is that as
an individual reader (always that), we are trained to see life as a set
of choices in some overarching narrative, and the stories reconfirm us
as to the validity of that narrative.

It's easier to bring in some "insider" knowledge [paradoxically, this
makes you "outside" as to reception, I think] about lighting and editing
and technical stuff; it's harder to maintain the same perspective about
narrative techniques. For me, while watching the film, the power of the
conventions is such that I couldn't avoid thinking of it in standard
terms. . . . 

Gary

[going off-list after Friday for a bit]