Audience Wide Asleep (P.S. Spoilers)

[Paul Mackin]

Is the fear of emasculaton that important to the movie? Another
hypothesis could be sexual awakening on the part of Bill. It starts at
the party  where the straight arrow young doctor is tempted by the two
beautiful models. After the fight with his wife and the need to fend
off the neurotic daughter of his dead patient he comes close to straying
with the understanding prostitute. The dream is the clincher however. He
begins to see possibilities in his own wife  he hadn't previously
suspected. His reactions may look like fear for his own sexual prowess,
or fear of the loss of his marriage and family, or just plain jealously. 
But why not a perverse kind of sexual arousal? He probably doesn't
understand it himself. So of course he has to go off and do a bit of real
hardcore experimentation before trying his new erotic self out at home.
The final scene (final word actually) of the movie shows that the
experimentation has probably worked. Not sure I've got the ordering of
events exactly correct and the hypothesis may be hooey. 

I did like Gary's contrasting Pynchon's approach to the reader with that
of the the average film including this one. Although both use similar
sexual elements which some might consider a bit retrograde  Pynchon
arranges things so that we don't consider what is happening to Slothrop
and Katje as reality. He is experimenting with the reader to make his
higher literary points. In contrast silly as the events and motivations in
the film seem (my local paper called it the dirtiest movie of 1958) in at
least one important sense it's very very real. As I said I was rooting for
Tom Cruise all the way. I was embarrassed by my behavier of course and
hung my head shamedly  going out.

		P.  

On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, Gary Thompson wrote:

> 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]
>