Kubrick’s Last Word
“However, human fear cannot protect anything, because fear is what protects a person from desire. Since fear bars itself from the desire, it protects only impotence or, in extreme cases, inferiority, aggravating fear. In other words, he guards "nothing", he guards "non-life" - shamefully covered loins, a body so rejected that it became dead and was nailed to the cross forever.”
“Desire is the fear.”
Kubrick was approaching the topic for a long time, carefully. He bought the rights to the screen version of Arthur Schnitzer’s “Traumnovelle” novel in 1960, but his wife, Christine, dissuaded him from the filming of the “moisture seeking story”. In fact, she was just scared (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrtJXH2hRGI) skip to 19:30). Instead, he shot “Lolita” in 1962. He pulled it off successfully - the press got hysterical, as after the first publication of the novel. Given that all this is about the dark, forbidden side of sexuality, but only one - the male side. There is not a word about women's sexuality in the novel, they are just objects of desire.
For Kubrick it was not enough. He began shooting "Eyes Wide Shut" as early as 1996 in the atmosphere of complete secrecy, thereby setting a record for the duration of the filming. How seriously he understood WHAT he was doing and WHAT he was fighting against, one can judge by some facts:
1. The bedroom of the main characters completely reproduces the bedroom of Kubrick and his wife. Cruise and Kidman slept there during all the filming.
2. One minute of "virtual" sex of Kidman with a naval officer took 6 days. Cruz was banished from the set. Kidman was forbidden to say anything about it.
3. Nobody was allowed to take pictures except for Kubrick himself, the cameraman, and the illuminator.
4. The main theme of the Ball - “Backward Priests” by Jocelyn Pook - is nothing more than the orthodox liturgy read backward.
And even after having cut the last scene, Kubrick did not stop and continued to build this devilish myth, complaining to a simpleton R. Lee Ermey something like: “what a piece of shit it turned out” or “Cruise and Kidman had their way with him” (judge for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeqGgwqHH3Q&ab_channel=nessuno2001italy skip to 17:20), at the same time admitting to his brother-in-law Jan Harlan that this is “greatest contribution to the art of cinema”.
“...the truth is that ... let's put it this way, you've never seen two actors more completely subservient and prostrate themselves at the feet of a director. Stanley was absolutely thrilled with the film. He was still working on the film when he died. And he probably died because he finally relaxed.” (Todd Field).
He let them look beyond the allowed by the Greeks for an uninitiated, and what the Christians barricaded with fear. In less than two years Cruz and Kidman divorced.
“Some part of the soul leaves us in pleasure. Sight is dulled. We become obedient, exhausted animals. The look of prostration in Roman melancholy cannot be separated from the evasive look of modesty and fright. Consul Petronius wrote; “The enjoyment (voluptas) achieved in coitus is disgusting and short-lived; the act of love (Venus) is aversion (taedium). ”
“Voluptuousness is nothing more than an impatient desire to which a person aspires as if the bewitched. Satisfaction immerses him in a state of frustration, which comes immediately after a love spasm, and frustration concerns not only the initial impulse of desire but also light, inspiration, rage, the impatience (elatio) that tormented him in the days and hours that preceded the accomplishment. Ovid said it was like death, from which people are hastily escaping in a dream, "defeated, prostrate, exhausted.”
“Christianity is a colossal estate - a legacy left by Roman patricians divorced, widowed, or deprived of their sons' inheritance. Christianity is the very dead son that mothers carry on their backs. The main hatred of desire is associated with this infanticidal or, at least, puritan aspiration, which provided for the future life and allowed to infinitely increase this immovable property. Neither the Old nor the New Testaments never preached repudiation of procreation, bequeath of ancestral estates, social or anti-fiscal anachoresis and taedium vitae.”
“Roman sexuality was suppressed not by the will of the emperors, not by religion, not by laws. Roman sexuality has self-destructed. Sentimental love took her place - a strange connection when the victim himself becomes an executioner. Those who fell into this slavery got used to their powerlessness and began to honor their chains, like a god. Moreover, they tried to fasten them tight. They hurried to sanctify and exalt the dependence of the woman and ennoble this slave dependence with the help of solemn ceremonies, in order to temper the fright turned into dread.”
"I have to go there and show my face."
Stoicism turned out to be so close to self-sufficiency that sexuality began to look coarse, indecent. Love for his wife, children, friends were allowed only within reasonable limits, only if a person could not completely abstain from them. One phrase from Paul’s epistle to the Romans in 57 might well have belonged to the Stoic: “Melius est enim nubere quam uri” (It’s better to marry than to burn with desire). First marriage contracts appeared. Soon they began to include articles according to which the spouse pledged not to take either concubines or mistresses. And although such documents were not formalized, they can be called the first marriage contracts of the West.
"I don’t avoid them, but I do deny them my essence."
The emperor Marcus Aurelius, a follower of the Epicurus sect, boasted in his diaries that he did not touch the maidservant named Benedict and even the slave (whose name was Teodot), despite his desire. This inner (almost psychological) self-control leads us to the themes of subjectus and obsequens maritus. Restraint, obedience mean almost passivity. The Romans of the Republic would have called such a spouse impudicus; in their opinion, this is a man who fell under the yoke of Juno Yugi. Love genialis turns into love conjugalis. Marital love is a myth according to which submission as a result of force (obsequium as a result of virtus) becomes psychological and religious (pietas and fides).
Thus, between the epoch of Cicero and the age of Antonins, sexual and marital relations underwent changes, quite independently of any Christian influence. And this metamorphosis occurred a hundred or more years before the spread of the new religion. Christians attributed to themselves the merit of a new strict morality, which actually took shape during the times of the Roman Empire, under the emperor Augustus and his son-in-law Tiberius.”
“The story is even stronger than lust itself, it endlessly demands:“ “More!” For his inherent pleasure is precisely pleasure, not love (voluptas).”
(all quotes from Pascal Quignard’s book “Sex and Dread”)