Kubrick’s “ship of fools”

The representation of psychosis in five films

by Kubrick

Insanity and psychosis, in Stanley Kubrick’s movies, can never be reduced to a

state of pathological disorder beyond human comprehension. They are not separable

from the world where they develop, but rather stem from it and constitute tell-tale signs

of its malfunctions. If the first example that may come to mind is The Shining (1980),

madness, and more frequently “abnormal” psychological conditions and behaviour, are

very often around the corner in Kubrick’s films. Because, precisely, the film-maker is

very much concerned with exploring what is normal, what is not and why, it is

sometimes difficult to perceive the thin line between the mentally sound and the

deranged. Far from clear-cut dichotomies and binaries, Kubrick is keen on investigating

how certain attitudes come to disrupt a state of order (familial, social, moral, religious or

political) but also how order itself may rely on more than dubious values, and eventually

contain the seeds of its own undoing.

To a great extent, psychological derangement is perceived, diagnosed from the

outside as much as it is experienced by the characters, to various degrees and in various

ways. From Jack Torrance’s murderous paranoia to Humbert Humbert’s obsession with

a young girl, including Alex DeLarge’s perversity and taste for violence, Kubrick’s

filmography includes a substantial set of neurotic or mad “heroes” at odds with the

community and/or common sense. We will therefore explore the representation of

insanity (in its various forms) by examining how it is cinematically rendered, then by

investigating the ambivalence of its moral, social and political status. This study will

focus on five movies, namely Lolita (1962), Dr Strangelove (964), A Clockwork orange

(1971) The Shining, and Full metal jacket (1987).

First of all, mental illness and neurosis are rarely permanent and intangible

conditions in the films of Stanley Kubrick. Rather, Kubrick is interested in showing why

and how they develop through several stages, grow or recede in his characters, and how

the latter respond to that evolution. In Full Metal Jacket, Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence

appears at first as the most psychologically normal character – so to speak – in that his

human weaknesses prevent him from being turned into a unfeeling killing machine. He

does differentiate himself by failing to keep a stiff upper lip as Sergeant Hartman throws

an imaginative stream of abuse at the recruits, but the audience may be tempted to

identify with him: his emotional reactions, it seems, are simply human. Instead, what

makes him “abnormal” is his incapacity to merge: overweight and clumsy, he cannot

comply with the army’s requirements. But an interesting, chiasmatic evolution takes

place: as he gradually manages to conform with military standards (to adapt the norm)

his mental health declines and becomes increasingly abnormal. The turning point in

Leonard’s psychological descent appears in the scene where the soldiers are cleaning

their rifles in silence. The general view of the two rows of identical men is disrupted by a

series of close shots alternately on Pyle's and Joker's faces, one as he talks to his rifle and

the other as he watches him with concern. The following scene shows Leonard achieving

“outstanding” marksmanship and praised by Hartman. However, the improvement of

“Pyle”'s situation appears retrospectively as one of the worrying symptoms of his

impending madness. On matriculation day, the sergeant’s calling out Leonard’s name

elicits no reaction. What follows is a protracted close shot on his worryingly blank face,

similar to his even more terrifying expression, later, as he is about to shoot his detested

superior and himself.

This scene reveals one of the director’s famous idiosyncrasies: the “Kubrick

stare”, which consists of a character’s looking up from under, often with a demonic smile

– this visual leitmotiv appears in Full Metal Jacket but also A Clockwork Orange (Alex)

and The Shining (Jack).

1: Leonard in Full Metal Jacket

2: Alex in A Clockwork Orange

3: Jack in The Shining

But more generally speaking, the close-up on a character’s face is instrumental in

the suggestion of psychosis. It may appear at key moments, such as the last but one shot

in A Clockwork Orange, where Alex’s ecstatic expression is shown, eyeballs rolling up,

just before the narrator’s ironic conclusion as his lecherous fantasy is displayed on

screen: “I was cured alright” – signalling his return to an unbridled state of perversion.

But sometimes, these suggestions are of a subtler sort. A significant example of this is

the beautiful close-up of the thoughtful, manly face of General Ripper against a dark

background, as Captain Mandrake confronts him in the base in Dr. Strangelove. Ripper

appears cool and self-possessed and his voice is poised, but this impression contrasts

with his discourse, which appears more and more paranoid and out of touch with

reality.

4: General Ripper (Dr.Strangelove): “I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy ... to sap and

impurify ... all of our precious bodily fluids."

Similarly, a few close-ups of Major Kong show “[t]he obsessed, skillful, delighted

face of a mass-murder hero” (Kagan 115). There is indeed something increasingly

suspicious about his monomaniacal concentration and determination, until the last

moment when he blissfully lets himself go down with the bomb his plane is to drop.

Outside acting, insanity is powerfully suggested through the creation of coherent

symbolisms (inherent to one or several films) which provide the audience with a

consistent grid of interpretation. The worlds of the characters concerned partake in the

representation of their psychological turmoils. On a visual level, props and settings are

very often used as objective correlatives reflecting a protagonist’s state of mind: the

Overlook hotel in The Shining appears as an immense maze with innumerable rooms

where the characters wander and often find themselves alone to deal with their

insecurities and inner demons – a metaphor that is visually reasserted through the

hedge maze outside the hotel, where Jack eventually dies frozen.

5: Jack in The Shining. The labyrinth as a spatial metaphor of the mind?

Sound plays an equally important role: in the same film, the use of music, but also

of ordinary sounds, is extremely suggestive: the faltering clatter of the typewriter is

replaced by the booming sounds of Jack’s hurling a ball against a wall – an off-sound

whose origin is at first unidentified, provoking a sense of alarm -, which suggests the

protagonist’s giving up on his writing but also announces the looming outburst of

maniacal violence.

Furthermore, Kubrick’s psychotics often have one or several doubles who help

revealing, interpreting or balancing their own derangements. These doubles are more

often than not exaggerated or parodic versions of the “original”. Quilty, in Lolita, lives a

parallel life with Humbert: both are writers who took advantage of Charlotte, the lonely

widow, to have an affair with her daughter, and in the second part of the film, both

engage in a long journey the main purpose of which is possessing the “nymphet”. But

Quilty becomes a haunting, menacing presence, which may encourage us to read him as

the embodiment of Humbert’s guilt. Another possibility is to see in the Englishman’s

playful, Machiavellian and unscrupulous double, as a darker version of Humbert’s

perversion. In a more anecdotal manner, the famous scene where the “love triangle”

watch The Curse of Frankenstein is part of this mirroring strategy: Frankenstein’s

monster is, to Norman Kagan, a symbol of Humbert’s lust (108). This scene, which

doesn’t appear in the novel, might replace the suggestions of Humbert’s monstrosity.

Similarly, it is significant that President Muffley and Dr. Strangelove, an ex-Nazi scientist

confusing his former and current roles, should be embodied by the same actor (Peter

Sellers). The absurdly childish phone conversation of the former with the Russian prime

minister at a moment when the survival of mankind is at stake betrays another yet

comparable form of madness – both men, but also other characters such as Generals

Ripper and Turgidson, are shown inconceivably trifling with human lives. The doubles,

therefore, are magnifying glasses held over the looming madness of Kubrick’s

characters.

Kubrick’s films are never black and white depictions of “malfunctioning”

individuals living in a “normal” world, stigmatised for single-handedly disrupting the

prevailing harmony. Far from it: psychotic and divergent behaviours always have a

highly ambivalent status.

Their responsibility seems almost always questionable, as their pathological

behaviour relates to a pre-existing system and is influenced by external elements.

Although Jack Torrance does have psychological issues before the family moves to the

Overlook hotel, his immersion into a claustrophobic, secluded environment haunted

with a troubled history seemingly triggers his collapse into madness (just as it did for

the previous caretaker, who was allegedly healthy). Furthermore, alcohol contributes to

Jack’s psychological breakdown: he had, we are informed, stopped drinking, but his

being faced with the failure to realise himself as a writer, a father and a husband

prompts him to drink again, which is an alternative, rational explanation for his madness

(as opposed to supernatural events). To a great extent, Kubrick’s “madmen” are

suffering individuals who try to escape reality by indulging in substances or activities

that alleviate their pain or enhance their unsatisfying everyday life: similarly, music-mad

Alex drinks “milk plus”, “Pyle” becomes obsessed with his gun, and Humbert Humbert

with a nymphet.

This aspect can lead to the suggestion that morally speaking, the representation

of psychosis is extremely ambivalent. Mental derangement often appears as the

response to some form of imprisonment or rigid fixity, so that the disruption of order it

entails may almost seem necessary. In The Shining, the Torrances are trapped in a place

that appears eerily “immobilised” in space and time – by nature (the winter snow allows

little activity and displacement) and history (the hotel is overwhelmingly haunted by a

prestigious past). Jack’s madness, by throwing light on this unnatural state of affairs, has

a cathartic effect – and, at a higher level, his mental collapse may point out that this

immutability is aesthetically disastrous: Jack’s lunacy is also a compensation for his

symptomatic lack of artistic inspiration. In Lolita and A Clockwork Orange, neurotic and

psychotic attitudes expose social fixity, which in a way are more subdued but no less

unhealthy. In the former film, Humbert’s obsession with a young girl is the transgression

of overbearing sexual and moral norms – so persistent, as a matter of fact, that they

limited Kubrick aesthetically (he had to take into account the inevitable censorship) as

much as they did Humbert practically. This transgression, however criticisable on a

moral level, has at least the salutary effect of questioning the fact that strict ethical rules

are being imposed from the outside, imposing censorship on individual lives.

Incidentally, it highlights the relative, controversial dimension of what is considered

“perverted” (Lolita’s behaviour being extremely ambivalent). Although all of Alex’s

offences in A Clockwork Orange are undeniably condemnable, their irrationality is

qualified by the notion that they too are seemingly aimed at disrupting some sort of

pathological fixity: the brutal attack of the tramp originates in the young man’s hostility

for all that the latter stands for “on aesthetic, philosophical and, bizarre as it sounds,

moral” levels: Alex is resolutely on the side of modernity, and as such immediately feels

hatred for the old man whose “sentimental retreat into the past”, suggested by the Irish

folk song he drunkenly croons, signals “defeatism in the present” (Rasmussen 117).

Conversely, his subsequent crimes target a cultural and social elite that tends to live in

an autarkic, all-too comfortable seclusion, out of touch with the rest of the world.

Furthermore, in Kubrick’s films psychotic behaviours do not come out of the blue:

they are the result, as well as the symptoms, of malfunctioning milieus or societies. This

aspect is particularly highlighted in A Clockwork Orange: Alex’s deeds can be seen as

rebellions against several forms of authority, and as a reflection of state violence and

medical perversion. The cold violence and sadistic humiliations he inflicts on the tramp,

the Alexanders and the “cat-lady“ are echoed by his treatment in prison: the drawn-out

episode of his admission shows the representatives of authorities objectifying and

subduing him by making him strip naked in front of the wardens. “[S]ubjected to a rectal

examination by the Chief Guard[, in] a figurative sense Alex is ‘raped’ by the State”

(Rasmussen 139). It is only an official and more subdued sort of violence that is exerted

here. Similarly, Alex’s pleasure in inflicting pain is equalled, if not almost outshone, by

the cruel madness of the Ludovico project – a neat and organised version of the torture

imposed by Alex to his victims. Let us notice the striking proximity between his

treatment of Mr. Alexander, forced to witness his wife’s rape, and the Ludovico

technique, where the subject is made to hear and see unbearable scenes of cruelty.

6: Mr. Alexander witnessing the rape of his wife

7: Alex submitted to the Ludovico technique

Similarly, Kubrick aptly portrays the madness of the war machine: the scene just

before matriculation day in Full Metal Jacket demonstrates that bringing about a deep,

unsettling psychic change in the soldiers through a ruthless training is a deliberate

design of the military authorities: the song the marines chant along on their jogging

session, is a light hint at their readiness to die, or as “Joker” puts it, to “eat their own guts

and ask for seconds”. The latter’s voice-over comment as, in the subsequent shot, the

marines are shown screaming, rushing towards the camera with bestial expressions,

explicitly remarks that the point of the training is to turn the men into killers. No one is

left psychologically unharmed: not only “Pyle”, but also Sergeant “Animal Mother” (a

nihilistic soldier with no respect for the value of life, including his own) and “Joker” – his

helmet, that reads “born to kill”, and his “peace and love” badge suggest, beyond the

ironic jest, a schizophrenic streak. The scene where “Pyle” shoots Hartman and himself

dramatizes the notion that the former’s fall into madness is but the outcome of his

treatment within the military world. To “Joker”, who tries to reason his comrade out of

his insane act of rebellion by saying the two of them, if caught, will be “in a world of

shit”, “Pyle” retorts: “I am in a world of shit”: the true act of insanity may actually not be

resisting the army discipline, but rather complying with it.

In many cases, psychosis echoes or stems from institutional repressiveness and

insanity. Kubrick’s attack on such institutions as prison, the army and the medical

authorities suggest an influence from Foucault’s theories: madness and perversion are

constructed by discourse and relations of power and as such, should never be

considered in isolation from their context.

Obsessive, slightly deranged or utterly psychotic characters are, as we can see,

recurrent in the films of Kubrick mentioned above, the scenarii of which revolve a good

deal around order and its disruption by divergent individuals – a major theme also

found in Paths of Glory (1960), Barry Lyndon (1975) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) in

particular. The representation of these characters is a success aesthetically, thanks to

their ingenious integration into systems of mirroring, and of visual and aural motifs, but

also philosophically: Kubrick, by avoiding stereotypes and Manichaeanism, manages to

show that his “psychotics” are never marginal, isolated cases; rather, they are engaged in

complex, dialectic interactions with not so healthy environments and societies.

Works cited

Primary sources

Kubrick, Stanley, dir. A Clockwork Orange. Perf. Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee and

Michael Bates. Columbia-Warner, 1971. Film.

---. Dr. Strangelove. Perf. Peter Sellers, George C. Scott. Columbia Pictures, 1964. Film.

---. Full Metal Jacket. Perf. Matthew Modine, Lee Ermey, Arliss Howard, and Vincent

D'Onofrio. Warner Bros, 1987. Film.

---. Lolita. Perf. James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon, and Peter Sellers. Metro-

Goldwyn-Mayer, 1962. Film.

---. The Shining. Perf. Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall. Warner Bros, 1980. Film.

Secondary sources

Kagan, Norman. The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick. Oxford: Roundhouse, 2000. Print.

Rasmussen, Randy L. Stanley Kubrick. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 2001. Print.