Stanley Kubrick Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

In the following dissertation I analyze the motif of food in the light of Freud’s theory of Eros and Thanatos in selected films – Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. The concept of Eros and Thanatos is proposed and described by Sigmund Freud who examines also problems related to culinary imagery, such as search for contentment, satisfaction and pleasure. I make an attempt to understand what eating communicates and why, apart from practical reasons, it is important to humans, how it correlates with human nature and how it influences characters’ identities and relations. The thesis I propose is that food, drinking, eating and dining may reflect a broader problem of human nature, and thus, analyzing characters through the perspective of food turns out to be crucial to their full understanding. In other words, culinary motifs are important because they are strongly related to love and death drives that influence and sometimes even dominate character’s behavior and reasons.
The dissertation consists of introduction, four chapters devoted respectively to theoretical background, history of food in film, analysis of Kubrick’s film and analysis of Greenaway’s The Cook…, followed by the conclusion. The first chapter focuses on Freud’s understanding of life and death drives. It is also a summary of the main points of Freud’s line of reasoning presented and scattered in his several works. Freud refers to the problem in, among others, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The Ego and the Id, Civilization and Its Discontents, An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis. In this chapter, I also describe the relations between Eros, Thanatos and food.
The second chapter presents an outline of the history of food in films. I summarize the most popular technical obstacles inhibiting directors from depicting food in the cinema in the past and today. Then, in the further part of the chapter, I provide a definition of mise-en-scene in the context of film studies and summarize potential readings of food symbolism in movies, especially those connected to understanding food as a part of a narrative and not merely as a prop.
The third chapter provides an overview of particular scenes related to food in Kubrick’s movies. The analysis of The Clockwork Orange includes scenes such as: droogs in the Korova Milk Bar, Alex’s fantasies about maidens feeding him grapes in ancient Rome, the scene of dinner in the writer’s house, and feeding Alex by the Interior Minister in a hospital. In The Shining, I analyze the theme of fear of starvation, slaughter and cannibalism that can be seen in Wendy, Danny and Jack’s conversation about food and hunger on their way to the Overlook hotel. I also refer to the scenes, where Wendy and Danny’s have their homey meals together juxtaposed with Jack eating alone. 2001: A Space Odyssey is full of references to food. The first scenes present the transformation from herbivores to carnivores, and then, consumption of highly processed food on the spaceship. There are some communal acts such as drinking together, having a birthday cake and eating together juxtaposed with HAL’s inability to eat. Another scene connected to food takes place in the 18th century style dining room.
The fourth chapter, which is the last one, is devoted to Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Most of the narrative is set in a restaurant and food plays an important role in many scenes. For instance, Spica and his bullies torture Michael to death by force-feeding him pages from his books. There are also long scenes in which Georgina and Michael hide in the kitchen, in the pantry, and in the walk-in refrigerator, where they enjoy themselves, have sex, and talk – always surrounded by food. Food is also connected to metamorphosis, which is symbolized by the last scene of cannibalistic supper.