|
The political and religious views of film director Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) have been subjects of speculation during his lifetime and after his death. While earlier films like ''Paths of Glory'' seem to reflect an overtly progressive ideology, later films such as ''A Clockwork Orange'' can be construed to be equally critical of the political Left and Right. Fascinated by the possibilities of a supernatural reality, as reflected in films like ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' or ''The Shining'', Kubrick was committed to no particular world-view. ==Politics== In his memoir of Kubrick, Michael Herr, his friend and co-writer of the screenplay for ''Full Metal Jacket'', wrote: Stanley had views on everything, but I would not exactly call them political... His views on democracy were those of most people I know, neither left nor right, not exactly brimming with belief, a noble failed experiment along our evolutionary way, brought low by base instincts, money and self-interest and stupidity... He thought the best system might be under a benign despot, though he had little belief that such a man could be found. He wasn't a cynic, but he could have easily passed for one. He was certainly a capitalist. He believed himself to be a realist. Herr recalls that Kubrick was sometimes akin to a 19th-century liberal-humanist, that he found Irving Kristol's definition of a neoconservative as a "liberal mugged by reality" to be hysterically funny, that he distrusted almost all authority, and that he was a Social Darwinist.〔Herr 2001, pp. 11–12.〕 Herr further wrote that Kubrick owned guns and did not think that war was an entirely bad thing. In the documentary ''Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures'', Herr says "…he also accepted that it was perfectly okay to acknowledge that, of all the things war is, it's also very beautiful." The writer said of initial reactions to ''Full Metal Jacket'' that "The political left will call Kubrick a fascist."〔Rose 1987. Online at: (Stanley Kubrick, at a Distance )〕 In a 1987 interview with Gene Siskel, called ''Candidly Kubrick'', Kubrick said, "''Full Metal Jacket'' suggests there is more to say about war than it is just bad." He added that everything serious the drill instructor says, such as "A rifle is only a tool, it is a hard heart that kills", is completely true.〔Philips 2001, p. 198.〕 Frederic Raphael, who authored the ''Eyes Wide Shut'' script for Kubrick recalled that Kubrick once remarked that "Hitler was right about almost everything," and insisted that any trace of Jewishness be expunged from the "Eyes Wide Shut" script. Kubrick's bizarre relationship to his own ethnicity deeply troubled Raphael, a fellow Jew. Raphael was further puzzled over Kubrick's cryptic praise for Hitler, unable to decide if Kubrick was jesting. Raphael was equally puzzled by Kubrick's trashing of Schindler's List. After Raphael mentioned “Schindler’s List,” Kubrick replied: “Think that's about the Holocaust? That was about success, wasn't it? The Holocaust is about six million people who get killed. 'Schindler's List’ is about 600 who don’t."〔("Is Schindler's List fatally flawed?" – The Jewish Chronicle )〕 Though some have said Kubrick disliked America, Michael Herr says that America was all he talked about and that he often thought of moving back.〔Herr 2001, p. 46.〕 Herr wrote that Kubrick was sent VHS tapes from American friends of NFL Football, ''Seinfeld'', ''The Simpsons'', and other television shows that he could not get in the United Kingdom. Kubrick told Siskel that he was not anti-American and thought that America was a good country, though he did not think that Ronald Reagan was a good President. In the interview, he also predicted an economic meltdown worldwide by pointing out to Siskel that most of the major banks in the United States held dubious foreign bonds as collateral and huge third world loans treated as assets.〔Philips 2001, p. 186.〕 Kubrick likened this to the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale about the "Emperor's New Clothes", and felt even during the Cold War, an economic collapse was more worrisome and imminent than nuclear annihilation was. As far as Kubrick's views on welfare and taxation, according to Ian Watson, Kubrick said of the pre-1997 socialist Labour Party that "If the Labourites ever get in, I’ll leave the country." Watson claims that Kubrick feared being ruined by tax-the-rich policies and was opposed to welfare in general.〔Watson 2000. Online at: (Plumbing Stanley Kubrick )〕 Kubrick's earlier work is seen by Pauline Kael as more socially liberal than his later work.〔Kagan 2000, pp. 65, 66, 71, 134. "a world the liberal Dax will not accept"; Kael: "Strangelove ... concealed its own liberal pieties"〕 (She also viewed his early work much more favorably.) The early films embody liberal ideals, and the satire of government and military in ''Dr. Strangelove'' seems to point to a liberal political perspective. Similarly, film analyst Glenn Perusek thinks Kubrick's earlier ''Paths of Glory'' reflects a Rousseauist vision of man with natural human sympathy crushed by the artifice of society; later Kubrick films abandon that perspective.〔Perusek in anthology ''Depth of Field'' edited by Cocks, Diedrick, Perusek〕 While Kael viewed ''Dr. Strangelove'' as a liberal film, Kagan disagrees, holding that film to be written from the point of view of a detached realist, lacking the overt liberalism of similar anti-war films of the era such as ''On the Beach'' or ''Fail-Safe''.〔Kagan 2000, pp. 65–67, 134–135.〕 Kubrick's more mature works are more pessimistic and suspicious of the so-called innate goodness of mankind, and are critical of stances based on that positive assessment. For example, in ''A Clockwork Orange'', the police are as violent and vulgar as the droogs, and Kubrick depicts both the subversive liberal writer Mr. Alexander and the authoritarian status quo Minister of the Interior as manipulative and sinister. Kubrick commented regarding ''A Clockwork Orange'': Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved—that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.〔McGregor 1972. Online at: (Nice Boy from the Bronx? )〕 He went on to say: The idea that social restraints are all bad is based on a utopian and unrealistic vision of man. But in this movie, you have an example of social institutions gone a bit berserk. Obviously, social institutions faced with the law-and-order problem might choose to become grotesquely oppressive. The movie poses two extremes: it shows Alex in his precivilized state, and society committing a worse evil in attempting to cure him." When ''New York Times'' writer Fred M. Hechinger wrote a piece that declared ''A Clockwork Orange'' "fascist", Kubrick responded: It is quite true that my film's view of man is less flattering than the one Rousseau entertained in a similarly allegorical narrative—but, in order to avoid fascism, does one have to view man as a noble savage rather than an ignoble one? Being a pessimist is not yet enough to qualify one to be regarded as a tyrant (I hope)... The age of the alibi, in which we find ourselves, began with the opening sentence of Rousseau's ''Emile'': 'Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society's fault.' It is based on two misconceptions: that man in his natural state was happy and good, and that primal man had no society... Rousseau's romantic fallacy that it is society which corrupts man, not man who corrupts society, places a flattering gauze between ourselves and reality. This view, to use Mr. Hechinger's frame of reference, is solid box office but, in the end, such a self-inflating illusion leads to despair.〔Kubrick Site (no date). Online at: (The Hechinger Debacle )〕 Kubrick quoted extensively from Robert Ardrey, author of ''African Genesis'' and ''The Social Contract''—not to be confused with Rousseau's—and author Arthur Koestler from his book ''The Ghost in the Machine''. Both authors (Koestler through psychology and Ardrey through anthropology and evolutionary theory) searched for the cause of humanity's capacity for death and destruction, and both, like Kubrick, were suspicious of the liberal belief in the innate goodness of mankind. Ardrey and Kubrick both attribute this belief to Rousseau, who, in Ardrey's words, "Fathered the romantic fallacy". When asked by Michel Ciment in an interview if he was an anarchist, Kubrick replied: "I am certainly not an anarchist, and I don't think of myself as a pessimist. I believe very strongly in parliamentary democracy, and I am of the opinion that the power and authority of the State should be optimized and exercised only to the extent that is required to keep things ''civilized''."〔Ciment 1982. Online at: (Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange: An interview with Michel Ciment )〕 As well, like Noam Chomsky and others, they express much criticism for Behaviourism (although ironically Chomsky is a large believer in the innate goodness of man, according to Steven Pinker),〔(Q&A with Steven Pinker, author of ''The Blank Slate'' ), Steve Sailer.〕 especially what they consider "radical Behaviourism", which they blame primarily on B. F. Skinner and for giving rise to the doctrine that living beings, even the higher animals and humans, are nothing more than automatons at the mercy of environmental stimuli (hence feeding into the idea that, only by changing social institutions, can one change human nature). In his interview with ''The New York Times'', Kubrick stated that his view of mankind's innate capacity for violence and terror was closer to those of Christianity than to humanism or Jewish theology, saying, "I mean, it's essentially Christian theology anyway, that view of man." Kubrick appeared to believe that freedom and social libertarianism is still worth pursuing even if mankind is ultimately ignoble, and that evil on the part of the individual—however undesirable—is still preferable in contrast to the evil of a totalitarian society. Kubrick said in an interview with Gene Siskel: To restrain man is not to redeem him... I think the danger is not that authority will collapse, but that, finally, in order to preserve itself, it will become very repressive... Law and order is not a phony issue, not just an excuse for the Right to go further right.〔Philips 2001, p. 156.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Political and religious beliefs of Stanley Kubrick」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|