Strangelove Country by D. Harlan Wilson
222 pages, Hardcover
This is a book I have talked about a lot before reading it, so I came to it with a bit of foreknowledge but from the beginning, I was skeptical about the concept that Kubrick could have such an impact on the meta-narrative of greater science fiction but I was ready to be convinced. The reason to be skeptical is essentially Kubrick’s direct impact on SF cinema is the futurist trilogy (Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange) and A.I.: Artificial intelligence, the film that Spielberg completed after Kubrick’s death.
I thought
DHW’s job of arguing the impact of Kubrick’s films as having an out-sized
impact would be difficult, but the case is so thoroughly made there is no doubt
that this book will become one of the most important deep-dives into this
master filmmaker. Words like schizoanalysis and filmosophy, are common in
the DHW toolbag and the big words, and bigger ideas are what make this book
special.
“Other monads that distinguish Kubrick's cinematic consciousness include themes like violence, sublimity, sexuality, primitivism, obsession, and the grotesque; Movements and periods like “post)modernism, surrealism expressionism, classicalism, futurism, and Victorianism; And more specifically identity markers like “wargasm,” doppelgangers the fault ability of machines, the phallus, original sin, chess board precision (and prevision), uncanny visual symmetry, and the Kubrick stare, a term coined by Kubrick's director of photography Doug Milsome describing the detached, unsettling gaze that signals that a character is ‘piercing through the illusion of conscious life just by the deep archetypal forces that shape reality.”
Strangelove country is also about more than just Kubrick, it is about the SF megatext and certainly DHW touches on PKD briefly, and the science fiction inspired by all this.
“For Dick, empathy is a human logo that machines increasingly wear themselves as he declares in “The Android and the Human (1972)…” and later on the page connecting to Kubrick. “This is the state of (in)animation we see in 2001, a quasi-Phildickian exploration of techno humanities corporeal and cognitive incarnations.”
There are moments that show how deep the analysis is, and DHW devotes chapters to each of the four SF project to show how it all informs the greater “Kubrickian consciousness” even touching how other Kubrick films like Barry Lyndon, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut flirt with SF ideas.
Here are a few ideas presented in this book that show DHW’s unique point of view.
“It's an anti-SF film that shows how our innate science fictionality predates the genre, going back to the primordial hordes depicted in the quote dawn of man” sequence. It's also post SF-film, redefining expectations of what cinematic SF could be, and a meta SF-Film, aware of itself as a newborn star child in the SF megatext and the history of cinema. Finally, 2001, the most important impactful cog in the cognitive apparatus of the KFM, essentializes the Kubrickian. The molecular filmid thinks harder than any other KSF.”
I really enjoyed the breakdown of 2001, but I might have enjoyed the chapter on AI even more as its place as the film Kubrick almost made but ended up in the hands of another director is fascinating. “In A.I., we witnessed the Dusk of Man become the Dust of Man as the SFM, riding the bomb of KFM takes us home.” This means the Spielberg Film Mind finishes the work of the Kubrick Film Mind. DHW quite brilliantly connects the opening scene of 2001, to the end of A.I.
This is a special book, a one-of-a-kind look at one of the greatest filmmakers. Kubrick is a director who is so important that you cannot teach the history of cinema without talking about his films. DHW gives him the proper context, and explains just why he is so important not just to film history but all Science Fiction that comes after his work.
