Kubrick's Psychopaths
Society and Human Nature
in the Films of Stanley Kubrick
© 1990 by
Gordon Banks
Introduction
To the creator of films as well as other forms of literature, the dark
side of human nature has often proved more rich and interesting than the
bright. Films and books on the lives of saints have not been as popular as
murder mysteries and works of horror. While we may have no desire to experience
them in our own lives, terrible deeds and evil people exert their perverse
attraction on our psyches. We who consider ourselves moral and upright are
often fascinated by the behavior of the pitiless, merciless, and guiltless
psychopath. Like a magnificent black panther: powerful, dangerous, and alien,
the psychopathic character can have a dark, perfect beauty that simultaneously
attracts and repels us. We will explore the use of such characters in the
films of Stanley Kubrick, the 20th century film auteur as it relates to his
view of the nature of both individuals and human institutions. But first, we
will review the clinical view of psychopathy as assembled by students of brain
and behavior over the centuries
While it was not until the nineteenth century that doctors began to elucidate
the nature of that disturbing category of human beings that we now call
psychopaths, history and literature show that they have always been with us.
Scientific study of the psychopath is difficult because of the skewed view we
obtain from those psychopaths available for study: prison populations. The
psychopath recognizes no flaw in his psyche, no need for change. Those who are
successful in avoiding brushes with the law do not present themselves for
treatment or study. While some psychopaths undoubtedly correspond to the
popular view of the brutal killer, criminal, or rapist, many, if not most, do
not. Often this entity is referred to by the term sociopathy or antisocial
personality, emphasizing their chaotic relationships with other people and
society, but while this aspect of these personalities is most readily apparent,
there are many other features of this character disorder having nothing to do
with other people which also show considerable deviation from normal behavior.
For this reason, I prefer the older term psychopath. In recent years,
there has been a growing realization that there are many psychopaths who
successfully avoid trouble with the law, and estimates of the percentage of
psychopaths in the population (formerly thought to be about 3%, based on
studies of prisoners) have been revised upward.
As is common in medicine, and especially in psychiatry, where there is often
no "litmus" test which can be applied, diagnosis is a matter of nosology and
categorization. This is bound to lead to disagreements between various
authorities as to which manifestations warrant inclusion or exclusion of an
individual from a given diagnosis. Naturally, this has led to various schools
of thought on the subject of psychopathy.
Historical Overview
The first writings by doctors on the subject seem to originate around the
beginning of the 19th century[1,2], but the earliest formal
description of what he called "moral insanity" is given by Prichard[3] in 1835. The 19th century physicians recognized that there
were some walking among other men who were of sound reason and intellect, but
when it came to the moral realm were "deranged". They described individuals
who had no sense of right and wrong, no feelings of guilt or shame for
wrongdoing, and had a marked propensity to lie, cheat, and engage in other
activities which normal society considered reprehensible. During the last 40
years, psychopaths have been more intensively studied and recent research seems
to indicate that they actually represent a variant of human beings with
abnormal brain function.
Demographics
Demographic studies of psychopaths are somewhat suspect because they rely so
heavily on the institutionalized segment of the population of psychopaths, but
they show that males outnumber females by at least 5:1, and that they almost
always come from severely disturbed families[4] The deviant
behavior is manifest even as young children. The period from adolescence to
mid-thirties is marked by the most severe deviance. As they age, many
psychopaths seem to "mellow", at least in their more aggressive antisocial
behavior.
Clinical Features
In describing the clinical features of psychopaths, I will rely heavily on the
most complete description in the literature, the monograph which constituted
the life-work of psychiatrist and neurologist Hervey Cleckley entitled The
Mask of Sanity.[5]
Guiltlessness
While the psychopath often recognizes that other people have a "conscience",
and will feign remorse to avoid punishment, as Cleckley explains, "he shows
almost no sense of shame. His career is always full of exploits, any one of
which would wither even the more callous representatives of the ordinary man.
Yet he does not, despite his able protestations, show the slightest evidence of
major humiliation or regret. This is true of matters pertaining to his
personal and selfish pride and to esthetic standards that he avows as well as
to moral or humanitarian matters."[6]
Lack of insight and judgement
It is in this realm that the psychopath comes closest to the psychotic. While
seemingly in full possession of his reasoning ability, by all the means of
clinical psychology to test and assess them, the psychopath demonstrates an
inability to comprehend the meaning and significance of his behavior for other
people, and to judge their probable reactions to his behavior. He is often
astounded to find that people are upset by his exploits. Although he knows
intellectually what punishment is decreed for certain crimes, when caught, he
puts up elaborate rationalizations and defenses, and seems surprised when he is
actually punished. Mark Hofmann, an ingenious forger of rare documents and
murderer, included among the victims of his: many scholars, the Library of
Congress, the U.S. mint, the Mormon Church, private collectors, and several
forgery experts. His career began as a child with the alteration of mint-marks
on coins. He recently revealed his thinking on the subject of his forgeries:
"It's not so much what is genuine and what isn't as what people believe is
genuine. When I forged a document and sold it, I was not cheating the person
that I was selling it to because the document would never be detected as being
a fraud. Obviously if I would have known they would some day be detected, I
wouldn't have done it. I didn't feel like I was cheating them.[7]" This statement shows not only a lack of guilt and
remorse, but a semantic lack of understanding of the concept of authenticity.
Psychopaths can be thought of not as being hypocrites, but as actually not
understanding or using language in the same way other people do.
Lovelessness and lack of empathy
While the psychopath has likes and dislikes and fondness for the pleasures that
human company can bring, analysis shows that he is completely egocentric,
valuing others only for their enhancement of his own pleasure or status. While
he gives no real love, he is quite capable of inspiring love of sometimes
fanatical degree in others. He is generally superficially charming and often
makes a striking impression as possessed of the noblest of human qualities. He
makes friends easily, and is very manipulative, using his ability with words to
talk his way out of trouble. Many psychopaths love to be admired and bask in
the adulation of others. With the lack of love, there is also a lack of
empathy. The psychopath is unable to feel sorry for others in unfortunate
situations or put himself in another's place, whether or not they have been
harmed by him.
Disordered interpersonal relationships
While psychopaths are notably sexually promiscuous, their inability to love or
to show any but the most superficial kindness to others prevents them from
forming meaningful relationships with others, including parents and spouses.
The promiscuity seems more related to their lack of restraint than to an
exaggerated sexual drive. Bizarre and indecent liaisons are common. Dominance
and power are recurring themes in the social relations of psychopaths. They
enjoy being in a position of power over others, especially women. The
psychopath often plays jokes and tricks on others to humiliate them or to
assert dominance. Psychopaths are often found in positions of imposture. They
are attracted to certain vocations having great opportunity for exerting power
such as politics, the law, or medicine.
Fearlessness
The psychopath is remarkably free of both the psychological and physiological
manifestations of anxiety[8]. They often pass lie detector
tests (as did Mark Hofmann), and are well known for their valor in war, risking
their own lives, and often recklessly endangering their entire units and
disobeying orders in the process. It is said that the decision often comes
whether to award a man the Medal of Honor or to court-martial him, and the
"Rambo" stories of former war heros in trouble with the law have basis in
reality. The famous psychopath, Aaron Burr, directly disobeyed the orders of
his superior in winning a battle and fame during the American revolution.[9] It is this "bravery" that often helps the psychopath win
the affection of followers and accord him a respected place in society, which
is later disillusioned by his subsequent exploits. Another aspect of the
fearlessness, is the obliviousness of the psychopath to punishment. Not only
does the threat of future punishment have no power to deter him, but actual
punishment does not reform him. Most psychiatrists consider psychopaths
untreatable.
Irresponsibility, Insincerity, and Unreliability
While the psychopath is charming and makes friends easily, those who come to
rely upon him soon painfully find out that he has no sense of responsibility.
Continually promises are made and broken without regard for the gravity of the
consequences, for which the psychopath will then deny responsibility. He can
solemnly lie while looking the victim in the eye, showing no anxiety whatever.
Impulsiveness
The inability to restrain his impulses is what often leads to the downfall of
the psychopath. While he theoretically knows what is considered proper
behavior, and can even provide sage advice, it is in carrying out the actual
process of living that the psychopath runs into trouble. There is a tendency
toward continual excitement and stimulation. This impulsiveness may lead to a
scandal or to the commission of a theft, rape, or other crime. It is this
obliviousness to the consequences of risk taking that often leads to the
uncovering of a "successful" psychopath who was previously well esconced as a
doctor, lawyer, teacher, politician, or some other respected person in the
community.
Etiology
Prior to the past 30 years, psychiatry operated largely apart from the tools
of modern biological investigation, and most theories of abnormal behavior were
based on moral and later psychoanalytic notions, which largely were grounded in
the belief that the individual was shaped by the environment. When it comes to
explaining the psychopath, psychoanalytic theory has been speculative and not
very credible[10,11], and recent investigators have turned
to studies in genetics, electrophysiology, and language in an attempt to
explain why such a constellation of character defects crops up so frequently
and consistently. Opinion now seems to favor a defect in the function of the
brain, probably involving the non-dominant hemisphere which may well be
innate.[12] Studies of very young children have revealed
that contrary to the theories of Piaget, empathy appears at a very early age
and is probably an innate characteristic.
The Psychopath in Film
That the psychopathic character often finds his way into films (as well as
other forms of literature) is not surprising. The ambiguous mixture of strong
emotions that are aroused in "normal" persons while examining such characters
make them strange and fascinating subjects. We are charmed by their craftiness
and allow ourselves to be inveigled by their manipulativeness from the safety
of our theater seats. We secretly admire their disrespect for convention and
guiltless flaunting of rules and laws in a manner that we find almost
impossible to do. We enjoy their brave exploits and fearlessness. While we
fear their predatory nature, yet we find in them a mixture of beauty and
danger.[13]
The criminal psychopath is probably the most common form to appear in films.
Often, the characters are based on actual psychopaths such as James Wood's
character in The Onion Field, Gary Gilmore in The Executioner's
Song, Peter Lorre's character in M, and Charles Starkweather (the
basis for Kit, played by Martin Sheen in Badlands). Notable examples of
fictional criminal psychopaths in films are Michael Corleone in the
Godfather films, Scarface in the De Palma version of that gangster film,
and Dennis Hopper's character in Blue Velvet. Psychopaths may occur in
a film with a moral heart to serve as a contrast to the upright protagonist
(Richard Rich vs. Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons) and appear
in other films as an evil double or antagonist to the main character (Harvey
Keitel's character in The Duellists, Bruno Anthony in Strangers on a
Train). As in reality, film female psychopaths are rare, and when they are
used, they often serve as scheming manipulators whose main weapons are sexual
(Matty in Body Heat, Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind,
Jessica Walter's character in Play Misty for Me, Glenn Close's character
in Dangerous Liaisons). Other interesting psychopathic portrayals in
film are that of Robert Mitchum as "Preacher" in Night of the Hunter,
that of Eric Roberts as Paul Snider (Dorothy Stratton's husband) in Star
80, Keith Carradine's character in Nashville, and Robert Duvall's
Bull Meecham in The Great Santini.
Kubrick's Psychopaths
The most obvious psychopath in a Kubrick film is Alex (played by Malcolm
McDowell) in A Clockwork Orange. In Clockwork, we find ourselves
listening to Alex's narration as he tells the story of his career. In Alex,
Kubrick has created a character who is simultaneously attractive and repellant.
He is bright, witty, handsome, self-confident, brave (plays "chicken" in
motorcars), adventurous, splendidly fashionable in dress, lover of Beethoven,
and has a highly developed esthetic sense which is demonstrated in the
following narration describing the sensations of driving in the country at
night:
The Durango 95 purred away real horrorshow; a nice warm vibraty feeling all
through your gutty-wuts. And soon it was trees and dark, my brothers, with
real country dark.
But at the same time, Alex is totally devoid of any empathy for other human
beings. He has no moral scruples or conscience. He is sadistic, narcissistic,
sexually promiscuous, a liar and deceiver, and is driven by fantasies of power
and dominance. He and his hoodlum droogs prowl nightly beating up drunks,
fighting with rivals, and looking for opportunities to rob, rape, and pummel
their victims. Alex sees his crimes almost as a peculiar form of artistic
expression. The victims are usually chosen randomly (those unfortunates who
happen to be driving the other way when they play "kings of the road", or the
writer and his wife). Alex and his droogs are masked and the violence is
theatrical, accompanied by strange touches such as Gene Kelly song and dance
numbers ("Singing in the Rain"). When Alex returns from his depredations,
during which we have observed him rape a woman in her home and kick her husband
until he is left paraplegic, we see him deposit a watch and cash taken from his
victims into his nightstand drawer, which contains hundreds of other watches,
indicating the length of time over which this kind of behavior has been
occurring. He then remarks:
It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now to give it a perfect
ending was a bit of the old Ludwig Van (Beethoven).
Whereupon he proceeds to masturbate to the music of Beethoven's 9th Symphony
while entertaining fantasies of rape and violence. Alex is well satisfied with
this life and has no plans to change it, unlike Droog Georgie, who aspires to a
more conventional criminal career going for the "big, big, money". He tells
Georgie:
And what will you do with the big, big, big, money?" Have you not
everything you need? If you need a motorcar, you pluck it from the trees. If
you need pretty Polly, you take it.
Alex's home environment is a dreary contrast to his exciting night life. He
lives in "municipal flat block 18A linear north", a drab concrete housing
project with non-functional elevators and graffiti-defaced wall murals painted
in the style of "socialist-realism."[14] His parents
embody all of the bad stereotypes of the British working class: stupid,
gullible, unambitious, all leisure time spent watching the tele and reading
sensational newspapers, with garish taste in decor and personal attire. In
contrast to the decor in the rest of the cramped flat, Alex's room is very mod
and artistically appointed.
Manipulation is another tool of the psychopath often used by Alex. He lies to
his parents and to his truant officer in order to manipulate them. When Alex
is caught and charged with murder, he typically tries to shift blame to his
droogs and to deny responsibility. Once he is imprisoned, he adopts the role
of model prisoner, "sucking up" to the chaplain by pretending to study the
Bible (secretly finding more material for his sadist and sexual fantasies
therein). During his conditioning he attempts to manipulate the scientists.
Once in a position of dominance, his manipulation takes on a bullying tone, as
exemplified by his behavior following the suicide attempt when, despite having
lost the use of all four limbs, simply by opening his mouth, and demanding food
as if he were a baby bird, he asserts his dominance over the government
minister as the minister feeds Alex.
As might be expected, the choice of such a protagonist for an important film
by such a well known director as Kubrick resulted in a storm of critical
controversy. Kubrick was accused of pandering to violent behavior if not
outrightly promoting it. In an interview in the New York Times, Kubrick
explained that although he is fascinated by violence, he is not advocating it
(or anything else) in the film, but merely portraying it: "Part of the
artistic challenge of the character is to present the violence as he sees it,
not with the disapproving eye of the moralist, but subjectively, as Alex
experiences it."[15] From this standpoint, in my view,
Kubrick has succeeded masterfully in letting us see into the mind of a
psychopathic personality. But Kubrick goes further in the interview in
explaining his reasons for his fascination with Alex: "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.... The idea that social restraints are all bad is
based on a utopian and unrealistic vision of man."
Kubrick is expressing an idea here that accords with Sowell's[16] description of the "constrained" view of human nature
which posits that it is flawed and largely fixed, and that efforts to build
utopias will invariably founder on the rocks of human failings and will reflect
the imperfections of their builders. Variations on this view have been held by
such historical figures as Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Edmund Burke, Thomas
Hobbes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman. The
opposing view, that man is (at least somewhat) perfectible, or that the evil in
the world is mainly the result of bad social institutions has been the view of
Godwin, Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Paine, Jefferson, Voltaire, Ronald
Dworkin, and John Kenneth Galbraith. The constrained vision has been
characterized as cynical, conservative, pessimistic, as opposed to the
romantic, liberal, optimistic, idealistic unconstrained vision of man. Sowell
points out that the person's view of human nature often serves as a litmus test
that can predict which side of a given controversy the person will come down
on, with holders of the constrained vision opposing holders of the
unconstrained view across a spectrum of religious, social, and political
issues. Often, people at opposite poles have great difficulty communicating
with and understanding each other, since their basic premises are so
different.
Kubrick expands on his view of the man's futile hope of salvation through
social institutions in Clockwork by showing the natural man (psychopath Alex)
in his encounters with characters representing other archetypes.
The liberal is represented by the writer Frank Alexander. Alex and his droogs
gull him into opening the door to them by playing on his compassion with a sob
story about an accident on the road, whereupon they brutally rape the wife and
beat Frank so severely he is left a paraplegic invalid. Significantly, Alex
vandalizes Frank's study, sweeping his writings and his typewriter onto the
floor, and pulling down the shelves scattering asunder the books representing
man's accumulated wisdom and knowledge. When Alex has come full-circle, and
once again encounters Frank, he now is in Frank's power. How does the liberal
deal with him? He drugs him and submits him to torture, gleefully enjoying his
screams, thus demonstrating that at the heart of the liberal lurks the same
primitive brutality that motivates Alex.
The moralist is represented by the prison chaplain. Alex fools the chaplain
into thinking he has a true love for the Bible in order to gain privileges.
The chaplain, significantly, recognizes the hypocrisy of the conditioning, and
that it has made no moral change in Alex. But he is told by the minister of
the interior (another type of psychopath):
Padre, these are subtleties. We're not concerned with motives, with the
higher ethics, we're concerned only with cutting down crime and with relieving
the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true
Christian...
Cynical characters in the film who appear to share Kubrick's gestalt are the
prison guard and warden who see through Alex's manipulation, but have not
sufficient power to prevent the minister and the scientists from using Alex for
his own ends.
Kubrick's view of societal institutions is shown by his general portrayal of
the drab conditions of the future England as well as through the psychopathic
characters of the representatives of state authority shown in the film. The
truant officer, Mr. Deltoid, is hardly concerned for Alex's well being. He
barely can conceal his joy that finally Alex has killed someone and now can be
punished severely. The psychopathic police interrogator enjoys torturing Alex.
The government minister is also a psychopath, having no true concern for the
welfare of either the prisoners or the society. The minister sees the Ludovico
technique[17] as a tool for accomplishing his political
ends, and Alex as a perfect candidate: "He's enterprising, aggressive,
outgoing, young, bold, vicious--he'll do". And besides, "Soon we may need all
our prison space for political offenders." He and Alex understand each other
well and the last scene shows them scheming to place the blame for Alex's
"misfortune" on the scientists and the minister's political opponents:
We tried to help you. We followed recommendations which were made to us
that turned out to be wrong. An inquiry will place the responsibility where it
belongs.... We never wished you harm, but there are some who did and do....
There is also a certain man...a writer of subversive literature, who has been
howling for your blood...but you're safe from him now...we've put him away. He
was a menace--we put him away for his own protection and also for
yours.
At the end, Alex is "cured" of his conditioning under government auspices and
begins a new career in government service ("we always help our friends, don't
we"). It is clear from his power and sex fantasies which close the film that
he is not cured of his psychopathy, and that he will now continue his exploits
from a position of even greater power than before. The final fantasy of him
reveling in a sexual orgy while being applauded by many figures in Victorian
garb may be symbolic of the forthcoming social sanctioning of his libertine
behavior.
In Clockwork, government, technology, and other social institutions are
seen as only worsening the problem of man's barbaric nature rather than
helping. It is small wonder that liberal critics decried Kubrick's vision, as
this also runs counter to their notions. Malcolm McDowell said in an
interview, "Liberals, they hate Clockwork because they're dreamers, and
if someone shows them realities--cringe, don't they, when faced with the bloody
truth."[18]
Kubrick's view that the psychopath is an apt model for the natural man is one
of the more bleak and cynical castings of the constrained vision. His casting
of society as basically sharing the psychopathic bestiality of the natural man
makes it no surprise that he has been vehemently attacked by some critics. It
is interesting that many of those critics generally failed to perceive
Kubrick's fundamental antagonism to their own views until the release of
Clockwork. We will now examine the earlier Kubrick films to see how his
use of psychopathic individuals and societies developed.
In Kubrick's earliest work we encounter psychopaths only as villains or
peripheral characters, in the persons of the dance hall manager in Killer's
Kiss, and Val in The Killing, although all of the main characters in
the latter film are criminals. Kubrick's first use of full psychopaths as
major characters comes in the form of the scheming generals Broulard and Mireau
in Paths of Glory. Here we find them as pitted against hero Kirk
Douglas, a liberal officer. Douglas' Colonel Dax character was the last use of
an unambiguously liberal protagonist in a Kubrick film,[19]
and it can be argued that the producer, James B. Harris, and/or Douglas may
have had some influence on his interpretation of this character.
Kubrick probably delivered a jolt to the world view of the average film viewer
in 1957 with his portrayal of the Generals. In those days, many were fond of
thinking of the leaders of countries (especially allies) as being intelligent,
competent, and even humanistic, and they were usually so portrayed in film.
General Mireau, despite his feigned concern for his troops (sparring with Gen.
Broulard and trying to avoid a difficult assignment) orders his gunnery officer
to murder them by impetuously turning his own artillery on them after they fail
to carry out his impossible orders. He is incapable of accepting blame for his
mistakes, and remorselessly sacrifices three of his own troops to deflect
attention from his failure. General Broulard even more clearly exemplifies
psychopathic amorality. He uses Dax against General Mireau and seeks to reward
him with the latter's command after Mireau's final downfall, assuming Dax to be
a man like themselves who was playing his cards for his own benefit and not for
that of his men. When Dax responds indignantly, General Broulard is surprised
at this "naïvete" and tells him he is "wallowing in sentimentality".
Because the self-serving psychopath does not think as other men and has no
feelings of guilt or conscience, his ability to wreak chaos upon the rest of
mankind is immense as he executes his power schemes without regard to who gets
hurt.
General Mireau's indignation at ultimately being held accountable for his
battlefield behavior illustrates another interesting facet of psychopathic
behavior: their peculiar sense of justice. Being deficient in empathy and
thus failing to recognize his own behavior as immoral, Mireau can see his fate
only as the result of the scheming of brother officers, both superior
(Broulard) and subordinate (Dax), in the power game. He was at least half
right with respect to Broulard, whose moves also were governed by psychopathic
logic.[20] In the end, Kubrick's dark vision prevailed in
this film, as the liberal Dax is incapable of either saving his men or changing
the rules of the game in which he is enmeshed. Liberal film critics could
acclaim Paths of Glory because the psychopaths were militarists and the
film was seen as anti-war, with a liberal hero, Dax.
The Roman senators in Spartacus play power games, and Imperial Rome is
portrayed as a corrupt and scheming society, but the central character,
Spartacus (played by Kirk Douglas), is a somewhat liberal man of scruples..
Spartacus ultimately fails (as did the real Spartacus, who has in modern days
become somewhat of a ideal of the left). In Lolita, Clare Quilty has
some aspects of psychopathy (he is as much a pedophile as Humbert Humbert, a
trickster, but brave in the teeth of death), but his character is not well
enough developed to make any definitive statements. Likewise, in Dr.
Strangelove, we get glimpses of characters who seem to be rather devoid of
morality (Strangelove, General Buck Turgidson), but their personas are not
explored in detail. Again, it is deranged human systems and institutions that
seem more Kubrick's target in this film. Strangelove was perhaps the favorite
film of liberal critics as they saw it as indicting one of the great evils of
the cold war: the arms race. What they may have failed to perceive was
Kubrick's cynical attitude toward the efficacy of liberal politics, as he
portrayed the impotent president Muffley as an Adlai Stevenson clone. In
2001, A Space Odessey, the central character, HAL, is a computer. While
he does some terrible deeds, killing the human members of the crew, he does it
out of dedication to his mission and self-preservation instinct. HAL also
apparently becomes mad because of conflicting instructions given to him by his
human programs, and thus does not qualify as a psychopathic intelligence. It
was at this point that some of the critics began to become uneasy with Kubrick,
for he portrayed man as violent and bestial by nature, incapable of solving
their problems on their own and with their only hope of salvation being
intervention by god-like extraterrestrial intelligences. Because they could
see it as primarily an indictment of technological solutions, many of the
Luddites among them could still approve.
Kubrick's work following Clockwork Orange has continued to display the
pessimism and even misanthropy of that film. Barry Lyndon depicts a
society bound up in formality and ritual which people used to pretend to
civilization while basically totally corrupt, decadent, and immoral. The
central character is a picaresque rogue. Apart from the fact that he seems to
be capable of love (at least in the case of his friend, Captain Jack Grogan,
and son Brian), Barry seems to fit the picture of a manipulative, although not
murderous (if one ignores duelling) psychopath. As his career progresses, he
becomes more skilled at lying and cheating under the tutelage of a phony
marquis. His major goal is to lead the life of an aristocrat and he attempts
to attain his goals by marrying a rich woman he does not love and then bribing
his way into a title. With each film, Kubrick's settings seem to cycle from
present to future to past, but all of his visions show humans as base and
loathsome.
Jack Torrance in The Shining has many psychopathic features. He is a bully to
his wife, a child abuser, and has a history of alcoholism. He has difficulty
keeping a job. He shows little love for his family, but he is quite capable of
being charming and manipulative when it suits his purposes. Psychosis plays
more a part in his final downfall than does psychopathy. Again, characters
representing the more liberal side of man (the pediatrician and Dick Halloran)
are impotent to ameliorate the situation when push comes to shove.
In some ways, Full Metal Jacket can be seen as complementary and
inverse to A Clockwork Orange. In Clockwork, Alex wreaks havoc
because of his love of violence and sex and his lack of empathy for his
victims. Society tries to change him by aversive conditioning against the sex
and violence (leaving the lack of empathy untouched, however). In Full
Metal Jacket, the system takes young men and puts them through a
conditioning program to attempt to extirpate any feelings of empathy that they
might naturally have, leaving them in the end, psychopaths, suitable for
animalistic warfare. It does so first by stripping them of the characteristics
they use to identify themselves and order their lives. They are shaved bald,
removing any individual hair styles. Their names are taken away from them and
denigrating nicknames applied. Their home regions and towns are ridiculed.
Their physical characteristics (shortness, obesity) are used to mock them and
tease them. Their manhood is denied. Any morality that they learned at their
mother's knee (don't fight, don't say bad words, don't have promiscuous sex,
etc.) is deliberately inverted and aggression, sexual prowess, and profanity
become the valued qualities. Any empathy the soldiers might have for one
weaker or less fortunate is mercilessly driven out of them. The fat Pvt.
Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence is continually harassed and ridiculed by the DI.
Some of the more sympathetic men, such as Joker, attempt to help him get
through basic training by showing him how to do things and keeping him out of
trouble. The real purpose of making Pyle the goat, however, becomes clear when
the DI begins to punish the men for Leonard's mistakes. Then they begin to
hate him. In the incident when they pummel him with bars of soap slung in
their towels, even Joker takes part, showing that the breaking down of sympathy
and empathy has succeeded, and the men are ready to be killers. Thus, Kubrick
demonstrates that, as in Clockwork, the society gives lip service to law
and order, but when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, it is psychopathic and
will use whatever system of values (or lack of them) that it needs to in order
to accomplish its purposes.
Once in Viet Nam, the men put into practice the psychopathy they learned in
their training. They swagger, curse, kill, and screw, and do little else. On
the helicopter trip to the front, Joker and Rafter Man observe the psychopathic
door gunner as he machine guns peasants at work in their rice fields while
laughing and joking, asking them to write a news story on him. The Vietnamese
are also corrupt, or have become corrupted by the contact. Whores walk the
streets with their pimps auctioning them off. Youths on motor scooters steal
using hit-and-run tactics. Respect for authority is almost non-existent.
Cowboy, although he is technically in command, can not enforce his orders, and
the men do pretty much as they please.
The protagonist in this film is Joker. The psychopathic conditioning is not
fully successful on Joker's personality. He retains some empathy, although
becoming hard and cynical. Although he participates in pummelling Pyle when
egged on by his peers (with a vengeance), he cringes to hear Pyle's cries and
weeping afterward. He tries to prevent Pyle's suicide. In Viet Nam, he wears
a peace button to symbolize his ambiguous feelings about the endeavor he is
engaged in. His opposite number is Animal Mother ("You talk the talk but do
you walk the walk"), in whom the conditioning has produced a perfect specimen.
Animal Mother carries a huge Browning Automatic Rifle and joyously screams war
cries as he kills. His reaction on viewing the bodies of dead comrades is
"better you than me." Finally, Joker's empathy forces him to put the wounded
female Viet Cong sniper out of her misery, when Animal Mother and the others
oppose it and want to see her suffer.
Certainly Full Metal Jacket can be seen as an anti-war film (as was
Strangelove and Paths of Glory). Since war is the human
institution which most highlights the brutality of man's animalistic nature, it
is natural that a pessimist such as Kubrick would return to it again and again.
Conclusion
One of the questions asked of Kubrick in the aforementioned interview was "how
did a nice Jewish boy from the Bronx acquire such a dark view of humanity?"
His answer was "From observation, knowing what has happened in the world,
seeing the people around me." He specifically denied that it was because of
being Jewish (and the holocaust), and said that such a view was historically
primarily Christian, anyhow.[21]
Does this mean Kubrick is a fascist, as some have suggested? Kubrick does
state that there should be social constraints on behavior, and believers in the
constrained vision have often been politically conservative, believing that
authority is necessary to check the propensity of individuals to do evil. At
least in his films, Kubrick puts forth no vision of a social order (as Fascism
is) as a solution to the evil he portrays. He seems to equally indict all
attempts to impose order as futile. His main interest, it appears, is to
portray the dark side of human nature and institutions without offering
solutions (if one ignores the deus ex machina solution of the monoliths
in 2001). While Kubrick disclaims advocating violence, he probably
would not be surprised (or disturbed) to learn that many viewers vicariously
enjoyed the violence portrayed in his films. This would simply accord with his
views of the nature of man.
Is Kubrick correct in his pessimistic view of the natural man as a psychopath?
I think most psychologists and psychiatrists would not agree with him, and not
just because of their liberal biases. There is ample evidence that while the
common garden-variety man is no angel, empathy is a fundamental human
characteristic. Most persons do have consciences, and feel guilty when
they violate their own moral standards, although specific moral rules vary from
culture to culture. Cultures that exalt psychopathic ideals are rare,[22] but even in our own society, there are subcultures which
espouse frankly psychopathic ideals. Examples are the fringe right-wing groups
such as "The Order", skinheads, left-wing terrorist groups, "Soldier of
Fortune" devotees of Ramboiana, and the urban street gangs of tough young
males. While all of these groups may contain idealistic individuals who are
merely following a different morality, and are not true psychopaths, these
subcultures attract psychopathic leaders who often see the group as an
opportunity for adventure and power.
If the majority of individuals are not psychopaths, what about governments and
societal institutions and their leaders? To give my answer to that, I must
first indulge in some speculation and try to answer the question, why are there
psychopaths? While we are a social species, the engine of evolution is
variation. The psychopath is common enough, with uniform enough
characteristics, that he might be thought of as a variant upon normal.
Variants that survive and are genetically passed on must carry some advantage
for at least a significant portion of the variant organisms. While many, if
not most, psychopaths seem to be misfits, spending much of their lives
incarcerated in penal institutions, it has been recognized that many are clever
enough or restrained enough, to avoid being "unmasked." It is easy to think of
fields of endeavor (politics, business, even science) where a lack of ethics
might present a decided advantage, provided the unethical behavior can be
shrouded from the scrutiny of associates and society. Even when the misdeeds
are uncovered (often through the psychopath's poor judgement), the psychopath
may succeed in maintaining the respect and admiration through his charisma,
talents, and abilities. (Does the world in general respect Nixon or Carter
more?) Many of the "greatest" politicians and businessmen have made their fame
and fortunes living according to their own rules and
full-speed-ahead-damn-the-torpedos, with their own agendas. Those who succeed,
have their faults forgotten. Perhaps the psychopaths then, even serve a social
purpose in our species. The negative side to all this, however, is that when
psychopaths govern, their policies can lead to a great deal of inhumane
behavior, such as intrigues, "dirty tricks", arms races, assassinations, and
wars. Thus while I disagree with Kubrick's severe view of individual human
nature, I somewhat agree that humans acting collectively under leaders tend to
act with less conscience than individual persons would. In part this might be
explained by the gravitation of bright psychopaths into high government
positions.
Although we can describe the psychopath, we do not understand him. What we do
know, for me at least, does not reduce but expands the wonder at the beautiful
complexity of brain and behavior. One of the values of literature (of which
film is a part) is vicarious experience. We can experience persons and
situations that we would never meet in the flesh. We can absorb some of the
wisdom of dead men and vanished cultures. Films such as Kubrick's, which seek
to portray man and his experience, even in some of its darker aspects, are
superior to those which tend to deliver an obvious "message" or to preach or
moralize. One can never definitively explain a work of literature or art.
Because such explanation would not only embody every thought put into it by its
creator, but every thought which will be evoked in every reader, even those not
yet born, every work is infinite.
[1]Pinel, P. Traité médico-phiosophique sur
l'aliénation metale, 2nd edn., Paris: J. Ant. Brosson, 1809.
[2]Rush, B..Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the
Diseases of the Mind. New York: Hafner, 1962.
[3]Pritchard, J. C. A Treatise on Insanity and Other
Disorders Affecting the Mind. London: Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper,
1835.
[4]Goodwin, D. W. and Guze, S. B. Psychiatric
Diagnosis. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979.
[5]Cleckley, H. The Mask of Sanity. St. Louis:
Mosby, 1976.
[6]Cleckley, p.343.
[7]Excerpts from the Mark Hofmann Interviews.
Sunstone 11: 40-41. 1987.
[8]Hare, R.D. Psychopathy: Theory and Research. New York: J.
Wiley, 1970. Chap.4 "Autonomic Correlates of Psychopathy".
[9]
Burr also demonstrated the psychopath's typical lack of judgement and
obliviousness to consequences in pursuing his duel of honor with Alexander
Hamilton. Burr was vice-president of the United States at the time of the
duel. He was planning to run for president with the support of the Federalists
when he shot and killed Hamilton, a beloved founding-father of the Federalist
Party. Almost immediately he became a pariah and was forced to flee the
country.
[10]Cleckley, pp. 395ff.
[11] Grünbaum, A. Foundations of Psychoanalysis.
Berkeley, Univ of Calif, 1985.
[12]Hare, R.D. ""Twenty years experience with the
Cleckley psychopath." In Unmasking the Psychopath, Reid, et al, eds.
New York: W.W. Norton, 1986.
[13] The most famous "psychos" in films are not psychopaths,
but psychotics. Well known examples of these are found in the films Psycho
(Norman Bates), Taxi Driver (Travis Bickel), and Halloween (Michael). These
characters are in varying ways disconnected from reality and suffer from
delusional ideation.
[14]We imagine such a world to be the failed socialism of
the future Britain toward which policies of the 1960s Labor Party were leading.
[15]McGregor, C. Interview with Stanley Kubrick. New York
Times, January 30, 1972.
[16]Sowell, T. A Conflict of Visions: Ideological
Origins of Political Struggles. New York: WIlliam Morrow, 1987.
[17]Whereby criminals undergo operant conditioning to
extinguish violent behavior and sexual behavior.
[18]New York Times, January 30, 1972.
[19]Kubrick did not have artistic control of
Spartacus. Joker in Full Metal Jacket did display some ambiguity
and there are some parallels to Dax.
[20]A similar real-life example can be found in the failure
of Richard Nixon to this day to understand the moral significance of the
Watergate affair, and his continual insistence that it was all blown out of
proportion by his enemies.
[21]Indeed, there is a strong current of Christian thought
that emphasizes original sin, the depravity of man. It has been more
prominent, however, since the holocaust, and usually is considered a feature of
neo-orthodoxy.
[22]Nazi Germany is the most oft cited example. While
studies of Hitler have shown that he probably was not a psychopath but a
fanatical eccentric, the Nazi party attracted numerous psychopaths into
leadership roles at all levels.