In this episode of International Horizons, Interim Director Eli Karetny speaks with film scholar Nathan Abrams about the enduring relevance of Stanley Kubrick and what his work can teach us about our current era. From the nuclear absurdities of Dr. Strangelove to the cosmic rebirth of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick’s films expose the fragile line between technological mastery and moral collapse. Abrams unpacks Kubrick’s fascination with war, authority, and obedience, his roots in the New York Jewish intellectual tradition, and his exploration of mystical and mythic themes—from Kabbalah to The Odyssey. Together, they reveal how Kubrick’s cinematic universe reflects our own: a world where human creativity, paranoia, and power intertwine in both terrifying and illuminating ways.

Transcript

Eli Karetny
So far this fall podcast season, we’ve discussed the international landscape with political writers, historians of ideas, and social theorists, but today we’re going to look at the state of the world through the eyes of Stanley Kubrick, whose films explore, among other things, timeless themes related to conflict and violence, state power and social control, and the relationship between advanced technology and human progress. Kubrick—the artist, thinker, storyteller—challenges us to look beyond the stories we tell to and about ourselves, with images and narratives bombarding our attention and battling for our allegiances. Kubrick can help us transform the screens that invite in these forces. His films can empower us to better understand those elements, seen and unseen, that shape our world.

Welcome to International Horizons, a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues. My name is Eli Karetny. I teach Political Theory and International Relations at Baruch College, and have for years been the Deputy Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. With our director John Torpey on leave this year, I have the privilege of serving as the Institute’s Interim Director, which means I have the honor of hosting this podcast.

Here with me today is Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film at Bangor University, where he directs the Center for Film, Television and Screen Studies. He’s also the co-founder of Jewish Film and New Media, an international journal. Professor Abrams is the author of numerous books, including Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film; Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual; and Kubrick: An Odyssey. Welcome, Nathan. Thank you for joining us on International Horizons.

Nathan Abrams
My pleasure—happy to be here.

Eli Karetny
Let’s start by talking about Dr. Strangelove, a movie about the madness of nuclear weapons, the paradoxes of nuclear deterrence, and the danger of aligning state power and a certain kind of scientific genius—strategic necessity from one angle, sheer lunacy from another. Kubrick was, of course, pointing beyond the Cold War. So I’d like to begin by asking you: what relevance do you see in this film for our current era?

Nathan Abrams
Well, the interesting thing about Dr. Strangelove is just how often the memes—say, the ending of the film, well, near the end of the film, when Major King Kong is riding the bomb toward total nuclear destruction—how often memes are recycled from that film, putting on different presidents, whether it’s Ronald Reagan or, currently, President Trump. So something in that particular image, and how that image acts as a metonym for the entire film, speaks to people through the ages. That idea of systems failing and humans going wrong really speaks to people. I’m always struck by how often themes from Kubrick’s films reoccur through the ages. You know, the whole idea of Dr. Strangelove or the “Strangelove effect.” One sees other examples: HAL from 2001 is frequently referenced, or “Here’s Johnny!” from The Shining—how often those images appear in political cartoons and memes. So clearly something in the films speaks to people, even though Strangelove is very much set in that early ’60s period of the Cold War. It’s rooted in that, yet I think people see something in it according to which decade they’re positioned in.

Eli Karetny
Thank you, that’s interesting. And what about the characters as allegorical representations? I’ll hold off a minute on getting to the character Dr. Strangelove as a kind of compilation, but maybe we can talk about a few of the other characters from that film. I’m thinking of Jack D. Ripper. I see pale reflections of Jack Ripper as an allegory on social media all the time—where sexual metaphors, conspiracy thinking, and militant nationalism converge. Can you say a few words about that character, or maybe others that stand out for you?

Nathan Abrams
You’ve just put a thought in my head that I hadn’t previously had, and before I forget it, I’ll say it now: QAnon, right? At the heart of the QAnon conspiracy is the idea of child abuse, and therefore there’s a sexual element at the heart of this grand political conspiracy. I hadn’t really made that connection with Dr. Strangelove, but now that you’ve said it—I know you didn’t say QAnon—but that’s exactly what came to mind.

What’s really interesting is that sexuality and sex are often featured in Kubrick’s films as a signature theme—from his very earliest documentaries, especially The Seafarers, through to, obviously, Eyes Wide Shut, where sex is a key theme. That really is a film about, in a way, sexual conspiracy. So we see that as a theme that runs throughout Kubrick’s work. He had a very childish or sophomoric, teenage, adolescent sense of humor, so I think that whole side of it appealed to him in Dr. Strangelove.

But the movie is making a deeper connection between the conjunction of power—or the fear of the loss of power—and sexuality in that figure of Dr. Strangelove. Physical power, or the projection of power as in military power—B-52 bombers—is very much equated with impotence, as in sexual impotence. That’s the triggering event.

Whilst I’m thinking of it, I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie One Battle After Another, which I do recommend. It’s P. T. Anderson’s latest. It very much speaks to the current moment—reflections on immigration and sanctuary cities and ICE. In it there is a character called Steve Lockjaw, and the way he is played—particularly at the end of the movie (don’t worry, it’s not a spoiler)—he very much resembles Dr. Strangelove. I think that’s a deliberate homage by P. T. Anderson—obviously an admirer of Kubrick—to put this Strangelove-ian character in a film that is so much of its moment. So it speaks to that first question you asked me: the Strangelove character recurs. The dialogue this character speaks is almost the same—not quite word for word—as the lecture that Jack D. Ripper gives Captain Mandrake about how women sense his power. He almost says the same thing, word for word. And in this movie about immigration and the clamping down of immigration, which speaks to the current moment in the U.S., there’s a Strangelove reference.

Eli Karetny
I haven’t seen the movie yet. I’m planning to. From what I understand, it was very influenced by Thomas Pynchon’s work. Is that right?

Nathan Abrams
It was an adaptation of the Pynchon novel. I’m not so familiar with the novel; I just went in kind of blind, as it were, and watched the film. But it struck me. I saw other Kubrickian references in the film—more visual ones. Another director one could talk about is Jordan Peele, particularly Get Out and Us, not with reference to Strangelove, but he uses a lot of Kubrickian references to reflect on race in contemporary America.

What I find interesting in Kubrick’s films is that people from widely different backgrounds and generations see something in the films that appeals to them—visually but also thematically—for them to articulate their concerns decades later. We don’t think of Kubrick as being a particularly right-on director. His depictions of race leave a lot to be desired. His actual casting of people of color and non-white people is very limited. But yet a director like Jordan Peele can still see something in the work where he thinks, “I’m going to reference this,” not to attack Kubrick, but to articulate my vision. I think that’s the same with P. T. Anderson. I don’t know the book well enough to know whether the book’s Kubrickian in any way, but I’m pretty sure this is P. T. Anderson’s projection rather than Thomas Pynchon’s.

And interestingly, Kubrick wanted to adapt—I think it was Gravity’s Rainbow. That’s right.

Eli Karetny
I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I’m thinking now about literary references—literary influences on these kinds of artistic directors—and thinking about where Kafka plays a role in Kubrick’s work. We can hold off on that. I was planning to think through some of those influences in a bit. But since we’re bringing up other directors, I’m thinking Christopher Nolan here in various films; even in Oppenheimer there seem to be these very Kubrickian themes. Say a word about where Kubrick influenced Nolan’s filmmaking.

Nathan Abrams
One of my standard lines to my students is this: whether you like Kubrick or not, or whether you think we should be studying Kubrick or not—obviously there’s a debate about that kind of curriculum—pretty much most filmmaking, at least U.S. filmmaking in his wake, has been touched by him in some way. Therefore the stuff that you like, I say to the students, whether you like him or not, it’s probably been influenced by him—whether it’s The Simpsons or Nolan.

Obviously Nolan is a fan. Nolan’s obsessed with 2001, and he’s obsessed with the actual photochemical process that was used to make the film. He did that restoration of 2001 that was shown, I think, at Cannes a year or two ago from the original print. We see elements of 2001 in—well, obviously Interstellar. I haven’t seen it recently to comment much more than that, but I think any science fiction of that nature is going to in some way reference 2001. I’m thinking also more of Inception, where it’s very much like 2001 meets Citizen Kane by the end.

Nolan is a director—I’m not such a fan of all of Nolan’s work. I think two of them are brilliant: Memento, and I liked Oppenheimer. Everything in between looks great, sounds great, but what’s it saying?

Eli Karetny
Interesting, interesting.

Nathan Abrams
But that’s maybe for someone else to make that argument.

Eli Karetny
Thinking about Oppenheimer, I’m hoping to have Kai Bird, who works at the Graduate Center—actually just above us on the fifth floor—on the podcast to go back to some themes in Oppenheimer. But we’ll hold off on that for a time. Just one more question about Dr. Strangelove—the character Strangelove himself. It’s been said that he’s a kind of compilation character: Teller, von Neumann, von Braun. Where are you on that question? What are the real influences? And beyond that, what’s Kubrick doing with that character? What’s the message there?

Nathan Abrams
With Dr. Strangelove, I’m probably in a minority of one in my reading of that character: that he’s a composite of about seven different figures—some of whom you’ve mentioned. There are others: Herman Kahn is another one; Irving John Good; people who worked on the Enigma project. He’s got this combination of characters—let’s say seven. I don’t remember the exact number—six of whom are Jewish, and the seventh wasn’t. The seventh is Wernher von Braun. Then when he’s working on 2001, Kubrick’s working with people who used to work for von Braun, and he says, “Please tell Wernher I wasn’t having a go at him.” So let’s take Kubrick at his word and take von Braun out of the equation. Then everyone that Dr. Strangelove is based on is Jewish.

Interesting: when Midge Decter wrote her review of Dr. Strangelove in Commentary magazine in ’64—and very interesting given where Commentary was going, Kubrick—she loved the movie, but she criticized Kubrick for not going far enough in his characterization of Dr. Strangelove. She said, “Why didn’t you make him Jewish? That really would have made the point.”

Where was Kubrick going with that? The quote I like is that he described—I’ve got the exact words—Strangelove as a kind of vaudeville parody or caricature of a Nazi, which I’m pretty certain influenced The Producers, because Mel Brooks obviously would have seen the film and was in one of the early audiences for it. So he’s a Nazi in the way that Mel Brooks did Nazis in The Producers, not to be taken entirely seriously.

My argument is that he’s actually a Jewish character who’s got this Nazi arm grafted on him, as opposed to the other way around: he’s not a Nazi with a Jewish arm; rather, the body’s Jewish and the arm remains Nazi. It’s kind of like the witch—I might mix that up—but his Jewish body with his Nazi arm obviously wants to strangle this Jewish body because he’s based on all these Jewish characters. The one character I forgot to add that he’s largely based on is Stanley Kubrick himself. There are pictures on the set where Peter Sellers and Kubrick are wearing the same outfit, and part of the accent that Sellers is affecting is in part based on Kubrick’s.

Their relationship developed when they worked together on Lolita a couple of years earlier. In that, my argument is that Quilty—the character Sellers plays—is Kubrick’s dark double. So much of it is based on Kubrick. Bear in mind, one of the ways that we analyze in film studies is to look at the casting—and Peter Sellers is a Jewish actor. So for me, it’s a bit too simple to say he’s a Nazi. He’s a caricature of one, played by a Jew as a caricature, but also based on all these other Jews. Maybe when he’s trying to strangle himself, he’s trying to strangle the Jewishness out of him, because part of him is also Nazi.

I think there’s also something deeper. What’s interesting—I put this in the 2018 book and probably repeated it a bit in Kubrick: An Odyssey—is that when Kubrick was doing his research for Dr. Strangelove, he was conflating the idea of nuclear holocaust (with a small “h”) with what was beginning to be known as the Holocaust—the Final Solution of six million Jews by the Nazis. In his research he’s reading people like Hannah Arendt, Bruno Bettelheim, and Raul Hilberg. He has these reference cards. On the cards, he notes the idea of Jews cooperating in their own destruction—very much an idea that Hilberg came up with and Arendt popularized with her Eichmann in Jerusalem articles on the banality of evil. If we read Strangelove as Jewish, and not simply as a Nazi, you can see how that fits with the idea that Jews are cooperating in their own destruction.

It’s also interesting that on the crew of the B-52 bomber there’s a Jewish navigator. So in that multicultural crew, one of them is Jewish.

Eli Karetny
I’m going to spend a little time soon thinking through some of the Jewish influences and the idea of a dark double. But I want to stay here for a moment on the Strangelove character as having allegorical significance with a political inflection. Was Kubrick saying something there about the post–World War II influences on America—looking beyond the initial stages of the Cold War? Did some German influences find their way into the U.S. that transformed U.S. thinking—Nazi scientists like von Braun and others who made their way from the Nazi regime to the U.S. and had a profound impact on technological developments, rocketry, NASA? Is he pointing in that direction?

Nathan Abrams
I think it’s difficult to escape that conclusion. We have a Nazi scientist at the heart of this film. It’s inescapable to think of Wernher von Braun. He probably was thinking of von Braun; he just tried to backpedal when he wanted to work with people associated with him. Arthur C. Clarke, I think, was friends with von Braun. So yes, there are probably allusions to Operation Paperclip and the hiring of Nazi scientists in that race with the Soviet Union to get the best they could from Nazi Germany.

There’s also the influence of other German émigrés on American life. I mentioned Hannah Arendt already, but Fredric Wertham, among others. The Frankfurt School probably also comes through. That relates more to Lolita, I suppose, with the character of Dr. Zempf. Kubrick was fascinated with all things German. So I’d see no surprise in him having that in there. The beauty of such a character is that he can be read on many levels. It’s not so simple to peg him as one thing. My argument is that underlying all the Nazism of Dr. Strangelove, there’s this Jewishness. It’s not so simple to say he’s a Nazi; he’s a parody of a Nazi, as seen by Jews. And he’s not entirely Jewish either—so I’m not going to swing the other way.

Eli Karetny
Looking beyond just this film and thinking about his war movies, I want to spend a little time talking about what his war films say. Of all the movies he’s made, almost half of them deal with war: Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, and Full Metal Jacket; also projects he never got to do, like his Napoleon project and Aryan Papers. Why was he so interested in war? How was that the space through which he said something about human nature and history, revealing maybe a tragic kind of realism? Others have called him a pessimistic thinker—I think you push back on that characterization. Maybe point to why people think that, and then explain why that’s a mischaracterization, or at least incomplete.

Nathan Abrams
I’m not saying it’s a mischaracterization. I think there’s a tendency—ever more pronounced these days—to make up your mind first and then find the evidence later. In the case of Kubrick, they’ve decided he’s pessimistic and misanthropic based on what they see in the films, and the films do sustain that reading.

I argue, though, that you can look at it alternatively. When one looks through the endings of his films, from Killer’s Kiss onwards, one can read a positive ending. There’s rebirth in Killer’s Kiss. It’s a bit more of a bleak ending in The Killing. Paths of Glory—the soldiers are re-humanized at the end. Spartacus—Varinia gives birth to his son. There’s a pregnancy at the end of Lolita. Dr. Strangelove ends with one giant nuclear orgasm. 2001—there’s another birth at the end. You see where I’m going. All the way through, what’s the very final word of Eyes Wide Shut? I don’t know what language we can use on this podcast, but it’s the first commandment in the Bible—go forth and multiply. The implication being that the couple will go home, have sex, and maybe produce another child—another image of birth.

So this is where I see positivity in Kubrick’s films. If one wants to see negativity, you’ll find negativity. The films sustain both readings. I actually think this idea of him being a pessimist and misanthrope is based on a misunderstanding of what his actual life was like. Many people think he was the hermetic director sealed off from the world who didn’t like people. The actual evidence is the opposite.

Eli Karetny
I’m going to tease this out a little. I’m not yet bringing up where Kafka influences Kubrick, but I’ve read in several places that you’ve written where Kubrick says something like, “I’m not a Kafka, sitting at home alone.” Right? Lonely—dog, fat kids, a wife. He might have, after moving to London, spent most of his time at home, but this was not a misanthrope, right?

Nathan Abrams
No. He was a sociable guy. He didn’t go out because he didn’t need to go out. When he went out, it was a disaster. The world came to Kubrick. He had this big, large kitchen; it was open, airy, and he’d eat together with people. He’d make his films at home; when that part of the film would be at home, they would all be eating together. People would be in and out of the house.

For all the negative memoirs, collaborators—particularly screenwriters—are usually disgruntled for other reasons, like how they were treated as screenwriters. That’s a different conversation. But they all talk about how they were invited into Kubrick’s house and would eat with the family. It was a very collaborative style of filmmaking that involved his daughters and his wife. You get a sense of a really sociable Kubrick, and it’s hard to square that with the pessimistic image in his films.

Eli Karetny
That’s certainly the impression I got from the Michael Herr book. But he also acknowledges, despite being an affable guy, when it came to business decisions—paying his writers—that was a different story.

Nathan Abrams
Yeah. As a boss—I’m not going to defend his behavior as a boss—it did leave a lot to be desired. That’s where lots of the rumors come from. When he was devoted to a film project, he wanted his crew working 25/8—25 hours, eight days a week—for industry minimum. He didn’t understand why they weren’t as devoted to his vision as he was. So, yeah, he could be…

Eli Karetny
Back to his supposed pessimism—or I’d say tragic realism. Say something about the way A Clockwork Orange ended, and how he chose to end it differently than Burgess ended the novel. That final chapter of the novel—Kubrick moves in a different direction. Maybe say a few words about that and what it might reveal about his worldview.

Nathan Abrams
That’s another positive ending, because Alex goes back to having socially sanctioned sex. I think it’s filmed in such a way as to show that it’s a consensual relationship, unlike what happens earlier in the film. He’s applauded by those grandees in Edwardian dress around him. It’s a much nicer image than some of the ones we’ve seen previously—a more positive image of a sexual relationship at the end of the film. Again, an image of procreation, hopefully with a positive outcome.

Arguably the greatest violence done is that of the state—to Alex—and then the writer. There goes one of my dogs—I have animals here; that’s very Kubrickian. When he was editing, his cats would sit on the Steenbeck, so who knows? They might have had a paw in The Shining.

One could argue that the violence Alex does to various women in the film is the greatest violence; that’s true. The way the sequence in the writer’s house is shot is quite visceral. But also the way the state clamps Alex’s eyelids open—you almost cringe thinking about having that done to you. Kubrick was really worried about the state destroying free will in terms of the source of creative, artistic inspiration. He’s probably thinking, “What if they did that to me?”

Eli Karetny
That’s interesting, because that flips on its head one way of understanding these different endings. There’s a reading that in Burgess’s novel there’s a kind of hopeful idealism: tools of social engineering—state violence—can have a positive impact; it can change us; it can make us better. Kubrick, as you say, seems horrified at that prospect—as a moral matter and a practical matter: it just can’t work. There’s something about human nature—there’s a permanence—that will make state violence nothing but violence, with no transformative, positive prospect. What do you think about that?

Nathan Abrams
I think he’s really taking on, in the ’60s, B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism—the idea that you can train the badness out of an individual. This was very much in vogue. Think of the fear of brainwashing in the ’50s—The Manchurian Candidate—that the Soviets were attempting with Pavlovian responses. Then you have brainwashing and cults in the ’60s and early ’70s. He can see that as a very dangerous tool in the hands of the state, because what they can do on a mass scale.

If you get rid of “the spark”—although that spark might lead to violence in the case of Alex—it’s also the spark that leads to creative forces. During the making of 2001, he was sitting around with Dan Richter and Roman Polanski, discussing whether they’d taken drugs. They said the sugar cubes Kubrick had were like drugs. Kubrick said, “No, I never have and I never will.” They said, “Why not? You’re square.” He said, “Because I don’t know where the source of my creativity comes from. I’m afraid that if I take drugs, I’ll lose it.” That explains his horror of the Ludovico Technique. He didn’t believe in behaviorism. His image is: we become automata if we’re all conditioned to behave the same way. Hence why he wants to rehabilitate Alex—which is different to Burgess—because at least Alex has free will and creativity. The violence is that of the Ludovico Technique.

When Alex is forced to jump out the window—very clever technique he uses to show that. He really wants you to empathize with Alex at that point—that first-person subjective shot when he throws the camera out the window. Kubrick, being a notoriously cheap producer, would not have wanted to destroy a camera willy-nilly, but he considered that shot important enough.

Eli Karetny
You mentioned how Alex is depicted throughout the film—also different from the novel. In the novel, Alex is not at all a sympathetic character, whereas Kubrick depicts him in a very complex way. There are moments where we feel sympathy for Alex—we’re cheering for this anti-hero.

Nathan Abrams
In his publicity for the film, he compared him to—forgive me, I’m trying to think which Shakespearean king—I think Richard III—that you hate and like at the same time. You make him this charming character. The way Malcolm McDowell plays him: it’s his perspective, his narration. He’s very charming, very erudite. He has an extremely good way with words. I think Kubrick created him as a sympathetic character. Whether you sympathize with him is a different issue, but I think that is, in part, the authorial intention. The film is very much from his perspective, so naturally that’s going to sway us. That’s how films work.

Eli Karetny
Shifting in another direction—another worrisome social trend and a persistent problem: conspiracism. Where does this play a role in Kubrick’s work? Evidence of a kind of social lunacy—but you’ve written that this is a kind of insanity that can also be interesting and even revealing. I’ll read a line from your book Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film. You write, in a section on conspiracies, that “there are things below the surface in this and all of Kubrick’s films, even riddles, codes, secret messages—but they are rational things that enrich the films and our response to them.” Say a little about that—the lunacy of conspiracism. We see this in documentaries like Room 237, where the absurdity of Kubrick conspiracy theories is beyond anything rational. At the same time, he seems to invite a kind of conspiratorial thinking that isn’t only crazy. There’s depth and fascination—looking at things from different perspectives, attention to detail, even an obsessiveness that he both demonstrated and invited in viewers. What’s going on with conspiracism around Kubrick?

Nathan Abrams
I’d start with two reasons why Kubrick’s films attract this obsessive level of reading. One: he did legendary pre-production research. We know he researched a lot; therefore the films are filled with ideas. The Shining isn’t just an ordinary horror film. He’s read Freud, Bruno Bettelheim, the Gothic, The Yellow Wallpaper, Poe, maybe some Lovecraft—and put it in the film. We know there’s intellectual depth. Knowing that he read all that and it influenced his adaptation gives us something beyond what meets the eye.

The second thing: Kubrick didn’t tell us what to think. He gave us the materials to think with. He did do interviews—it’s a myth that he didn’t. Whilst he might have expounded on certain subjects at length, very rarely is he drawn on what his films mean, or what he meant to say. There’s a rare instance where he explains the ending of 2001 in a phone call to a Japanese director, or maybe The Shining—one of those—where he probably didn’t expect anyone to record that and transcribe it and stick it on the internet years later.

I like to call Kubrick an elliptical director. We’re left with these monuments—like the monolith in 2001—into which we can read what we want, but we know it’s based on something. We just don’t 100% know what.

The other thing is the character of Kubrick himself. He may be one of the most written-about directors ever. Hitchcock—who is one of the most written-about—doesn’t attract the same obsessive interest. It’s in part due to how Kubrick has been painted (incorrectly, I would say), but it doesn’t matter whether it’s true. What people believe matters. They believe he was a hermetic, Howard Hughes-like recluse; a bearded recluse. Also that he was Jewish—most conspiracy theories lie where there’s a Jew. There’s a comparison with Leo Strauss: Strauss was said to put secret codes in his works that only his followers could understand. People say the same about Kubrick. That persona attracts conspiracism.

Eli Karetny
If I can reveal something about myself: I spent more time than I’d like to admit searching for those secret codes in Strauss’s work—and maybe some extra hours searching for things in Kubrick’s movies as well. I searched so hard I created them, and they’ve stuck with me.

Nathan Abrams
That’s like Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum—a novel Kubrick expressed interest in adapting. It’s precisely that: did I find them? No, I produced them. That’s the kind of cultural production Eco wrote about in Foucault’s Pendulum; what people tried to do with Strauss, and then did with Kubrick. The idea of him as this bearded, Jewish, hermetic individual adds to that. People don’t look for conspiracies when it’s just some ordinary white guy named Chip. They do when he’s named Stanley and he’s got a beard.

Eli Karetny
A few things. One—thinking back, some memories: Strauss said, I think in a private letter, something like, “Why walk through an open door when you can enter through a keyhole?” It revealed something about the way he thinks and writes—what kind of people he’s writing to—and the techniques he’s drawn to. I wonder if there’s some element of that in Kubrick as well. If there’s some element of that in Kubrick—is he revealing something about the way he thinks and the kinds of people he wants to be thinking with, or am I projecting?

Nathan Abrams
I’d love the full quote—I like that idea. I’d apply that Strauss quote, but we have to remember they’re working in different media. Strauss is political philosophy. I think I read him as an undergraduate—early modern political thought—Hobbes. He was so obscure to most of us that even though I’d read him, I’d forgotten I’d read him by the time he suddenly became famous again in the second George W. Bush term, after the Iraq War.

He’s writing for an academic audience—people who know that genre. We always have to remember about Kubrick: as much as he might be an intellectual, he’s trying to make commercial films. He wants to make a commercial return on his investment. He’s not going to make utter commercial trash—he’s incapable of it—but he doesn’t want to make Derek Jarman’s Blue, something no one’s going to see.

Spielberg could make a film in six months and it’s a box-office success—Jurassic Park. Whilst he’s editing Jurassic Park, he’s making Schindler’s List. Part of the reason Kubrick never made Aryan Papers was he didn’t want to compete with Spielberg over scarce resources in Poland; he thought that would be distasteful. He joked that the reason he never made A.I. was that the little boy would have grown an Adam’s apple and stubble by the time he finished.

His movies can be read on multiple levels because he’s trying to attract the widest possible audience. He admired Spielberg’s ability to do that. The other part of him had done so much research he wanted to put those ideas in there. There’s a paraphrase of David Mamet quoting Maimonides: when people say, “Are you worried if people understand the codes in your films?”—those that do, do; those that don’t, don’t. If he’s put references to the Minotaur, the labyrinth, Borges, Kafka—if you get it, great; if you don’t, you won’t not get the film. It’s not the key to unlock it.

With Strauss, you may need the keyhole to understand him. With Kubrick, the door’s wide open. You can go in through the keyhole or walk in through the door. He’s giving you both options. If you go one way, you’ll get more out of it. Also, a lot might be incidental: if you absorb that much information in prepping a film, something’s going to go in beyond your conscious choice.

Eli Karetny
You bring up his admiration for Spielberg. That was something I heard from a close filmmaker friend and kind of didn’t believe. I had an exalted view of Kubrick as a deep thinker; as much as I love Spielberg’s movies, it’s on a different level. The idea that Kubrick admired Spielberg took me some time to accept. I’m in a place now where I can appreciate it—especially knowing where that admiration contained self-awareness that Kubrick couldn’t be a Spielberg even if he wanted to be. Maybe that’s why he turned over his A.I. notebooks—the Pinocchio story—to Spielberg, partly because he knew he couldn’t make a movie like that. Is that right?

Nathan Abrams
I think he admired that Spielberg could make a film fast and successful. Kubrick wanted commercial returns but wasn’t going to make kids’ movies. If Spielberg can make Jurassic Park in six months and while editing make Schindler’s List—that’s a different mode. Kubrick joked the A.I. boy would grow stubble by the time he finished. He didn’t make Aryan Papers in part because he didn’t want to fight over Nazi trucks in Poland.

Eli Karetny
Perfect segue to fairy tales. I never thought of Kubrick’s films as fairy tales, but I see it now. Heroes immersed in dreamlike, almost mythic worlds, presented realistically—even hyper-realistically. Visual symbology, complex allegories, Jungian archetypal images appear lifelike, ordinary. I’m thinking about Kafka’s influence on Kubrick—The Shining and elsewhere: fantastic stories presented in a direct, almost journalistic style. That tension between fantasy and the mundane—say more about where Kafka influenced him, and how this plays out.

Nathan Abrams
What influenced him most is the idea that Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning as some giant monstrous vermin, but everything else is the same—he’s a vermin at home with his family. Everything else is mundane. That juxtaposition—the fantastic abnormal in the everyday. Kubrick tried to shoot things realistically. His view was: good, interesting, better. He went for near-realism, but when something else was better, he’d jettison realism.

There are examples where realism is less important—Full Metal Jacket: that row of bathrooms were actually British toilets; no military unit had a bathroom like that, but he didn’t care because it was a great shot. The name “the head”—cleaning the head. The poster image is of a helmet—as if this is all taking place inside Joker‘s head.

My argument about The Shining connects to this. Kubrick said, “I’m going to light The Shining in a way that Kafka wrote his stories.” It’s a hotel where the lights run all the time—not the dark haunted house on the hill. Riffing on Psycho (1960), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973)—everyday places. In The Exorcist, we know there’s evil; in Rosemary’s Baby, we’re not entirely sure. That ambiguity is in Kubrick: Eyes Wide Shut—when does the dream start? Is the entire thing a dream? Is it Alice’s dream? Full Metal Jacket—maybe Joker’s head. The Shining—Jack’s projection.

Apocalypse Now isn’t really about a river journey, nor was Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. That’s another author who influenced Kubrick. His first movie was very allegorical in a Conradian fashion, before he learned to hide his hand.

Eli Karetny
I’m thinking about Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It’s been reported he was reading it while making 2001, and gifted it to Arthur C. Clarke. Campbell writes: “The hero is the man of self-achieved submission.” Submission to what? Is there an element of that view of the hero in Kubrick’s work, especially 2001? Who’s the hero in 2001?

Nathan Abrams
Let’s say Dave Bowman. That’s tricky. Yes, he’s reading Campbell, but he’s also reading Frazer’s The Golden Bough. Pinning Kubrick down to one source is difficult. The mythology comes from many places and can be read in different ways.

2001 is read as a Christian movie by many. My contribution is to read it in a Jewish vein as very Kabbalistic—there’s the Jewish idea of reincarnation. My Sri Lankan friend says it’s Buddhist—Arthur C. Clarke was living in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), a Buddhist country, so that makes sense. Three hundred people: one Buddhist reading, one Jewish reading, the other 298 Christian readings. The Buddhist argument has merit because of Clarke; the Jewish argument has merit because that’s what Kubrick knows. The Christian readings are impositions—why would Kubrick make a Christian movie? But in his use of myth—drawn from Campbell and the Bible—people can read different things in there.

Eli Karetny
I struggled with whether submission plays a role in Kubrick. I don’t see it myself. Maybe the monolith has a mysterious force; at the end, after he overcomes HAL and passes through the portal into this interdimensional space, there seems to be an element of submission—he’s in bed, no longer moving, just before the rebirth; the monolith stands at the foot of the bed. Maybe there’s some element of submission there. In The Shining, by the end, Jack has submitted to the dark forces of the Overlook—one a heroic figure, one an anti-hero. In both cases, a kind of giving in to higher or mysterious forces. Anyway—let’s press on.

Nathan Abrams
I definitely agree that in The Shining Jack is submissive to a higher power—he’s willing to obey its dictates. As I argued in the 2018 book, that’s influenced by Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority and Genesis 22. Milgram’s book opens with Genesis 22—the idea of Abraham submitting to a higher power, which would have been a voice in his head telling him to kill his son—he’s about willing to do it. That presents the age-old problem of obedience to authority. That submission idea works for The Shining. Whether that’s Campbell or not, I don’t think I’m qualified to say. It comes from his understanding of the Nazi mindset and his reading of Milgram and Robert J. Lifton, and, as I mentioned earlier, Arendt and Hilberg, coupled with Genesis 22—which Kierkegaard also engages.

Eli Karetny
Perfect way to pivot to Kubrick and Kabbalah—Kubrick as New York Jewish intellectual. On the Kabbalistic side: the monolith. Clarke’s “Sentinel” monolith is different from Kubrick’s; Kubrick changes it from a pyramidal technological artifact to something very different. You’ve described it as a kind of tombstone, maybe a gateway. Also, Dave Bowman—after overcoming HAL, he passes through the portal and ends in another dimensional space where a crystal glass breaks. What might that mean—Jewish weddings, Kabbalah (shevirat ha-kelim, the breaking of the vessels)? He’s in bed, staring at the monolith; then we cut to the Star Child. And on the political side: New York intellectuals, neoconservatism. Some moved to Washington; around the time they were leaving New York, Kubrick left for London. Is there an allegorical reading of his move? Or did he never really leave New York?

Nathan Abrams
I’ll take them in turn: the neoconservative turn, the monolith, and the Jewishness of Dave Bowman at the end.

Kubrick first moves to the UK in 1960 to make Lolita. He does it for practical reasons—tax breaks, a good industry, production facilities. He likes British actors. It’s not L.A., and it’s as far as he can get from Hollywood in an English-speaking country. He briefly considered Australia but changed his mind.

His conversion to Britain predates the neoconservative shift. By the late ’60s you get the shift—the Six-Day War and the aftermath; the real shift comes with Reagan. By that point Kubrick’s already firmly in the UK. We don’t know Kubrick’s politics. He loved the definition of a neoconservative as a liberal who’s been mugged by reality. He owned guns. He was a fiscal conservative—didn’t want to pay taxes—but despite threatening to leave the UK under a Labour government, he never did. Norman Jewison, for example, left; Kubrick stayed. Was he a neocon? Possibly. But his politics are opaque; we read through the films. The major difference with the New York intellectuals is that they were explicit.

On 2001: the genius of the monolith. Film is manipulation—light and framing. You’ve got to pretend you’ve gone to the moon (as the old joke goes: Kubrick was asked to fake the moon landings, and being a perfectionist, he shot on location). The monolith presents a practical problem: how to represent it. He rejected the pyramid—too anchored in Ancient Egypt and in a particular tradition. He had practical problems with materials and shape, eventually finding the right one. The beauty of the blank oblong is that it doesn’t tell you anything. You can read it as a tombstone; the totality of the law in a Kafka sense; the Talmud; a standing stone (matzevah); tablets of the law with no writing; a movie screen; a gateway (and in the end, it actually is a gateway, because Bowman goes through it). The shape allows multiple readings; it’s not anchored to anything specific.

On structure: in my book I argue the film’s structure and the repetition of the number four—four words in the title, four digits in 2001, four monoliths, four composers (Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna uses four types of human voice; the choir’s size is a multiple of four), four sections, four million years—map to the Jewish exegetical acronym PaRDeS (Peshat, Remez, Derash, Sod). Peshat (surface) is “The Dawn of Man.” Remez (clue) is the leap forward—no intertitle, but it’s the second section. Derash (interpretation) is on board Discovery—interestingly named. The final section, “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite,” maps to Sod (secret), akin to Kabbalah—the most mystical section. There we see reincarnation—gilgul in Hebrew. (Kafka’s Metamorphosis in Yiddish is Gilgul.) There are links to gulgoleth (skull), and skulls play a role with Moon-Watcher in the beginning.

With the smashing glass, there are three possible things. One: shevirat ha-kelim—the breaking of the vessels in Kabbalah. Two: Arthur C. Clarke wrote in his diary that this was Kubrick showing his Jewish side—clearly a reference to the breaking of the glass at Jewish weddings, itself a remembrance of the Temple. Three: Kristallnacht—a Holocaust theme that runs through Kubrick’s work. Another small note: I read Dave Bowman as a Jewish character—he’s “David.” David was a bowman (an archer), and a lyre player; King David kills Goliath—HAL as Goliath. Bowman, in that baroque room, knocks the glass—he’s a klutz; there’s a whole literature (Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body) on alleged Jewish bodily “deformities” and anxieties around decorum. Also, when he steps out of the spaceship, the first thing we see is a bathroom—of course he wants to go to the bathroom after a long trip. One of Kubrick’s jokes: where are the Ten Commandments in 2001? They’re not on the monolith—they’re on the door to the toilet. So although it’s a sterile, sexless movie, there are loads of jokes.

It’s Homer’s Odyssey, but not a strict rendition. HAL as the one-eyed Cyclops; Odysseus the archer; the quest to return home. Plus Kabbalah, Biblical references, Jewish culture, and the mise-en-scène that prefigures Barry Lyndon. While I make a Jewish reading, I’m not suggesting it’s the only one; it’s the least done and worth pushing, and it situates Kubrick in the milieu he knew.

Eli Karetny
Make the case—New York Jewish intellectual—and specifically where Kabbalistic themes emerge, given there are no overt Jewish themes and he left New York.

Nathan Abrams
Kubrick grows up in the Bronx, then moves to Greenwich Village in the late ’40s, living there until about ’55 before moving to California to make The Killing. For six or seven formative years he’s in a cultural maelstrom: returning GIs, the Beats, existentialism, psychoanalysis, Freudianism—in New York, where the New York intellectuals coalesced around magazines they founded and edited: Partisan Review, Commentary, Dissent, The New Republic, The New Leader, The New York Review of Books. He’s reading those—we know he is. There are NYRBs in Wendy’s apartment in The Shining (there’s also a Playgirl—make of that what you will). In the original Strangelove screenplay, where the character is reading Playboy, the model has Foreign Affairs—another intellectual magazine—covering her backside. He could have been reading Commentary. He asked for articles from these magazines. He wanted to work with Lenny Bruce, Jules Feiffer, Joseph Heller—alternative New York intellectuals; Mad magazine; Mort Sahl; Elaine May.

I position his films in the decades of their intellectual debates. His early films deal with Freudianism and existentialism, the war movie, film noir, the boxing movie. Then as he moves further in—what’s happening in that decade? The Feminine Mystique comes out in ’63; Lolita is ’62; there are similarities between Betty Friedan and ideas in Lolita. Dr. Strangelove picks up debates that tore apart the New York intellectual community over Arendt’s banality of evil thesis. He lifts words from Bettelheim. Jewish intellectuals grapple with the implications of the Holocaust; Stanley Elkins on slavery; Friedan uses a concentration camp metaphor; so do Lifton and Milgram.

2001 reflects on the origins of human violence—how humanity evolves and where we’re going—released in one of the most violent decades in American history. The film doesn’t directly refer to contemporary events—the Tet Offensive, MLK and RFK assassinations, riots, decolonization—but it does, obliquely, by showing that perhaps violence is not innate; it takes the intervention of the monolith, but we need that violence to evolve. Depressing, in a film set in 1968. I’m anchoring the reading in what’s happening, rather than imposing it.

Kabbalah in the ’60s: the counterculture looks East—Zen Buddhism, yoga. Among Jews, many became “Jew-Boos.” Judaism looks to its mystical tradition; Gershom Scholem’s works are translated into English paperbacks and popularized. I distinguish Kabbalah (the authentic tradition) and “Kabbalah” (mass-market). The same under-30s who made 2001 a success were dabbling in spirituality—including Kabbalah. The film’s structure resembles Kabbalistic thought. We can’t prove it—archival work rarely yields a magic formula—but the research material is there.

He hires Marvin Minsky and I. J. Good—both claimed descent from the Maharal of Prague, the most famous inventor of a Golem. What is HAL? He’s a Golem—technology gone mad. Gershom Scholem named Israel’s first computer “Golem.” During WWI, soldiers saw war as a Golem; they felt like Golems—covered in mud. German Expressionist Golem films come out at the end of WWI—one survives—that would have influenced Kubrick. All part of the mix he absorbs in his voluminous research.

Eli Karetny
I want to follow up on both parallel streams—the political and the mystical. I’m having a tough time formulating the question, so I’ll think aloud. New York intellectuals: one strand became neoconservatives—Irving Kristol defined a neoconservative as a liberal mugged by reality. When New York intellectuals left New York and moved to Washington, they became neoconservatives. Around the time they were leaving New York, Kubrick left for London. Is there an allegorical reading of his move? Or did he never really leave New York?

On the mystical side: he changes Clarke’s monolith from The Sentinel—from a pyramidal technological artifact to what we know. Why? What’s the significance in terms of Jewish mystical readings? Relatedly, Dave Bowman overcomes HAL, passes through the portal, ends in another dimensional space where a crystal glass breaks—Jewish wedding? He’s in bed staring at the monolith, then we cut to the Star Child. Pick up there on both the political and mystical dimensions.

Nathan Abrams
On the move: as I said, Kubrick moved for practical reasons in 1960. The neoconservative shift is later. He remained connected to New York intellectually—his last movie was filmed in London but set in New York. He never really left New York in his sensibility.

On the monolith: as above—practical filmmaking and interpretive openness.

On the glass: as above—shevirat ha-kelim, wedding glass, Kristallnacht, and my “klutz” read. Bowman as “David”; HAL as Goliath. Jokes about the bathroom—Ten Commandments on the toilet door. Homeric structure plus Kabbalah plus Bible plus Jewish culture.

Eli Karetny
One final question. I’m reminded: reading The Odyssey with my daughter, Odysseus’s wound is discovered when he returns home—symbolic of initiation. For Kubrick, there are Jewish themes just below the surface. He maintains both parallel themes—the Homeric and the submerged Jewish. The idea of the wound also appears in a Jewish reading—Dave Bowman limping (?), Barry Lyndon limping, Jack limping. What’s the idea here—for Kubrick, in a Jewish reading—the idea of the wound or struggle?

Nathan Abrams
I hadn’t made the connection to Homer—that’s a nice elucidation. What I have tried to do—particularly with Jack in The Shining—is that he’s got the name of the biblical patriarch who struggled with an angel. Subsequently his name was changed to Israel, and he had a limp. Ashkenazi Jews don’t eat the sciatic nerve; they remove that portion of the carcass. For me, it strengthened the reading of Jack as Jewish.

There’s also Sander Gilman on the Jew’s body—that certain alleged Jewish deformities marked the Jewish body. In the medieval period it was a cloven hoof; by the modern era, a deformed foot or limp that rendered Jews unfit for infantry service in modern nation-states. What started as a medieval anti-Jewish canard turns into a modern antisemitic canard.

Looking through Kubrick: Dr. Strangelove can’t walk; Jack has the limp (administered by Wendy); Barry Lyndon loses a leg in Barry Lyndon. Not all characters do. I don’t recall Bowman got injured the same way—though in the final scene he’s old and in a wheelchair. Earlier you said “submissive to the monolith”—he’s on his deathbed; give him a break. At that point in our lives, we’re all submissive—just in case we’ve been wrong our whole lives.

I think Jan Harlan, his brother-in-law, suggested Kubrick was hedging that there was something else—just in case. I’d capitalize “agnostic”: he didn’t want to fully go there, just in case he was wrong.

Eli Karetny
I think his wife said in an interview that 2001 was his “agnostic prayer,” right?

Nathan Abrams
Yeah. He described it as a $6 million religious movie in an era when people weren’t making science fiction movies—they were making Bible movies. A Clockwork Orange is his movie that deals most with religion; 2001 is his most religious movie—almost akin to a numinous experience of the divine. Watching it on the big screen, when it goes from darkness to light—that’s a recreation of Genesis. With Kubrick’s hubris and chutzpah, he probably says, “Look, I can do better than the Creator. I’ve got Panavision—what has he got?”

Eli Karetny
Fair—perfect place to end. Thank you so much. This has been a fascinating conversation. I really appreciate you joining us here on International Horizons. Thank you very much.

Nathan Abrams
I enjoyed it. Thank you. Bye.