The Kubrickon is new multimedia campaign to fathom the secret design behind what I call Stanley Kubrick’s Architecture of Immersion.
I have never been a fan of Kubrick’s films; in fact I have disliked the later ones quite a bit but most of all the whole idea that he is a Great Cinematic Genius bugged the hell out of me for years.
The cognitive dissonance between my own experience of his films and the larger consensus, which had bothered me for decades, finally moved me to try and tackle it with podcaster Doug Lain. (Clic kon image for podcast)
After the conversation, I re-watched Room 237 and The Shining and finally “got” the latter (enjoyed it, I mean), thereby deepening my interest in the idea that Kubrick’s films were not ordinary films, either in the sense of being simple entertainment, or “works of art.”
I reached a tentative conclusion that Kubrick had approached his “art” scientifically, as an experiment of some kind, and that the proof of this was in the way his films generated such obsessive attention and analysis. I started to suppose that this was deliberately intended by Kubrick, for a specific purpose.
I had a kind of epiphany in which I thought I had grokked what that scientific purpose was. I sent some lines out into the “Sync” community ~ where many of the SK-obsessives obsess together ~ which led to another podcast. (Clink on image below)
I didn’t want to come out and state my “discovery” because it was so wild and mostly unbacked by any evidence, so instead I extended a challenge at my blog, here. (This was also the beginning of The Kubrickon comic series)
Most of the responses and guesses and feedback so far have been interesting but still within the accepted framework of SK as an alchemist, illuminati shill, NL Programmer, etc etc, positing very wide, general aims usually with mystical overtones; what I am working towards revealing is quite specific and not vague or mystical at all: scientific. This is another reason I haven’t revealed it yet, because to present an at least semi-“hard” scientific hypothesis is going to take some work.
So what started as a couple of pages of notes for a chat with Doug Lain has turned into a book-in-progress and a growing web of internet activity, which I call collectively, The Kubrickon, in imitation of the original Kubrickon, which is what I am hoping to unveil.
There’s a Twitter feed.
A Youtube channel where I will be uploading a series of short (often very short, the first is 37 seconds long) films.
A new piece at The Quietus that pretty well sums up the opening hypothesis: There’s Something About Stanley: Kubrick’s Strange Science Of Obsession