Kubrick’s early works -- Joy McEntee (Thursday 18 July 2019)
Dr. Joy
McEntee is a professor at the School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, at the University
of Adelaide.
She has written
on Kubrick’s work namely: The end of family in Kubrick’s a clockwork orange.
(2015) Paternal responsibility and bad conscience in adaptations of The Shining.
(2016)
She has taught
multiple courses on film and literature namely: Adaptation, Fleshpot: American
Film Melodrama, Hollywood or Bust! and American Gothic.
She is enthusiastic
about pedagogy and has been awarded six prizes. She was bestowed a total of
160,000 to coordinate projects for the betterment of eLearning. [1,2]
Dr. Joy McEntee can be contacted via email: joy.mcentee@adelaide.edu.au
Dr. Joy McEntee presenting on Kubrick's early works. Photo by Karen Ritzenhoff.
Dr. Joy McEntee presented on Kubrick’s early films. She began addressing them chronologically describing exactly what films she meant when speaking of Kubrick’s early films. She divided them into three categories: Documentaries (The Day of the Fight, The Flying Padre, The Seafarers) Crime/Thriller/Noir, (Killer’s Kiss, The Killing) Anti War (Fear and Desire, Paths of Glory).
Dr. Joy McEntee
wanted to address these films via three lenses. The first was state of the art
and explaining the current status of these films. After this she looked at the
films controversies and described what provokes said controversies. Finally, she
looked at possible ways forward regarding the status and controversies
surrounding these films.
Dr. Joy McEntee
first described the observations that are most frequently made by studies of
these films and now have even become self-evident truths about Kubrick’s work. The
three main observations are that they are no longer hard to access or obscure,
that descriptive work is no longer necessary and finally that they are well photographed.
The
questions that she wanted to debate with the conference were that the early
work of Kubrick is not taken seriously by academia. However, she outlined that
these films can be used as a case study to examine just how Kubrick would
later craft his fictional films. Namely his objective, point of view driven
camera work and narratives. Joy McEntee also pointed out that these films need
to be placed in context. These films were not created in a bubble and
researching how they were produced and received can grant the academic world
insight into Kubrick’s methodology.
As such
they should be studied and compared to films of the era so that the cultural
and social setting in which they are produced can rescue them from being inside
the “Kubrick Bubble”. The documentaries and thrillers are relatively
under-supplied by critical analyses. However, the war films are relatively well
supplied with critical analyses. Dr. Joy McEntee hypothesis that this is because
the thematic of war is more resonant throughout Kubrick’s later career.
The Stanley
Kubrick Archive may or may not hold the answers. With the emergence of an early
draft of Killer’s Kiss entitled “Along Came a Spider” that portrayed
Gloria as a less conventional and more ambiguous character (Rescuing Davy from
Rappallo) Joy McEntee follows up on Karen Ritzenhoff's presentation and suggests a
study of the women both in front and behind the camera. Nathan Abrams followed
this up by informing the conference of Fiona Radford’s work. For her Ph.D.
thesis she researched the production history of Spartacus and realized
that the portrayal of female characters was heavily altered. Furthermore, she
discovered that Kubrick’s preference for British actors began on this
production. Nathan Abrams followed up by making the point that Dalton Trumbo has been too central
in shaping the narrative regarding the production of this film and should be
cross referenced by other sources.
In
summation Joy McEntee finished her presentation asking the conference the
following questions: Is every Kubrick production sacred? Is the consideration
and regard for Kubrick’s work a problem for critical analyses? Her suggested
solution is that we expand the contexts in which we look at Kubrick’s early
films, namely studying their cultural surroundings and the ladies who aided in
their production. [3]
Dr. Joy McEntee mid-panel discussion. Photo by Karen Ritzenhoff.
Panel:
The panel
agreed with Joy McEntee’s observations. Regarding Kubrick’s work, all films
should be examined on equal footing. The financial constrictions of the early
films should not be used as a pretext to not examine his filmography in full. Despite
having financial constrictions these films still have Stanley Kubrick credited
as the director. Therefore, should be examined with the same stringency as his
later work.
The
workshop discussed Kubrick’s modus operandi. There could in fact be a
transformation between how Kubrick crafted his early works versus how he constructed
his later films. The academic community must investigate his professional habits, how he
cast, photographed and edited his films by comparing his early experiences as a
director versus his later experiences. In relation to actors and casting we can
extrapolate that his preference for working with British actors began on the
production of Spartacus. A determining factor that would be almost constant in his later films. Fiona Radford, the P.h.D student mentioned in the
presentation by Nathan Abrams might have insight into Kubrick's predilection for British
thespians.
Kubrick
has inspired many directors that directly pay homage to him. However, did Stanley
Kubrick pay homage to any directors himself? What were Stanley Kubrick’s
influences? And how much or how little did they influence his work? This is an
important aspect to study because Kubrick did not live in a bubble. As such, he
crafted his films with influences from his epoch and his contemporaries. With
this in mind the panel agreed with Dr. Joy McEntee’s presentation regarding the
early works of Stanley Kubrick and the need to comparatively study it alongside
other films of the same time.
There is a
lot to be learned by studying this period of the director’s career. The academic
community could study Stanley Kubrick through a progressive lens and
learn how his modus operandi progressed from film to film. Scholars
should also investigate Kubrick’s early filmography through a comparative lens to
try and understand just how much or how little Kubrick was influenced by the
movements of his epoch. If academia is able to understand Kubrick’s early films
it stands to gain a greater insight into Kubrick, his work methodology and the
influence of Kubrick's contemporary epoch on his work.
Bibliography:
1. “Dr Joy McEntee.” Dr Joy McEntee | Researcher
Profiles, https://researchers.adelaide.edu.au/profile/joy.mcentee.
2. “Joy McEntee.” Dr. Joy McEntee | University of Adelaide
3. McEntee, Joy. “Kubrick’s early works.” .” Stanley
Kubrick, Life and Legacy. 15 July 2019, Leiden.
Blog Post by: Miguel Mira
Comments
Post a Comment