Type
Text
Type
Thesis
Advisor
Lutterbie, John | Frank, Barbara
Date
2014-12-01
Keywords
Film studies | artifice, grotesque, kubrick, lyndon, sex, violence
Department
Department of Art History and Criticism.
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76879
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
Stanley Kubrick's oeuvre is characterized throughout by a distinct and unique interest in violence, sexuality, the uncomfortable, the eerie, the unknown, the beyond, and the grotesque. His aesthetic and conceptual approach achieves a special quality of calling attention to the liminal - those unspoken, unseen, uncertain, ungrounded, fleeting, and perhaps ineffable, moments and spaces in the visual and narrative presentation that occur between scenes, between characters, between images, and between the viewer and the film itself. In doing so Kubrick destabilizes the viewing experience and suspends the viewer in moments of uncertainty, discomfort, and ambiguity, achieving this effect even in those films with an ostensibly straightforward narrative arc and traditional literary and filmic structure. His 1975 epic Barry Lyndon serves as a fertile and profound elaboration of this effect, helps to define the grotesque in the films of Kubrick, and displays how Kubrick employs this effect to stimulate and challenge viewers. Hypnotizing us with sumptuous visual beauty, refined manner, and a rollicking narrative, Kubrick casts a spell on the viewer that lingers forever. | 22 pages
Recommended Citation
Turchin, David Zachary, "Artifice, Aesthetics, and the Liminal Grotesque in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon" (2014). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 2755.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/2755