Geoffrey Cocks Responds to Henry Lawton

Unfortunately, Henry Lawton’s review of my book, The Wolf at the Door: Stanley Kubrick, History, and the Holocaust (March 2006), lives up to its title. That is, it consists of assertion rather than argument. This is both surprising and disappointing, since Lawton’s approach is the correct one: to challenge the specific evidence for my chief argument, to wit, that in The Shining there is a subtext relating to the Holocaust. But instead of following the logic and strength of his approach by offering examples of my “reaching way beyond [the] evidence,” Lawton contents himself with mere repetition of the assertion that my arguments are invalid.

Lawton also asserts that I admit “having virtually nothing to work with.” I do not say this. The last three chapters of the book in particular offer extensive evidence of patterns of cinematic reference that—arguably—can be interpreted as reflecting a lifelong approach-avoidance syndrome on Kubrick’s part with regard to the Holocaust. What I do say is that some of my interpretations of specific features of The Shining are more speculative than others, but it is especially those others—in the patterns they form in that film and in connection with patterns of symbolism and reference in other Kubrick films—which, I argue, constitute rich, subtle evidence for my thesis. I find it especially curious that a psychohistorian would not be attentive to my approach, which relies heavily on Freud’s dream theory, where of course small things in the dreamwork reveal powerful—and thereby distorted, denied, and repressed—important things in the mind and life of the dreamer. This approach is especially apropos here, since, as I also extensively document, Kubrick himself was well schooled in Freud and consciously constructed his films as dreams, using depth of field to invest all sorts of objects in the frame with meaning and reference. You won’t read it in Lawton’s review, but this is one of the reasons why, along with many other things, the number “42,” a German typewriter, and musical compositions by Bartók and Penderecki written under the impact of the Nazis and the Holocaust are important parts of a pattern of visual and aural expression that constitutes powerful historical reference.

I do not know what to make of another assertion by Lawton, that I leave unanswered the question of why Kubrick would adopt such an indirect approach—principally in The Shining—in dealing with the Holocaust. Apart from the fact that Lawton himself quotes me on the reasons in general why Kubrick adopted such an indirect approach, he has apparently forgotten about the extensive sections of the book (pp. 6-10, 14-17, 28-32, and much or most of chapters 5, 6, 7, 10, and 11) devoted to answering precisely this question. The short answer in this small space is this: the Holo-

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caust was worse than anything, even the end-of-the-world craziness of Dr. Strangelove. (And even Dr. Strangelove, which contains its own oblique reference to the Holocaust, was rendered a black comedy partly because Kubrick could not endure a dramatic iteration.) Lawton—or anyone—might find my answer inadequate or even wrong, but I do ask the question and I do offer an answer.

I agree with Lawton that Oedipal dynamics played a role in Kubrick’s life and work and he is right that the story in The Shining is strongly Oedipal. But these dynamics do not displace others; both the historical and the Oedipal were powerful influences on Kubrickian cinema. No life can be understood by reference to a single theory, which is another argument I make (in Chapter 1) that goes unmentioned by Lawton. It is particularly surprising as well as disappointing that a psychohistorian like Lawton also does not critique the several chapters I devote to putting Kubrick’s Oedipal complex in its own historical context. Kubrick, born in New York City in 1928, grew up a descendant of a Jewish family from Poland in a world dominated by the harshest of patriarchs, in particular Germans preaching and then practicing unprecedented exterminatory racism and anti-Semitism. In addition, Kubrick’s own interests and affections carried him deeply into realms of the cinema world which was importantly shaped and peopled by Germans.

I regret to have to say that anyone wishing to know what I argue in The Wolf at the Door will learn nothing from Lawton’s review. It is of course self-serving for me to say it, but you will have to read the book to judge the accuracy of this statement.

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