Eyes Wide Shut, Scientology, & Vivian Kubrick - The Conspiracy

Eyes Wide Shut, Scientology, & Vivian Kubrick - The Conspiracy (Parts 1-6)


Greetings my fellow conspiracy nuts. I bring to ATS a gift of sorts. The gift I speak of is my analysis of Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut, followed by my hypothesis regarding the film’s many different layers of symbolism & interpretation.

I had intended for this to be my Christmas gift to ATS, mainly because the movie takes place during Christmas and I thought it would be a fun idea to post this thread around the same time of year. Though once I got started on this in December, I realized it was going to take a lot longer than I had anticipated. In fact, I can probably write an entire book about this. Consider this the short version.

Parts 1-6 of my analysis are the preface. Part 7 and the rest of this thread (i.e. the good parts) are still in review with the mods.

Any reference material that is NSFW will be linked with a disclaimer.

On the bright side, it’s sort of a good thing that I’m being forced to release this in sections because it will allow room for some good discussion to take place.

This is a conspiracy thread written by a conspiracy theorist for a conspiracy forum.

And nothing else.



ABSTRACT

In this thread I intend to demonstrate, with evidence, the idea that Stanley Kubrick used his final film to convey a personal message about his life and his daughter Vivian Kubrick, who was forced by Scientology to disconnect from her family while her father was filming Eyes Wide Shut. I will outline the basic structure of the film as it was derived from the novella and incorporate it into a larger conspiracy that includes allusions to sex magick, pedophilia in the entertainment industry, elite families such as the Rothschilds & Rockefellers, the use of MK Ultra style mind control, and the subliminal references to Scientology & other secret societies that are inherent throughout the film.

INTRODUCTION

We begin with the official trailer for Eyes Wide Shut:



Eyes Wide Shut, like most of Kubrick’s films, is about much more than just what is shown on the surface. Eyes Wide Shut is a multifaceted, multidimensional masterpiece that incorporates the use of ideas & symbols on the surface to communicate a myriad of interpretations that exist in a highly sexualized, unconscious dreamscape obscured by ambiguity and illusion.

Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut is a story about Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) & his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) as they contemplate the illusion of intimacy, fidelity, & desire in their marriage. In the film, Dr. Harford (protagonist) begins to descend into a Freudian nightmare after Alice reveals to him that many years ago on their honeymoon she had briefly contemplated leaving Bill for a complete stranger. Frustrated and despondent, Dr. Harford seeks to embark on a quest for psychosexual liberation via the societal underworld of sexual fantasy from the lowest rank of humans feeding off society to the very top elite who ‘control’ society, all while his feelings of sexual impotence linger over him like a storm cloud.

During Dr. Harford’s futile journey for his own sexual catharsis he infiltrates a masked orgy being held by a mysterious secret society with connections to the Occult. Dr Harford slowly finds himself caught up in a conspiracy of lust, power, & murder, all of which are derived from the central theme of a collective sexual unconscious that precedes every aspect of human behavior.


PART I: Traumnovelle (Dream Story) by Arthur Schnitzler

In order to understand the film and my own hypotheses, one must first familiarize themselves with the short story that Eyes Wide Shut was based on.



Taken from Wikipedia:

Rhapsody: A Dream Novel, also known as Dream Story (German: Traumnovelle), is a 1926 novella by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler. The book deals with the thoughts and psychological transformations of Doctor Fridolin over a two-day period after his wife confesses having had sexual fantasies involving another man. In this short time, he meets many people who give clues to the world Schnitzler creates. This culminates in the masquerade ball, a wondrous event of masked individualism, sex, and danger for Fridolin as the outsider.

It was first published in installments in the magazine Die Dame between December 1925 and March 1926. The first book edition appeared in 1926 in S. Fischer Verlag and was adapted in 1999 into the film Eyes Wide Shut by director-screenwriter Stanley Kubrick and co-screenwriter Frederic Raphael.

The book belongs to the period of Viennese decadence after the turn of the 19th century.

Dream Story was written in 1926 by Arthur Schnitzler while he was living in Vienna, Austria. The short story is a fictional analysis of the human psyche as it relates to sexuality on the conscious, unconscious, individual, and social levels. In context, the themes and motifs of the novella bare a striking resemblance to the scientific analysis provided by Sigmund Freud in his essential work, The Interpretation of Dreams.



Synopsis of Dream Story taken from Wikipedia:

The Interpretation of Dreams (German: Die Traumdeutung) is an 1899 book by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which Freud introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, and discusses what would later become the theory of the Oedipus complex. Freud revised the book at least eight times and, in the third edition, added an extensive section which treated dream symbolism very literally, following the influence of Wilhelm Stekel. Freud said of this work, "Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime.”

Despite not knowing each other there reports that Schnitzler and Freud’s children were acquaintances around the time of 1926. It is believed that the two were in infrequent correspondence through their children. Whether their relationship was close or not, Schnitzler & Freud shared many of the same ideas and their comprehension of the underlying tensions of sexuality inherent in the human psyche.

Taken from Rainer J. Klaus of the University of Cologne:

Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Novella and Stanley Kubrick's film Eyes Wide Shut have much in common and are at the same time very different from each other. Stanley Kubrick sets the story of the novella in present-day New York. The main protagonists are the married couple, Fridolin and Albertine, renamed William (Bill) and Alice and portrayed by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Taboos and problems of secondary relationships in marriage in Vienna at the turn of the century (also frequently referred to as the age of decadence) are transferred to modern-day New York. In doing so, a not inconsiderable part of the mood, atmosphere and fantasy of the Viennese novella is estranged and thus translated into a new message by setting it in present-day New York. Certain questions regarding to what extent fantasy and reality in their mutual dependencies are concretized by the film and conveyed to the viewer can be raised. Schnitzler's attribution of the reality of the dream to Albertine and the testing of fantasy in Fridolin's reality is also sensitively put into question by Stanley Kubrick. The film and the novella are to be reconsidered by means of an exemplary juxtaposition. The marital drama from the turn of the century possesses a present-day relevance which, despite liberalization, the breaking down of taboos and changes in moral values, has not lost any of its intensity the yearning for intimacy in a satisfying relationship, but also its simultaneous endangering by our unconscious desires, feelings and fantasies. Arthur Schnitzler, who was a medical doctor by profession, was admired by Freud for his knowledgeable descriptions of psychic processes. They were not friends, but had great respect for each other. It is said that it was only the children of Freud and Schnitzler, who played together with each other, who gave occasion for correspondence between the two.

The similarities between Schnitzler & Freud are again described by Hertha Krotkoff in her work Themen, Motive und Symbole in Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle which was published in Modern Austrian Literature Volume 5 - 1972:

One could easily be tempted to construct intentional resonances from the common features in the title and theme of the works by Freud and Schnitzler. The idea of a position taken toward Freud's scientific interpretations of dreams in the form of a novella lies to hand. The extent to which conjectures in this direction are justified may perhaps be revealed sometime by the diaries.

Two critical differences in the novella are the absence of the beginning and end of the film. In Dream Story, the novella begins the evening after Carnivale has taken place, and ends when Albertine confronts Fridolin about the mask in their home. Kubrick supplements more story in the beginning and end of the film.


PART II: The Screenplay for Eyes Wide Shut (adapted from Traumnovelle)

A copy of the screenplay for Eyes Wide Shut can be found here.

The story of the screenplay starts all the way back in 1960 during filming for Kubrick’s epic classic Spartacus.

Taken from an interview done just recently with Kirk Douglas for his 100th Birthday:

The pair clashed again during the filming of 1960’s “Spartacus,” when Douglas forced Kubrick to go through with the now-iconic “I am Spartacus!” scene, which Kubrick was reported to have highly disliked. According to Douglas, their arguments were so prolonged and vicious that his wife suggested the two attend therapy together.

The psychiatrist told Kubrick to read the 1926 “Traumnovelle,” recalls Douglas, which would later become his final film, “Eyes Wide Shut.”

And although Wikipedia says that Kubrick obtained the rights to Traumnovelle in the 1960s, Rainer J. Klaus offers a modified version of events in his brilliant analysis Notes on Arthur Schnitzler’s Dream Novella and Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut:

For a long time, Stanley Kubrick had the intention of filming Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Novella. He purchased the film rights already in 1971. Schnitzler himself had also written a film script in 1930. At the invitation of the director, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, who wanted to take advantage of the success of other films based on Schnitzler's works, he wrote the manuscript for a silent movie
version. In this he envisaged a real attendance at the ball which in the novella is transposed into a shared memory and which will crop up again in [Eyes Wide Shut] later on as a party at Victor Ziegler's, a friend of the couple. But the film script remained unfinished. Pabst turned it down and it was not realized. It would be interesting to be able to compare both film versions. But we cannot do this. For a long time it was also not certain whether Kubrick himself had access to Schnitzler's script.

More details about Kubrick’s assimilation of the original silent screenplay into the screenplay for Eyes Wide Shut emerge from Kay Kirchmann’s piece Stanley Kubrick - Stanley Kubrick Das Schweigen der Bilder:

That Kubrick's analogous way of proceeding was probably immediately inspired by Schnitzler's own preliminary work has been demonstrated by research in the meantime, for Kubrick had asked Schnitzler's heirs for permission to read the draft script during his own preliminary work.

In an interview with Michael Ciment, Kubrick is asked ‘What were the various projects that you have dropped?’ and Kubrick responds with:

There is also a novel by Arthur Schnitzler, Rhapsody: A Dream Novel, which I intend to do but on which I have not yet started to work. It's a difficult book to describe -- what good book isn't? It explores the sexual ambivalence of a happy marriage, and tries to equate the importance of sexual dreams and might-have-beens with reality. All of Schnitzler's work is psychologically brilliant, and he was greatly admired by Freud, who once wrote to him, apologizing for having always avoided a personal meeting. Making a joke (a joke?), Freud said this was because he was afraid of the popular superstition that if you meet your Doppelgänger (double) you would die.

I remember reading somewhere that Kubrick’s widow Christiane Kubrick said that Stanley was immediately obsessed with Dream Story but admitted to her at the time that he was too young to understand its meaning, and that it had always been in the back of Kubrick’s mind as a work in progress.

Another critical part of this story as it relates to the screenplay for Eyes Wide Shut, is that Kubrick employed the assistance of American screenwriter Frederic Raphael. Raphael’s job was to help Kubrick adapt the screenplay from the novella, and to volley ideas back and forth with Kubrick.



Taken from Wikipedia:

In 1999, Raphael published Eyes Wide Open, a memoir of his collaboration with the director Stanley Kubrick on the screenplay of Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick's final movie. Raphael made criticisms of Kubrick, and upon its publication the book was publicly criticised by several of the director's friends and family members, among them Christiane Kubrick, Jan Harlan, Michael Herr, Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise.

That same year, Penguin Books also published a new translation of Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Story, the basis for Eyes Wide Shut, featuring an introduction by Raphael.

Here is an interview done sometime after 2010 with Frederic Raphael:



For those who cannot watch the video, he talks about Kubrick suggesting that there should be some back story to the secret society and their sex rituals. Raphael then wrote up a short draft in the form of an official report (he says CIA in the beginning but later switches to FBI). The fictional report is about a group of (presumed wealthy & powerful) people who were admirers of Kennedy and have since long after Kennedy formed a sort of club where they relive Kennedy’s sexual exploits. The interesting part is where right after writing this fictional document, he sent it by fax to Kubrick and Raphael says his phone rang almost immediately after sending the fax. It was Kubrick, and he wanted to know where he got the document (as if it were genuine). After Raphael explained to Kubrick that he wrote the document and that it was a work of fiction, Kubrick continued to press him by asking him where and what inspired him to write this and asked if it was based on anything true that he had secretly obtained. Kubrick exclaimed ‘If you got the ideas for this from something real, something secret, I need to know. You need to level with me!’

If this story told by Raphael is true, Kubrick was (in my opinion) concerned that any reference to any specific person, family, or agency might be so accurate or so personal that these families & institutions would come after him, one way or the other. It plants the seed in one’s mind that Kubrick was attempting to communicate specific messages about these entities without making these references appear obvious.

Kubrick is a master of subtlety, and of obscuring interpretation. The entire film is loaded with allusion, so much so that anybody with a basic knowledge of the Occult would find Kubrick’s hints are not so subtle and yet instead appear as blatant & overt. It’s becoming easier to see how personally connected to this film Kubrick is becoming. How much of Kubrick’s personal life will spill over into the final product?

Here is a video of Kubrick’s taped acceptance of the honorary D.W. Griffith award:



The video was taped by Kubrick and sent to the award show in advance, Kubrick explains he couldn’t make the ceremony because he was working on Eyes Wide Shut (although we now know that Kubrick had a fear of flying, or driving, or sailing, and that in particular he had a lot of distaste for Hollywood). Kubrick details the life and career of Griffith and points out that his story is one of great success in his career but also of great caution, for Griffith would go on to be shunned by the very industry that he helped create. Kubrick goes on to tell the Icarus myth, juxtaposing Icarus flying too close to the sun with Griffith’s wild and wacky career.

For reference, Griffith made one of the most racist films in history, Birth of a Nation (1915). To make up for his ill conceived notions of race, he directed the silent classic Intolerance (1916).



Taken from Wikipedia:

Widely regarded as one of the great masterpieces of the silent era, as well as one of the first art films,the three-and-a-half-hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines, each separated by several centuries: (1) a contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption, (2) a Judean story: Christ's mission and death, (3) a French story: the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, and (4) a Babylonian story: the fall of the Babylonian Empire to Persia in 539 BC. Each story had its own distinctive color tint in the original print.The scenes are linked by shots of a figure representing Eternal Motherhood, rocking a cradle.

This complex film consists of four distinct, but parallel, stories—intercut with increasing frequency as the film builds to a climax—that demonstrate mankind's persistent intolerance throughout the ages. The film sets up moral and psychological connections among the different stories. The timeline covers approximately 2,500 years.

1 The ancient "Babylonian" story (539 BC) depicts the conflict between Prince Belshazzar of Babylon and Cyrus the Great of Persia. The fall of Babylon is a result of intolerance arising from a conflict between devotees of two rival Babylonian gods—Bel-Marduk and Ishtar.

This may seem irrelevant to the screenplay now, but take note of this reference to Ishtar, as it will come in handy later. References to goddess worship are prevalent throughout the film.

Moving on, we come to a conflict between Kubrick & Raphael about the Jewishness of the main protagonists Bill & Alice (Fridolin & Albertine in the novella). Kubrick believed it to be a necessity that the couple be white. He explained that they needed to have no basis for marginalization, no inherited disadvantage due to race or class. Kubrick believed it was important for the main couple to appear as though they have everything including a nice apartment in the city, a daughter, a high paying job, social status, etc. This way they appear on the surface to have everything they need to be happy, yet they are not. Intimately they are miserable with each other, as it is revealed in the bedroom scene the night following Ziegler’s party.

Taken from Wikipedia:

While Fridolin and Albertina, the protagonist couple of Dream Story, are sometimes implied to be Jewish, there is nothing in the novella which justifies this assumption, and neither Fridolin nor Albertina are typical Jewish names; whereas Nachtigall (Nightingale) is overtly identified as Jewish. Kubrick (himself of Jewish descent) frequently removed references to the Jewishness of characters in the novels he adapted. In the case of Eyes Wide Shut, Frederic Raphael (who is also Jewish) wanted to keep the Jewish background of the protagonists, but Kubrick insisted that they should be "vanilla" Americans, without any details that would arouse any presumptions. The director added that Bill should be a "Harrison Ford-ish goy" (though Ford's mother was Jewish), and created the surname of Harford as an allusion to the actor. This is reflected in the way the film's Bill Harford is taunted by college students when going home in the morning. In the film, Bill is taunted with homophobic slurs. In the novella, these boys are recognized to be members of an anti-Semitic college fraternity.Kubrick's co-screenwriter, Frederic Raphael, in an introduction to a Penguin Classics edition of Dream Story, writes "Fridolin is not declared to be a Jew, but his feelings of cowardice, for failing to challenge his aggressor, echo the uneasiness of Austrian Jews in the face of Gentile provocation.”

In the novella, the story starts the evening after they have attended Carnival and any references to the festivities are alluded to in the past tense. For the screenplay, Kubrick & Raphael write a scene into the beginning where they attend a Christmas party, and continue the story as it does in the novella. They also invent the character Ziegler who is hosting the Christmas party, and introduce the character Mandy who is later revealed to be the masked woman who is sacrificed at the orgy. This is a major deviation from the novella. And the ‘talking to’ that Ziegler gives Bill in the end of the film is entirely the creation of Kubrick & Raphael.

PART III: Vivian Kubrick



Vivian Kubrick is the daughter of famous filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. She appeared as the little girl video chatting with her astronaut father as he is in space in 2001: A Space Odyssey. When she was a teenager she directed a twenty minute mini documentary called The Making of The Shining. It was the most intimate footage ever seen on a Stanley Kubrick set. She went on to score her fathers 1987 film Full Metal Jacket, and her father had intended on using her again to score Eyes Wide Shut. Instead of scoring what would be her father’s final film, she disconnected from her father and the rest of her family in favor of joining the church of Scientology.

Vivian Vanessa Kubrick (born 5 August 1960) is an American-born English filmmaker and composer, known for her work with her father, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.

Kubrick was born in Los Angeles, California to Stanley and her mother Christiane Kubrick. She had an older sister, Anya, from whom she was said to be "inseparable" in childhood. She also has an older stepsister, Katharina, from her mother's first marriage.

In her late teens, Kubrick directed a half-hour documentary for the BBC, The Making of "The Shining",which is included on all DVDs and many videotapes of her father's film The Shining. She shot 18 hours of footage for a similar documentary on the making of Full Metal Jacket but it remained unfinished. She did write the score to Full Metal Jacket using the pseudonym Abigail Mead. Director Kubrick had initially envisioned a score that featured Japanese drum compositions, but after hearing an original piece his daughter had recorded, he asked her to score the entire film.
Her father solicited work from her to write music for Eyes Wide Shut, but it was not completed, as Kubrick left for California instead. Although Stanley Kubrick wrote her a 40-page letter in an attempt to persuade her to return to the project she chose not to do so. The film instead used music by Jocelyn Pook.

Wikipedia says that her family stated publicly that Vivian had joined the church of Scientology in 1999. Although other sources tell a different timeline.

Taken from BlouArtINFO:

His daughter Vivian Kubrick, who acted in several of her father’s movies, directed a film about the making of “The Shining,” and wrote the music for “Full Metal Jacket” (under the pseudonym Abigail Mead), joined the Scientologists during the preparation for “Eyes Wide Shut” and was no longer speaking to her family as of 1998.

Taken from an interview at The Guardian with Christiane (Kubrick’s Widow & Vivian’s mother):

"She is a fabulous person," says Christiane. "Beautiful, very witty, enormously talented in all sorts of directions, very musical, a great mimic, she could play instruments easily, she could sing, she could dance, she could act, there wasn't anything she couldn't do. We had fights. But she was hugely loved. And now I've lost her." She pauses. "You know that? I used to keep all this a secret as I was hoping it would go away. But now I've lost hope. So. She's gone."

It all began, she says, while Stanley was editing Eyes Wide Shut, which starred Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Stanley asked Vivian to compose the score, but at the last moment she said she wouldn't. Instead, she disappeared into San Francisco and Los Angeles. "They had a huge fight. He was very unhappy. He wrote her a 40-page letter trying to win her back. He begged her endlessly to come home from California. I'm glad he didn't live to see what happened.”

And here Christiane speaks about Vivian in regards to Scientology.

On the day of Stanley's funeral, Christiane says, Vivian arrived with a woman nobody recognised. "She just sat in Vivian's room. Never said hello to us. Just sat. We were all spooked. Who was this person? Turns out she was a Scientology something-or-other, don't know what."

"Did Vivian give a reason why she joined the Scientologists?" I ask.

"It's her new religion," Christiane shrugs. "It had absolutely nothing to do with Tom Cruise by the way. Absolutely not.”

Interesting… Vivian’s introduction to Scientology had nothing to do with Tom Cruise, according to Kubrick’s widow. But did that stop Kubrick from taking out some of his frustrations on Tom Cruise’s character in Eyes Wide Shut?

At this point, I believe it would be naive to dismiss the fact that Kubrick must have been aware of the irony that the lead actor in the film he is working on is the main spokesperson for the celebrity cult that stole his daughter. I’m not saying that he cast Cruise for the role of Bill Harford solely to make a mockery of Scientology in Eyes Wide Shut. What I am saying, however, is that Kubrick cast Cruise & Kidman on the basis of their ability to act and the fact that they were a couple. Cruise was especially selected because of his machismo, alpha male status he is known for playing in various roles. Kubrick wanted an alpha male to be destroyed psychologically in the film, and to appear weak. He was staying true to the Schnitzler novel.

But back to Vivian, this was said about Vivian by her sister Katharina in The Daily Beast in 2010:

Katharina Kubrick, Vivian’s step-sister, also confirmed to the Daily Beast in 2010 that Vivian came to her father’s funeral with a “handler.” Katharina said that was the last time she saw Vivian.

“The whole situation was so impossibly weird,” Kathrina recalled in the Daily Beast interview. “We didn’t know, at first, anything about it really, so we were like, ‘Who is this person? Why won’t they talk to us?’”

And guess what… Wouldn’t you know it? Vivian is a conspiracy nut!

In 2013 she was seen in Dallas to protest the 50 year anniversary of JFK’s assassination. I’m still not sure what she was trying to accomplish with the protest, other than to make headlines. She even went on, believe it or not, InfoWars:



The strangest thing about this 25 minute interview is that instead of asking her about her involvement in Scientology, Alex Jones instead appears starstruck. But hey, that’s just Alex Jones being Alex Jones. The irony of course being that Scientology has been implicated in tons of human rights violations from forced abortions, involuntary imprisonment, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. And in financial crimes - embezzlement, fraud, and also the largest internal espionage ring ever busted in US history (Project Snow White), just to name a few. Alex had a primo moment to confront Vivian on her hypocrisy and he blew it.

More words about her sister from Katharina Kubrick, take from The Daily Beast:

“Viviane is immensely talented and she could have more or less done whatever she wanted,” Katharina continues. “But I guess, like a lot of people, she was looking for something. Obviously, she thinks she’s found it.”

She describes her sister as a rebellious spirit who “did a lot of alternative stuff” like Tarot cards, crystal healing, and homeopathy, and said she thinks she was first introduced to Scientology while working on the score for the 1999 film The Mao Game, starring Kirstie Alley, a Scientology member. (The Scientology anonymous source said that Vivian got involved in the Church in 1995, but not through Alley.) Both Katharina and her mother deny that Tom Cruise, another celebrity Scientologist, had anything to do with Vivian joining the church, despite the Eyes Wide Shut connection.

So Vivian’s sister Katharina believes that Vivian became introduced to Scientology through Kirstie Alley while working on The Mao Game. Released in 1999, The Mao Game would have been in production from 1997-1998.

But then we have the anonymous source from within Scientology that claims Vivian was introduced to Scientology in 1995 but that it wasn’t through Kirstie Alley and wouldn’t name anyone specific.

I believe it is safe to assume that Vivian Kubrick was targeted by the church. Scientology spends millions of dollars trying to indoctrinate celebrities in Hollywood, and it goes all the way back to the church’s roots with L Ron Hubbard in the 1950s with Project Celebrity.

As far as Tom Cruise & his connetion to Scientology goes, I believe Kubrick cast him in the film based on his alpha male status and it was only after the fact that Vivian had joined the church (or before?) but not because of Tom Cruise. Kubrick took notice of this parallel between his daughter and his lead actor’s character in the film. The fantasy sex scenes shot with Nicole Kidman as Alice and a Naval Officer are a direct reference to L Ron Hubbard.

Here is a link to Vivian’s Twitter feed:

Viku1111

I won’t post pictures of her tweets but you can see that she is very much an activist. In fact, she writes a lot about conspiracy related stuff, see for yourself. Despite being a Scientologist, Vivian would probably get along fine with most of us at ATS.

PART IV: Laurent Vachaud



In January of 2013, french film critic Laurent Vachaud offered a new interpretation of Eyes Wide Shut. This interpretation appeared in Positif, a french film journal. If anybody can find a copy of the Jan 2013 issue of Positif, please send me U2U.

Taken from BlouInArtINFO:

After analyzing the omnipresence of triangle patterns in the film’s sets, Vachaud (interviewed this week by ARTINFO) concluded that “Eyes Wide Shut” is much more than a simple story of spousal jealousy. He theorizes that it is about mind control exerted by the secret society to which Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman) belongs. Her husband, Bill Harford (Tom Cruise), with “big closed eyes,” is blind to the fact that his wife is part of a cult that provides sex slaves to wealthy elites.

As far as I can tell in all my research on this film, Laurent Vachaud is the first film critic to (publicly) posit an interpretation that is based on Vivian Kubrick & Scientology.

In his article, Vachaud wrote that the theme of abused children is at the heart of all Kubrick’s movies since “Lolita,” and that the Harfords’ child would also become, under the control of her mother, a slave of the secret society. Uncovering “barely veiled allusions” to Scientology in “Eyes Wide Shut” (among them the fact that Tom Cruise is himself a zealous Scientologist), the article claimed to discover a parallel between the movie and Kubrick’s personal life. His daughter Vivian Kubrick, who acted in several of her father’s movies, directed a film about the making of “The Shining,” and wrote the music for “Full Metal Jacket” (under the pseudonym Abigail Mead), joined the Scientologists during the preparation for “Eyes Wide Shut” and was no longer speaking to her family as of 1998.

The Positif article gained some notoriety online and Laurent Vachaud was asked by internet documentary maker Gasface to give an interview about his article and the alternate interpretations to Eyes Wide Shut.



Kubrick & The Illuminati - A Documentary by Gasface, featuring Michel Ciment (editor of Positif) and Laurant Vachad:

(NSFW) - Kubrick & The Illuminati - (NSFW)

I am not allowed to embed the documentary since it contains images of nudity from the film. To watch you will need to click the link above.

The video comes with somewhat of a disclaimer. After this video was uploaded to youtube, Laurent Vachaud himself wrote in a comment and said this:

I am not the director of Kubrick & the illuminati. I'm only intervewed about my Positif article from January 2013 on Eyes wide shut. The way the film is edited and conceived has nothing to do with me and i'm not supportive in any way of the final result. Gasface's, the two co-directors are rsponsible for it. Laurent Vachaud

The plot thickens! In any case, the words in the documentary are indeed his. He claims that Gasface and his co-directors edited it in such a way as to remove all the context from his article that made his theories seem relevant. So again, if anyone can find a copy of Positif’s Jan 2013 issue let me know!

PART V: Scientology, L Ron Hubbard, Jack Parsons, & Sex Magick

Scientology. Where to begin? This ATS thread is a good place to start. Tony Ortega writes a lot about Scientology on his blog. Let’s take a look at L Ron Hubbard:



Scientology is a for profit, pseudo occult, pseudo religion founded by Lafayette Ronald Hubbard in the early 1950s. Hubbard’s work in Dianetics goes all the way back to the late 1940s. Before Hubbard decided to stake his claim in the galaxy as the prophet of a pyramid scheme under the guise of spirituality, he was a somewhat successful writer of pulp sci-fi novels. He was influenced by Crowley at a young age, having read The Book Of The Law in his late teens.

Aleister Crowley & The Book of The Law:



After his career as a science fiction writer began to fade, Hubbard joined the US Navy. His service in the US Navy was minimal, as he saw virtually no action while serving. Sometime after (unofficially) leaving the US Navy, Hubbard wandered to Los Angeles where he met Jack Parsons, the head of Aleister Crowley’s OTO Agape Lodge in California. The OTO Lodge under the direction of Parsons, was practicing Crowley’s Sex Magick rituals, some similar to those seen in Eyes Wide Shut.

Jack Parsons:

John Whiteside "Jack" Parsons (born Marvel Whiteside Parsons; October 2, 1914 – June 17, 1952) was an American rocket engineer and rocket propulsion researcher, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Associated with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. He invented the first rocket engine to use a castable, composite rocket propellant, and pioneered the advancement of both liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets.

After a brief involvement with Marxism in 1939, Parsons converted to Thelema, the English occultist Aleister Crowley's new religious movement. In 1941, alongside his first wife Helen Northrup, Parsons joined the Agape Lodge, the Californian branch of the Thelemite Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). At Crowley's bidding, he replaced Wilfred Talbot Smith as its leader in 1942 and ran the Lodge from his mansion on Orange Grove Avenue. Parsons was expelled from JPL and Aerojet in 1944 due to the Lodge's infamy and allegedly illicit activities, along with his hazardous workplace conduct. In 1945 Parsons separated from Helen after having an affair with her sister Sara; when Sara left him for L. Ron Hubbard, he conducted the Babalon Working, a series of rituals designed to invoke the Thelemic goddess Babalon to Earth. He and Hubbard continued the procedure with Marjorie Cameron, whom Parsons married in 1946. After Hubbard and Sara defrauded him of his life savings, Parsons resigned from the O.T.O. and went through various jobs while acting as a consultant for the Israeli rocket program. Amid the climate of McCarthyism, he was accused of espionage and left unable to work in rocketry. In 1952, Parsons died at the age of 37 in a home laboratory explosion that attracted national media attention; the police ruled it an accident, but many associates suspected suicide or assassination.

Sex Magick taken from Wikipedia:

Sex magic (sometimes spelled sex magick) is any type of sexual activity used in magical, ritualistic or otherwise religious and spiritual pursuits. One practice of sex magic is using the energy of sexual arousal or orgasm with visualization of a desired result. A premise of sex magic is the concept that sexual energy is a potent force that can be harnessed to transcend one's normally perceived reality.

It’s very important that you understand the fundamental concept of Sex Magick as a form of divination. This is precisely what the secret society in Eyes Wide Shut is doing at Somerton Mansion, they’re practicing ritualized Sex Magick.

While in Pasadena/Los Angeles, Hubbard & Parsons performed what is called the Babalon Working:

See (NSFW) - LINK - (NSFW) for image of the Scarlet Woman.

The Babalon Working was a series of magic ceremonies or rituals performed from January to March, 1946 by author, pioneer rocket-fuel scientist, and occultist Jack Parsons and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.This ritual was essentially designed to manifest an individual incarnation of the archetypal divine feminine called Babalon. The project was based on the ideas of Aleister Crowley, and his description of a similar project in his 1917 novel Moonchild.

When Parsons declared that the first of the series of rituals was complete and successful, he almost immediately met Marjorie Cameron in his own home, and regarded her as the elemental that he and Hubbard had called through the ritual. Soon Parsons began the next stage of the series, an attempt to conceive a child through sexual magick workings. Although no child was conceived, this did not affect the result of the ritual to that point. Parsons and Cameron, who Parsons now regarded as the Scarlet Woman - Babalon - called forth by the ritual, soon married.
The rituals performed drew largely upon rituals and sex magic described by English author and occult teacher Aleister Crowley. Crowley was in correspondence with Parsons during the course of the Babalon Working, and warned Parsons of his potential overreactions to the magick he was performing, while simultaneously deriding Parsons' work to others.

More on Parsons, Hubbard, a the Babalon Working can be found in the book Sex and Rockets The Occult World of Jack Parsons by John Carter. I highly recommend it.

What’s interesting to note is that L Ron Hubbard stole the wife/girlfriend of Jack Parsons after the Babalon Working. This is referenced in the film when Alice reveals that she fantasized about a young Naval Officer that she met in Cape Cod while her and her family were on vacation. Cruise’s character Bill is constantly haunted by his imagination of Alice’s fantasy, where he repeatedly visualizes his wife being intimate with the Naval Officer.

Parsons & his Wife:

L Ron Hubbard in the navy:


The three of them create a dubious love triangle.

In the film, Bill Harford is upper middle class or lower upper class doctor living in Manhattan. Throughout the film he blindly flirts with an elite cabal of people who are presumed to be taking part in the orgy scene. The parallel between Bill Harford & Jack Parsons becomes noticeable when you take into consideration the fact that in real life Tom Cruise. Despite being somewhat of the celebrity spokesperson, Tom Cruise has his own fate sealed in Scientology, a pseudo-religion created by L Ron Hubbard. Jack Parsons lost his wife, his fortune, and possibly his life because of L Ron Hubbard, as many have suspected Hubbard of being responsible for Parson’s death. All of these things seem possible for a moment in the film, as Bill lets his unholy obsession with Alice’s revelation of the Naval Officer catapult him into a world of sexual deviance, magick, and murder.

At the mansion and after the orgy, Bill Harford is threatened by Red Cloak who is the master of ceremonies for the ritual. Red Cloak threatens the most dire consequences for Bill & his family if he tells anyone what he has seen at the mansion.

PART VI: The Occult History of Christmas

We see Kubrick’s brilliance and his intuitive sense of symbolism in his setting of Christmas in New York City as a modern adaptation of Carnival in Vienna in Schnitzler’s Dream Story. With the Christmas setting, Kubrick retains the basic cultural atmosphere of Carnival in Dream Story while expanding on it with symbolism that references both ancient and modern Occult practices. Keep in mind that despite seeing Christmas trees and Christmas lights in almost every scene, and despite the film taking place during the Christmas Holiday, we hear absolutely no Christmas music at all in Eyes Wide Shut. None.

We all know Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th, that date is reserved for a celebration of the Winter Solstice. In fact, nearly all pagan sun gods from around the world were born on December 25th. Historically, Christmas has been about sun worship.



The below excerpt is taken from an interesting yet somewhat over the top article at humansarefree:

Consider the pagan roots of our popular symbols of Christmas:

1. Christmas Tree - The sacred tree of the winter-god; Druids believed the spirit of their gods resided in the three. Most ancient pagans knew the tree represented Nimrod reincarnated into Tammuz! Pagans also looked upon the tree as a phallic symbol.

2. Star - Pentalpha, the five-pointed star. The pentalpha is a powerful symbol of Satan, second only to the hexagram. The star is the sacred symbol of Nimrod, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity.

3. Candles - Candles represent the sun-gods’ newly-born fie. Pagans the world over love and use candles in their rituals and ceremonies. Certain colors are also thought to represent specific powers. The extensive use of candles is usually a very good indication that the service is pagan, no matter what the outward trappings might be.

4. Mistletoe - Mistletoe is the sacred plant of the Druids, symbolizing pagan blessings of fertility; thus, kissing under the mistletoe is the first step in the reproductive cycle! Witches also use the white berries in potions.

5. Wreath - Wreaths are circular, and so they represent the female sexual organs. Wreaths are associated with fertility and the “circle of life”.

6. Santa Claus - Former Satanists have told me that “Santa” is an anagram for “Satan”. In the New Age, the god, “Sanat Kamura”, is most definitely an anagram “Satan”. The mythical attributes and powers ascribed to Santa are eerily close to those possessed by Jesus Christ.

7. Reindeer - Reindeer are horned animals representing the “horned-god” or the “stag-god” of pagan religion! Santa’s traditional number of reindeer in his team is eight (8); in Satanic gematria, eight is the number of “new beginnings”, or the cycle of reincarnation. The Illuminati views the number “eight” as a symbol of their New World Order.

8. Elves - Elves are imp-like creatures who are Santa’s (Satan’s) little helpers. They are also demons.

9. Green & Red - Green and Red are the traditional colors of the season, as they are the traditional pagan colors of winter. Green is Satan’s favorite color, so it is appropriate it should be one of the traditional colors for Christmas; red is the color of human blood, Satan’s highest form of sacrifice - for this reason, Communism adopted red as its main color!

10. Winter Solstice - December 25th is known as the “nativity” of the sun. This date is the birthday of Tammuz, the son, the reincarnation of the sun god. Traditionally, December 21 is known as Yule. The Roman Catholic Church moved the celebration of Yule to December 25.

11. Saturnalia - December 25th is also known to the Romans as “Saturnalia”, a time of deliberate debauchery. Drinking through repeated toasting - known as ‘wassail’ - was a key to the debauchery of this celebration. Fornication was symbolized by the mistletoe, and the entire event was finished with a Great Feast, the Christmas Dinner.

12. Christ Mass - Even the name, “Christmas” is pagan! “Christi” meant “Christ”, while “Mas” meant Mass. Since all pagan Masses are commemorating “death”, the name, “Christmas” literally means “death of Christ”. A deeper meaning lies in the mention of “Christ” without specifying Jesus. Thus, Antichrist is in view here; the pagans celebrate “Christmas” as a celebration of their coming Antichrist, who will deal a death blow to the Jesus Christ of Christianity.

13. Pilgrims - Early Christian Pilgrims refused to celebrate this holiday because of its pagan roots.

I’m not saying that I believe everything in the article above, and I’m not saying Kubrick believed all or any of it either. What I am saying is that millions of people around the world believe these illuminati conspiracies whether they have evidence or not. Kubrick was mindful of this method of integrating conspiracy theory in film. I think it’s impossible to deny that Kubrick uses the folk lore of modern conspiracies as a sublayer to the plots of many of his films. The reprogramming Alex is subject to in A Clockwork Orange resembles a lot of MK Ultra mind control. Lolita has tons of innuendo about pedophilia rings and human trafficking. Strangelove is a political satire that’s rooted in cold war conspiracy theory. Remember Vivian Kubrick on the Alex Jones show?


PART VII: Scene By Scene Analysis of Conspiracy Theory

Part 7 of this thread is being reviewed by the mods. In the mean time, it is recommended that you engage in a healthy, constructive discourse with the OP.

engage in discourse? Who the hell can read that fast anyway?

Take your time, theres obviously plenty to chew on.

a reply to: Rosinitiate

Take your time, theres obviously plenty to chew on.

No... You take your time. I'm the one that wrote it, therefor I am familiar with it.

originally posted by: ColdWisdom
a reply to: Rosinitiate

Take your time, theres obviously plenty to chew on.

No... You take your time. I'm the one that wrote it, therefor I am familiar with it.

Ive read the OP and subsequent posts. without clicking on links or watching vids, I'd say there is certainly an interesting connection, where this is leading (mods permitting) I can only guess but fitting in that sexual depravity seems to be quite a hot topic. Like a pizza right from the oven.

a reply to: Rosinitiate

It's just a movie. I offered to censor the images of nudity but... no dice.

Now I'm waiting to see if they'll allow me to finish the thread by linking my reference shots of the film out to a third party hosted website with a NSFW disclaimer.

a reply to: ColdWisdom

Thanks for a great thread. I first became interested in the esoteric meanings behind a lot of Kubricks movies having watched "Eyes" and looking at Jay Weidners analysis

jaysanalysis.com...

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

You're welcome!

Although I haven't even delved into the good stuff yet. What I've posted so far is actually only about 1/5 of what I've written. The next part goes right into a scene by scene analysis. Followed by some other parts, a conclusion, and a bonus section.

That's why I said in the OP that if I really wanted to, I could write an entire book devoted to this. There's definitely enough material there, as Eyes Wide Shut is rich with entropy.

It's one of my favorite movies. I've read many different interpretations of meaning (even wrote one myself) and would really like to see the rest of what you've got there.

a reply to: Bluesma

Thank you!

I'll get the rest of it out to you guys one way or another. If I have to upload the rest to a third party website then I shall.

Awesome!

Cant wait to soak it all in...

Great ATS stuff here. I liked the movie and of course the conspiracies behind this sort of thing. Very well thought out and written!

a reply to: ColdWisdom

Goody cant wait!!!!

has not lost any of its intensity the yearning for intimacy in a satisfying relationship, but also its simultaneous endangering by our unconscious desires, feelings and fantasies.

The unconscious is dominated by the conscious and if we dwell on a thing it is where the mind goes.

It is a simple thing to turn from lust to love by not watching, listening or engaging in conversation which leads to lustful behavior.

I reject lust and grow love, dwell on love of the deep heartful kind. Engage the mind in good and your feet will follow the path.

Thus I rarely read or participate here any longer and eventually will have stopped 100% it is no longer a place that searches for truths in my opinion. Still threads like yours can open eyes if used properly. Very well written, if you are not a writer you should be in my opinion.