Lolita, Barry Lyndon, Eyes Wide Shut.

This crescendo in number of words reflects Kubrick's advancement not only as a director, but in my view a display of his constant capability to perceive things about human society and its agents (relationships, sex, power, wealth, violence, social validation, and etcetera). Kubrick, in his films, encompassed more and more content in each of his works as time has gone by, although I'm not demeaning his earlier works. The richness and attention to detail is almost unrivaled in the history of cinema, and as I was recently watching a session of his films the thought came to me: why not to interpret this trio of films through the lenses of TRP and/or MGTOW? I didn't knew both viewpoints until one or two years ago, so I might identify their “concepts” while watching the three films.

*****Lolita (1962): Yes, there are crimes and personality disorders, nonetheless I still consider it valid, but there is the warning about the age of consent. The main character is Humbert, and the context is the 1950s in the USA.

Humbert is a professor who is looking to rent a place, and this place happens to be the house of an overweight widow and her bitchy daughter, Lolita. Her father died and left them secured financially, and the widow even has a sacred altar in her room (with his cremation ashes and a picture of him full of happiness as a saint/blue pill provider). Lolita while sunbathing draws the attention of the man, and he decides to rent expecting sex with her and subsequently falls in love with her in an obsessive manner; on the other hand, the widow is in despair of having sex with him and capture him, as she is hamstering about being 7 years lonely after her saint husband’s death.

He rents the place, and Lolita as a female teenager stars acting flirtatious with him, while the mother calls her attention on lowering her value by eating unhealthy food. The mother somehow perceives her daughter as danger to her plans but not really on a conscious level, and sends her to summer camp; Humbert in his jealousy of Lolita says it will be good to discipline the teenager, thinking that in a females-only camp he will secure her, a snowflake. Nonetheless, Lolita goes away for months, and Humbert walks into her room which displays fantasies of hypergamy, full of posters and photos of famous males, including an alpha nationally famous named Quilty.

In the following moment after the nymph’s departure, Humbert receives a letter from the widow: either leave the house or stay to marry her (Humbert in this moment laughs and baffles about the widow’s desperation to capture him like a MGTOW would, yet he displays a beta oneitis for Lolita and decides to marry her mother as an indirect means of access). Days earlier, she had revealed what she liked so much about him: his antiquated character (read: blue pill provider, on the surface). Now married with Charlotte (Lolita’s mother), he stays at their house and secures it as a male gold digger and in hopes of reuniting with his obsessive oneitis Lolita. Fights and arguments increase in the couple (shit tests in the bathroom scene), alcohol and guns involved, and eventually one day Charlotte dies in a dramatic scene. Somehow, he said consciously that even a game has its rules and she should show more respect for him, referring to their marriage and how she treats him as a dog.

Humbert displays traits of being a beta on the surface, but has qualities that attract women, while deeply he is a psycho. Previously, there were displays of attraction to Humbert because of female pre-selection for him and how he acted as an ego booster to the widow, including flirting of the widow’s friends and even an invitation by a “liberal” and "extremely broad-minded" couple (the Farlows) during a summer ballroom. In this same ballroom, at the very moment the widow sees an alpha (Quilty) dancing, she rushes to him leaving Humbert and the couple of friends in the dust displaying hypergamy; Charlotte even disrupts the sexy woman that Quilty is always accompanied by, also showing that other women don’t mind sharing an alpha. At this moment, we discover hints of a past sexual relationship between the widow and Quilty, who also visited their house and had been attracted to Lolita in a way that competes with Humbert.

After Humbert and Lolita flee from the hometown, he becomes more and more worried about her sexual behavior, as she is flirting with boys almost everywhere she goes. Humbert had discovered that there was only one male in Camp Climax, and she probably had close relations with this alpha boy even if he was surrounded by women constantly. They settle in a new town where he secured a college job, having a house for the two of them, where Humbert went as long as doing all of the house chores and other responsibilities just to support Lolita; he even does paint her toenails. He gets constantly more afraid and enraged of being cheated on by the girl, specifically about dating boys in school and the school play, which he was right as she was cheating him for weeks. They fight and argue about it yet flee again together, when suspiciously she decides in a blink of an eye to stay with Humbert, disregarding on the surface her resentment about his control of her hypergamy. She needs to find a hospital soon after.

Lolita recognizes in Humbert a declining male, and flees from the hospital in the middle of the night with her uncle, even though it was a lie and in reality it was Quilby, the famous alpha. Albeit crazy, Quilby drove away with Lolita to New Mexico, where they would be in a house full of other men drinking and partying all day, and where he would propose her to make an “art film” (porn). Lolita said she refused and then flees once again, alone, and contacts Humbert after months: she has now found a beta to support her, and is pregnant of him. This beta's resources are not plentiful and sufficient for her, so she contacted him through a letter informing of the pregnancy and that the more resourceful beta sends her a check/money. He meets her and discovers the couple plans to move to Alaska with his financial backing (mind you, which was fruit of him as a gold digger, still beta).

The naming of places that Kubrick used for this film deserves attention: Camp Climax (when Lolita is discovering her SMV and about to be sexually active, again, before the age of consent), Enchanted Hunters hotel while fleeing and hosting the police event, and finally the Hunted Enchanters school play. We discover throughout the movie the enchanters of Lolita, these being the rivals Humbert beta and Quilby alpha, both gone crazy chasing pussy. The two rivals have a final confrontation, a male-male competition, where the beta uses a handgun to kill the alpha. Humbert ends dying in prison after giving the money to Lolita.

Terms such as “liberal” and “broad-minded” are mentioned, and also females smoking and being socially accepted as widows, giving away the background of the sexual revolution (culture and feminist ideology) from those years contemporary by Kubrick. The director gave many hints about how women are not that innocent as we men are educated to think, e.g. women whispering what we suppose are obscenities to males’ ears and the amount of lying. In the end, was the famous controversy and shock from the audience in 1962 really just about the age of consent? Or, was it also due to female hamstering about their true nature, mostly by explicit female hypergamy and how far males will go for securing sex? Crimes and deaths?

*****Barry Lyndon (1975): The main character is Barry, a man from the 1750s Ireland, an alpha (that's debatable, but he surely acts more alpha more than the other two movie protagonists).

Barry was born in a poor family, and luck/chance plays a central role in his life as indicated by the source novel. Barry in his adolescence fell in love with Nora, his cousin; she taunts and provokes him sexually and he develops a oneitis for her, as this is his first love so Barry is absolutely Blue Pill even risking to die because of her in confrontation with an alpha. This alpha male from the military approaches Nora to marry her with his higher SMV and DHV, as he proposes a dowry/a financial provision to their family; Barry opposes them, and obviously all of the family males go against him because of social conformity, no matter how Barry is deep in love (way more than she is, is she?). Barry and the military alpha set a pistol duel to clear the matter, yet he is betrayed by the Blue Pill men in his family and the marriage actually happens: thus, the military guy going into what society expects of him in a provider role.

Barry is then forced to move away from this hometown and family, leaving his widowed mother behind in a poor condition; as a misfortune as usually happens with betas who can’t defend themselves, Barry loses his horse and possessions to thieves while fleeing to Dublin. With a poor social positioning and inexistent wealth, Barry signs up for the military (which is of course admired by the women, as an example of the ultimate sacrifice, to die for someone else); there, he becomes AMOG between the soldiers. He expected the money and the DHV being military, which happens as time goes by but in a way slower speed than he expected, to the point he gives up the military after a long story of transitions between armies. Yet, in one scene in particular and through the attraction of his uniform, he by chance ends meeting a young German girl by the poor countryside: he asks her about food and he is accepted into her house. They talk about being lonely, and while Barry seduces her she even ends up neglecting her child. She was left alone with this child by a soldier. Comes a moment where Barry gets back to his journey to Holland, and they promise love to each other; whereas the narrator informs us of many and many military lovers she already had in the past, by this very road.

Barry had previously deserted from the English army, and now is suspected of being a spy. He is offered to join the Prussian army, and accepts, or else he would be shot. After participating in the wars Barry is now a Prussian police agent, and spies on Chevalier de Balibari, also an Irishman. Barry reveals the truth to the Chevalier, which made his fortune as a professional gambler, and he decides to educate Barry on this as a work; with the gambling, comes DHV through improved social status and learning of seduction (overall, Barry is now fully Red Pill). Then, back to England Barry meets by luck an interesting couple, a woman in her prime beauty before hitting the wall, who is married to an older crippled man who is about to die. This couple, the Countess of Lyndon and Sir Charles Lyndon, the later which dies soon after.

In the second act of the film, Barry seduces as an alpha and marries the Countess, acquiring now the famous last name of Lyndon. Into Barry’s rationalizing and calculated moves for the marriage, it was included what he would gain for it: the wealth, the property (a castle!), and the beautiful woman. What he forgot to consider in the calculus was the child (a Lord already) she had with the old man, and a Reverend who served and a non-sexual orbiter and general emotional tampon for her. Although now his vision is Red Pillish than before, he ignored these red flags.

Just the day after marriage, Barry completely changes his behavior with the Contess, now treating her badly. They have a child biologically from Barry, in addition to the child from Sir Charles. In the birthday parties of Barry’s biological son, we now see Barry’s mother living in wealth in the Lyndon’s property. A sage advice is given by his mother (why the perception came from a female and not Barry himself, a male?), regarding status and resources that Barry should be looking for, since he is still penniless himself. Barry then tries to win nobility titles, still penniless but using the old man resources, to get another DHV. It could be argued that the high society events and buffets and etcetera could benefit the feminine imperative, and with all the bridezilla stuff and the mating dance as seen on the garden scenes; on the contrary, what is usually called the patriarchy by the feminists is also displayed on most of the film, and Barry is seen constantly cheating his actual wife. The male and female privilege could be analyzed, too.

His wife is distancing more and more from him and she is becoming mentally ill, while Barry’s mother perceives the Reverend as a negative orbiter for their marriage. Those red flags start biting Barry’s back, such as the son (Lord), who grew up too attached to his mother and now creates problems for the couple, although admitting the Lord was correct about the false love from Barry which allowed the marriage. Misfortunes start to happen to Barry and negative factors such as no credit (DLV) take place, until his decline as an alpha and the final ultimatum for the film. In ends in 1789, with Barry poor once again and without descendants, like patriarchy gone unlucky.

*****Eyes Wide Shut (1999): The film EWS is set in the 1990s in Manhattan, NYC. Dr. Bill is the protagonist, with a higher SMV because he is a doctor and the status that comes with it, is also handsome with a beautiful wife, but appears to be more beta than alpha.

EWS begins with the couple going to a pre-Christmas party in a high society or elite environment, and is very open to personal interpretations as Kubrick did it in many other moments of the movie. In this scene it is shown how Alice, supposedly losing control after her alcohol ingestion, interacts with a man other than her husband. This man is an old player stereotype, trying to seduce and have sex with her at the very party, yet she is the one dominating the interaction through desire and being the gatekeeper of sex. Simultaneously, Bill is interacting with two female models who invite him to go for another place, he appears to be stepping back from the situation due to the commitment he has (wife and child), but then he is suddenly interrupted by a medical emergency and goes upstairs leaving behind the implicit ménage fantasy. The film goes back and forth in examples of how marriage is a box that both should fit into, falsely or not.

Shit tests ensue in every speech of the following bedroom scene, when the couple Bill and Alice is smoking marijuana and in underwear; eventually Bill will fail the fuckton of shit tests, and she will deny him the sex. The shit tests do include if he is jealous of her and if he cheated her with the two models. She bursts out laughing at Bill’s completely Blue Pill/Beta answers, and informs him a little bit of her past and present possibilities of hypergamy. While this is open to interpretation as a dream or reality, she could indeed have betrayed him before with a military man (the naval officer), and . After that, she tells him her surreal dreams that she is surrounded by naked men all desiring her to have sex, while Bill is watching. Hamstering is included in the conversations with his wife, too.

After the moment of revelation and awakening, Bill is called for another emergency. The patient has died, but his daughter which does not mind at the all of hitting on Bill and revealing her sexual desires for him, that is, high SMV and pre-selection. Detail: he is alone with her and the dead man in this scene, and she doesn’t mind leaving her current boyfriend. Bill then uses an excuse to get away and dodge the crazy woman, and goes have a walk on the NYC streets. As he is walking he gets approached, as in the male does not approach, by an attractive woman who later reveals to be a prostitute. Out of anger and other emotions Bill enters her apartment, and proceeds to kiss her but is suddenly disrupted by a call from his wife checking him. He stops it all and leaves, yet acts all Blue Pill paying the prostitute for the talking and opening about his weaknesses.

The thought, the uncertainty about her love and possible unfaithfulness is always in the back of Bill’s head; the anger about that was one of the motivations for accepting the prostitute’s invitation. After that Bill meets with an old friend, a frustrated med school dropout and now a pianist already married and father of four, he discovers about a secret society event. This friend (Nick) informs him of a required password to enter the event where he is playing piano: Fidelio. Fidelio historically refers to being faithful, and Bill cheats the entrance of the event through faking a persona, as that could mean faking being an alpha into the secret society. Bill enters the event and discovers it is a sexual orgy full of 9s and 10s, hinting at an environment of wealthy and powerful people, and he is a fake intruding this party. He is warned by a woman to leave it before his cover is blown up, but it is too late and they catch Bill (without he consummating sex/ physically cheating his wife).

Bill suffers the consequences of faking it, and gaming the system much like Barry Lyndon did: Bill is now under vigilance, from this powerful elite which obtains sex from the highest score women he could ever imagine. That hints us at the debate between wealth and power for a man, which does come first? Ziegler (a wealthy patient from Dr. Bill) could be interpreted as a MGTOW, displaying his wealth, emotional intelligence and autonomy. The means by which Ziegler is auto sufficient sexually is debatable, as that involves prostitution and his membership in the secret society; anyway, the whole secret society scene could act as a metaphor of our real society, and the relation between sex, power and violence (where once again we enter the debate if our society is moral or immoral). The use of Venetian masks can be interpreted as the social masks we use in society, e.g. masking as a PUA while you do not work on yourself and your integrity and values.

There’s an important moment, probably the only instance in which Bill acts truly alpha, when he meets with the second street prostitute. Although the original intention was to meet the first prostitute, tricking her with a gift in a moment of DLV. When he enters the room with the second girl, he is confident of himself and it shows in body language. But as soon he discovers the first girl has got AIDS, Bill leaves the place, even if the second girls is throwing herself at him all the time because of his high SMV and pre-selection. Also, the hypergamy of the very young daughter of the shop owner, is displayed with two Japanese men; after a sudden and not explicit change, her father doesn’t mind having her own daughter used immorally in exchange for something we aren’t informed.

Lastly, Relationship Duress (RD) and society’s expectations in general are a central theme in EWS. The last line of dialogue is an affirmation that the main couple should “fuck”, but what is behind this F word: Does it mean that she saw Bill as of more value than before and felt threatened of losing him and maybe his resources? Did his wife thought about it just in a blink of an eye, like Lolita did? This last line remains one of the biggest secrets about the director, as what’s the meaning of that final sentence?

*****Recurrent themes and Conclusions: It could be identified in all three films that women as being the gatekeepers of sex, and men being gatekeepers of commitment. These social dynamics are very well integrated by Kubrick, just not displayed upfront: Kubrick in interviews once said that the worst strategy to tell something is to tell it directly. Could this be the case? Maybe.

Men’s love is generally more original than women’s in these Kubrick films, even though society teaches us that the female is the most romantic of the sexes. Barry learns the use of love (seduction?) as means of deception, and seduces a woman into marrying with him after he had forgotten his first love; Lolita as a female displays that her love can be artificial and acquired; Bill is constantly worried about the marriage if his wife loves him the same way he loves her and if she is NAWALT, but, dreams and plans of female hypergamy, yeah. Pre-selection possibly helps other women falling in love with the protagonists.

Usually, it is the woman who decides what is cheating or not in a relationship, maybe this could be connected to Briffault's Law; for example, between Alice and Bill, she defined the limits of acceptable cheating, even if it really happened or was just in her dreams. It also reminds us that women are more sexual than men and like to have “fun” (in the contrary belief of most of men), in the sense that they are always evaluating the present through their implicit or explicit desire, while for men being sexual is generally restricted to physically acting sexually, to sex itself. The trio of films also shows how the male disposability is sexy for them, the potential of how long the male will go for females; that takes part in the debate of what is love for a male versus a female.

Kubrick uses in Lolita and Barry Lyndon the reverse of what we usually see, which is the protagonist as a male gold digger. At the end of both movies, respectively, there is the guilt money and the duel outcome, and the implicit theme of the male as a social fraud (even Dr. Bill could be seen as a fraud, alpha for the public life but beta in private, that is how important integrity in for MGTOW I think). On the other hand, the female gold digger is not seen as badly by society, where she is usually seen as a victim only (anachronism, cultural marxism, but yeah redistribution of wealth and patriarchy).

Maybe the judgment is clouded by my own morality, but the question of defining in a fixed way if a character is alpha or beta is difficult, even more difficult when it does include crimes directly such as in Lolita. Well, but that’s why women shit test constantly, to keep evaluating and difficulting the male behavior while maximizing their female hypergamy.

Innuendos and hidden language are plentiful in Kubrick films, not only as jokes between men, but also from women to men. And finally, of course, these three are works of fiction, but it reflects our reality. Other titles in his career could analyzed too, let's say A Clockwork Orange, but I have found that the trio mentioned focuses better on relationships between the sexes, and not only sex. Kubrick himself was known to have a personality of his own and even though he was married, he didn't stop doing what he loved, his mission as a man and I admire him for that.

As an important disclaimer, Kubrick obviously did not use this framework for creating his works; but, as I believe and have read before, the knowledge that we are forming and sharing now through the internet was here and in practice by men centuries or millennia ago. To me, Kubrick as a male had captured that, although I (yet) haven't read his biographies to have a factual evidence of that. Absolutely not for the purpose of game or whatever, I only wrote this to help or better our understanding of being a man, a male in this XXI century and how this is perceived throughout the recent history. Hereby, I recommend that you do watch these three films, and possibly in the future I will expand this with a full analysis, not only this experiment with what could be called a framework.

TLDR: My first post after being a lurker and not an english native. I wrote a concise analysis about three movies focusing on TRP and/or MGTOW “concepts”, as I (re)watched these now as an adult with added sarcasm. Many details may be missing, and feedback would be appreciated. I recommend that you (re)watch three movies now that you have another views on life: they are slow paced but not boring, pay attention to the details and implicit narratives. ;-)

Cheers from Brazil, KubrickBrHue.