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Comment by mynameishere | Hacker News Reader

The article dismisses the various theories ("Illuminati", etc) about the film by pointing out that powerful people in fact have fairly sordid affairs rather than satanic/black mass/ritualistic events.

It's worth pointing out that Sydney Pollack's character uses this same exact argument in the film (in the billiard scene). "We fucked her brains out, the end." Clearly, that was not what was happening in the movie, and that wasn't the point of the movie either.

The article mentions Jeff Bezos, but they might have mentioned Jeffrey Epstein instead. For instance.

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Regardless of what the article posits, the movie was based on actual secret societies. I'm pretty sure Kubrick was trying to tell us something.

Anthony Frewin (assistant to Stanley Kubrick):

I had a friend who lived in the south of France, G. Legman. He supplied us with a lot of information about secret societies and sexual mores in Vienna at the time of Schnitzler. He also sent over a lot of illustrations of secret-society rituals and the Black Mass, mainly from the 19th century. We had a lot of illustrations, contemporary and even much older, of some ceremonies.

That's a tautology. The film involved a secret society with sexual elements, so they lifted the recognisable aesthetics of some secret societies, particularly ones which involved, or purported to involve, naked ladies. There's no philosophy in there, and the costumes and rituals were a lightweight confection from a bunch of different sources. It's not like he was going to have them dress up in giant rabbit outfits and play kazoos.

Unless your point is that he features a monied sex cult so he's saying that they're somehow endemic. That seems rather a stretch.

That's an oddly specific response to something that was never said. My point and the overall arch of what I think Kubrick was implying in EWS is that these people exist and people in positions of power we would otherwise hold in high social regard are no different or ethical than anyone else and more often less so. What's the difference between a corrupt elite "secret society" verses the Mafia and organized crime syndicates? Socially we tend not to view them as morally equivalent because one group is at the top echelon of society while the other are just lowly "criminals" when in fact there is no difference.

"that these people exist"

Thats what I was responding to. I disagree, because the cult in the film is a device, not the central point of the film. The same logic would conclude that Kubric believes that there are obelisk gateways to hyperspace orbiting Jupiter.

Yeah - it was "I'm Stanley Kubrick and I don't know how to make an orgy look interesting."

He should have called called up Tinto Brass and asked for some pointers from filming "Caligula".

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