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Comment by microwavecamera | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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