Main Character’s Queer Aspect and the Quality of Sex in Eyes Wide Shut

In this paper, I will discuss a queer aspect of a main character, Dr. William Harford, whom Tom Cruise plays, and examine the quality of sex in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. We can see this movie as a quest of William for his self-identification. His self is dismantled or made fluid in various ways. Firstly, his convinced position as a husband of Alice is shadowed by her confession of the notion that she tempted herself to play around with a naval officer during their family vacation. This notion obsesses William many times in this movie and makes its motif. Secondly, his social position as a doctor, a father, a friend, and so forth is endangered by a possibility to infect HIV by a one-night stand with a prostitute, Domino, and by a disgrace resulting from his failure in sneaking into a sexual orgy. He has a narrow escape with a help of a woman, who turns out to be Mundy whom William examines at a dance party in the opening scene. In either case, he uses these female characters as his agents or alter egos to identify himself and, at the same time, those female characters are others to be incorporated into his self. In this sense, William can possess a queer orientation in his identity.

This movie presents sex as a trial of William’s identity and as a scene of transsexuality of his identity. He has to do this quest to break out his obsession by experiencing the same kind of sexual situations as his wife might have encountered. In terms of this, he is identified as his wife. During the quest, his masculinity is stripped away because of his transsexual identity, so he never has a sex in this movie except he plays a masculine role as a husband and father in his family. When he tries to have a one-night stand with Domino, a call from his wife prevents it. If he had it, he could infect HIV. Here, Domino represents his position. As I wrote before, he is found out to be a stranger in the sexual orgy. He is forced to be naked and disgraced, but a woman, who is Mundy, literally sacrifices herself for him. He comes to know in the newspaper that she is secretly killed. Here, Mundy represents his position. After all, he never has a sex with other women than his wife so that he can believe his wife’s honesty from his point of view as a man. We can think the way in which his female alter egos experiencing what his wife might have gone through are killed by the representation of a murder of Mundy and he recovers his masculinity.

This movie once tries to dismantle not only a main character’s identity but also a family as a social institution by introducing sex as a discourse. Sex can privilege a man and a woman as a status of couple in the major society. Masked sexes depicted in the scene of the sexual orgy or sexes masking one’s identity “mask” the privileging power. When the identity of an individual who involved with masked sex like William is “unmasked,” the power works not only for the one but for the other of the couple. The power can negatively work for his whole family. The persons involved with the party try to exclude those who revealed their identities because this power should be under the mask for enjoying sex as an act. From the opposite viewpoint, the scene of the sexual orgy seems to be rather asexual despite the fact that the scene is full of sexual acts. That might be because the party is insulated from the society for its quality of the party and masks, and therefore both sexes (men and women) acting sexes are in the condition of gender-free. In comparison with the sexes in the sexual orgy, the sex which is acted by William and Alice, played in the very first scene of the movie or implied at the very end of the movie by Alice’s words, is more sexual since sex as a discourse is exposed and unmasked.

I examined William’s character from the perspective of a queer aspect of his identity by looking at this movie as a quest of his self-identification. In this movie, sex as an act is the key to make the main character into a trance of his transsexual experience. He finally returns to a sex with his wife, which stands for his social status, after experiencing “anonymous sexes” which is stripped from the social contexts.

Diary

Recently, I'm in the process of searching for a new job. I went to a "hello work" in my district, which is a public facility introducing jobs to the people. This time, I was not there for finding jobs but applying for unemployment insurance benefits. Normally, I have to wait for three months and a week until I can get the first insurance benefits. But if the labor standards office admits the unlawfully long labor hours of me for three serial months before I quit the job, which should be 45 hours or more for overtime hours, I can get the money only one week after. I worked for three years, so I can get the insurance for 90 days only. But all of this money will be gone for the taxes for the city and prefecture residential taxes, which are calculated from the last year's income.

I eat a lot of yellow watermelons which have been grown by my father. When I stayed in France, I had to eat a watermelon with a fork and knife before dinner. It was a strange experience for me. In Japan, a watermelon is eaten with a spoon after a meal or for a snack.

My Work

I work for a famous Japanese company which manufactures electric appratuses. Actually, I am not a member of that company, but my company sends me there and makes me sit for twelve hours or more per day to make a help file of the software which our section has been developing since the last October. The software is used for making settings of a motion controller CPU. A motion controller CPU controls many servo motors which become power sources for moving conveyors, robot's arms, elevators, or any movenments in mechanical systems. A software's help file must cover all basic setting procedures. I have to capture picures of each setting everytime the software is changed for upgrading, downgrading, or any change in procedure and appearance. I wake up at 6:45a.m. and get a 7:14 train and begin to work at 8:30 and finish at 21:45. The time when I arrives home is around 23:00. At the end of April, the software must be released to the predetermined market. To meet the deadline, most of us work on saturdays. Well, I remember I was hired as a translator. However, Japanese companies do not make a contract that restricts workers' duties.

Classical Music and Me

I began to practice violin when I was four years old. It was not my will. My father wanted his child to learn playing an instrument. Violin is selected for portability and his arbitorary notion on violin. I went to class on each Tuesday with my mother. The teaching method was called "Suzuki method" which is famous for education of children to be talented and at the same time notorious for the poor instruction of basics of music. The dogma of this method was "every child grows, and the teaching method is only one (suzuki?)". Teachers all believed all the students could play the vilion at some level as they speak their native language. Thanks for this method, I can play Dovolzak's Humoresque, Bach's Concerto, or other tunes without notes. However, I can't read notes and understand violin sounds with do-re-mi or C-D-F. I even didn't know there's the same tone between violin and piano which was called one of the sound names (do-re-mi). I thought violin sound and piano sound were totally different. I continued to go to class for almost ten years. One day, I rejected going to class since my capacity was full with high school studies. Practising the vilolin was nothing but agony. But my ears became rather sensitive against classical music after quitting the lesson. Mozart's No.40 symphony, Beethoven's No.6 symphony, or Chopin's piano improvisation were comfortable and impressing on my ears when I listened to them at the music class at high school. I began to collect classical music CDs. I couldn't believe historically valuable music was cheaper than modern J-pops. I owned more than 200 CDs by the time I graduated from high school. After entering a university, I met a guy who practised the violin, prefered classical music, read Murakami Haruki. He and I became good friends one minute after we first met each other.

She is not here anymore...

She gave me a mild smile. She always apologized me and thanked me. I loved her way of saying such words. But it was me who should've said such words. I didn't take her call because I hated a cell phone. I lost many opportunities to hear her voice which can never be heard now. It echoes in my brain but does not sound. There's no day when I don't remember her. When I think upon some girl, I remember her. When I think about a lot of things I could have done for her, I regret I didn't talk more and spend more time together with her. I miss her. I miss her kindness.