African Genesis
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (1961) is a book by Robert Ardrey.
When New York Times writer Fred M. Hechinger wrote a piece which declared A Clockwork Orange "fascist", Kubrick wrote a letter in response:
It is quite true that my film's view of man is less flattering than the one Rousseau entertained in a similarly allegorical narrative—but, in order to avoid fascism, does one have to view man as a noble savage, rather than an ignoble one? Being a pessimist is not yet enough to qualify one to be regarded as a tyrant (I hope)...The age of the alibi, in which we find ourselves, began with the opening sentence of Rousseau's Emile: 'Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society's fault.' It is based on two misconceptions: that man in his natural state was happy and good, and that primal man had no society...Rousseau's romantic fallacy that it is society which corrupts man, not man who corrupts society, places a flattering gauze between ourselves and reality. This view, to use Mr. Hechinger's frame of reference, is solid box office but, in the end, such a self-inflating illusion leads to despair.
In his letter, Kubrick quoted extensively from Robert Ardrey, author of African Genesis and The Social Contract--not to be confused with Rousseau's--and author Arthur Koestler who is famous for writing The Ghost In The Machine. Both authors (Koestler through psychology and Ardrey through anthropology) searched for the cause of humanity's capacity for death and destruction and both, like Kubrick, were suspicious of the liberal belief in the innate goodness of mankind. Ardrey and Kubrick both attribute this to Rousseau, who, in Ardrey's words "Fathered the romantic fallacy" and Behaviourism, especially what they consider "radical Behaviourism", which they blame primarily on B.F. Skinner. In his interview with The New York Times, Kubrick stated that his view of man was closer to those of Christianity than to humanism or Jewish theology, saying "I mean, it's essentially Christian theology anyway, that view of man."
