My Stanley Kubrick.

Before I saw Stanley Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut, I began to recount how several of his earlier films had made such an impact on me.

As part of a double bill at the Tivoli Theater in St. Louis in 1982, my friend Jeff and I went to see The Shining. Back then, the Tivoli was a revival house. The Shining was the second film on the bill; the first was--get this--The Exorcist. Linda Blair and company were scary enough, but the performances Kubrick got out of Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and Danny Lloyd were absolutely remarkable. Especially Lloyd, the child, who kept repeating "redrum" (murder, spelled backwards) in the most disturbing voice ever uttered by a human. Even the titles that appeared between scenes, like "Tuesday" or "3:00 P.M." frightened me.

Great film. Scary as hell.

Jeff and I left the theater and stepped onto the foggy street. We both lived about three-quarters of a mile away. We started walking home, the streets getting darker and darker. Neither one of us said a word, yet we were both thinking about the final scene, with Jack Nicholson chasing Danny Lloyd around a snow-covered garden maze. At the same moment, Jeff and I both broke into a run. I doubt either one of us has ever gone as fast as we did that night.

When the ending credits rolled after Eyes Wide Shut, I felt let down. I'd wanted to witness a genre-warping film like The Shining (1980) or Full Metal Jacket (1987) or Dr. Strangelove (1964). But the seamy cable television program Red Shoe Diaries has had more erotic episodes with more discernible plots.

The much-talked-about orgy scene is fabulously shot with excellent set and costume design. But what do we carry away from the scene? We learn that the difference between an orgy with the super rich and, say, people in a trailer park is simply social status and ceremony.

But I've come to praise Kubrick, not bury him. Much has been said about the brilliance of his small body of work. To that I cannot add. However, these retrospectives neglect the importance of Kubrick's political message.

Few films have had their content dismissed or, worse, misunderstood more frequently than Dr. Strangelove. The great film critic Pauline Kael denounced Dr. Strangelove as a pious liberal diatribe that "ridiculed everything and everybody it shows." The movie was without hope, she wrote, causing the young to be paralyzed rather than empowered. "It's not war that has been laughed to death, but the possibility of sane action."

Oddly enough, it was this film's thorough destruction of the myth of a "winnable" nuclear war that made me anti-military. Kael might have hoped that saner heads would prevail in a crisis, but how could any of us be certain that would happen?

It was because of this movie that ! finally gave up on JROTC, which made my mother very, very happy. Oh, I had been a great cadet, and I looked smashing in the uniform, but when I saw PEACE IS OUR PROFESSION tattooed on the fuselage of a B-52, I couldn't comprehend the bullshit.

I wonder how many crazy-ass General Turgidson (George C. Scott) wannabes still roam the halls of the Pentagon. Dr. Strangelove opened the wide shut eyes of a generation that grew up with the mistaken belief that nuclear weapons were a necessary deterrent against aggression. The film forced us to laugh at the bomb as safety blanket, and at the men who lied and said this was the best way to settle our differences.

But Kubrick's anti-war sentiments also shine through in the 1957 drama Paths of Glory. In Colonel Dax (played by Kirk Douglas) you see the duality that nationalism creates inside smart men who should know better, and you watch pompous, pious, pitiless, autocratic military leaders dream up unthinkable plans to achieve their own self-serving goals. General Mireau (George Macready) is fired for being incompetent, but not before three men are executed. The story may be fictional, but the actions of high-ranking officers like General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) who use punishment as a face-saving technique under the guise of upholding national unity is as real as it gets.

Even back then, critics loved the style but dismissed the message. "You may not believe that two such evil men [Generals Mireau and Broulard] could wield this power, or that French military justice could be polluted," said The New York Herald-Tribune. "In this case, Paths of Glory will strike you as a narrow and unlikely drama."

This year, Kubrick's left-leaning beliefs didn't even get a hearing, a failure that should undermine the notion of the "liberal" establishment in the culture sections of newspapers and magazines. Critics don't have to embrace his beliefs, but to fall in love with the execution of Kubrick's films without identifying the politics is unconscionable.

NOTES:

* Congratulations to Entertainment Weekly and other media outlets that have recently discovered the lack of minorities, especially blacks, in the new television season. But, gee, aren't you guys a little late?

Writers in the alternative press have been shouting about this for quite some time. A couple of years ago, when WB and UPN filled their prime time slots with crap like Homeboys in Outer Space, the mainstream press thought it was the beginning of a renaissance. The nerve-wracking banter of Dawson's Creek and Felicity is increasing WB's popularity. But the network seems not to recognize that it stayed alive with the help of black viewers who regularly tuned in to black shows. Even on this network, the serious dramas this season will feature white stars.

* The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has stepped in recently with a boycott of network television. How about this: Why not boycott Black Entertainment Television for creating a monopoly, and then not doing much with it? Sure, I love the more news-oriented programming of BET, but the network has dropped the ball in terms of creating new entertainment. Please, what the world doesn't need is another comic showcase.

The NAACP should also extend its boycott to the guilds that represent directors, writers, and technicians. This is an industry that created the god-awful Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer--about Abraham Lincoln's fictitious black manservant-which featured an all-white writing staff.

You can have as many minorities on the screen as you want, but stereotypes are created out of the minds of writers and directors. Want better representation? Start behind the camera.

Fred McKissack is a writer based in Chicago.