Podcast for Social Research, Episode 89: Eyes Wide Shut — a Film Guide

In episode 89 of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live at BISR Central, BISR faculty Danielle Drori, Jude Webre, and Lauren K. Wolfe sat down following a screening of Stanley Kubrick's controversial final film, Eyes Wide Shut , to discuss its long thirty years in the making, its source material in fin-de-siècle Vienna, and its vision of bourgeois marriage and sexual morality in turn-of-the-millennium New York. Kicking off with behind-the-scenes Hollywood details, Jude adumbrates an argument for the film as an auteur's personal reverie, tracing resonances between it and the enigmatic story of Kubrick's own (second) married life in postwar New York City; Lauren then lets us in on the lurid sexual obsessions of Arthur Schnitzler, on whose 1926 novella Dream Story the film is based, with the interpretive aid of W.G. Sebald; while Danielle guides us through a collective Freudian analysis of the dreams that run through and construct the film's emotional core. With insightful and witty participation from the audience, the talk touches on masculinity within marriage; nudity and nakedness; coitus interruptus; Freud's stages of sexual development; dream as unconscious communication; sex and death; fucking down and marrying up; Nicole Kidman as gay icon; and whether anything of substance appears to have changed in bourgeois sexual morality between circa 1900 and 1999. The Podcast for Social Research is produced by Ryan Lentini. Learn more about upcoming courses on our website . Follow Brooklyn Institute for Social Research on Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / Bluesky

You can listen to Podcast for Social Research, Episode 89: Eyes Wide Shut — a Film Guide online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Podcast for Social Research, Episode 89: Eyes Wide Shut — a Film Guide is an episode from The Podcast for Social Research by Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.

This episode is 01:21:49 long.

This episode was published on May 2, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from The Podcast for Social Research when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.